The Capillary
My arterial life takes its turn to the heart; chemicals and infusions arm my father’s diminished limbs, pulling my mind on his frame. I let him relax upon the needle. I run quietly throughout time. The flood of warm laughter. The sting of lives parting. The swelling parts of his night blue veins. How they […]
Unwinding
Her hair waves. Her eyes smile. Her warm goodbye twirls around my frozen animation. Next time, these winds will neither cool nor hide. They will carry this voice, lifting these arms, unwinding these melting fingers. When she turns, they will glide across her, sounding her name. Her eyes will pause. Our hands will touch. Her hair will fall as we twirl.
The Ghosts of Ghost Stories
In my grand manor on my grand estate in one of my parlors filled with shelves, one of the books tells a story about some war that took your lives in your petty homes on your petty land.
Common Ground
I could smell your flattened body torn across this dry rocky tar, my metallic fingers peeled your tail upward like a strawberry pancake. But my bag fills not with roadkill. My mind fills not with shame. How you climbed those rocks those cables those walls and those trees. How your tail flicked across those last traces of sunlight. Along these […]
In Hollow Luster
The body of this young woman curves throughout my reflection. Don’t let this scent take shape. Don’t let these tight, smooth walls take me further. My wife in our home making dinner. Our life together is good. But this girl She floors without pressing She reaches without moving. How we could fall this night without gravity. Don’t […]
A Poem for Stinky on His Fifth Birthday
five by me thirty-five by you still my number one and now my elder that leg up you’ve sought finally come true but as you grow and as you go i beg this flows as ever-soothing prose: For as long as I’ve raised you I’ve looked up to you. your energy so fluid your company […]
After the Rains of Castamere
I’d like to extend a heartfelt round of applause for all A Song of Ice and Fire nerds, who so dutifully enabled last night’s Game of Thrones episode to be the surprise it deserved. You have collectively set the standard for the book-to-screen decorum and, gratefully, I commend your (continued) tight lips. Also, a brief […]
That Friend, That Light
My friend – Your darkness, it will lighten. Let it hurt you. Let it shape you. Let it never take you away. Let it see you. Let it blind you. Let it always shine inside you. You soar when you laugh. You glisten when you cry. If you listen when you try your center you will find. Beaming like that pulsar. Glowing like that sunrise. Smiling like that friend who never hurts who never hides who always cares who always […]
The Sweetest Executioner
Poised with poison I don that invisible black hood. A promise ripens as my father’s time nears: in his living room I will keep him from dying in horror. At last I find that the loss of the life of the man who gave me mine must embody my mind and body taking merciless action to give […]
Closure
Brutal this canvas – a course so comfortably coarse, to retrace our warmth now lost. Drained I sketch waves of pain that will ebb until my blood no longer flows. You taught me to breathe in, to let go, to leap in, to draw, so with this portrait, I withdraw the currents of the present to pull all […]
