Monthly Archives: February 2022

A Threshold

Something has changed the sounds out here.
They phase out and then reappear
like vagabonds in the frontier.

Breath itself, a labored chore
an anchor pulled across the sea floor
not wanting to move anymore
though unable to interfere

Wayward eyes will find no relief
lost amongst the constant mischief
the world apt to abuse belief
real and absurd defined ‘unclear.’

The smell of the place reaches deep
like a fog over the throat that creeps
finding fetid remains to reap
the scent of one’s end always near.

You can feel the hostility
hidden like electricity,
tangible curiosity,
tamed only when engineered

Senses reel back from the attack
all becoming abstracts or black
flesh hacked away by well-aimed flack
the mind, a shattered chandelier.

Darkness then takes you by the hand
drags you out before that big band
desperate teeth pushing words through wasteland
“There is nothing for us to fear!”

Center Stage (w/poet Riley Seidel)

a man to match,
two husbands for mother and me,
two pennies shined and spent,
irrelevancy captured in pastiche
be not my father, fleeting, fugacious,
a filament of generational morals
or rather something less gracious.
I burn for my sins, sitting on your pyre
was my death cathartic enough, my child?
did you really have to call me a liar?
I cried for my matrimony,
nineteen and a child already lost,
supposed residual bonding upon this acrimony
can you tell me,
what couldn’t I see?

Beneath those hands
that were once so quick to strike
you hide eyes that shed tears in the light
but remain quietly dry in the darkness.
the audience, with that sad soliloquy, is sedated
but I remain a victim resigned backstage
a witness to all this from an angle much less complicated.
as supporting cast, I played my part,
myself reduced so you could be elevated
though you “died” you lived on in my heart
for the life you were to me was all I had known
until finally those curtains began to close
and I recognized that I was grown.
How could you see, from up high on that stage,
anything that you didn’t want to be shown?

The Frontier

It waits for us in the forest
festering amongst the trees
the patient infection subdued;
an evil one seldom sees.

The oak and the pine sound anxious
ardent wind ignores their cries
wrapped around the best like ivy
searching us with ivory eyes.

We carved the beast from bone remains
rooted out from bloodied fields
tooled to honor those we slaughtered
resigned to stay safely sealed.

Time gifts the beast greater power
posturing it for the war
in which we had been the monsters
killing for land and much more.

Our victory in the battle
baneful for all that is good
gifted us unfounded wisdom
while our death waits in the woods.

The Orphan Bound to Steps

Standing against the crowd like river rocks
gears whirring in a clock with hands outstretched,
static against motion,
his eyes are loud against deafening stock
herding towards boxes and locks that pay well
sapping their emotions.

The boy is alone swallowed by the swarm
a cold drop in warm water unnoticed
soon enough devoured
falling to the ground prone, beneath the storm
trying to conform, become safe like stone.
I left him there cowered.

I left part of me there as well
both of us settling into hell.

Melting

A pool of water on the floor
reflecting fractured porcelain
I had not ever seen before.
Footsteps like tears lead out the door
taking with them my oxygen.

Who is it that has found this place
my sad forest of broken things?
Who takes lazy steps with such grace?
Do they know what the night will bring
that bleak and haunted carapace?

Surely, they know not of those ghosts,
or they would not ever have come,
I think and follow their breadcrumbs.
I still have a duty as host
to shake hands and bid them welcome.

Oh! If only it were that plain,
to find things in this place again!
The cracks and crevices have grown
far beyond what I can explain
None of it is yet set in stone.

The walls will move from here to there
when they think you are unaware.
The floor will find stairs if it please
and remove them with the same ease
always some laughter in the air.

Found

Hands formed for functions unrealized
                 land distressed on like minded wood planks
         an unwanted applause

                                  They approach this way

                 Emergency room eyes
                           Obsidian
                        shaped as sharp daggers
                 cutting the dark with fractures of light

                                  They approach this way

Sounds of protest drown in midnight fluids
                 like tree sap and pistons
                                  stretched thin
                 desperate for the floor

                                  They approach this way

I am static and stagnation
                 as broken as the horror before me
          crucified with thick nails of decisions undecided

                                  They approach.

An Effigy (w/poet Riley Seidel)

I saw your hand
reach out from behind the cloth
a fragile thing
beguiled by shadow and pomp
though your face flush
the hand was molded plaster
disembodied
as if it had no master
but you it served,
of this I can be certain;
the gift it held
brought from behind those curtains
I gave to you
all those many years ago.
Why now return
that whittled ivory rhino?

I loved you then
that I am sure of my dear.
So romantic
but with you, it was austere.
In such patience
my dreams slipped from reality
contradicting
your love for hyperbole.
I filled myself
with the visions of your rhino
grandiose, yes
amongst my humble fallow.
Your confusion
Lends all hands towards your grief.
I must tell you
It is time for me to leave.

Heat

The pilot light defies the dark
               a flickering of potential
                              this is every Tuesday now.

What was at one time once a month
               then every few weeks
                              has become common place somehow

Though the basement is an abandoned place
               left to the wires, pipes and tubes
                              of all the hidden movements in the house
                                             this quiet void
                              is the most ambitious.

Sunset on the Patio

Where the landscape ends in bright red fire
I find my thoughts there in stone – petrified
from here it is a wall of unknown desire
though from there those moments are denied.
A conclusion is only a new beginning
a place where the avenues of time left suspending
waiting for that agency to be employed
and leave the other possibilities destroyed.
Who in this position would choose life
when death is the outcome of those choices;
valid protests extinguished for those silenced voices.
Decisions are oft rife with such strife.
Rather let us sit in repose and ponder;
permit those possibilities to endlessly wander.