An old man asked
Can you tell me son
The only three honest words
In the English Language
I stared at him a while and mumbled
I don’t know
© June 2022
Quietly the dawn arrives
Through a heavy curtain silken grey
No fireworks this morning
The birds still sing
The earth still spins
Without fanfare to announce her day
Shall this one be
Any less spectacular?
Shall orphans cry the harder
Deprived not only of mother’s breast?
Joyful songs find not the halls
When day breaks in such mournful silence
Who shall guard the light
Now that it has gone away?
And who shall make the people believe
There will be another sunny day?
© February 2024
Cloth ghosts
And wooden witches
Hang around the house
Lingering memories
Though Halloween is far behind
Christmas lights
Would still hang in the bushes
If any were set to start
They wait in a box unmarked
In the attic
Three or four rows back
Spring cleaning has begun
Raking flower beds
Rearranging the pantry
As if our sins may be so easily cleansed
I know what’s waiting
On Sunday said the priest
But we hurried past too fast
Rushing to the waiting
Parking lot
He went back inside
Alone
To close up the House of God
Locking the Holy
Behind four walls of stone
He returns to his apartment
Boils a pot
Making tea, he shares with the birds
His only company
Together their songs
Rise up to Heaven
He is far from my mind
As I scrub the baseboard
Cleaning, preparing
Aching to be born new again
© November 2022
The tendrils of hate
Burrow deep in the heart
Roots sharing and sinking
Poisoning all they touch
How readily infectious
Jet black tar
Sticky oily unctuous
Spreading from closed fist to bruised face
Wickedness finds a new host
Another poisoned well
Grows yet more vile crops
How can it end?
How can the light push through?
Jesus tried to lead the way
And look where that got him
How many bodies have been piled
In His Holy Name?
how many children molested, genocides committed?
Is all love deluded folly?
Lord show us the way
Out of this Hell we create
© November 2024
They say the night is always darkest
Just before the dawn
What they fail to mention
Is how much darker it still can get
Have you ever known true darkness?
When not ever your hand may be seen
Six inches from your face?
I’ve been to such places (if only for a moment)
Fifteen more minutes would have taken
What little sanity I managed to keep
Count not upon a bottom
To the endless well of darkness
Make your own light
Or lose yourself to despair
© November 2024
Melting like a popsicle
In my chair of velvet and gold
I have everything I want
I have nothing I need
Tall, secure
My own mental pope
Has crowned myself king
None may penetrate
My high walls of stone
Not even on a ladder of disaster
One degree, bah
Three degrees, no problem
I’ll let them eat cake
Just as long as the pharmacies stay open
© December 2022
Ride the wave
The highs and lows
Undulate unbound
Lash and roll in the ecstatic terror
Of all that is
Tessellate
Become
Infinite Forms Unbound
Ever God-Shaped
Repeat and repeat
The spiral comes back round
Ashes ashes
All fall down
Go forth and conquer
That familial bones may molder
In foreign lands
Unsought by ancestors
Mountain high and valley low
Follow deep within
Know where to go
For boundlessness contains
Everything but an end
Perhaps greater glories still remain
Peaks still await their beholding
Fertile fields as yet unploughed
Gems of green or colors not yet seen
Yearning to be set upon an imperial brow
The jeweler’s hands quick and nimble
Flutter searching
Grasping for a canvas as yet unmade
Birth denies
Death reclaims
Still Life parades
Proclaiming
Climbing
Shooting forth
Into nonbeing which never was
The Kingdom of Heaven
Still contains a perfect garden
To risk it all is to become divine
A young man worries not at what cost
And so calls the quiet voice of Truth
Begin again
Begin again
Begin again anew
© October 2024
Blake was a poet
I’m really not
He tore down the heavens
To map them with gilded word
And rearranged, for our delight
Golden truths inside his garden
I putz about, have a snack
Every now and then scratch my ass
Blake cleansed the doors of perception
I don’t even wash my mirror
Dusky white, it’s speckled
With perfectly round splatters
Toothpaste, spit out most nights
I don’t always remember
© December 2022
Four days without you in the world
Four months without you in my life
Never a day went by you didn’t cross my mind
The end of the line so soon
A finality I thought would never come for us
If indeed death is final
Beyond the flesh I make no claims
Ideas, beliefs, nothing more
Knowledge still eludes
Suffice to say you are gone
In this way at least
Our earthly love shall we share no more
