Category: poetry
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The Minotaur’s Triumph
Gone in the labyrinth is the thin golden clew that is the salvation out for the gathering of lost poets. The thread doesn’t exit to the center, to meaning, just a thick grove of forest where they meander forever in the definitions all around them, each footfall erased in the revision of those before.
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The Deaf Listen to Their Poetry
The poet signs his words to the deaf. The screen behind exposes his faulty hands. He is silent. His hands a fire. He knows there will be unintended words, new meanings to old and familiar lines. The muddle is his creation, their new meaning, new poem, both treachery and rebirth, their dawn and twilight,…
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Remembering Prayer
There will be a time when God leaves you. Maybe summer. Maybe winter. The last thing he will say: Keep searching. Keep finding. Seek me in the trash, the womb lungs and heart. He will leave you agape and stirring, just a memory prayer to say as the sun rises and you wonder whether winter…
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Dig, Dig, Dig
The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth. Walk with me. Fall with me. Be the helmet light in the tunnel. Hold my feet less I fall into the abyss. Shackle your friends to you, foot to foot, arm to arm. The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.…
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El Lenguaje de los Fantasmas
Mommy, esta di descubrí el lenguaje de los fantasmas Ghost talk? What are you talking about, Jonny? Si mommy. En serio descubrí. Escúchame. Ghost talk? What do they say? Para saludar dicen: hoo hoo. Para decir que sí, dicen: Hoo And how do they say goodbye? No lo sé. They haven’t left yet. Mama, today…
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My Poetry Is Like This
Writing poetry for me is like fishing in the wind: You shoot your arrow-net into the air and after many failures you snag an ugly bird that you make beautiful the more you see that it really resembles you.
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Earth’s Trick
The world is the ultimate trick It grants man thunder yet steals his lightning every time. It makes him think he has the sweetest smell of every thing even that his shit does not stink that taming fire was his best theft of all time that a caged dove heralds peace in our time the…
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BTW
I gawked at her nine mind years hooked three heart weeks later btw f’ed a year before the day btw three dogs, no kids but she can really cook so we lived happy btw friends, church, family, dogs, house, night, day, time all slipped away btw yes, we aged, grew old-er btw fell into cancer,…
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Blindspot
God, do not send the sunshine down in thoughtless torrents. Please do not obsess on light falling on all of your making, graciously falling everything on earth. For we are things of the shade, and the light falls too…
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Bless
Bless the blessings. Bless the moon for bestowing dreams that illuminate the soul. Bless its beams. Bless the way it reveals revelations in the dark, black letters inked on white vellum daring to be read that release the heaviness of the mind in the lightness of eternity. Bless the idea that frees, not oppresses. Bless…
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Caught in the Prayer Storm
The hot night rain drenches me in sleep opening a bow to prayer amidst the lunatic birds swarming in the dark heat. Magnolias are split in dreams heavy with bolts and tears, flowing in the cascade of cracked mirrors. All is unmoored from my memory, surviving on communion. Dear Jesus am I not more profound…
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Earth Rejects All Man’s Anagrams
From form vile evil in the shade of hades sire and rise the lived devil, the tornado donator that is the heart of the earth. God denying, dog hating, it listens for silence, the license to edit the tide to its whim and sink man’s canoe in its ocean.
