Sugar answers bitter questions, in nursery-colored hues
tiny chalky hearts will spell it out for you:


                     why         be          
… Read full post »

my world is not your world even if I address it to you and it comes to your hand in an envelope that is the glorious depth of dark velvet pansies enclosing an invitation in cursive blood on parchment of my own skin limed and scraped… Read full post »

Well fuck.  End of the road. The GPS that could bring him home from this didn't exist and his fucking phone wasn’t smart enough to grab a signal for redemption.  Coulter knew.  And Dedham.  Shit.

shit shit shit

The air was stale, suffocating, and his head felt like it w… Read full post »

"Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first—verdict afterwards."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!"

"Hold your tongue!" said the Queen, tu… Read full post »

didn't the taken rib open your heart cage
to a needy desire
for something other
more than
eden

breathing the golden air
nothing you named would answer to you
our secrets unsung, unslobbered by your cataloging tongue
you do not know me
or where the squirrels hid the seeds
of the quenching fruit,… Read full post »

       

The force that drives the sprocket drives the chain

out of the slow turning greater cogs

and small rapid pinions, teeth meshing

to chew out meaning - torque of regret -

mechanism of memory and desire

involute unwinding - each hob

shaped to bring tr… Read full post »

I wake up in a dream.

The bookcase in the front hall has moved in the night -

now it is empty and blocks the front door.

The books are gone, as well as the suitcase

from my last disastrous trip.  Going for a glass of water,

I see the books haphazardly stacked on… Read full post »

I don’t like a preening piety and besides, that hopped up preacher smiles so much I'm sure it's a tic, the corners of his mouth dragged up by a twitchy urge to ingratiate.   Those strobing teeth haywire Mason’s brain into epileptic-like fits of spasmodic clutching at churchy… Read full post »

In the words of Mary Katherine Gallagher:  “I think my feelings can best be expressed by…” 

  casu marzu 

("World's Most Dangerous Cheese" : I love how the marzu is surrounded by dainty roses....)

Ode to the Maggot 

Brothe… Read full post »

It's her day and I'm remembering her.  Some memories are like rooms in a fancy dollhouse where I'm not allowed to play - I can only peer through the windows.  Other memories, the scent of her skin and home,  the sound of her voice, are ephemeral as breath.  My breath, my… Read full post »

...even when
the words grace me with their presence,
they don't always choose to step
delicately into the world, pink shoes
treading softly over the white horizon.

^{- from invitation by Mackenzie Connellee}

  ....

All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself. 

-  W. H. Auden

Dear Wystan,


The Oxford Junior Dictionary’s

exile of acorn and ass,

blackberry, bramble, buttercup,

clover, crocu… Read full post »

it’s its own totem

the ego’s fetish is itself

mirrors confuse and distract it

the object is closer or farther away

the distance is backward or sideways

the self is a sentimental charm

a souvenir

it’s a prism

compulsively curating

broken down parts

grit of wasp in the sweet f… Read full post »

though he’s gone there’s always someone

who will tell her how it’s done

she lives the story they know the plot

they think she is alone without

adjectival chaperones for company

impoverished bereft or maybe boozy

it’s beyond black crepe or sati

every widow’s garden is her own

vi… Read full post »

it always comes back to the ungainly imperatives life throws at you

not like some striped summery beach ball, bouncy and rainbow bright

more like lemon meringue in the face -  tart, sticky sweet and messy

or (surprise!) one of those icy hard snowballs from Hell, you know - afte… Read full post »

Tell us how the soul is bound and bent
into these knots, and whether any ever
frees itself from such imprisonment.
—Canto XIII, Inferno
               




Because I heard on the radio an aged concert pianist

proclaiming the grea… Read full post »

Grey and then grey,  another wet spring day

again, again

the infinite recursions

(maze of sameness and a feckless Minotaur)

spiraling away from stillness,

deaf to the echo of being already there

again, again.


I think the poet sits on the  stoop of the world

whittling his bones in… Read full post »

My dear,
           


Let’s not call it love, but allow it was a dawn haze

in the deep thicket wherein we pursued the art of venery.


Quivers of quickened blood held piercing desire -

the gleam of sweated haunch, the ra… Read full post »

clemency comes in strange forms

it might greet you in a foreign tongue

but it tilts its head kindly and gestures for you to rest

breathe in the sweet incense of spring

every leaf a prayer flag

each gentle sigh a sutra

Read full post »

Christ has been done to death
in the cold reaches of northern Europe
a thousand thousand times.
                         Suddenly bread
and cheese appear on a plate
beside/… Read full post »

On any given day we drag the cross,
endure the spit and heckle, feel the weight,
and wait for the nail, the wound, the cloth:
not abandoned but obdurate, we hesitate.

What if our hearts would open like the tomb?
The love once dead in us might rise.
Visiting the par… Read full post »