Your voicemail the last I’ll hear of you
(Seventeen calls but
I leave no message
after the beep)
Unless you deign to visit spectrally
Perhaps nice for me, but my prayer is
That you may be free
And find a life less difficult
May you rest
And know peace
© February 2024
The silent grace of gulls
Without tourists to tease
Dignified before
The squalling fights
Of blind madness
Hunger
Insatiable desire
The only way
Desire knows how to be
No hordes of careless hands
Haphazardly dropping fries
No chasing children
Arms akimbo, throats asquak
No battleground
Not yet
They came across the sky
Smooth as glass
Soft as lover’s lips
This time next week
They’ll cry for blood
The fray won’t cease
Until season’s end
When the money has gone away
© May 2023
Apple blossoms sweet
Good cheer, a house full of friends
They are gone from me
© December 2023
Water spilling across the rock
The endless flowing of nature’s clock
Marking time in melted stone
Each stripped particle travels alone
Cutting valleys dead and ancient
If nothing else this world is patient
But I am not; I hurry by
The eons past unseen by my eye
I am a particle swiftly carried
A part of the dance
Carrying my load until I’m buried
There’s not much of a chance
That my work could be
Carrying mountains to the sea
Perhaps in its fullness time will reveal
A truth deeper, more surreal
An endless flow of blood in God’s vein
But hold that thought, I’m late for my train
© April 2024
Softly the blanket weaves itself
Upon scenery once familiar
Land I didn’t realize
I had taken for my own
Now I see in the biting white
There is nothing I may own
Each belongs to itself
All subject to the forces
The wise see more, know less
I am seated in the center
All around anonymous armies march
Never seen before, never heard from again
They expire much too fast
How may I get to know them?
So perhaps the rock does wonder
As on its head thoughtless apes do clatter
And gather
In love
In conquest
From nothing to nothing
Are we the only ones who forgot?
So the world turns again
And all is made new in my perverted sight
Clear and vast
Might madness be a gift?
Might I see anew, and understand
What was told before I was born?
May I not wake up too fast
For though the storm may never last
This day is beautiful within
© January 2024
To keep us safe
From our own ideas
Sticks and bullets and bombs
Deployed by a faceless man
In blue, in black, in camo colors
Fear of his boot, they say
Will keep the terrorists at bay
We never know who the next enemy will be
Maybe you, maybe me
Stay safe, stay safe
From the thoughts within
They will bloom in time
To plants of wicked sin
Heed not your heart
Nor the clouds above
Follow close and stay within
The crushing grasp of Father’s Love
All else is folly, make no mistake
Lest the Agents of Freedom will come knocking next
In your neighborhood, where you mother rests
And she will cry before it’s done
Don’t rape my daughter, don’t kill my son
Stand back ma’am and nevermind
It’s only Freedom after all
Freedom to hide, to cower, to bawl
Before her eyes your blood shall spill
Yet more grist for Freedom’s Mill
All because you dared to speak
To think to dream
To ask aloud what this all means
Stay in your lane
Be free from pain
And if it causes (it causes)
Your soul to shrivel, to die
We have some products, some apps
To keep you occupied, if not satisfied
Hollow yourself so you can be
A good American
Safe and Free
© July 2024
Just a few propellers
Nothing much to see
The midmorning light glints
High above
Enola Gay
Then a flash
And God’s wrath has come to Earth
America the beautiful
Shedding His grace on the lesser nations
A city ruined
A people broken
Next week we’ll do it again
© February 2024
Slate grey skies cover
The still moonlit morning
The world yawns and stretches
Shaking off last night’s dreams
Of hallways unfamiliar
Diners long since closed
Schizophrenic sensations
Patterns freed from earthly bounds
Eyes turn skyward
Then check the clock
The time has come
For the wakeful fantasy
To leave the dreams unperturbed
Lest they bleed into our lives
Like a pebble in a cave
They echo all around deep within
Vibrations finding hairs aprickle
In spite of breakfast, coffee, television
Still the dreams
Or echoes of dreams
Hum about their victims’ ears
Never shall the mind be clear
Until the falling instant when
Tomorrow’s dreams come again
© July 2024
The grey rain curtain
Surrounds my house
Peeling back only for death itself
Peering through my windows
I count the trees
(Maybe six dozen)
And the leaves
(maybe six gross dozen more)
I count it plenty
A whole world
A lifetime of study
And what if the sun
Should burn off this mist?
