u-turns                                                       &nb… Read full post »

 

 

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.
 -  Alan Watts

 

The Language for Loss

 

What is inarticulable remains so.

Now I am told things differently
and everything speaks of you.
I have learned… Read full post »

 

 

 

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

_{-  John Cage}

 

 

I call dibs.  Who else wants

the blank page, the black hole.

Lost horizon?  I own it.

Mine the numinous emptiness

without icons

or furniture.

(Mine the dust… Read full post »

 

I think one of poetry’s functions is not to give us what we want… [T]he poet isn’t always of use to the tribe. The tribe thrives on the consensual. The tribe is pulling together to face the intruder who threatens it. Meanwhile, the poet is sitting by himself in the… Read full post »

 

 

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. 
 _{- Carl Sandburg}

 

 

Tourists

Rounding a crumbled corner
we half expect a giant pair of mouse ears
but the small world, after all,
gets smaller from a distance.

Instead there’s a brothel ruin,
bereft of desirous flesh -
the…

Read full post »

 

The work of the poet is to name what is holy.   

^{- Diane Ackerman}

 

In The Histories

 

I was reading about the queen
who built a room for flooding;
there she invited her betrayers to banquet
and there they drowned.


I knew Mom would be up for it
since our… Read full post »

 

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.

—Allen Ginsberg

 

It's 3 a.m. and I'm thinking I want to be asleep in a dream… Read full post »

 

 

People cannot stand the saddest truth I know about the very nature of reading and writing imaginative literature, which is that poetry does not teach us how to talk to other people: it teaches us how to talk to ourselves.

- Harold Bloom

 … Read full post »

 

 

How odd to be here surprised by it,
what was coming, if it came -
as it has so far, so far seeming
like the coyote’s tip-toe lifted -
now the precise shadow of an acme anvil falling.
   
The desire for acrid pith, for zest,
for tearing membrane, for the bright acid sweet-… Read full post »

 

At sunset  a wide plane of black, full cloud hung over the red-orange horizon  - Rothko crossed my mind, and the story about St. Peter's shadow healing cripples, curing sight.   Because it looked like this

 

 and felt like… Read full post »

 

 

I don’t mock exactly your degree in poetry, but
can you really teach me how
to follow its scent,
to blossom it from taste buds,
to draw it from my eyes and ears, waxy,
to be
careful how I handle what touches me...

O Arts and Crafts,
technicolor Play-Doh brain -

I’ll babysit the muse… Read full post »

 

 

the skim of the craft
the constant question the oar asks
the water’s resistant answer
pushing  pulling
the murky submerged life

rowing a cup of tea
sandpaper skin of this bosc pear
the just on the edge of full moon
tipping the tides

tonight  downside-up  streetlights are sta… Read full post »

 

 

or night might be a satin bowerbird offering the blue sky to lure you to itself

end of day flying toward feathery dark,  beak and talons,

honeymoon of home and another dance of hours, more black and blue

hormones - pheromones - serotonin - oxytocin - dopamine… Read full post »

 

 

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,
made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing?
dipped into oblivion?
               
If not, you will never really change.
         &… Read full post »

 

 

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}

  ....