The sun becomes a scarlet wafer just before it dips into the lake and starts to dissolve and stars shine through the theadbare night one unified light made piecemeal too hot to sleep when dreams arive they come on fire from across the water that doesn’t disclose if it is deep or shallow
heart of the city cracked asphalt like fire’s detritus it had to be hotter than they said it was feeling the heat even now late the air crackles against faceless glass infinite expansion manifest destiny new construction no heart no love in the man-made canyon voiceless only noise a bottle crushed under tires a snapping metal wire until a man speaks from his rooftop only five stories up leans over and says this this is […]
Arcturus again nights in the city a bus sighs, idling, sounds of passage, low tide traffic and the distant warmth of disembodied lights from a great enough distance things become clear a deserted rooftop everything coursing below and it isn’t lonely at all, somehow
we ran through a forest at night an unfamiliar road an unfamiliar night anything can be foreign depending on context . back-lit windows as heavy-lidded eyes monstrously large behind the trees . a car passing quickly a thought that won’t settle that’s not a bird it’s a bat
The shortest day gives way to the longest night. Of course. The street, this building, quieter than usual, perhaps everyone gone, travelling home, or just asleep. The hour is late, maybe the emptiness woke me, that big, smooth zero, like a rock of ice. You know it would float. That doesn’t make sense, I know. Of course. But that doesn’t make it wrong, either. Harbingers, suddenly listening to Tom Waits, craving a racket. There are […]
Ungrateful returns. The wind batters the gingko, a cardboard box sails by six stories up. Absence grows familiar, still, unpalatable. There’s a different sort of beauty in these geometric nights, so abstract, divorced from messy life. A light goes on, a light goes off. You wrote from London, it’s nearly dawn there, now. Or then. I still wake and wonder where I am. This sky is toothless gray, no stars for all the light but […]
too tired to sleep a small gold moth darts in the dark like doubt or a heartbeat the night puts an edge on memories no answer, no answer, those were answers enough
Windows down driving over the lake the green scent of it languid humidity and the city lights gem-hued, strewn across sky and water, for seventy-thousand seven hundred and ten feet, some peace, spanning the gap, the longest floating bridge in the world, except for hope
Waking with a burning throat it’s the sun that changes not the haze a distinction worth making? Who knows. The sky bright opaque some big eye’s sclera and it doesnt blink
a day of too many quiet rooms no balm for it words on a page too linear the page too square all coming back to right angles, edges, each a precipice– if potential was always positive a heart would not sink
OPTIONAL POETRY 