How dwarfed will my little patch become?
Should my little ramble
Seem any less full?
Should the pulsing symmetry
Of leaf veins and river beds
Please my eye any less?
When the sun comes
As songs of old insist it must
What treasures will be revealed?
And which shall be cast aside?
© October 2024
Here I am
Seated in the center of creation
Hosting an ocean of infinity within
May I be as diligent?
As careful and tender
As my own creator?
No never I cry I am but mortal
Forgetting it is only my body that will die
I am born of infinity
Into a world of endless joys and endless tears
Who am I to reject my birthright?
To believe the lies of those who would make me small?
Who, indeed, am I at all?
Fertile soul for the seed
I am Farmer I am Water
I am all I need
© December 2023
I dropped a quarter
In the wishing well
I would have called
But there are no more payphones
And I don’t have much to tell
No matter
My heart reaches out
To you in darkest night
Likewise on sunny shores
When I walk through the city
I hope the next face parting
The crowd will be yours
My footsteps softly drip
Past the house where you used to live
Though it’s over
Our love was
Just right
I just wrote to say
I dropped a quarter
To wish you well
© April 2023
How quickly the big ripples
In their silent undulation
Wipe out any trace of the smaller
The erstwhile multiplicity
Of meek minor lines
Relaying their morals
Their stories, their ways
Yet some winds must prevail
And prevail they do
Inciting
Cajoling
Urging for the wider path
Which takes in its wake
Every history to the contrary
And so once more the surface of the lake grows glassy
Looking if only from shore
Like one
Unbroken
Perhaps even to eyes poor
And imaginations vast
Unending
Until the hand throws a pebble
Or cluster of sand
And the wind changes again
© August 2024
With fence and fire man claims
What he calls his natural place
Though naked, as he was made
Cowardice would overtake
All the louder he laughs
Surrounded by artificial light
All the louder (though he denies it)
Because it still can’t dispel
His lonely fear of the night
And what may go bump
Beyond the edges of the TV’s blue glow
What may visit, what may fright
His wretched lonely soul
So loudly we sing
And stand altogether
Quite unaware
We still must feel the weather
© September 2024
Your way
Is the way
Of trust
Of blind faith
Of leaping
Free
Not as it may seem
At first glance
Into the abyss
But over it
Through all the beauteous realms
Of Good God’s creation
Doubts
What ifs
Plan B’s
All too heavy
Offset the buoyancy of the soul
Leave them for those who need them
May they be well
With their spreadsheets
Facts, figures
Politicians du juor
Leave them be
Pray for peace amidst their wars
And smile
Knowing we march to the same horizon
The same clearing at the end of the path
Knowing that on your final day
(Not to mention the uncounted
Little deaths and naps)
When you lay your head down
You will go easy
With thanks
With joy
With love
Let them be
And let yourself be
And be
And be
And
© September 2024
Grey and wet
Another day passes out my window
Inching ever closer to New Year’s Day
The last time I saw my father
I discovered I had grown taller
And the Earth still spins beneath my feet
The shadows would grow long
If any were in sight
The day grows old, perishing
Passing into night
I cross another day off my calendar
Waiting for the new year
When I may begin again
© December 2023
When the silver dew
Drops form on blades brilliant
Green, dreaming, I sigh
© July 2024
When the silver dewdrops form
On blades of brilliant green
The world smiles, stretching
While her dreamers softly sigh
The world of taxis, sirens
Beeping appliances and coffee brewed
(in black plastic, dutifully filled
After last night’s dishes were done)
That world sleeps still
Clinging to the last moments of calm
When the air is still fairy blue
The other world clings too
Relishing the still
Savoring the momentary pause
Between breaths so many have forgotten
© July 2024
Call me not a snowflake
For I melt on another timeline
They remember what I have forgotten
See it as they whirl
Say true as they stack
Each on each other
Blending into a mass
Unafraid to lose themselves in something greater
A fresh start for all
They cry not out
As their pattern never seen never again
Dissolves into all that is
© December 2023
Light creeps
Through dawn’s squinted eyes
Tugging at the hem around my mind
Whispering
Awake arise alive
Soon the hours will be passed
Nevermore shall this day be seen
The clock is ticking, time is fleeting
