Tag: poetry

Where is my joy?
It's flown away again,
fickle creature.
I should learn how to trap and shoot.
Emotional taxidermy.
So lifelike!
Only the glassy eyes give me away.

January 17, 2018

lost
in sleep
half awake
dislocated
in space
in time
invisible
body
pivots
at the hips
back and forth
unable to orient

are we facing
the door?
the wall?
the window?
the refrigerator?
where are we
in space?
in time?

until
like sand
after a seismic wave
we settle
back
into our familiar shape
and reality
like dust
floats
on.

November 7, 2019

This is my (parenthetical) life.
A life of multiple-choice questions.
I don't get to write an essay,
explain
entertain
my intersections don't fork,
they bifurcate. 

I saw a billboard, an advertisement.
"It could happen faster than you think."
I couldn't see the meaningful text.
What could happen faster than I think?
Death? Opportunity? AIDS?
The young man looked unhappy.
It must have been AIDS. Or unemployment.
Not a natural disaster. A personal disaster.
All disasters are personal.
We get lost in them,
like a pebble in the tide,
swallowed up
disgorged
upon a foreign shore.

That's where I walk,
along the edge of oblivion. Oblivious.
The land depressives know best.
The place where you're always drowning, but never drown.
Forever in that moment when you can't
breathe,
but never fall all the way in,
because that's where peace is,
where neither breath nor life matter.
A suspended moment
free from the internal scoring etched by
relentless thoughts
of tragedy.
As if one person could contain all that.
As if I'm important enough.
As if I matter.
As if I'm not just one more pebble
in the maelstrom.

Life as a series of multiple-choice questions.
What would I choose?
It's not the answers that matter,
it's the question.
I never see the right question.
I'm always one page off,
working on something
that won't even be on the test.
Even when I'm right,
I'm wrong.

I lie alone at night
trying to solve the puzzle of the past
trying to see the picture.
I always assume there's a picture.
Maybe there isn't.
Maybe I'm making it up.
I see color and shape
where there's only gray.
I make a story.
I have to make a story.
I'm a human being,
that's what we do.
We tell ourselves the story
of ourselves.
That's how we remember
who we are.

Otherwise

we become
nebulous
unanchored
free floating
motes of dust
suspended
in a beam
of sunlight
powered by some external engine
unable any longer to assume
the right of flight
part of the conglomerate of dirt
anonymous
a non entity
compacted into what feeds
the indifferent multitude
above.

Life is not a series of multiple-choice questions.

2015

the motion of the beloved in the night
when the mind
deep in its distraction
receives a signal that by-passes the sentinels of conscious thought
and the internal self turns
with a formless
artless
joy
an expectation of reflection
an anticipation of reunion
before soberer attentions
reassert themselves
and like a hand drawing back the buoyant child
from the edge of the abyss
the emotive response is
cut short
extinguished
smothered
and only the cool emptiness of regret remains behind
an absence where once there was a presence
a wound only momentarily disturbed
and a hope rises
like a flare in the darkness
that this might be
the last time

September 17, 2015

i want to be
your
girlfriend
boyfriend
your
he
she
your
number one
your
miss mister
sir
ma'am
i am
and
you could be
my
girlfriend
boyfriend
my
he
she
my
number one
my
miss mister
sir
ma'am
i am
i love what
i am.

December 2, 2018

Medusa with a hairpin
becomes me
muffled up
with a smile
and a book.
Pigeons
settling
in a forest
of vacant faces
caught
in the act
of turning away.

July 16, 2018

and the sun sinks
behind black lace
and chain link
and for one breath
my heart is free
of winter
and rises up
above gold shot
cloud into
blue sky

February 2020

palest blue
slate clouds
like a distant sea
i wanted to dabble my fingers
in warm water
but i was on my way to work
in a city consumed by
small problems
in a room consumed by
small problems
in a heart consumed by
small problems
smallest
meanest
meaningless problems
collapsing down
into a salt plane
where no green
leaves
grow

February 2020

i looked away
for a moment
from that tiniest flash of
white and pink
against the pale morning sky
and lost what had been touched
by a sun that had not yet
touched us

January 2020