When the azaleas burst into bloom around a Buddha given me by a dear, departed, harmonic soulmate, it was time to set her memorial song to imagery of the green, green hills of Earthh ...
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‘When you are struggling in your writing (art) …”
What does it mean when you are you struggling and wrestling with your writing or art? Nayyirah Waheed sums up.
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‘What Does the Past Look Like?’
A more Catholic grade school name you could / not conjure — Our Lady of the Rosary. Where, on a / bright Saturday afternoon, I'm surprised to find / an orange traffic cone propping open a first-floor / door. And so, as one will do when invited by the / cosmos to stroll the hallways where you once / walked a half-century gone, I walk in.
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VIDEO/POEM: ‘The Difference Is’
There is a difference / between people who do things / and people who don't ...
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“RUN-ON SENTENCE: At 47”
I am 47, the day is Jan. 2, the year is 2005, / my beard is stained white in several places, / my son is 14, my girl 10, my (borrowed neighborhood) / cat is named Mister Puzzlesocks, / my favorite red wine of the moment is / Trinchero Cabernet, my car is a white ’93 …
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Dirt & Bourbon
My ink-stained hands hear the/ sound of the railroad, another train / passing through my town, here/ at the middle of nowhere &/ everything. I am ready to burst/ open like a cherry tomato/ between your teeth …
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POEM: In Need of Saying
I am on a porch, captain/ of a green ocean. Wasps patrol / the boundary lands. In whispering winds, conversing / in high tulip poplars, I hear / poems from another tongue …
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TIME FOR A POEM, No. 1
Do not deny the urge, do/ not let the chance for a poem/ pass you by. It’s OK, it’s wholesome / and nutritious, go ahead …
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POEM: “Unfamous”
I decide to be famous / only to myself. It is / so much easier and my / tender, so lightly bruised / ego now thanks me for this / demilitarized zone …
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POEM: “The Cow Bell”
A great grief saddles me,/ rides down the pampas of / Virginia Dare Avenue, / until I am too tired / and we return home / together ...
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POEM: 10,000 Thunderstorms
If I'm to be an insomniac, a fine thunderstorm is a welcome thing. To entertain. To relish and divert from mournful or misbegotten thought. I ponder getting up. Going to my front porch, storm-sitting perch.
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POEM: The Flavor of Grief
I have been getting familiar lately with the flavor of grief. It comes on me with no warning. While driving up-river, to shelter-in-Nature. At 68 mph, passing a too-slow, white Chevy truck.
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PICTURE|POEM: A Dozen Ways to Look at Chicago, Illinois
I've always been intrigued by human beings whose lives are lived just below and sometimes at the level of the clouds. They surround us by the thousands, the tens of thousands. In blue rooms, staring at TVs in their skyboxes. Doing Downward Facing Dog, 2,000 feet above the sidewalk.
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POEM | “My Paragraph & I”
'I want my paragraph to strut, carved cane in hand, the Left Bank, like a proper boulevardier. I want my paragraph to wow you. leave you wanting more. To, if possible, make you gasp. To make you—prose willing—cry. And then, to laugh. And then to laugh at your crying ...'
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POEM | “Body of Evidence”
'I'd no excuse not to grok the fact, or traffic in illusions of not growing old. Or denial of encroaching senescence. Or flipping the bird at Mister Death. It would halt nothing of my body's fade, of our decay. I was, perhaps, whistling past my future graveyard.'
