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 […]
More North than home, this morning-still forest– dull today, awaiting more snow, more sky, more anything– a drowsy forest, half-sleeping under packed-down ice, still dirt where the sun breaks through, on some days, but not this one, no more day now than hours ago, barely more than night, the sun somewhere in its low arc, somewhere under these insulating clouds, very little moves, the lake comes as a surprise, so silent at its banks, even […]
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 […]
traffic sounding almost like the tide this night spent early a couple laughs so loudly in the lobby there is nothing silence can’t magnify particularly stillness a pipe empties from the loft above even ears plugged blood courses through its vessels
Al pastor with big hunks of piña, a raucous song coming from a band of young drunks, is it Roma, Condesa? These streets run around and around like a race track. Cerveza at altitude. Joven, cinco más por favor, con todo. What warmth and light at this hour of night. And absolutely nothing at right angles, walls coming out like full bellies, pavement in riot, this city sinking down into the prior. Poco que sé. […]
Summer went out like a light, extinguished. Rain now pools on the roof, sounds of passive movement, the day cedes more willingly. Water splashes up beneath a passing car, yes, this city is more beautiful when damp, saturated, it carries more weight, occupies more space. Yes I booked the flights. What hell to wait, sometimes, to inhabit every hour, each a different room, interminable. Some hearts come more even-keeled, don’t yearn while floating through a […]
Rain, finally. As if home was returning from battle– the cold slick road engulfed correctly the familiar treachery of a high mountain pass– prodigal clouds come back as if visitors. Who knew this summer could actually end? A timely progression of seasons, how strangely normal. Still a headache from yesterday’s smoke, but seeing it, belief and then such relief despite white-knuckle driving for hours after
It’s not pretty math one saddled with the remainder one the larger denominator one always wanting more This crescent moon is a quarter this night is one third over this silence a tense zero some bad egg that might hatch
Untethering in stages– the front door closed the train from work mechanical issues a gate change, delayed, the salmon sky turned black now, it’s beginning to feel late, but when did I leave, or have I left yet? Also a gradient, shades of leaving, and arriving, and still customs to clear when we get there, a man paces, a baby sleeps likes a baby in a collapsible stroller, stasis, the man curses under his breath, […]
I could sleep now in this raft of a bed, or later, or eat an unreasonable dinner, or make something sensible, or wait, getting lost in a book, or a thought, or these small rooms, quieter in your abscence. Another city night, some man sings loudly into the velvety dusk, and it’s not clear whether the high rises are cast in cool blue hues due to this sky or to their glass or if such […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 