Poetry

Not changing the world. Just taking it all in with words.

When I started writing at age 8, poetry was my first love. By the ripe old age of 12, I realized there was no money in poetry and shifted my ambition to journalism. There’s still no money in poetry (or journalism), but I keep dashing them off to appease the muse — and my wife, who along with my mother make up the total of my poetry fans. Until a chapbook emerges, here are a few…

Homewrecker 11.13.2014

(Published in the Fall-Winter 2022 Rat’s Ass Review)

“If you’re going to win the lottery, you have to buy a ticket.”

It’s not the sort of thing you’re looking for
after 18 years of marriage.
You’ve adjusted to this life of yours,
gotten comfortable
got two cars and a mortgage
and a half-built nest egg.

Even still, the thing you’re missing nags at you.
Your dreams ache at the edges of your bones.
You can’t quite release what might have been
the life you really wanted to be living.

Happenstance,
She takes a job she plans to leave in three months.
She takes your hands and says you can have her children.
She takes your heart and your U-Haul
to a new time zone.
She gives you the winning lottery ticket
and loves to the marrow.

Reading bell

Published in Masque & Spectacle, March 2023, and Cantos magazine, May 2023

I found myself in the pages of her Bone Black childhood,
misfit and lonely.
But I wasn’t alone.

I borrowed bell hooks’ memoir from the library
marked with pencil throughout.
Through the reader’s notes, I found a friend
living the bone cutting memories 
along with me.

She underlined “girlhood rebellion” on the first page of the introduction.
She scrawled a box around a paragraph about bell’s grandmother.
In cursive in the margins she penciled:
doctors,
real, 
home, 
smart, 
iron, 
proper, and 
pink
along with random x’s, bullets, stars and dashes through the pages.

I began to read with her eyes, mine lingering on her underlined echoes of
“They act as if this is another sign that I am not normal,” and
“She never wanted to marry…is her choice to remain single and alone,” and
The faintest marking lingers under “punishment” 
and “feeling of shame,”
An underline drifts downward as if she were falling asleep 
or couldn’t bear to finish the mark under
“humiliation.”

S-E-X is penciled in beside Ch. 32, and
W-I-F-E beside Ch. 33.
A bold circle loops around “She saw herself as one of them,”
a smaller one around “sad.”
She’s written “Me” beside the line 
“We know there are many magical things that can be done with hair.”

I imagine her dark, thick and sad,
Blistering the pages looking for a friend. 

An entire page of a chapter on dirty books is bracketed in pencil with underlines:
Popular romances, 
almost always poor, 
working woman, 
women were always in need of rescue, 
always virgins, 
always married, and
always had happy endings.

Did she get a happy ending?
She underlined “Knowledge that everything would come right.”
Did it?

In the end, my co-reader and I merge into one.
“There is nothing wrong with feeling alone,” circled,
evoking my oldest fear. 
Then she underlined the words tattooed on my soul:
“I am here to make words.” 

Beaten Heart

Published in The Bookends Review, 7/19/2024

In Texas,
They declared a heartbeat alone
enough life to preserve.
I watch my baby girl
Suspended in darkness,
her heart pounding at 120 bpm.
She has a tail, paddles for hands and stumps for feet,
two dark spots where eyes will be
and a spinal column.
No head, no brain, nowhere near human,
but a heartbeat thundering through the womb
I waited my whole life to hear.

In Elizabeth City
They declared a grown man,
not worth saving.
He had a heartbeat,
and 10 kids, and a spouse, and
four decades of HIStory.
And two hands on the wheel.
The thunder in his chest
pounding in the darkness
until 
he was aborted 
by people who promised to protect
and serve him.

No more waiting.
No more.

Changing the Bed

Published in The Bookends Review, July 8, 2024

My limbs are electric, 
reaching, clinging, wanting 
wanton for the press of 
her foreign flesh.
 
As much as I had feared 
my desire was a raw nerve, 
feeling pleasure and pain 
indistinguishable.
 
