Our Old School Dance

poetry

The music played all night
it was late December if I recall
and the spread on the dining table
was glamorous and all-inclusive
the moodlighting was spot-on
The frost on the windows made
picturesque
by dancing candleflames and
sparking camera flashes
and the dances were slow
rather tedious in point of fact
with hands on hips and feet
hardly stepping but it looked right
and the music played extensively
yeah, it never really stopped at all

fatigue

poetry

every time you gotta fight
to keep the cold from sinking in

the shiver lies dormant in your spine
you don’t wanna let it out

this time, you were doing so well
save one gust in a blustery storm

and now that it’s snowing
the shiver wont wait to get you

you let it out, you damn fool
and now it shakes you wherever you go

try and sleep it off, make it go away
spend time under artifical suns

how many times has it been now?
and with each time it takes longer

longer to sleep off
longer to get warm

So-called traitor

poetry

Each if their daggers is kept so sharp
and they are despots all
and they will cut the others to keep
their secrets safe and
while he brings his blade to bear
and cuts from time to time
he just can’t be okay with that
but he will continue, to keep
his secrets safe.

Fallen Snow at Evening on a Plastic Playground

poetry

Vantage from the park bench surveys fallen snow like manna from heaven, raining frozen stars in promenade.
Sparks of spirits springing into step; orbiting fires spell majesty in constellations.
Grated clouds in the cold bring warmth, and a silence that I eschew and do not quite yet understand.
It adorns, gowns every vista in panoramic pageant, the bride made without stain or blemish presented to her groom.
But this bride of cold feet, indecision and logic soon tatters herself.
Countless footsteps in snow unknowing, tracking innumerable roads to sanguine eternities bending backwards to vaults and beds, stages and beakers finding steps to stairways, up mountains, ziggurats, podiums, passageways, pyramids; zenith ascensions and tombs.
Bare trees pronging branches like upside down octopuses, arching tines; a million fingers stretching heavenward;
One-hundred thousand forks spoking to the skies, waiting to taste paradise.
Every atom yearning upward, gravity shackles in opposition and the snow descends to cover us.
The Bible I read says you made all this, but how?
The scope to see is inconceivable, if only I could understand why? But who would you be then?
The demand for attention is indomitable; I’m jumping off the edge of me and falling into you.
The plastic playground, a Lincoln log cabin made life size:
with green plastic tiled roof, with red plastic cross beams, with yellow plastic fencing, with swirling blue plastic slide, with brown plastic walls; a menagerie of color.
And a bridge, bowing to the most tentative of pressure, connecting plastic palace to another plastic palace.
Swing sets: here, gripping tangible yes! almost, slipping BACK! there, gone, distant, lost! nothing.
Rings, rings, links of promises looped together, groaning to stay fast, afloat, and hold on to their terms of words and actions.
Built wrapped around one another, the weight of integrity, the dismay of compromise.
Whine chinking, frictioned, shrieking like witches cackling over cauldrons foretelling prophecies of fallacy; moving, but always stuck.
Higher! So much, not enough! Enough! When? Too high! Too high! The chain slags, snags, jumps, rattles, can anyone withstand?
He curses him, the air curses him, slaps cracked lips.
Snow soggied foundations, rubber and woodchips loosed on disillusioned endeavor unmatched by fallen snow covering hills in white stitches.
Every blade of grass illuminated in whited pencil pricks, competes with hungry moon.
Frozen in white, Lethe has forgotten itself: petrified waves, streak rippled statues, apocalyptic landscapes. Oblivion pauses.
The snowflakes smile, slide beyond, absorb sound, render me unto solitude and silence where all is holy.
The brave beauty of heaven stands naked; shades of ash transmute to linen white; transient, poised and everlasting.

A Shrug and A Cold Sholder

poetry

It was cold in that basement
colder than anything,
I could tell from my
frosted fingers,
Could see the smoke of
freezing breath
(I was told as a kid
it was my soul escaping)
and I
felt just like
I was going to die.

You were with me then,
and you assured me
there was nothing we
could do about it.

Then the ice grabbed me
and locked me and
my heart for an eon
it seems, and as I gauged
the passing seconds
I tried to cough the ice away
that was slowly stopping
my throat.

