love
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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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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 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 16 – Harrowing
The question of the descent into Hell or Sheol, or Hades on the surface seems academic. “Did Christ actually go to free the souls of the righteous?” Was He there in the nebulous dark emanating light to the countless millions dead before the coming of the Son; Adam and his beloved Eve the Patriarchs, Moses…
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National Poetry Month 12 – Clement Sends a Short-Form Letter
Greetings! My brothers and sisters in Christ I write this letter to the church in Corinth, telling you to get it together. God has ordered peace in the heavens – the stars and the moon and sun all roll across the sky as He ordained, so why not peace in your church? Remember Peter and…
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National Poetry Month 7 – Lord Have Mercy!
Lord have mercy! It is chanted in union among the sinners Lord have mercy! I sing it to myself in the night. Lord have mercy! Lord give strength to those who suffer in silence. Lord give hope to those that have none. Lord work upon us in ways we can’t understand, but feel. Lord have…
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National Poetry Month 6 – Won
Sometimes it feels like you get one shot at companionship one opportunity to set the board move your pieces and capture a queen. When she’s there in front of you and her smile is unbearable because it makes you blush you wonder at how every roadblock, and every setback, every Checkmate, only led to her.
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National Poetry Month 5 – In the Morning
Soft skin and warm over the pillow fort displacing the cat I insinuate myself lodged next to you where I can wrap my arms and legs around your body as you sleep. You stir and mold into me and there is nothing on Earth that matters more in that moment but you.
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Christmas 2021
Merry Christmas! Another year nearly gone, another world left behind us. For every year that passes is a change of the world; chemically, biologically, socially, spiritually. We often think of how the Earth abides through all of what we go through, that this spinning ball is forever fixed under our feet. But Earth is dynamic.…
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Pilate’s Painting
There is a legend that Pontius Pilate painted Christ long after he retired as governor. What a challenge that would have been to capture the man you so briefly spoke to on a wooden panel yet who’s life (and death) will stay with you for the rest of yours. Would you take red and accentuate…
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Justa Grata Honoria Writes to Attila the Hun
“Here is my ring, I will not marry him. Come and take me away Attila, you strong man save me from this run-down world this cesspit of censer incense and lace. Take me away from middle managers and scheming mothers. Away from mosaic gold and lapis. I want to ride your pale horse through the…
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Virginia Poe
We had no portraits of her we had nothing in our heads but her face alive and well dining and singing and laughing and sometimes sinning with Edgar. When she coughed up the blood the crimson stained her lips and her cheeks would flush looking like a painted lady out on a holiday. Edgar stared…
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Marguerite Bradbury
Who ends up with the memories of a love when one of a pair passes away? Surely they will last forever in the skull of the survivor: The ring-ding of the door bell in the bookstore where she stood organizing shelves and watched in suspicion the strange man overdressed for a warm LA day when…
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Christmas – 2020
It’s Christmastime again. A Christmas set during a year of profound sorrow afflicted by plague, political unrest, and change. Many of us, too many to count, have faced this last year as a trial with the jury still out deliberating our fate. I know that I have prayed to God for help and guidance, and…
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The Apotheosis of Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury is 100! I can still see him, larger than life, when I close my eyes – he has never died. He existed on the planet of his birth for over ninety sweeping orbits of its sun. Transitory was his life, specular, reflective, but also burning with his own light like that sun. Doing…
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Napoleon’s Last Words
There is a panorama somehow unfolding before me like a landscape painting on an infinite canvas all of you look as little dots crowding and clustering in armies of barely distinguishable colors smoke is rising from cannonades, and here and there blasts of dirt tinged with red blossom and fall back to the earth. How…
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National Poetry Month: “St. Augustine in Love”
She was so beautiful. She vibrated with life. I tossed her an apple from the neighbors orchard she reached out and caught it one-handed her skin honey, her hair like burnt offerings. I needed her like I needed reed and ink. Soft belly and taut breasts held high on her frame like melons fresh from…
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National Poetry Month: “Love Poem”
She asked for a poem. “When will you write one about me?” In my head I know that all of my writing is about her. Or for her, even if tangentially. I know because there is nothing unique without her. When I go to bed, I give her a goodnight. When I wake up, a…
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National Poetry Month: “Hitler’s Bunker Blues”
Over the Rainbow The gramophone is playing ‘Over the Rainbow’ Judy Garland is singing, turning from sepia tones to full spectrum color in the blink of an eye. The ceiling shakes in syncopation deep within you can hear the machine guns rattling bombs cause the needle to skip out of the finely machined black track of…
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National Poetry Month: “Fire”
The Normandie was burning in New York harbor. It was a nebulous sensation the question of fire and the man who watched the cork life vests bloom how fascinating, how pure to see the ignition of plasma and watch its growth from birth to groaning metal collapse into the harbor, the water sprays now floes…
The Numinous Cosmos 