The heart that beats against the prison bars of guilt and soured love and apathy must fail in pain before the cold that mars all teeming life, love, and harmony. For hearts are flesh and blood and soul divine, while cold metal is but the bones of earth and unyielding in its rigid design, stoic Continue reading

This is the time when the sky burns, longing for the cooling touch of ever greening trees, and when the sweaty noonday sun pours relentlessly into the streets, constrained only by iced tea and oscillating fans. This is the time when you and I sing out love through the steady rhythm of our blending voices Continue reading

I have long stood in the shadow, lingering at the edge of definition, the flickering flame dancing in my eyes. I have watched and waited while crumbs fall to the ground, broken pieces of life from ignorant lips. They have gorged themselves on beauty and truth and goodness; and they do not understand. But I Continue reading

This is the time when the sky awakes, buoyed by the swaying hands of shimmering trees, and when the warm morning pours early into the streets, softened only by stray clouds and a gentle rain. This is the time when you and I walk out love through the steady rhythm of grasped, swinging hands, and Continue reading

This is the time when the sky bleeds, impaled on the brittle, clawed fingers of dead trees, and when the icy darkness pours early into the streets, constrained only by pale lights and silent flames. This is the time when you and I beat out love and warmth through the steady rhythm of our hearts, Continue reading

I once imagined that Death would find me sprawled on the floor surrounded by my books with a pen in my hand and half a poem scribbled on my arm. But then I met you and Death changed plans; not on the floor so much as in our bed with my arms around you and Continue reading

On nights like tonight, when the moon is draped in shimmering ghoulish sheets, I find my fears pulled, like high tide, further up the shore of my awareness. I sit in pale darkness waiting for the colored cacophony of dawn to drown out the grating whispers lurking at the edges of perception. I watch and Continue reading

When the empty apartment laughed at my movement, and the silent whir of the fan moved through the dusty, muffled air, and when the blank page mocked my twirling pen, and my half-empty coffee cup cooled in the lingering light, then the great shadow fell across my heart, and my naked soul shivered in the Continue reading

After “Against Whatever it is That’s Encroaching” by Charles Simic Best of all is to be still– except (of course) the coffee pot and (naturally) the dishwasher– when studying the light: the way it trashes subtlety and dances energetically through a north-facing window. It’s tricky to have a dog around just then, and two is Continue reading

The warmth of whiskey and vinyl and laughter and good friends follows me home. I turn the lock only to walk into still silence. I see the traces of your presence: a crumpled pillow, an empty dish. . . The wet noses greet me in a frenzy while my heart limps down the hall, and Continue reading

Today, the couch and screen are not enough I long for the road and silent dew My obsessions fade before the failing light As darkness rises from the sun’s corpse The sophists hold forth beneath pale florescence While I step out the window drifting into the dusk Speak to me, cold wind swirling forgotten thoughts Continue reading

“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you” or so Yeats* did write, ink within black space in a poem of love, beauty, and grace beneath crowded stars and the lucent moon. And your pilgrim soul, this sorrowful heart, this Grace amid thorns, this mist on the air, I hold in my soul, I Continue reading

I wander the darkened halls of my shuttered certainty searching for a memory to point me back towards home. * * * “How often” muses Faulkner* “have I lain beneath the rain” careful here, watch the comma “on a strange roof, thinking of home?” * * * The memory of ancient things or so Tolkien Continue reading