Spring snow, heavy from the sun, as one season slides into another, jubilant, inexorable, put on a happy face and wonder where has it gone? No more sloping, no more gentleness, whatever I thought there was, was wrong and the only way out is through. Truisms and robber jays, ice in the shade. A refusal
oh encapsulated day too small and every meter metered out bland formalities as measures sun in a picture but in this distant window rain the thought again that distance is not mere physics or even physical enough corporal work will teach you that quick
late morning, no snow it may have rained but is not raining presently a vacuum cleaner running somewhere, removing the evidence, making it possible to forget. Somewhere near here the tide turns away a gradual recession you have to stay and watch to see but it’s blocks and blocks away and not really ocean, more constrained bay and I recuse myself from all sorts subtlety this morning, bare streets and indifferent traffic, turn over in […]
and dreaming of artichokes realistically with fine threads and coarse skin otherwise this winter might devour me, at night looking up spreads muhammara, peppers, roasted red, Aleppo, the roughest cut of salt, cumin earthy as dirt, rude scallions, but in just the right amount, tempered, a counterpoint, what lasts? rehearsals for the inevitable, blue-blooded kale and enough lemons to drown out the world, citrus affront, oil and pith, shock, doctrine, if life gives, you make
Does an emptiness attract more space or manufacture it one or the other such a nice day after all, cold, clear elevator affability and sunlight drawing in everything except those cherished words not anymore through unthinking neglect or something more willful one or the other and would it even matter it may snow tomorrow a line is drawn never benign no, this much but not a breath more a love gone asymptotic
a border is a boundary or a perimeter that defines a place in physical space but in gerund form bordering implies proximity to a dangerous extreme each sense topical timely but also ominous its antonym it’s hard to name exact shades of gray winter sky suitcloth ashy ashen censer censor one is smoke the other smoke and mirrors what is implied implicitly can still be false scarier is complicity best to clearly state a border […]
A return again back from the bay industrial coast the shipyards by night and hunters at dawn a dispassionate racoon receeding into the woods the day become a little less wild . the difference between a plea and proclomation not too much both should know better this land intentionally left fallow . a rainy drive as forecast charmless towns without that dutch blue sky geese resting and in flight cursive, discursive get to the point […]
I dreamed a door swept shut and felled a row of empty bottles that didn’t break but scattered about with hollow echoes and you were there saying careless, careless, careless, careless awake again light coils on the floor cool-hued pools of star and streetlamp, making a cold thing colder sleep an uneasy truce
What do you say to a man who is dying? A fact, just as it is twenty-eight degrees out, the sun set three hours and thirty-five minutes ago, this is a man who is dying, but is still alive. Careful, things fall easily here, this the greatest distance, none could be further. What hues in that sunset! A slow burn over the bay, the city changes its face, harder edges of night, but ribbons […]
How the intolerable becomes tolerable, against all attestations otherwise the bite, forgotten that old dispensation what a strange capacity a heart deadens itself, dryly, inexorable as a nature show prey, predator, or merely winter coming on, nothing is surprising now, not even this
OPTIONAL POETRY 