Where does a dream end, and the act of remembering it begin? That’s like asking the storyteller if he knows he’s a ghost. The observer is observed, observing the observer, in a succession of night-blue mirrors. And the eyes in them are stars. Some are moving away, others drawing near. And here is the imagined space between them. Lost in San Francisco Lost in San Francisco, I met a […]
Should you ask what it is I’m trying to express, I would answer, I’m not trying. And to confess? Maybe this: Not flying. Not dying. [ 53 ]
I think I’ve already mentioned somewhere that I tend to forget poems almost as soon as they’re written. It’s interesting, because so many, like this one, are memory-driven, and each verse is its own childhood or family album. Rainbows and Windmills Sometimes we leave with rainbows in our pockets, and sometimes we travel without them, knowing there are always rainbows about; and yet a crumpled rainbow is its own […]
Night in bloom The night in bloom, as if the moon both meant to stay, and go; just so, my hat, my coat, my soul. Recently Banned Literature, November 8, 2014 [ 51 ]
1 at the center of which is Man, said the woman unto him, laughing, her symphony a breath of hands. 2 There were walls in those days: 3 The cotton patch on one side, impossible to mend; her father at the window, plotting murder; her mother knitting sandwiches: 4 Bolls, half open, scratchy to retrieve; the failed blood of […]
This old dictionary, in full bloom on my work table. A petal falls: solitude, noun. Songs and Letters, August 18, 2008 [ 48 ]
The stage isn’t really a stage; but then again the sky isn’t the sky either, unless there happens to be a light rain falling, dripping from a pine or from the edge of a tall gray building. Dawn, or at least a suggestion of it. Reminder: Talk to the person who handles the lighting. The cast consists of two characters, who for the entire play alternate between looking skyward and […]
A stone in a bottomless pond — a sky so deep, my eye is a star. Poems, Slightly Used, November 23, 2010 [ 46 ]
Surely you can imagine the street, the stones, the carriages, the table, the coffee, and the coming revolution. Or maybe you’re just thinking about an old friend, because today is his birthday. You remember sitting near the curb, beneath a tree, and how your cup somehow became full of tiny spring spiders, but not his. And then, the last time you were to meet, you waited alone, not knowing […]
Following are companion entries from the first volume of Songs and Letters, written and posted on consecutive days in April 2005. I don’t pretend they are important in any way, or even very good; heartfelt, yes, and certainly revealing; but as to what they reveal, I will humbly, gratefully leave to you. Gone are the days wherein I would be embarrassed by something I’ve written. Ample are the times I […]