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Today, I Will Be the Promise
Today I will be an apple bringer, a sower of Job’s tears, a healer of grief. Today I will be the tarty sweet fruit passed hand to hand in the peace caravan. Today I will be the cooing melody among a flight of doves. Today I will be the candle of the…
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Facing It
The tears fade in the screaming inside howling brick. It is our cancer swirling around, stone, flesh and home. Our history is in its eye, our profile in this wild night of carnage slouching towards mornings. We turn away and the brick frees us. We turn back and are inside our granite selves forming in…
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A Day for Love
Pick a day. The random date generator chose: January 13, 1835 There are still generations formed from those that fell in love, married, birthed sons and daughters on that day. Each an unrepeatable existence. Family lore and crests enshrine the first kiss, the birds that soared the sky, the color of flowers in his/her hand,…
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Wind Shear
The oaks perceiving the assailing breeze shiver off their nuts, swallows and squirrels upwards to a dark fearful sky that camouflages broken peace in the wild promises of the swirling winds. Night breaks night— smashing every compass point in impatience. Bricks stem to snow, the wind ghosts every leaf in mournful woe. …
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Waiting for the Hungry Ocean
I am oxygen for you are the sky. We exist only because rain has formed the sea. Our memory is buried in every tide. Its waters swim inside the roots of our blood. The fluid of our language, rippling stories in the school of words. The bits of dreaming are…
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Shelter in Place
My dog finds a conch nestled in the sand- half dead, half alive- in the foaming tide, She paws at its exposed pinkness ignoring the hermit crab seeking shelter. The conch shrivels beyond its lip the scent of dead flowers pouring out, my dog in a frenzy to taste its exotic flesh, this beautiful creature…
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Hymn for Our Past and Future
For my reversal and recovery, For my wife’s lost womb, For a future free of cancers, For the old brick house toppled in the wolf tornado, For the new cradle being raised on an ancient cry of earth, For the mothers who died never seeing their children wed, For rescued memories stuck on cardboard, For…
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Collecting Beach Glass After the Storm
I never thought brick dreams could tumble in the wind. My wife collects our scattered memories in a undersized bin like a child on the tide line collecting beach glass and seashells. She listen for the sound of blood amidst the dying wind mistaking rustling pages for her breath cycling in and out, her pulse…
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On Seeing My Old Crooked Tree Uprooted After the Tornado
I loved this old crooked tree that refused to grow straight with the sky but willed itself to stretch with the horizon, limbs resisting what every oak near it wanted— to kiss the sun. It had a brother, long since cut down, its stump never uprooted, ground to chips. Decades of weeping, trying to…
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My Preop Wish
One night when skies have donned their stars And parted the lunar drapes Scattering silent bats to afar To huddle with their mates, We’ll fix our eyes northward, my dear, To distant lush Spring realms Where musicians play songs with cheer And nothing overwhelms. And we shall travail lovely streets With restaurants and bakeries, Serving…
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Waiting on the Promise
Wait, I spoke to the highest star. It winked and bowed to dawn. Wait, I spoke to the low sun that set. Wait, moon. It just glowed on, gracing, gifting me with bright words. Wait, I spoke to my sad heart. It beat as a heart does, disobedient less it stop trembling…
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Ode to a Peanut Butter Elvis
Elvis loved his peanut butter. Gladys, who loved him the most, as all good mothers love their children, would feed him grilled Hawaiian bread sandwich after sandwich of peanut butter with chopped caramelized bananas, or gently mashed fork bananas, sometimes with bacon, sometimes without. He dreamed of peanut butter and Gladys would feed…
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The History of the Stone from David’s Sling
Five smooth stones David culled from Elah’s brook, Shepherd knowing dense ones to fit sling’s crook. He released the first on Goliath’s shright the giant falling back dead with the smite. Goliath gazing into David’s eyes felt his blade render head for David’s prize. Head held high, high and tight, in David’s…
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Footballs Are Made for Running, Tossing and Fumbling
Footballs always dazzled me, composed boxes on the shelf, like pigskin half moons and suns needing tees from toppling down, a kick or a toss to send them hurling to human planets. The long run, perfect spiral is inherent in its form, as is carnage, grace, error. Its life is moving forward in the…
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Accident
The rear view mirror showed the car on fire. Metal no protection for burning flesh— burning down to the color of the night— a bright reversal reflected in white. Maybe charred bone? Not hell. Neither heaven. Police, EMTs too late to save the tissues smelling like pan steak, fatty pork— blood emitting its metallic compounds—…
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Trying to Sing in Italian
The virus news carries me from room to room. A Verdi aria breaks the solemn chant of the rising death tolls in my brain as Italians sing to the sick below, voice to voice forming a single line of hope, that filters down to the lonely windows, my electric screen, all the world’s tablets. The…
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She Is the Way They Left Her
She is the way they left her: silent, shuttered, composed amidst disarray, the waiting chair unmoved, her body draped in final coverings, spider rays webbing the room, the overhead light unused, the bed sagging forever in the center after this, the sun fighting with the weight of shadows on her bedspread. The corners of her…
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Spring Knows the Rose’s Scream
The rose has thorns because it cares not to be touched. Its color is a warning for animals to stay away. Its scent is a scream and not a delight for us to own. bending only for the sun. The scientist knows this having heard its sub audible howl with delicate machines that probe its…
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The World Is Full of Missing Things
The world is full of missing images and sounds. In heaven the blind and deaf will meet: one will show the other the pictures never seen, the other will share the songs they never heard. That is why, what and where, are part of the essential questions every one asks.