The moment’s past now for sleeping
Up up and on we go
Riding with all haste
To meet today
For this moment only
May I sit between
Two great foes
Or brothers
Or lovers
The naked glow of night
And the busy light of day
© May 2023
And so the darkness comes again
Sliding into its place
My old familiar friend
Swallowing sunshine hope and joy
And all the while in my heart’s empty halls
Echoing softly as mouse footfalls
A brighter light tries to penetrate
But cheer for now will have to wait
© August 2024
Oh you’re such a
My brain tries to tell me
Thinking back on that time (which time?)
I put my foot in my mouth
Truth is, never was
Never will be
Not nothing
Just like my bottle won’t be water
Not now, not ever
Even if it should be filled a hundred times again
It remains ever hollow
Til the day it gets swallowed
Whole by the Earth its Mother
Where it came from
Where it goes to
And in between
Is make believe
© December 2023
Embrace the come and go
Of fellow travelers on Life’s winding road
Don’t carry more than you can hold
The price is too high
Precious moments will pass you by
While you languish in your own garden of torment
Carefully tended by your unwillingness
To accept what is
Listen to your heart
No matter the price
I assure you it is cheaper
Than living a lie
© December 2023
Peering up at the night sky
I could say How Vast How Dark
How Cold How Empty
Perhaps I would not be wrong
But it is not so
I gaze skyward and my heart leaps
My eyes cast from pinprick to pinprick
Tracking the lights of the heavens
As they dance before us
From evening to morning
From season to season
I learn their names and neighbors
And watch them swirl round Polaris
Giving meaning, direction
In the great vast void I once called dark
© December 2023
Drink deep of the water
And feel its blessing
Pure and clear
It permeates every atom
May it always flow free
God’s ultimate blessing
© December 2023
Sleepy archipelagos of clouds
Float silently
Through the vast
The soft
The high blue sky
The couple walks
Not hand in hand
Forty years echo in the silence between
He stops and looks
Just there on the ground
Her eyes follow
Perhaps they even discuss
What it was they saw
Walking across the shifting sands
Still many miles from home
Green
No, blue
No, capped white
Vast and endless
Even boundaries are but enclaves
Pounding swirling ceaseless motion
Hungry and wet and alive
Oh so alive
Nothing may stay the same
Nothing may stay
Nothing
But she remains
And waits not idly
She is cradle and grave
Womb and tomb
At water’s edge
Forever doesn’t feel that far away
© May 2022
How often before
Have I looked, longing, waiting
Wishing we might try
© December 2023
The dull ache of yearning love
Reaches out across the miles
To you, my dear, to you
This pressure, this thrumming
By your sweet touch shall be transmuted
Into the fires of ecstasy
As a hot bed of coals has its way with the dry pine
So shall you excite, enflame
Propel me into infinity
Shattering my mind
Releasing my body
Soon, my love
When I cross oceans
To be borne in your arms once more
© January 2024
I am a singular point
One in a million
One of a million
Or a million million
If it makes no sense
It is only because
I am so small
And God is so large
What a blessed realm
What a gift to be
Infinitesimal
And free
© December 2023
A single vase rests on the shelf
A false promise of permanence
An anchor tattooed on a dying man
They said he’d have it forever
Life was not long enough
Years pass like grains in glass
Mountains are born, rivers die
And still my love sits on the shelf
Frozen
Waiting
Just one more tomorrow
© October 2022
Still we sit
Mired in mired in mired in
The miasma of mires past
Mires present
Mulling over mires yet to come
Indecision our habit
As cigarettes were before
Marking the time
Passing it
Predictably
In controlled units
I wait not impatiently
For the next ticking of the clock
It sings a sweeter song
And so we sit
Waiting for permission
Waiting for our lives to begin
Waiting
© January 2024
New beginnings abound
The sun creeps across the sky
Leaving us for a time
To sit and wonder, last of all to dream
The moon turns, hiding her face
Shining her light, now soft, now brilliant
I turn pages on a calendar, store bought
Make drawings in the sand
Scrub yesterday’s crumbs from tomorrow’s clean plate
And do my best not to fixate
On whether I shall be remembered
© January 2024
To see time
Dancing across the land
Cuts and crags
Paths etched by wind
And ants
And men
Time marks itself
Reveling
Revealing
Placing gentle and proper