After,
our limbs twisted together in fraught knots,
exhausted.
Exhausted of the wait, 
exhausted of the fight to stay apart, 
magnets calling for each other 
from opposite poles,
finally collapsed.
Exhausted from the wicked curiosity 
of being unknown to each other,
of hiding, not lying, but 
not telling the truth 
to anyone.
And we are swiftly boated by sleep 
that refuses to abstain any longer. 
 
I startle,
groping for her
finding foreign arms threaded and 
breasts pressed against me.
A room tilted in the wrong direction, 
a bed giving way beneath me that 
feels like anything but home.
"Are you ok?"
I ask, patting her down.
She pulls me under her and 
we are tunneled to sleep again.
 
I startle,
groping again
finding unknown everywhere.
Light from the bathroom reminds me 
I am not home.
"Are you ok?"
I ask again.
"I'm fine. You're ok,” 
she says and tugs me down. 
 
I startle,
my weak arms fueled by fear, 
feeling for my bearings.
I don't hear my pets licking, snoring or
scratching.
I don't see the red bars of the alarm clock 
reminding me it's late. 
I don't taste her Chapstick on my lips, 
can't smell her lotion, hair conditioner, 
face cream and deodorant swirling under 
my nose.
"Are you ok?"
“I’m ok.”
She's annoyed now
for the sixth time or eight time I’ve woken her, 
my heart seized,
no breath in my chest,
blind, fumbling for anything familiar, 
solid ground.
under a rug ripped out.
 
This is not home.
She is not her.
And I
am not me.

Entombed

Published in Cantos magazine, May 2023

Under the shade of pine
needles’ whispering fingers,
under the dirt of hundreds
of feet tread there,
under a layer of concrete
laid atop a crumbling sidewalk
long ago pressed into the raw flesh of wet concrete,
the signature of us:
J + S
encircled by a lop-sided heart
still remains.

We had drawn the same
on the south beach of Vancouver
after we legally married there.
We took a picture,
but the tide took it out by morning.

We had stood on the curb
debating should we write into the fresh cement.
This was an opportunity to enshrine something more permanent.
And with the school girl grins
we used to have,
we dug a stick into the gray goo,
leaving one permanent thing
in the world
that was us.

We were not meant to last.
As hard as we tried.
As hard as I cried
when I realized.

We fought the poverty of our twenties,
loss,
family trauma,
two counselors
and one broken dream.
Nearly two decades of tides
shuttling us in and out until
we were no longer the same people
who stood in front of a fresh sidewalk
across from The Old Mill
looking twice before
defacing the pristine surface.

One week later,
they paved over the sidewalk again.

I walk my son past the site,
my eyes lingering on the place
where our secret, damned,
lay hidden from view.

I know what it cost
 to bring him into being.
My lop-sided heart
still broken
beneath a layer of concrete, 
covered in the dust of shoes,
shaded by the hissing fingers
of the pines overhead.

Call It Us

Too swiftly we caved,
some said and say.
Five weeks acquainted
before falling in love,
abandoning our paths to
start a new one together.

We knew new love
is not a thing that lasts
on its own.
It’s work, it’s changing ourselves
into we-ness.
It’s a thousand micro heartaches
to forgive over and over.
Love is no back door,
and no looking back.

There’s nothing special about us,
save the grass we water
where we stand.

Call Home

And this is the place we give to you to call home.
The place where we have dreamt,
whispered  prayers, mourned and poured
more hope than we had to give
in bringing you to be.
XV was all we had,
and yet, you came to be.
And now, at your fragile feet
we la the whole of the world.
All its brilliance and barrenness for your grasp.
That when you discover such a thing
as to cleave or flee,
you remember your place in the fire
and call home.

Catch

Laying itself down silently,
indiscriminately, indifferently,
snow cloaks every surface in pristine blankness.
It’s chill, cleansing.
It’s unfettered blanket pure.
Sound and fury muffled in its gentleness.

Through the shards of my past,
you reach for me,
pulling me past tangles of trauma
to the promise of possibility.

Your love like snow,
blanching in beauty
our paths forward, entwined.