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The Missing Sock Always Knows Where the Other Is
I lose one sock every other washing. The wisdom of the washer and dryer says that God is stockpiling the lost one to be reunited with the other in heaven. Does that mean those with perfectly mated, never separated pairs, are doomed to the spin dry of eternal hell? But then, it’s Smart of God,…
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SEE ROCK CITY
I don’t know if SEE ROCK CITY is still stenciled in white on black on old red barns along dusty Southern highways. The old black and white photos weren’t arrows, more like anchored arks that floated menageries of tourists to Lookout Mountain to see miniature Fairy Tale Caverns, villages of Mother Goose creatures, a…
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Obituary of Her Last Memory
Many say the last thing the dying see is the flap of dove wings or Jesus caressing their hair. Her hallucinations were full of Him smiling at her, speaking words she could not understand. And when I draped the blanket over her cold feet, crowned with the blue bruise of all her past…
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Satan Has Hollowed the World
Soldiers patrol Bethlehem now. The Kaaba hosts no circumambulating mustati. The Ganges’ bathes in its own sin and ash releasing no Moksha. The Vatican quarantines even its Cardinals as The Pope holds mass to an empty St. Peter’s Square. In Chicago, a 7-year-old girl named Heaven, will not die today, not become…
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Satan Hates the Spring
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Boricua Nada
How can I call myself a Boricua when I barely know the Spanish for earth and sky, have no roots in the soil of Moroves, no sense of San Juan’s flavors, the warm Atlantic blowing Arecibo beach, Ponce dancing in the Caribbean’s laughter— all memories stolen from postcards hastily bought at the airport along with…
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Cooking in the Kitchen with the Dog
My wife doesn’t allow me to watch her when she cooks. The dog is her silent admirer, sitting patiently for crumbs. So much of it is filled with the aroma of her mother, Geri’s cooking, the recipes etched in memory’s stone, rituals not shared with a family of men. The scent of garlic…
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What a Deaf Republic Chose to Hear
A deaf republic can’t afford to sit on its hands, killing its sign language in willful silence, letting memory erase the fear and the truth. The disease existed. The shrouds too. Concrete does not pave over the blood. A stroll in the park does not tamp the pain. The Punch…
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What a Deaf Republic Chose Not to Hear
They are shoved into the silence, the one that speeds down the road, bumps and rattles disguising muffled horrors: handkerchiefs in mouths, gloved palms over squeezed lips tight as a kiss. These are the ones soldiers are told to ignore, to turn their backs on- civilians, friends, family- just listen to the chain of command,…
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Max von Sydow Made Me Believe
When he cried on the cross he made me believe in Jesus. When he blessed a devil child he made me believe in His Word. When he mated death he made me believe in the light. When he ate a wild strawberry he made me know love. When he held his…
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The Wolf’s Interrogation
The wolf watches and asks me questions: can I watch you eat, watch myself absorb into you, play with the cancer. She questions everything: even if I want to live, die now or die later, although that is unanswerable or unquestionable. That is the statement life wants, love needs in its haste to…
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Chihuahua of the Manor
Aye, chihuahua, canis familiaris, land piranha nipping at Aztec heels. Aye chihuahua! Heart of a Techichi warrior becoming yipping snarling bitch, eyes pulsating, patellas luxating at the stench of homo erectus US-es post-alus carrier-alopulus approaching, adorned in sky colors crowned in ivory pith. She is fed on belly rubs and Kirkland’s grain…
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Onward- to the Rediscovered Realm
In a realm of two moons and three suns not afraid to be besieged by everlasting brightness, where everyone speaks from their heart spires and devils and scorpions cavort with sprites, magic coexisted with every day miracles. People would cross on invisible bridges as easily as Jesus walking on water, on their way to their…
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Fold It Away, My Child
Good mothers make their children fold and put away all clothes, even hers after death. Bad mothers make sure they always wear them for the rest of their lives.