I think I heard you tell me
that you’d wait for the Spring Thaw.

It Only Takes So Much Catasrophe

poetry

It trickles and leaks down the steps in to cracks
in the stairway to fill up the basement
and eat the foundation
and drown all the life out of
everything, everything
we’ve kept around for so long
and as long as
the bilge pumps are broken,
and the kinder words spoken,
the stuff will keep dripping
and grips will start slipping and
soon enough everyone’s
dead

Heels to crack and hands to burn

poetry

Words are true and honest.
Meaning what they mean
and maybe a few other things
and no more
until they bend beneath
the heal of a heavy-footed bastard
and arsonist.

He will burn us both and crack
the boards in the hallway
that separates us. He is
a fool and a bastard and
I’ll pay any man a fine sum
if they find him dead.

He sows his seeds incurably
and perfectly and smiles and
stands so far back as to
watch his work but
only once or twice has he
been caught in it, and
it burned us all. His scars
will hopefully
never heal.

so i’m leaving behind my computer tomorrow

poetry

and heading for conference
then beach
but more importantly people
and downtime
where i plan to regenerate
myself with books.

yes. i’ll bring them on my phone
a computer in itself
and i’ll lay in bed and read
and sink my feet in to sand
and run.

somehow this will bring me back
to the job i love
ready to do it even better.

or so me hopes.

Stretching Toes towards Heaven

poetry

(In a season of false strength and defiance)

Waves of man
somber and cruel
screeched steel, plundered the sky
and plucked out light and innocence
eternity had dreamed out for them
to kneel in, to die in

A birthing of vestigial heroes on a sacrificial plate
for the one eyed god of Jealousy
to torment until the flock of days inure
their gaze to flows of sorrow, and the

Once-upon-a-time-heroes like paper cranes fly
down a damp ravine lamenting yesterday’s thick foliage
left with dreams of individuation
a leaf, a rope or a comb clinging to heaven’s roots
in a dark night forest.

(silence was a friend and a foe).

mail

poetry

she opens the envelope
replaces it on the table
closes eyes inhales
the words
written in cursive recognizably
rising and falling
written in syntax matching
the map of her thoughts limited by
blue lines blue lies
and all she ever hoped
you might say.

Poem Titles I’ll (Probably) Never Use

poetry

“Compressed Carbon” 
“Afraid of the Dark” 
“Homegoing” 
“The Color of the Sea” 
“613” 
“Socially Adaptable, but I Digress”
“Rose Petal” 
“Some Trust” 
“Groups of Three”  
“Articles and Prepositions” 
“Why you have ten toes instead of eleven and other such oddities of life” 
“Albert and the Infinite Abyss” 
“Killed by the King of Spades” 
“Amoretti”
“Wink and a Gun” 
“Jumping the Check” 
“Never Met a Weekend I Didn’t Like” 
“So Constant, So Monochrome”
“Enstasy” 
“Learning to Walk (Again)”

Respite

poetry

Days
stretch on as
the halls of a mortuary
stretch,
leaving guests
and grief to
wander in to infinity

but the nights,
they seem to burn like
paper on a candle
or a devil
in the sun,
sleep and solace lost
among the cold, unruffled
bedstuffs

but,
one day
I hope to have a night
and, after
easing my days
from the stretching,
perhaps
I’ll take my night
and call it one

And that woman, she gets the best of you.

poetry

She spoke Thick German
with an accent that felt
like it’d get caught in her throat,
and it worried you.

So you worked so hard, your magic,
mixing concoction after potion
after cure-all, but your whiskey
and sour mix and snake oil only
goes so far.

So her tongue lilts ethereally
floating past your ears and right
in to the core of you and
now you have to stop and stare
and perhaps mix up a Wonder Tonic
for your own benefit

Things Spoken

poetry

They found the dialogue
engaging,
and especially from
half a dining room away.

Words carried on lips but
twisted on fingers
with that
BODY LANGUAGE
waltzing in the candle-
light

And in all the spit and
sputum I
found no cause to fear,
for my blades are kept
sharp
and my tongue just as well
and for just such an
occasion
as eviscerating our dinner
‘guests’