There’s gradients of silence– the moment just before the PA system comes on, the moment just before the voice calls a code, the moment after . And every voice there ever was started as a child’s voice . Is that why we’re so eager to rush, to save? Or is it salvation by action, by lack of thought? . After a while you can tell apart each wing of this hospital by the timbre of […]
These nights predictable as the twelve-bar blues this life too it’s bound to leave you behind it’s bound to leave you and it’s a shame the rain passed through the sky so starless still there’s nothing outside the window nothing seeable and even I would sing if it could make that nothing less so
An unseen bird sings a one-note song that almost slides into two sleeping with eyes open the old dog hears it too, incessant, incessant, the invitation had said silence. . An amber bead suspended in the window frame opens up into a spider . What kind of bird is it? One bird, one song, one note, and no response, what does it ask, who does it ask, could it be me could it be what […]
This night another night bus night impossible to discern its path while on it everything seen cannot be touched or not for any length of time as it’s not also on the night bus and the night bus doesn’t stop. Strange to go right through a town with its warm lights and conversations and glints of connection halfway out the door but the night bus moves on always the party’s in the other room the […]
In the woods a suggestive wind the trees creak like doors but opening or closing ones I’m unsure and the moss the grass the ivy shags that grace the maple trunks and sway are all more green than they have any right to be and buds appear on saplings like tongues that won’t be held and this light rain gets caught in wind and sun and rises blown like sparks the sun on the wet […]
Night drive just like the last night drive just like the city lights that paint the freeway pavement archetype of neon if only a heart could be trained to sit or stay I take it with me driving home about seventy it’s late which compounds its velocity but a heart can’t be trained and every night we both race home with only one of us arriving
Now an awful dream anemones growing out of my skin how the subconscious processes drowning and I watched cells dividing to herald more arrivals two four eight the biologically plausible nightmare of a scientist deep deep in sleep and under water.
Untethered untethered a psych ward day no one was there even as they sat there lost like reception a radio song cuts in and out and it’s not the same song that they hear anyway so I move politely on or try even my shadow self-conscious here they are not a ghost but it feels like a void here like an ache from a sharp blow like static no pieces no whole just cracks and […]
The day after the day leaving in the early dark the radio DJ playing soft songs to ease the hangovers even the broken rhythm of the rain is subdued. I dreamed you wrote to say that a tsunami almost got you I should really probably write you back and everyone else it’s just hard to grasp that these daily dull laps might seem comforting to someone who isn’t so weighted in place, so yes I’m […]
Venice, again. I had forgot the earrings I bought there and then lost, one after the other, maybe too careless with things, but never with feelings. I remember them, clear as the Adriatic, and it’s raining there while it’s raining here, and just how many places has this rain been? Counting the same place more than once, of course, as no place ever stays the same.
OPTIONAL POETRY 