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A Tour of My Happy Place
I am a lousy gardener that only offends the soil on top and below. No Petunias or Marigolds bloom, only crab grass struggling with Tennessee moss, and a small patch of Kentucky Bluegrass the survivor of almost fifty years and two previous owners: a general practitioner who layered the inner sod of the…
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visiting Smithsonian museums with my sister
by the third floor the weight of history had become too much that you wanted to release it to the sky by the fourth my sister still hadn’t enough of rolling in its ashes hearing the moans by the fifth there was nothing to see but the blue cinder terror so we…
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The Mentor
He taught them where to carve the dead parts so the rest could live, to find its flow and tap its sap. With every mistake the mentor took each student by the hand on a short walk to the middle of the forest where it slopped into pools thick with inky water, where…
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House H(a)unting
It’s hard to find an even house: foundations settle at creation, doors will sag from slamming, tiles will chip from drop pots, careless feet scuffing along, days when they sweat and cry, bricks will crack, driveways too— settling into a haunting beauty, everything tilts differently, microscopically altered from your last place.…
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My Mother’s Sounds
I am not your dying son, I thought, as my wife gave me the diagnosis, remembering my mom in her dying chair. I will not pass into final memories watching the Pope in America. “Bless me, Papa”, will not be my last words. I do not believe in my mother’s God though He…
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One Million Prayers
I will spend my lifetime fulfilling the dreams of the dead, writing to the living of how their hopes were fulfilled, hoping their prayers will blossom a million miracles.
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Haven of Our Sun and Moon
Wake dear, and rise, sleep not this day. Let our two dreams play to and fro with each. Let’s dance in the sun shouting— one beam, the light’s high joy. You nor I will not cry today as you gambol and swirl, as I dream, hope, now words, then love and vows…
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Lullaby for Your Daydreams
My sweet little one, these sea days are smaragdine. I feed time emeralds to extend your birth. I nestle you close though you float away from me small dream to dream to dream. Standing in front I see all your suns. Breath unions us a mist reared from tide. Like a tern winged in…
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Reading the Handwriting of My Surname (MOYA)
M My ugly M: two lonely crescent wings touching the sun, an Icarus mounting up, than melting into the whirl; the waterfall between mountains; caterpillars kissing like moths fluttering to the light. OY O- a strawberry, orange just ripe for a thumb to squish; a lasso, not a noose; a good herd dog corralling…
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In the Cancer Museum
In the cancer museum I imagine where mine would rest in peace and ease. My eyes scan rows of organs: Disney’s lungs on top of Newman’s own racy pair; Ingrid Bergman’s left breast bump Bette Davis’ right— indiscreet voyagers; Audrey Hepburn’s colon nesting Farrah Fawcett’s like Tiffany Angels. I saw my…
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Prayer for Old and New Coats
I have to sew my memories inside the lining of my coat to keep them close but not inside, something to take on and off when cold grief needs warm reflection or remembrances flash painfully bright, when chemo and radiation makes it difficult to feel my teeth, tie my shoes, retrieve the…
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The Boxer
His arms were too short to box with God, so God sent him down for more sparring. He boxed the devil over and over and over, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit doing the scoring. When he beat the devil every round, he tried again to punch the Lord. His arm were still…
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The Call of the Wild
What does a dog know of being a wolf, a wolf know of being a dog? The wolf howls not to understand the moon but to know itself in the community of nature, to shout out its place in the pack and among the stars. It knows hunger that a dog will…
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Salvage
What keeps me holding onto my old self, preventing me from casting it into past swells? Something detested, adored, hymned too, haunted, cancer ridden, inflamed, grieving and torn- yet beloved, pulled forward into an ocean of tomorrow and tomorrow’s swimming to hope or drowning in hopelessness, never knowing where my forgiveness exists…
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The Wave
The hospital gown they gave me is the same one with clouds my mother and friend once wore, a hand me down filled with the aura of grief and hope, of time and death. My name and date of birth are the only thing the nurses ask as I am led to the mold…
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Gifts
I can’t remember when death turned moments to memorial, gifts unfolded to blessings. The tan slippers of Christmas past snuggled my mother’s lost toe so the others never mourned. Those mules never left her feet, even on her final nap. “Bless me Papa,” her last words. I don’t know if they were…
