Tag Archives: writing

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.

The World is Yours

Locked in wood stocks
the world bound and wound up
             spinning at the whim of a child’s hand
an expectant finger
             waiting for a place to land.

             Like spearmen to a charging horse
the blow lands and stops it dead
a digit stalled sets the course.

In that space dreams are made;
             a poor facsimile of an immutable thing
                           quieted by innocence
                                        inquisitiveness
                                        inspiration
                                        imagination
             and thus made immutable again.

The world in a child’s mind is but a word
             until a place is named
         held down
   and claimed for their future self

The Mountains are Silver with Winter’s Leavings

  Black pines                         the moon weeps
to see them drag that thing screaming
                           a bundle of noise
             given agency in sound
                           such luxuries are deceiving

                           Red lights│
                                        blue│
                           silver strobes of tinsel

                          The colors slip over the tilled snow
             like a long gown dragged over the stairs
they whisper beneath the fugue of fear
             those concerned cries calling out for a close ear
                           for someone who cares.

But the sound is too loud
             it bludgeons empathy

Pity the trees that must stay
             to witness such horrors
                           ever protesting in the wind
                                        but unable to look away.

English Channel in Late Spring

A cold wind is blowing – across blue mysteries
where fabled depths are made – with dreadful histories
the fog that hides our shores – honest beyond distance
reminds us there is more – than water’s resistance

Those sunken tragedies – speak to us in the mist
like lost souls rekindled – struggling to persist
to have their stories told – in hidden waves crashing
a song of desperate need – sung with somber splashing

Gulls and hearts hear those words – cry out in harmony
though the mind binds their mouths – and call it larceny
Why should time take those things – we enjoy in life now
and give them to the past – that we have disavowed?

Those far off shores stay hid – behind veils of regret
while we must remain here – on all our sides beset
by the antiquities – of an empire long dead.
From those sober ashes – we always look ahead.

Inspiration

Immeasurable
             though wanting so badly to be defined

Does definition ever really help a thing
             or is it the act of being refined
suddenly less than what it had been all this time?
             This page was once porcelain potential
                           poised for possibilities

             now it is scarred
permanently not a million other things
Defined
             measured
                           caged

             How many worlds
                           we turn to ash
to fill a blank page.