lonely night
the high from a stranger's
vicodin
Moongarlic, 5
silent night
a street musician rolls
a joint on his guitar
Moongarlic, 5
busted knuckles
my father's blood mixing
with mine
the burn
of his favorite whiskey...
a vigil for my father
who's dead
only to me
killing a mosquito
with my suicide note...
someone else's blood
hospital christmas tree
the last twitches
of life in your hand
hospice...
the young priest's eyes
deader than yours
after the wake
I relapse on painkillers
prescribed to her name
Prune Juice, November 2015
hard to believe
we've never touched...
summer moon
Modern Haiku, 47:1
city haze...
the homeless child wishes
for stars
Prune Juice, Issue 16, July 2015
who I used to be...
the empty streets
of the motor city
PJ, Issue 16, July 2015
losing my faith...
a friend sells me acid
behind the burned out church
PJ, issue 16, July 2015
Hovel
If I had describe my mind, I'd say it's just four cigarette-stained walls, a room in a sleazy apartment where prostitutes make their living, where heroin addicts overdose on the shaggy brown carpet, and where geniuses compose brilliant poems, then crumple them up and toss them toward the trash can full of unread suicide notes and colorful used condoms. My mind is nothing but a place where I can be a fly on the wall of life, a place open to all of humanity for my own entertainment... and no one ever even knows I'm there, on the wall or hiding inside the dusty lampshade. Someone I love from afar will probably squish me one day, if I get too close... and if they do, I hope they feel lonely afterward.
people-watching...
an Issa haiku
tattooed on her wrist
PJ, issue 16, July 2015
-I Am Here-
I've been lost
since before I could even walk
and now it makes me sick
that I can run, jump,
and rip the moon down from the sky
if I wanted....
but still wouldn’t know
where to go with it
or how to get there.
So tonight I drank
for the first time in months
and wished
on the only star
bright enough to pierce through the smog
of Detroit –
on that one little dot that says
“You are here”
like on a map in some failing shopping mall
full of empty stores
and kiosks of fake jewelry
painted gold.
I don't know.
Maybe if I keep drinking
I'll find my way
somewhere...
to brilliance, to rehab,
or to the ground.
But I don't give two shits,
I'll just let Jack take the wheel
take it from my hands
because I can't find my way on my own.
There's just something
so unexplainably beautiful
about kissing the lips
of a cold bottle
under an empty, polluted sky
then watching the stars appear
one by one,
telling me exactly where I need
to go
and be.
paper Crown, issue 1
-My Field of Wildflowers-
You're my stillborn butterfly
afraid of your beauty
with limp wings —
pried from the safety of your cocoon
by my old hands
in a forest where everything
is charred.
Only the skeletons of trees
once lush with life and birdsong
can admire your strange elegance
as you lay listless on their roots
that thirst for a storm of passing love
and thunder.
I want to carry you away
to my field of wildflowers
and resurrect you with the unfiltered glow
of the shy moon, who only shows its face
in this meadow of lies.
I'll watch the breeze wake you on my fingertips
then let you fly away, carelessly
into a world of color
I'll never compare to.
Paper Crown, issue 1
slowly dying...
how easily this snowflake
melts in my palm
Frozen Butterfly, issue 2
only in my dreams
does her memory
come alive—
a dead lotus unwrapped
by the wind
The Bamboo Hut
watching the sunset
with a friend
who's become more...
again the fear
of settling down
The Bamboo Hut
moonlight
sparkling on new snow
my godson smiles
as I read him
ancient poetry
The Bamboo Hut
wondering
who my father is—
echoing through these woods
the voice of an owl
I'll never see
The Bamboo Hut
walking her home
as dusk settles in
our shadows
melt into this world
as we gaze at other galaxies
The Bamboo Hut
dewdrops
invisible in the lull
before morning—
the chill of darkness
between my toes
Red Lights
new love
after a breakup—
in the silence after rain
the rock garden fills
with fallen stars
A Hundred Gourds
chasing your ghost
through the backroads
of my mind
I loose you in a legacy
of settling dust
A Hundred Gourds
In a makeshift boat
I paddle through her enchanting iris
trying to reach the black island
of her soul,
but the sirens that sing
of her fear of love
pull me to the depths
of crystal green lust
Hedgerow #5
in the passing train
that steals my dream
every night
the faces of people
I'll never know
Notes From The Gean
making love
by a starlit pond
my girlfriend
puts her cigarette out
on the galaxy
Notes From The Gean
texting
my long-distance lover—
for a moment I forget
these clustered summer stars
are light years apart
A Hundred Gourds
her cigarette glows
on the other side
of our bed...
I watch stars melt
into the moon's halo
Kernels
midnight rain
ending the drought—
outside of the mine
a cart fills
with the galaxy
American Tanka
dark rocks
glistening
under a veil of water--
the echo
of ancient prayers
A Hundred Gourds
dead stars
cradled
in my cigarette smoke
all the things
I used to believe
Skylark
wondering
how I'll die...
the feint outline
of the crescent moon's
dark side
Eucalupt
sleeping together
under the frozen veil
of our universe...
shadows of ancient fire
stretch into our dreams
A Hundred Gourds
realizing
I never loved you
the firefly I captured
dark
inside the jar
A Hundred Gourds
trying to remember
what your voice sounded like...
a gentle breeze
sneaks through the wind chime
without a sound
Skylark
the shadowy fingers
of night enter my room...
missing childhood
I reach for the hand
that used to scare me
Skylark
I wonder how many
ghosts walk the streets
of this old port town—
the half moon, a ship
in a bottle of clouds
Skylark
no moon
to pray to, tonight...