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Florecitas
Ay, florecitas clouds of white frozen in sugary divine, little flowers of my soul, taste of sweet desire of little boys in San Juan, Moroves, Ponce, exiles in Miami and the Bronx tasting the beauty of their mother’s youth— knowing love by the rattling of small blooms in the big tin, the maternal hand…
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Gretel and Hansel Get Parental Advice
We tell our children not to wander in the woods, never to stop or enter the cottage with the peppermint scent and gingerbread façade for a naked witch is sleeping inside. Beware the milk weeping from an axe handle outside, the tingling inside that stretches from heart to toes that neither sinks nor swims…
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Underwater
I am Jonah in the belly of Leviathan living only when the beast surfaces, exchanging liquid grief, heavy air for the unwanted gasps of new life. I pray out of this belly for gills and only the ocean hears my voice, It deepens and encompasses me, its waves billowing me in absolution. The…
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The Song of Names
It was chanted for five Sabbaths in a row in the small synagogue with the charred bimah, ashes staining the tzitzits of the rebbe’s tallit, as he raised his arms above his head, closed his eyes and sang the first alaf of seven thousand dabars, the oral memory passed down six generations, a psalm for…
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Greensboro Boys Dream on Dying February Days
1. Four Greensboro boys at a counter watch dead astronauts rain on Texas, 2. hear the scream of eight states being ripped from Hidalgo’s belly, 3. imagine themselves the first black hand to cast a ballot in front of snarling mastiffs- 4. Cochise chanting a war chant in front of white captors- 5. A free…
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Tell them about the dream, Martin
In the shadow of Lincoln he heard Mahalia shout out “Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream.” He remembered the vision and the words that came to him on that long walk to freedom on that 75 degree June Detroit day. It was evident as the clear water of…
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Just Mercy
Southern justice is the snake that slithers up the tree before the buzz of the lumberjack’s saw, the duck of the head to fit it into the squad car, the dark voice singing in a dark cell put on death row before his trial, convicted for the color of his skin before he was even…
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Remember, Remember Not
Remember the sky even though it won’t remember you. Know the constellations’ tales even as they know not yours. Remember the moon’s pull despite its denying your shadow. Remember the sun, the dawn even as its novas your sight, singes your memories in forgetfulness, grief and time. Remember the sunset, that…
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Diary of Your Last Breath
December 3, 2019 She was displayed before me with her eyes closed and mouth agape, leaving me to wonder whether she died in terror or awe. Was her last breath the honest gurgle I’ve been seeing for the last few days, that I took comfort in hearing restart every time I called her name…
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The Hand
Every cut is a bleeding thorn, every breath is a spread of fingers. The ear records all its silences. – Lose a hand and it goes to the trash heap, lose an ear and everyone will think of Van Gogh. – In the landfill the hand discovers fire, it discovers how to conquer the rats,…
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The Mold
I am a Vitruvian Man marked out like an anatomy lesson in black and green dye, something to align against the mean, a mold made of sheets and plastic to aim the mechanical eye to revolve its rays around. I can’t move because the machine requires mathematical silence to perform its cure, so the…
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Seeing 2020
I want to greet the new year with 20/20 eyes, knowing that cure dances on the edge of hope’s grave and that in this biblical year of flood, cancer and death, that grief is just a short term companion. Tomorrow time will step me away leaving only memory and the long walk to the…
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Mary Wept
Miriam wept. as she gave birth to her first born son in the great room of her parents windowless house because there was no space for her in their guest room. Miriam wept amidst the smell of animals lulling in the stables, the stench of blood and life, pouring from her womb in circles…
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The Two Popes
For some God comes in silence and for others it’s a saxophone solo. He’s the confession a lonely parish priest has waited all day to see and hear after lattice hours of watching smoke blow down like Cain’s rejected offering. Every soul has two Popes, both living in God but are not of it.…
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Yoda Siths the Universe for the Rise of Skywalker
The force is another Jedi mind trick that convinces the soul that all that is Sith is not necessarily sin but the whining of a baby Yoda aware of his Death Star.
