nothing more than feelings
to be alive & to feel that way: to be here like a smooth black worry stone there like a circling red tailed hawk everywhere like hunger like music like hydrogen like faith like the blood on the back steps of the Beauty Shop to be alive & to feel that way: to be strange like a charmed quark afraid like that face in your mirror empty like a row of yellow plastic chairs in the Greyhound Bus station in Dayton Ohio at 3am on February 19th, 1977 to be desperate & relentless like a shiny new stripmall proud like my parents on their wedding day shut down like the Troy Street Pool Hall on...
Read MoreMistaking the Moon
I fear that I have made you feel at times too common: like the sound of a public school desk sliding across a dirty floor, or the sight of a shoelace dangling agreeably from its knot, or the smell of burnt toast or taste of a ham sandwich. You are so much more than a ham sandwich. You are wondrous in the same way cinnamon is wondrous as it dances and falls from its shaker, the way a porch light is wondrous when it winks rapidly right before it falls asleep forever, the way black ink is wondrous as it slides...
Read MoreA Bare Fist of Snow
Winter’s history, the lion never showed, the skin took the brunt of numbing.
Read MoreDaffodils
(in memory of Patricia Lewis Smith, 1953-2005) Time may absolve us of some things we’ve done, If only by its vast indifference; More problematic is the nagging sense Of possibilities forever gone. Bright daffodils on February’s lawn Brim with regrets, for all their innocence— Arrangements that were never sent. Years hence, They will loom large as living comes undone: Soft chalices of golden winter light, Champagne flutes where the wounded may not drink. Try as we may, we never get loss right: It stuns to speechlessness just when we think The future will be bearable, if not...
Read MoreHow to Watch a Bad Movie
There is an art to enjoy bad movies, A way to abstract perfect stills From tawdry plots and dead dialogue: Raindrops beating on the heroine’s face – You can bracket this, cut away the edges Of the hackneyed scene; you can travel far On the montage of a lonesome highway To the shot of the runaway lovers. The art is to detach from plot and words, The absurd clichés muted by the will, Life itself removed, a clumsy interlude. It’s all yours now, stirred in the alembic Of half-dreams, a movie within a movie, This fine art of late night...
Read MoreNow Let’s Say
you are out in the suburbs in your little gated rooms and you’re not even desperate. Let’s say you’re not so young you could leave whatever seemed safe for a fling, losing it all. Then the red shoes mania gets to you. Could be a love, ballet, it could even be a horse you fall wild for, decide you want your ashes scattered over her grave. In your head maybe you’re Moira Shearer, flame red hair the whitest skin, mystery skin. Maybe the red shoes are the color of what makes you lie, something you give up everything else for, let what matters collide, tear you to shreds. Are you going to...
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