Grains of sand along the dunes
Valleys deep and hallowed
Cut in long years by ancient rivers
Cartoon lines trapped in amber
Second hands tick
Born of crystalline vibrations
Proof of propulsion
Shifting and twisting
In ways we know not why
And can only wonder
As time spins her next web
The pattern invisible to the performer
Dancing and leaping
Loving and weeping
Along lines we dare to walk
Making tracks in the sand
On a sometimes sunny day
And time still places each
And every
Grain
Of sand
© February 2022
A drum unbeaten
Stands silent in the corner
No one will hear him
© December 2023
Tears fall from my eyes
Finally
A brief release
From the pounding
Interminable blanknesses
Which hammer my soul to dust
Slack expression
Limp limbs
Days defined by despair
Mean and meaningless pain
Above, a hawk takes flight
Red tail glinting in the sun
Someday I too will be free
© June 2022
Buds burst
From once frozen limbs
Nature’s silent explosions
Announcing the changes to come
Hold on tight, my friend
For once the avalanche has begun
We must ride it to the bitter end
Melting slopes of mud remake me
In God’s fertile spring
Who shall I be
When my time comes around
I haven’t met him yet
And must away
Preparing for his arrival
© April 2022
Still cold morning
Breaths cling and dance
My only companion
In a world silent and grey
Soon there will be music
A cacophony of life
Cars starting, lovers parting
The beginning of the day
Not yet, not yet
Just now all is still
I enjoy my hard fought peace
Only for a moment
The silence shatters
As life clatters into motion
Wide and endless as the ocean
Unminded, my feet march into line
© October 2022
I dreamed last night
I was drafted
The tears streamed down my face
Mama I don’t want to kill
I pleaded the Good Lord
I’m sorry
Please don’t make me go
His quiet reply
Isn’t this what you asked for
In all your wartime fantasies
Daydreams and Movies
Sharp uniforms and brave men
Duty, Honor
Supplanting blood, the smell of Death
Crying mothers, wasted homes
Scars on the landscape
And in the hearts of those who were there
Forgive me this violence I’ve craved
And may my tears heal
The hearts of the wounded
© 2015
A thin line cuts across the land
Blue smoke rising just above where a hand
Could reach
In a child’s yearning leap
The morning air is still
Breathing deep I take my fill
Surrounds my toes the growing grass
I pray this day won’t be my last
Head still heavy from last night’s visits
God provides only the mind inhibits
© June 2024
How long were we children
How many sunsets did we miss
Thinking foolishly of the future
And adulthood’s bliss
How many afternoons
Spent waiting to be grown up
We would soon have to learn
The rhythm of the markets
Stocks and bonds
Dividendous Investments
Reaping rewards in a hollow tube
While flesh sags and rots
When I was small I
Breathed the air I
Tasted what it was
That waited for me there
Now I rush
Through clouds of smoke
Trying to finish
Just one more joke
They don’t pay me for love
They don’t pay me for beauty
So I put on my gloves
And do my duty
Sophmoric and poor
Verses without rhyme
Rhythm and Meter
Are beyond my kind
Beaten into submission
I take my reward
In the form of a paycheck
A couch and remote
But when we were children
Said someday we’ll be tall
And then we’ll be happy
No chores to do at all
© 2020
Fights I had with my brother
Those years I tortured my mother
These are the things I choose not to remember
The day my grandfather died
Mom played hookey
Sitting in the living room we cried
Bug bites, burns
Trips to the Hospital
Withdrawls
Returns
These are the things I choose not to remember
Lost in the department store
“Never going home anymore”
Playing with my dad
Before things were bad
These are the things I choose not to remember
Cheating at board games
Calling her those awful names
Stuck in that Dark Room
Hurt
The click of my mother’s heels couldn’t come too soon
These are the things I choose not to remember
Rain, rain, go away
Don’t come back another day
If it were up to me, if I had a say
These would be the things I’d choose not to remember
© 2016
Pitted and pocked
My stomach and my history
Black lines swirl and gather
Forming shadows behind my eyes
They told me what to think
About who and how
And being small and foolish
I believed them
On dark nights
When lonely terrors rattle
The windows from inside my mind
Sometimes I still do
Perhaps they only meant the best
Scared and incapable though they were
For who could look on something so small
With anything less than pity and love?