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Honey Boy
We carry our fathers on our backs, honey boys to their joys and violence, absorbing their frustrations in memory or dispersing their cries into indifferent winds. Our hearts listen for the end of the cycle powerless to the mind beating the rhythm anew and the soul’s prayers for forgiveness bounded in an eternal history…
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A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Mr. Rogers grace exists in miniature cities of kindness, – the tranquil tones of forgiveness, level to the eye of a single frighten child. – For him, and in that moment, that child is the most precious thing in the world. – He blesses them with positive ways of dealing with their feelings; – the…
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Anne Frank Hiding in America or Breaking the Neck of Jojo Rabbit
With the sound of sirens screaming outside, ten knocks on the door, the shout of authority flooding in from the red steel, would Joe American give up Anne Frank hiding in the attic among his dusty relics, the crawl space shared with a family of rats, living under the loose floorboards among the stacks of…
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Cop Movie or 21 Bridges
Those who tread the thin blue line knows it follows through their lineage. – Strong boys become men, then become cops. The rest become robbers, the devil that stares them in the eye for the rest of their life. – If they are good they’ll get their shoot out in the slaughterhouse.
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The Good Liar
It’s hard to tell the lies of impression, the little bits of puffery that makes one look good in the eyes of a would be admirer. – One may say their name with a French flair. Betty becomes Bette. Roy becomes Roy-al, with the long affected A stretched out to tomorrow. – One may even…
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Your First Mustang or Ford vs Ferrari (A Movie Poem)
Everything is a continuous white line that goes on forever to the horizon where the next dream is always ahead. – Just you and the mustang a body and a machine moving through space and time. – Drive like you mean it. Drive hard. Drive tight. – The Mustang is a wild bronco not wanting…
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Veteran Day
The stars on the flag started falling off when Private Walker returned home to Tennessee after six months of being in country in Afghanistan. – At Camp Leatherneck on the treadmill he folded five points to pentagrams, imagined fireworks nova his welcome back. – The flag rarely flapped in the arid silence of base camp.…
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Making It- Midway (A Movie Poem)
Stella remembers when the Zeros flew thru her backyard and she saw Pearl Harbor in flames, blue bodies bouncing on the waves. – Afterward, welders melted the steel of capsized destroyers hoping to rescue any upside down survivors. – Her Billy drafted six months before would fly Wildcats in the Marshall Islands and in the…
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The Shining 2 or Doctor Sleep (A Movie Poem)
The earlier horror leaves DT a broken drunken man building smaller worlds within worlds, boxes within boxes, memories within smaller memories to keep the monsters from eating the shining he has left. – He is forever moving to the same room with different people. – “We are all dying”, he thinks, “The world is one…
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Film Noir or Motherless Brooklyn (A Movie Poem)
In the rear view mirror he can see the specters.. – her upside down reflection scatter when a foot hits the puddle… – hear the notes of a trumpet solo popping thru the open red door of a jazz club… – remembers when they whacked his partner… – and left their footprints on his ribs..…
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Harriet (A Movie Poem)
1. The biggest tree exists to neither swing nor sway, doesn’t wait for a strong wind to emancipate it from roots, to be turned into freedom papers to be torn up by the master. – The swing was created by the master, to exist until the limb snaps and the sway of blood to earth…
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Community Garden
The bulldozers and jackhammers blasted the concrete away clearing it of water, aggregate, cement, tearing it down to the soil until it buzzed with reclamation, smelled of loam and petrichor, the release of geosmin in the stirring, ozone expelling with first lightning and rain, surface bubbles releasing aerosols like fresh baked bread from the oven…
