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Category: Poems

Poems written by me.

Nameless Stream

March 28, 2012 • • 4 Comments

I walk as in an autumn dream
to this sweet and secret stream.

Cumulous roiled sky and leaves,
reflections in this cloudlet stream.

Come winter nightfall stars shine
time above this comet stream.

Raindrops pelt the surface of this
momentary wavelet stream.

Despite well known creeks, I’m drawn
each spring to this minute stream.

Turtles travel the muddy road
of this slow and temperate stream.

Summer noon, birds disperse; only
wind around this quiet stream.

How many days have I explored
and sat beside this favorite stream?

Small Adjustments

March 20, 2012 • • 8 Comments

First he thought it was the stars, that creaking groan and grind of tired years but with time the tension grew and he realized the problem lay not overhead but underfoot (as problems often do). Some days the gripping stuckness beneath his feet felt tighter and other days it felt looser like someone else’s shoes depending on where he walked and what he ate for breakfast. Out on the plains where the stars rattled so faintly as to be almost inaudible, he located the source of this tension, unzipped the blackland earth and studied the dull gears that moved the gears that made the world go round. He turned a wrench against the machine—so surprisingly simple to adjust, this mechanical universe—and retuned the planet’s motion relative to the earthly key of his own aspirations. That’s the way he explained his good fortune years later as he leaned back in the worn leather chair of his old age, smiling in the knowledge that he was now very close to achieving his lifelong goal of living happily ever after.

—

For Magpie Tales #109

Blown Away

March 4, 2012 • • 4 Comments

I saw the wind today
not evidence of wind
like a leaf skittering
through traffic
actual wind—just
for a moment like
glare in glasses
when you turn your head
(but I wasn’t wearing glasses)
the wind was there
and it wasn’t
like a mourning dove
disappearing into grayer
fog

///

fingers twitch
like a rattlesnake
twitch like
a harmless rat snake
fooling those who come
too close
the judgement passed
too easily by those
who say he’s just white trash
who say he deserved that bullet
behind the chicken joint

///

Prayers go mumbling to the sky
mumbling
to the graying sky
the wind answers
forgets for a moment
invisibility
just for that moment
fleeting, gone
before I even knew it was there
but I knew it was there
I knew

Highway Skies

February 27, 2012 • • 4 Comments

There was a time when film was too expensive.
In those days, we used words scrawled
on fast food wrappers, creased maps and memory.

The cars ran on gasoline and explosions.
The phones were tethered to wires,
but we weren’t tethered to anything.

The highways stretched forever.
Nobody knew what was on the other end.

Not the maps of the ancient conquistadors
nor the atlases of the highway cartographers
could show us the ten thousand things
we needed to see for ourselves.

—

This is one I’ve been kicking around a while.

In other news, mark Stratton gave a nice quick review of Birds Nobody Loves. He interviewed me for his blog too and that should be appearing in the near future. Thanks, mark!

Svalbard

February 3, 2012 • • 10 Comments

I stare at Svalbard on the wall map:
wind-whipped polar seas and all
the world’s seeds stored for years
against armageddon and ambition.

Ten thousand stalks of corn in rows.

I watch a woman lonely stare
across thickening seas, the stars
out most days, bright and forgettable
twinkling motes of TV static
against the day going black.

Crushed beneath deep winter’s snows.

How many months till the whalers’ shack
falls silent? She shivers, kicks
at the tracks in pebbled stone,
pulls the emergency parka tight
against her wasting frame.

The fever comes and goes.

Acorns

November 16, 2011 • • 5 Comments

so many acorns on the ground…
someday I’ll get to explain
these to my little boy
how they become trees
with nothing more than water
sun and a little help
from squirrels and blue jays
things about time and the
distance to the sky
and through years
how the trees will still be young
when he is old and
I am gone and there will
still be acorns on the ground
a trail of breadcrumbs
leading back to a forest where
we all grow toward the light

—

I wrote this last spring when my wife was pregnant and the ground was littered with acorns like I’ve never seen. You couldn’t walk down the street without a constant crunch-crack underfoot, and as I walked the dogs on those spring evenings, my mind was always on my soon-to-arrive son and I wondered—still do—what he’ll make of this world.

Anyway, I forgot I’d written this one and so many months later, when there aren’t so many acorns lying about, here ’tis.

Husbanding

October 19, 2011 • • 4 Comments

moonlight sparkles in
grey hair and
bourbon ice

beneath pine trees she
severe counts satellites
on silent skyways

falling stars
fading shine

the sky’s last synaptic glow
strange and waning

the highway fell
silent last summer
no cars since then

her mind wanders
revisiting the cellar
each jug of potable water

she calculates
consumption, her husband’s
weight beside her

bourbon ice (luxury
for special nights like these)
grey hair
moon-sparkling knife

the broken highway
heat lightning
bones in moonlight

—

Another poem about water, or rather, the lack thereof.

While Sitting in Church

October 14, 2011 • • 3 Comments

My videopoem “While Sitting in Church” was featured yesterday over at qarrtsiluni as part of the Worship issue. The poem is from my Birds Nobody Loves series, which will hopefully soon become a short collection when I can find the time to finish it off. Anyway, check it out, and thanks to issue editors Kaspa and Fiona who accepted it within hours of my submission. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an acceptance so fast. It’s a great issue they’ve put together so spend a while checking things out, especially Sherry Chandler’s “Doxology.”

Slow & Coiling

August 31, 2011 • • 11 Comments
Afternoon temperature. In the shade.

Slow & Coiling

drought doesn’t rage
like hurricanes or tear
the world like twisters

it’s a slow dismantling
of yellowed ecosystems
ash blown on wind

blind salamanders
blocks from a jenga tower
pulled one by one

cracks snake the earth
the quiet collapse of cattle
roaming mudpits, abandoned

fawns starving on roadsides
constellations of vultures
summer’s stars dark and full

silent silent sky
smoky whispers of a thousand
cigarette wildfires, sirens

a lone bat loops the dusk
where swallows and kingbirds
once flew toward trees

songless losing leaves
months before their time
tree rings tell futures

constricted bands
a snake coiling around
this thirsty dying land

Heat Advisory

August 12, 2011 • • 6 Comments

bring water, electrolytes
this night will burn

heat and light
have come untwined

out on the porch
I call back the dogs

swift feet, darkness
panting shadows

sweat beads my forehead
the stillness of trees

leaves roasted
beyond autumn gold

pray for rain, ask
in secret for hurricanes

they claim this red moon
only reflects