summer’s slow retreat

I that final summer we spent our nights on the pier, the moonlight bathing the water with its cool hands. night sounds, frogs humming and burping, crickets, and water slapping rocks serenading us. long hours lost in eternal embrace, caresses without end, daylight hours, too, passed in hide-and-seek cornfields. ski trips and trains marked our…

Life Imitating Art

I push in the tape and I lie on the bed alone, eroded by a glacier of memories. I have chosen a love story, though I never would have when we were together. The movie begins, a technicolor dream, figures arise before me, you and I. A passionate kiss lingers between lovers.  So soon torn apart…

boyfriend

your eyes are a pale-green altar. a torture device of worship, love. I hide my face when I look at you and see my own inadequacies, complicities to the war-torn vestige of our former years. Poisonous memories choke my throat and I cry tears, a sacrifice.

The unhung door

so much undone, so much on the list the unhung door, the unglazed window the wheelbarrow filled with rain that taunt purposeless, mocking

A Day with a Universal God

Listen for my voice in the crashing waves, And in the call of the wild wind, You can hear it there, too. I am the monk locked in silent solitude, I am the crying infant. Listen for my voice in your favorite melody, in a child’s rhyme. My voice is as endless as the seas….

Consciousness of a Flat Planet

                She wants to float above him, beyond his reach. As he splits the water with his sleek form, the specter of his voice echoes around her. Washed by his waves, she lulls her head toward the stars. Obscured by a canopy of gray mist, the stars dance a…

Morning Dew

the sun, broken down             into particles and rays sparkling through the morning dew on my windshield before I slip into another work day

Where We Rent

We must hate our parents             And ourselves                         We Americans, driven To erase all trace of our, and their, progress             On the landscape. Each site, landmark, seen As a blank canvas. What is this need? Is each strike of the wrecking ball an expression of relief or regret? Failure or success? Our hubris…

We Drink

we drink each Friday night: we drink to forget the dead end jobs that pay our bills we drink to laugh, though we sometimes cry we drink for courage we drink to slough off this weight we carry for people who do not have food or water or alcohol to forget. we forget for a…

White Dwarf

A meteor shower lights up the sky behind you, creating a halo, shadowing your face as you begin to speak. Watching the sky explode and die, dusts of stars and comets, traces of the galaxy they shared.  Endless, to a point.  The death of a sun as it erupts, shining brighter and burning away the…