I’m pleased to have a short poem published at “The Showbear”, a liberal arts journal.
You can read it here.
THE SHOWBEAR FAMILY CIRCUS
existential poetry
sermon of blah
The rain poured
a glass of wine
through my lips,
solid chunks of sky
hitting relentlessly
the thin slice of dome,
my head dizzy
reciting the do-re-mi-
cascade of water
breaking into bullets
and merging then
back into puddle.
This started earlier tonight,
white stone sheets,
dense air cool by November,
darkness so natural to thought
that my eyes were shut,
whatever observes
what the eyes exclude,
silently observing
my complicity
with melancholy itself.
So the sermon of blah,
almighty course of opinion,
eternal genesis of monologue,
running never away from me,
but through me.
At this point
anything can happen,
repeat repeat,
or the moon’s light
rising as smoke
into the hair that is your,
to the night I speak,
body’s cosmos.
The rain dwindling,
at this point,
the ache can be melody –
cool whiteness of breath
entering the sore river
of the night,
this time my body of thought,
the house with the wonderful
arch to welcome pain inside.
Do I have hope?
That is,
to some degree,
the question
that draws this poem.
groundless
Something dwells hungry
by the moonlight,
that measure now
vulnerable as clod
of experience,
recognizable by all,
below naturally
impermanent stride.
How did one
of these commonplace
collide with gravity,
clung magnetized
like heaviest descendant,
literally,
descending to stillness,
something so neatly
tucked in by white,
almost aluminum light.
Who hurries
to lift dear thing
so organized like organ
that means to sleep
sturdy like breath
woven to stone,
dance married
to mineral.
What energy travels
rough as arrow
through fluid eye
to catch the body
of the thing,
radiating borrowed sun
from borrowed sun.
It is hungry
but to consume
some ailment,
some human angst,
that lingers primarily
as longing,
until contact is made,
suddenly,
with the surprise.
Something,
not yet named,
remains motionless
meditating below
the slanting moonlight
that cannot keep
its curtain of glow
still.
Someone
roams like dust
ringing around
the room.
The moon
is half sharp
with light,
half naked
alike the rest
of the night.
golden
The message
enters the room
without a body.
Pure cave
round as
echo
undulating with
transparency.
The air is crust
hanging from the walls
see that fruit ripe
tremendously heavy
about to fall,
the light
makes a moat
just around the edges
to leave an island
of shadow
in its center.
The message
thicker than voice
makes viscous flow
of experience
as it leaves
through amaranthine
twilight-pregnant
window.
The message
golden collides
with the gold
of the streetlamp.
Some leaves are
curved still
by the curb
as night enters
as a sort of sound
muffled but total.
The ear eager
lends its arm
like a root
to the column
of the message.
The hearer
sees only sound
the world’s substance
seeping like syrup
into this music.
The listener’s body
dances first as fire
then as air
finally as
hum.
The message
and the body
meet.
The body
and the sound.
The music
and the veins.
The room
now filled with water
drowns the message.
The body
nothing but song
remains as
world.
delicate delusions
Man
climbs
the scaffold
leaving the arc
of his head pressed
against the blue horizon.
The world pulls calmly his hairs
until clouds are wet winds of white distance.
The hand organizing, playing the music of meaning
in strong steps, structures of size, rooms the shape of moons.
The man sleeps with the night tightly wrapped around his naked arch.
The street was pixelated with the yellows, crimsons and cadmiums
of thin leaves that clung like things leaving their mother’s veins.
The mouth took in the morning and the air snoozed a minute
before it rose, a wisp of paper infinitely exiting the world.
The day held its edge lightly above the lake
where swans wrote delicate delusions
on the waters’ smoke; the clouds
glitched, errors on the screen
once the eye caught serpent
moves on the silk that was
almost as blue as the sky,
the lake, the eye
all being
one.
passenger
You have
a fountain.
Pure sound
gushing out
the smallest
silence
imaginable.
Your eyes
trickle slowly
down
the slope
of words.
One chord,
then a pause.
You sail
alongside
the stream
of sounds.
The heaving
of meaning.
This piece
of sound
has already
crossed
the bridge.
It is now
sweat
on your
brow.
It is now
salt
on your
tongue.
It is now
again
silence
leaving a taste
of earth
in your mouth.
the swamp of volition
There must be
a method
to turn off freedom.
To waste motion in a curve
and glide down the city
as cascade.
To be sunk in the fumes
of machines or dance
in front of a choir
without any bullshit.
To undress in the cold
sensations of the crowd.
To chew the furniture of words.
To fall into the sound of water.
The idea of thought
would be framed
in museums
and memorial sites.
Like an ancient artifact of struggle.
All the small things will float in the air
and we’d decorate the problem of life
with the husks of memory;
without choice
life would be a nail
deep in the crust of flux
and language moss at the rim of our lips.
Contemporary Poetry
and the emptiness of
A weak wind
being bent as silent structure
on the margin of the hours
by the beach
a walk through the empire of rock
after death
love sits
with legs cold
and the storm of the sand
every crash
is wrath
looped in symbol
of being alone
with others
older in the corner
of mosaic
mystery is a heavy mist
pounded on our eyes
love sits
with cold legs
and the emptiness of the sand
those fingers
to carve in the skin of this earth
the folded name;
the forgotten
labyrinth of him.
Contemporary Poetry
rockn’roll
I paid
and he asks
how I’ve been
he left a shapeless mass of laughter
in the air
I’ve had a hangover for days
he says: rockn’roll
yeah it hurts
and the hard Furies strangle
each idea with a whip of flame
and in that throb
one must find a quartz
of moonlight under a window
and breathe in an avalanche
and heed the noise
dripping from the tiny tick
of the heart
sharply
the eyes begin
by the sway
of a moon drawn by wings
to sleep
and here
skirting a crater
at the roof of a boundary
I am
washed by a beam of music
pocketing the fog
and perfuming the worn rags of clouds
like in fable
or inside a final
visit.
Contemporary Poetry
Tripartite
Hello.
Anybody here?
Heylooo?
A priest
and a prostitute
enter a bar.
They come up to the counter.
The bartender: what canna getcha?
The hooker smiles,
same as yesterday, Sam.
The priest, swollen
and sweating smiles,
I’ll have a dark century, Sam.
The clouds moved through
my notebook, anxious
as snails along rugged time.
Someone?
Anybody?
The prostitute shows
the sweetness of her blackberry nipples.
$15 a boob job.
Alfred white as a number says, OK.
I drew a whole city in my notebook
and
in one corner
I built a home
yellow with a mountain of beauty
inside the living room.
Knock, knock.
Alfred was gratified, the stars
trembling in his dark glassy pupils.
That’s $15, she said.
Half the pages are torn out,
theoretical mistakes I say;
but the bulk of my notebook
has black markings
like the shadows of birds
in a mile of snow.
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