we make art becauselife is an affliction a fatal accident frame by frame a flaming vehicle passengers screaming jesus life's iron maiden mangles with twenty twisting augers and the air's marauding tenant crushes insects into heaven with one casual thumb there is no hope unless we midwife children not of flesh but still alive to … Continue reading Saint Catherine Speaks Candidly to Saint Cecilia on the Occasion of Their Single Foray Into Town Together on Market Wednesday
Category: Poems
Semantic Bleaching
"Life on hold sucks!"read the bus shelter ad. They meant the pandemicI suppose But what wry, ironic understatementIf you think of The awesome reality ofLife on hold. Customers in the supermarketFrozen in placeGripping Yorick skulls of well-traveled lettuceInfinitely poised at the switch fromSucculent to wilting; Cash register drawersPermanently openAnd you with your hand always thrustIn … Continue reading Semantic Bleaching
Morning Prayer
don't worry about my soul, just give me back my stylus Prints Hail MinervaFull of GraceGoddess of Disappointment,Petty Theft andFlaked Tuna in Broth It's Dave.Remember me?Eighth floor? From the depths of my Shame and squalorLargely self-induced, but whatever,I cry to thee. Restore thou to meWhat I have lostGenerally, my innocence, butSpecifically, my smartphone,Which I may … Continue reading Morning Prayer
HARD DRIVE
I had blitzed your sectors completelyBut all this time you've surviveddiscretely Interred in my one-terabyte drive: Knight jonesing for escape, five fingersdismissingPassion, fondling my door handle,kissingGoodbye our too-easy improvisation. I conjure desperate devious strategies:Charms, supplications, jammed connections, elegies,Viral replications, heartfelt blackmail.Impatient, lover? Hanging in thedelusionOf my blue-screened doorway, our fungiblecollusion Of dull bruises, ragged tears? … Continue reading HARD DRIVE
Jazz for insomniacs
for James H. IF WE WERE POSSIBLE—Christ, what a thought! — it would have to be in some other continuumstrung out in time between Lost In Spaceand Planet of the Apes— the original, not the remake— where my love like giantNoma bulbs leaks Red Green Bluepure Christmas colors onto snow;it would have to be suspended in aspic somewhere … Continue reading Jazz for insomniacs
A Satori
If seedlings are waking up in clay pots on my balcony, if there are tiny, fragile seedlings that despite their tininess and fragilitystill manage to express their true nature,just as distant stars express theirs; If this expression of stars and seedlingsis inevitable, yet innocent; And if a seedling, a wisp of green, a mere tendril, can heave … Continue reading A Satori