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The Singularity or Terminator: Dark Fate (A Movie Poem)
The machine that replaces you and the one that ascends you will fight it out on the factory floor. – Ultimately, it’s another machine, the gun, that will save you from a lethal precision that can cut flies in midair. – Put a hundred cops between you and the singularity and you get one hundred…
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Oncology Nurse
Every touch is a devotion, every soft phrase a prayer to life, to continue living. – A nightingale, a dove gowned in heavenly blue a ministering survival chant. – Thank you and double checks are abundant. – They minister consistent kindness for they live among the blasted. – There is no sniping, no rivalries, just…
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Okay
“Are you okay?”, my wife asks when I cough. – “No. I’m fine. Yes. I’m not”, I respond, – stumping her in the poetic irony of words that – encompass the yes and no and the in between. – She flips the finger at me and I return the bird to the nest. – We…
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The Lighthouse (A Movie Poem)
Doldrums, doldrums eviler than the devil. – The Cyclopes’ prism eye revolves around me in a mechanical chatter. – It calls out desires at night, a mermaid cast up on shore – that awakens with the caw of a thousand slaughtered gulls – sending me scrambling back to the darkness, – afraid to touch the…
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Pain and Glory (A Movie Poem)
“If you do not write or film”, the director wonders, ”am I alive?” – “What limbo am I in when the shooting stops? When my camera no longer holds the beautiful prism.” – His films stay the same, only he changes, exchanging the silver screen for glistening tin foil heated under with a match. –…
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Parasite (A Movie Poem)
Parasites: they insinuate themselves into your head, your heart, your art. – They exist in the schizophrenic zone: the lower right corner of your painting looking for patterns that go to childhood, the well rehearsed gestures that allow them to take over, plant the image in your agitated brain that makes you doubt your love,…
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Dreaming Graceland or Zombieland: Double Tap (A Movie Poem)
When you think Elvis was a fraud, a rip off the black man’s voice; – when you finally meet someone who smells like candles instead of gunpowder and whiskey; – who is comfortable with you driving that pink Cadillac all the way to Memphis; – who won’t throw your pink stuff to the side of…
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Dunk the Clown
The clown sits above the water awaiting the baptism, hurling the truth— – guessing the exact weight of the big blonde with the skinny man attached to her side like a vanishing twin, the errant throw the last spasm of a hand destined to be reabsorbed into the belly; – knocking a few inches off…
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Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (A Movie Poem)
The absence of love makes one a villain in other’s hearts. – In the proposal the weeping willow sheds its leaves to the sky, – while in the bowels below the servants of the earth forge war, – pull iron from earth as it screams to be reclaimed. – Above, silk napkins unfold into laps…
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Gemini Man (A poem loosely inspired by the movie)
It’s the mirror you don’t look into, the one without the morals, emotions, doubts and fears. – How much wisdom do you gain in confronting your older self, tailing it thru a city of statues and bridges, fighting with it in the catacombs amidst an audience of smiling skulls? – You have trained to be…
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Judy (A Movie Poem)
She always knew that Oz was a one-time voyage lasting until the red shoes dancing on and on cracks the golden road, wears it to dirt dreams, her tired legs collapsing into poppy fields, pills, her voice singing on and on in the fall until hoarse, silent and invisible. – She sings because she’s a…
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Northern Autumn and Southern Sun
The cold blows north and the city falls into the cycles of a leafless world. It feeds off the brick, licks the shoes, tastes the cotton of jackets, gnaws hands clutching the last warmth of summer close to their heart, cuddling its last embers, huddling to the next soul with faint fires when it goes…