And so the ploughshares
Are beaten into swords
By the children of children
Simply doing their best
Those who pray for change will see
Their fields watered with blood
Fertilized by corpses
Before the rainbow comes
Mr. Baldwin tried to warn us
No more floods to wash away our sins
The fire approaches, burning all
But mostly hate
A finer fuel it will not find
And when the reserves have been drained
It will abate, satisfied and spent
And leave an empty field
Made fertile by cinder
Waiting to be ploughed
© 2018
The swing set
Long since torn down
And Home Plate grown deep green
This yard isn’t mine anymore
The sun is setting
On a cool spring day
Dampened by the rain
The seas of gratitude swell
And roll their salty tracks down my face
I once belonged to this land
Cradled in the eaves and the leaves and the trees
Tunnels I found
Forts I built
Are no more
I hope the dandelions will remember me
When I’ve gone away
© 2016
Friends and relatives, one and all,
Come gather unto me, and hear my final call
The day grows dark within my eyes,
and now I march to paradise
My time on earth was brief
Though I admit the end comes as a relief
The drama of life soon shall fade
And in the celestial pools my soul will wade
Cry not for my death, oh children mine
For angels sing, come on in, the water’s fine
I see the faces of my family dear
And know my final breath draws near
And when the gates of gold shall open
Free I’ll walk, the promise remains unbroken
All the days I danced in sun
Now my final dance has come
Mourn not, mourn not
Only my body shall rot
I must go, but not so far
I’ll be in your heart, wherever you are
© 2022
The world churns in the steepled black
Another rumble, another attack
The first sign of spring, a robin’s rapacious beak
Breaks the earth and steals from underneath
A solitary worm, pink and round
His death knell makes not a sound
Slurped up for dinner
Tell me, does life have a winner?
© 2021
A little bird chirps
A sound most fair
Come out, come out and greet me
Sings my little friend
On days when the dark beast is close behind
My tortured mind twists in agony
The little winged one sings
Asks me once more to come and see
Come and see, and greet the day
I assent
For in darkness foul things breed
© 2020
How often must I ponder
Of snuffing out my own candle
Too bright and searching
It lingers in corners
Better left to darkness
And cries out in the night
Pulling itself towards home
Which is gone
And maybe never was
How often do I cry
That I may drink more deeply
From wells inside myself
If I could feel it all
Until it made sense
I’d die a happy man
But there is no sense
No ratio, no law
Binding my spirit to my mind
And so I watch the candle
Eat itself
And melt away
The night is long
My candle is not
We used to light prayers
In rows and columns
Behind the altar
Beyond the hungry box
Never satisfied
And so we pray no more
Asking for a map
In a land far and strange
Unlike the shores I thought I knew
She gives me no direction
Only promises of warmth in the night
And beautiful words when I awake
I feel raw, windswept, dry
Growing brittle by the day
I thought only night brought such cold
Such vast and lonely skies
© 2017
Drain me
I want it all to spill out
Run
Vomit
Bleed
Whatever it takes
I don’t want the clutter
Let me stay hollow
©2017