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The Death of Aubrey Beardsley
Black and white The light drip of ink That looks at paper like A savior. The ocean of it swallowed up by Blank pages and Oscar Wilde’s handkerchief. Oh LORD how far I have come How these willow-thin fingers stained With sin from my pen Pull away from my mouth red Lysistrata is dead. My…
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Liminal Joys
The bookstore lights were off. Its window glass reflected red neon from the theater marquee across the street. If you peered inside, if you shaded your eyes with your hands you could see thousands of books stacked and racked their spines titillating to a man of words as what’s under a skirt is to a…
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Wholly Man
I am a restless man, a wannabe holy man my mind churns over the meanings of God’s word it deconstructs the messages into pieces that can be weighed and measured held up to the light and examined closely, like a doctor with an x-ray. I find them to be great and daunting and confusing and…
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The Newest Year
At some point across the Date Line (cutting out the small archipelagos where seabirds don’t care) the New Year somehow begins. Other than on paper, it doesn’t exist its not an admonition in the flesh or a pure astronomical event its just a reinforced reminder of how we measure the flow of time. The New Year…
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Magpie Death Rituals
“They’re just birds” is the casual cast-off what can a bird feel? Their brains are so much smaller than ours yet they can recognize themselves in silvered mirrors and groom themselves with their reflective assistance like teenagers readying for prom puffed up feather headdresses high as kites. That’s something. When a magpie dies, other magpies…
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The Ancient Past
The ancient past – 1984 where rolls of copper wire unwound coil in the walls of white gypsum board electric surges and negative potentials sanctify the silicon motherboard a computer beeps and numbers crunch the sun is in the sky the clouds stay far away. Orbiting the Earth Soviets and Americans point lasers at satellites…
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Dr. Eduard Bloch Reminisces About Hitler
“He had such beautiful, expressive eyes within which stirred a profound sadness, so much like his mother’s. She was a kind and dear woman. I treated her for breast cancer. You see, her death left a mark on him, a black mark. The US Army psychologists came to the house as soon as I left…
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Incorruptible
The incorruptible saints lay still under glass canopies lovingly covered with silk burial gowns they lay there dry as bones as bones they are their skin tight around the curves of chins and eyes sunken in and dark. They see nothing as flesh once did but they aren’t really there, if there is a place…
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National Poetry Month 30 – Planetary Arabesque
You’re in an iron boat on a mercury sea Where the heavy metal floats upon the Reflective waves of dense fluid With high-intensity magnetic fields Creating an aurora of charged particles Dancing in effervescent fervor. Imagine this scene, with a sky filled with A gas giant, its clouds swirling a Thousand miles an hour and…
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National Poetry Month 29 – Cats I Know
Sabine She’s small and black with golden eyes When angered, she jumps and flies Across the room to speed attack Against her foes, she aims a whack. Wolfgang He’s grayish-blue and rather large With a tiny head and body like a barge He may appear to be alarming But in fact, is rather very charming.…
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National Poetry Month 28 – Nothing
A house without books, is like several looks At where the hands on a clock-face Show more than 12 hours in a row, Endless hours where the mind withers And the words you don’t read have no Perch or vine or place to put in roots. No frame to place around an Old Master, solid…
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National Poetry Month 27 – 64 AD
Down in the sewer, floating along the effluvium You can get a great view of what the city eats. The runoff from the tenement towers Where piss and shit rain down like showers From upper floors where no pipes go, And the ashes of the Christians burned by Nero For the nightlights that show off…
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National Poetry Month 26 – Steamship
It came belching black smoke down the river The sound of grinding gears and splashing paddle-wheels Scared the horses along its banks. Locomotion on the water sans sail or oar, Fulton smiling through a face of soot. “The damned thing works!” What may have been seen as a minor invention Of little practical importance except…
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National Poetry Month 25 – John on the Beach
The island of Patmos wasn’t so bad this time of year John in his exile set up a little hermitage Took a walk down to the beach in the afternoons Spoke to the other exiles Shared his food and his stories. “I knew Christ, he loved me as a brother. He told me that I…
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National Poetry Month 24 – Tale Ends
Imagine a book made with only leftover bits, the excised verses of the Bible paragraphs cut out of Moby Dick an alternate ending of King Lear a whole chapter out of The Odyssey that somehow was written down on one of Homer’s dinner napkins and found in a tomb. Can you make a prize-winner out…
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National Poetry Month 23 – Translation
I can take two words and transform them into flying birds or sleeping cats or timeless inspiration language makes it possible to interpolate within a sentence another sentence that can change the meaning of a concept or clarify it or make it become something new. Translation can take adelphoi from brotherhood to siblings…
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National Poetry Month – 22 Earth Day
In the beginning God created Earth for four billion years there wasn’t much here every once in a while a bacterium made its way out to the surface, only to be blasted by a comet or consumed by a volcano. Life had a very hard time. When humans came upon the scene everything was already…
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The Numinous Cosmos 