Living In Tent

“LIVING IN TENT” was all her sign said.
I craned my neck to look over my shoulder as we drove passed.
Black block letters printed neatly
on a small square of cardboard.

In the shamefully short distance
to a parking spot in front of the chain sandwich shop,
I wrestled a hundred miles of excuses and scenarios.
	Was she really hungry?
	What did she spend the money on?
	Where did she get the marker to make her sign?
	Was she on drugs?
	Or booze?
	How did she end up living in a tent?
	Was it something she did,
	or something that happened to her?
	Does she deserve help?
	Would helping her actually help her?

Getting out of the car,
I rooted deeply in my center sense of compassion
and came up empty.
None of my invented storylines about her mattered.
I was going to buy a sandwich—
I could easily afford an extra
whether deserved, desperate or deceived.

I mouthed to my wife what she already knew—
I was going to see if she’d like some lunch.
I handed over my keys and wallet
knowing I would likely give them away if asked—
but mostly that I didn’t want anything on me to give.

Her name is Kelly.
And “God bless you” she’d love a sandwich.
She’s been living in her tent for three years,
but would get permanent housing in another month.
She was doing all the steps they asked,
she couldn’t wait to have a place again.
She’d like a turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato,
and some seasoning if they have it.
And no, she wouldn’t like any chips—
she’s watching her figure.
And she’d love a sweet tea.
And “God bless you, thank you so much.”

I waded back through the rushing tide of cars
from her tiny concrete begging strip median,
and headed into the sandwich shop.
I realized asking if she’d wanted chips was stupid and cruel.
Chips would be painful with no bottom teeth.
She had extended a true kindness to me
by deferring the discomfort of the obvious.

Seeing me return with a sandwich and drink,
she scurried through the traffic to meet me.
As she set herself up for an instant picnic
—yes, then, she was truly hungry—

I told her my name and shook her hand.
We shared a few lines, and she thanked me over and over.
Although I knew she needed and appreciated the meal,
I still felt inadequate—like I’d missed the point.
I had been too quick to judge and
nearly talked myself out of affording a bit of dignity
to a woman someone somewhere loved—I felt sure.

Could I love her for them right there just now?
Could I see my addict sister in her and hope someone else
might extend her the same kindness?
Could I lose the storyline and just let her be a person “living in tent?”

What then, would be my living intent?
my great aspiration for this life—
to be judge and jury for someone in need?

I tell myself I don’t want to risk the chance
of being wrong about anyone.
My living intent: show up, be real, share when I can and stay open.
I never know when a homeless lady will change
the content of my soul.

Firefly Twins

I saw them tonight,
their little glow.

We used to watch for them
a few weeks of summer every year,
and I saw them tonight.

We were a family then
running through the heavy nights
capturing the lights in jars.

We were a family then
as we watched them slowly
suffocate, dim, then die.

We were a family then
and we thought nothing of it.

But each one of us choked
or suffocated, gave up and left.

We’re no family now,
and I think of it all the time.

Our new neighbors had their
own stories,
but they did not understand
the sacred dance of the
clumsy children falling barefoot
in the firefly massacre.

They did not understand the
scarring dance of hopeless
children falling away
in the family massacre.

6.15.1995

Firefly Ambassador

We saw them tonight,
with their little glow.
Our shoulders pressed together,
fingers pointing across the lawn.

She loves to see them
and doesn’t know why.
I watch with melancholy,
longing for the carefree time in my youth
before everything changed,
everything turned into strife and struggle and loss.

I still remember our dance as clumsy children,
capturing the insects in our cupped hands and jars.
I remember writing about it,
26 years ago now.

I look from the window down the hall.
My son, long asleep,
still too young to stay up for dancing with fireflies.
Too young for strife and struggle and loss.

I want him to see the simplicity and beauty
in the synchrony of their pulsing.
Want him to share the dance with his little sister,
Want him to hold on, hold fast
to those carefree days of his youth.
And
maybe,
Never know the strife and struggle and loss
of hopeless children falling away,
Never know the melancholy of missing
the family he used to have.

I call the fireflies:
“Keep him young;
Keep him dancing.”
6.24.21