Burning Out
You, who never tire of chaos, must comprehend this fire, and the manner in which it deconstructs the crackling logs, books we’ve read, ablaze in orange and splintering blue. Victims of our rage—it appears—they turn to white ash that drifts in our nostrils, presses our tongues in gestures of mute farewell. You, who never cared for poetry or philosophy, part willingly with yours, while I confess some doubt, hesitating over tomes you’ve heard me mention with sighs. We are wholly different, it seems, not in our desire to purge, but in our methods of departing from what remains of...
Read MoreSoul an Invisible Muse
By Chinese Poet Yuan Hongri Translated by Yuanbing Zhang Open the eyes of your soul and you will encounter your many souls In timelessness, as if the sun and moon never set or rise The world is only a book, phantom-like The soul an invisible muse Before the words were born, you were a giant From the kingdom of gold who know not...
Read MoreThe Office
The context of this room with its one window, desk and bookshelves, cheap art, is suddenly stifling. The beautifully parallel horizontal blue lines on white legal, and me staring left to right, knowing that the ink when it meets the resistance of the page will feel introverted, compressed, not at liberty to jump, the two skinny, vertical red lines to get past the margin. Perhaps a better milieu, a hill looking out on an open field of poppies or high corn, sitting under an oak stretching toward the sun, acorns falling, and white clouds, moving steadily across blue velvet. Or the deck of a...
Read MoreMy intense intents indent the bubbles
My intense intents indent the bubbles of possibles, at times a severe pop reports a part of the future is dropped, or its dilatory delivery retreats with reproach from my untimely approach, hissing away escapadely.
Read MoreFlower Girl
Poems are hard to create they live, then die, walk alone in tears, resurrect in family mausoleums. They walk with you alone in ghostly patterns, memories they deliver feeling unexpectedly through the open windows of strangers. Silk roses lie in a potted bowl memories seven days before Mother’s Day. Soak those tears, patience is the poetry of love. Plant your memories, your seeds, your passion, once a year, maybe twice. Jesus knows we all need more then a vase filled with silk flowers, poems on paper from a poet sacred, the mystery, the love of a caretaker− multicolored silk flowers in a...
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