A Foggy Rad Cam

Breaking Fast Slowly

Fallible

Speech Impediment

When I was a boy

I couldn’t say your name,

’round letters went stiff

Now I need a drink because

a drunken sailor needs the sea, 

                       …a gentle float adrift.

Oh, what little sounds we enter

where boisterous waves cry out,

‘Hey let me in!’

—no doubt.

So there you go 

passing by my boat.

You’ll stay afloat, just pine,

creaking sound of caring drowned.

Enjoy the floor and remember dear,

‘The words endear only how we hear,

for those who speak with silver tongues

bring gentleness ashore, 

heretofore.’

Scrabbled

Garbage and Laughter

sitting by the window
the scent of garbage and laughter comes in equal measure
then there’s a room silent
cavernous
and low

its emptiness glows
what a lonely sound echoing voices make with pleasure
all that remains
hollowness
bows

lying seditiously shallow
against a state of affairs, love evicted still rules writ
a law for fools
careless
fallow

the buildings and the trees
everything coated in painter’s black, bright moonlit
hope in the gallows
writhing
pleas

how many lines
that break and form again, never myself to permit
a peace that partakes
retreats
repines

The Amusement Park Wilderness Revisited

The First Visit

The Second

Skyscraper towers of rock silhouette the sunset sky

The evening star pokes a hole in the imminent darkness,

A promise that morning will come

But what dreams may pass between the shadow and the bluebird,

before the rise and fall of wild calls?

My hollow voice will echo faintly,

watch the ripple crawl across the watery table

The moon will glow and the sun will shine, ever brightly,

and where that ripple goes,

only they know

Reverse and Refrain

Bolted to the ground and bruised at the hip
Broken at the rib, where you once lived
The alpine wind comes and goes, who whispers while it whirs?
Something old, something blue, something eternally askew
Psalmist, sinner, and drunken lover never rest
the penultimate play, each must wearily address

Time shuffles forward and now my sins are my own
Paramours of the past echo flowered fields
circling a constellation crookedly sown
Truth survives the second coming intact
but some splendors were never meant to last

Dusky illusions will yield
while parched lips forever compromise in haste
Descending from the rocky summit, will you remember
or did you forget
The broken, the bruised, and the beautiful
sublimely written, wonderfully chaste

Forest corpses reverse and refrain
Only the sun redeems everything sane
Aspen groves gesture comically in the air
waving with faint flickers hello, then goodbye
Golden dusted lines crest every hair
before the cool breeze blows, a fasting sigh

Living Room

Ciao Baby!

*guest photo by Ruth Judge on set one (the orange building with bicycles).

No Relation

A Sea of Tense and Tea

is there no assurance of things long remembered?

a steady rhythm to recall the object of my derision

I, a small and feeble thing

confessing words that strain to match the intensity

of men with chests, barreled full of poetry

a thing long forgotten, it not I

and a placid sea of tense and tea

maybe it’s better to be blessed

than to arrange fallen line comedies,

an orangutan harangue and pitiful pigs

the procession never ends

this evolution is revolving round

flaccid round a cosmic point that dwindles

it must be something that collapses into nothing

what then remains of things long remembered?

better left lamented, love cements itself

till the bitter end begins again

and again I strain to see the point

where the small and feeble thing

becomes worthy of a king, it not I

pardon me, pardon me amidst the sea

find a steady rhythm to recall

a line forgotten in royal geometry

the wave stands still yet what remains

a pillar of salt just right, his not mine

then left a tragic stain

remember the pronouncement, again

a thing long remembered,

never more, never mine, I resign

There's A Sinister Side to Life

There’s a sinister side to life.
Brutal and real in that imaginary sort of way.
Flesh torn asunder
a violence
poured into coronary caverns.
It thunders and pulses
Fingertips throb with the nadir frequency of fear.
It’s a throttled, hushed tone
that knocks pernicious at your door.

The smokey breath of death slips beneath the threshold,
a bellicose bromine pools around your feet.
Suddenly the vivid stench of darkness goes quiet and flat.
The idle golden lock turns and clicks.
The shape it takes,
Altogether average but for a tilt and a tear
etched beneath the skin.

In the dusty corners of your eye, the world is black and white—
Stare this terror in the face
and see the hideous splendor of your own.
Escape the mirror of caprice
before its image breaks the plane.

Company

[On the left...]
“Sensationalism! Somebody’s drinkin’ it—it exploded. It’s all about personalities.”

[On the right…]
“That’ll clear out all the alcohol and the junk. What sort of insurance do you have?
—Detox! I love it.”
[Squealing]

“It’s just do what you will… what you will.
I’m the invisible third argument, trying to bridge the gap between urban youth culture and the church, the Christian World and the non-Christian world, which is bigger and more influential, and clearly.”

“Oh! Definitely ‘It’s Complicated’. No Question. Burn that one.
Precious? Never heard of it.
Sherlock Holmes? Oh! Yes, yes yes!”

[With affection…]
“My students…”
[With respect…]
“…my students.”

“Have you seen Twilight? No? It’s that vampire movie with—”

“You’re a little walking bibliography, here.
[laughter, page flipping]
Mm. Young people.”

“—young people.”
[tantalized]
When’s your birthday?
The 27th.
The 31st! Aquarius.
[High-five]
My ex-husband’s the 23rd.
[Eye roll]
Oh God. Oh, wait, no, he’s not a real aquarius.”
[Relief]

[Lean in]
“There’s a difference between being counter-culture and anti-culture.”
[Lean back]

[One departure]
“He just has a love addiction. That was the deal this time. He said give me a daughter, I’ll marry you—she’s 30.”

Schnee

Red White and Blue/Black Brown and Blurry

Holy Days