I burn a hole
into my arm
with a cigarette
Prune Juice
northern lights
swim across this frozen lake
I step
from my shelter
and fish the sky
Ribbons
as if the moon
had a hundred moons...
lantern festival
Cattails
mountain sunrise
birdsong smooths the edge
of darkness
Cattails
moonlit snow
the melody
of crickets' dreams
Shamrock
end of summer
my henna tattoo
turning orange
Modern Haiku
morning moon
a stranger's scent
in my bed
Cattails
deepening autumn...
the glow of cigarette stubs
in grandpa's ashtray
Haiku Journal
in my florescent office
I wonder...
how small are the fairies
in the bonsai forest
on my desk?
Hedgerow #3
When I return to the earth
I’ll let the fairies play hide and seek
with my bones
in hopes that they’ll hollow
my phalanges into little flutes
so music can flow
from the tips of my fingers
that crafted countless poems.
Hedgerow #3
-So Bad-
How did I get so cold?
I'm not even old but I might as well be,
I'm on more pills than my grandma
just so I can fall asleep
then wake up dreamless from an afterlife
of darkness, in gray dawn rain.
I've lost my goddamn mind
somewhere in my messy skull
furnished with only a bed and a desk
where I sit naked digging through piles of clothes
looking for unwritten poems.
life's a bitch… my bitch.
I tongued her inverted nipple then chewed on it when it showed
as she moaned with pain —
or maybe it was a secret pleasure
so secret that life herself wouldn’t even tell me
but begged for it
because she's been so bad...
so bad
that my wrists are still bleeding
with what she calls love.
Otoliths
firefly ghosts
in the frosted mason jar
harvest moonlight
A Hundred Gourds
stargazing on a hammock
the sway
of my dream
A Hundred Gourds
lonely night
I slide my lips
across the harmonica
A Hundred Gourds
alcohol on her kiss
nevermore
tattooed inside her lip
Bones
morphine drip. . .
I sing my mother
a lullaby
Prune Juice
scary movie
the pulse
in her hand
Frogpond
from my apartment window
the whole city
in the tip of an icicle
Notes From The Gean
memories—
the sidewalk stained with leaves
that blew away
Notes From The Gean
forgotten battlefield
a crash of thunder
shakes the grass
Runner-up in Shamrock Reader's Choice Awards 2013
wishing well...
a galaxy of stars
on stagnate water
Shamrock
the light
of a long-dead star
my fake smile
Frogpond
waking from a dream...
the humpback's tail slips down
into the sea
A Hundred Gourds and Red Moon Anthology 2013
an ocean of clouds
draining from the midnight sky
washing up stars
like sunken treasure
Four and Twenty
raindrops slice
through the moon's soft glow
only to join the sea, and gently rock
my boat
Four and Twenty
night fishing
in a starlit creek...
the depth of the galaxy
around my ankles
Four and Twenty
moonless night
she shows me
her hidden tattoo
Blithe Spirit
lover's moon
the tide between
our toes
Blithe Spirit
last embers
falling from the incense—
end of autumn
Editor's Choice Award in Cattails
candles flicker
behind frosted glass—
grandma's eyes
A Hundred Gourds
dad's suicide
a candle burns away
its shadow
A Hundred Gourds
high noon
the vulture's circle
lowers
The Heron's Nest
winter funeral
the resurrection
of old photos
The Heron's Nest
starlit creek
a tree frog sings
to the galaxy
Lakeview Journal
fortune teller...
the lights of a distant train
shimmer on the rails
Lakeview Journal
miscarriage
the dark space between
a crescent's points
Lakeview Journal
morning creek
the moon slips
through my fingers
Lakeview Journal
unknown solider
a firefly goes dark
over his grave
Lakeview Journal
mirror creek
an old, wooden bridge
across the sky
Lakeview Journal
midnight tundra
sunlight resting
in the trees
Lakeview Journal
passing storm
the moon caught
in a spider's web
Lakeview Journal
her ashes
settle into the pond
starry night
North Carolina Haiku Society 2014 anthology
Midnight approaches
in her stilettos of stars
flirting with my dream
Haiku Journal
moonless night...
a gypsy's finger-cymbals
pinch the stars
Under the Basho
last star...
the weight of snowflakes
on my lashes
Cattails
rain in the pasture
the fawn's eye
cradled by bone
Modern Haiku
no one's footsteps
left to follow...
late winter rain
The Heron's Nest, December 2014
ancient songs...
an elder's sweat
rolls off the bone flute
The Heron's Nest, December 2014
if suffering
had a color…
it would be periwinkle
because purple sounds
far too real
Hedgerow #6
only the light
of dwindling candles…
a wooden crucifix
clenched
in cold hands
Hedgerow #6
goosebumps…
your breath, a memory
on my skin
Hedgerow #6
among
the dark prophecies
of withered
graffiti,
the cracks
in an empty sidewalk
full
of tiny
flowers
Hedgerow #14
through candle smoke
I write my poem
with the quill of a phoenix
while my fingers sink
into the gray ash of this life
for warmth
Hedgerow #14
safe inside a box
the christmas bulbs
from our shattered family
Hedgerow #13
reaching for the wind…
in another life
I was a willow
Hedgerow #13
perched on my lap
she tells me the owl
is her spirit animal
Hedgerow #13
-Universal-
I wonder if aliens write poetry,
comparing their love to the endless stars
in their dusty red sky
where our sun is just a faint flicker.
Do they write with technology beyond ours
or do they still dip their quills into a jar of ink
as dark as the universe between us?
I wonder what other worlds
have spilled their tears onto a page
stroked by the pen
of a mentally unstable genius,
who let his soul gush from out the pores
of his gray skin
and travel down his arm to the tip
of a silver pen, empty
of whatever substance would mark the paper.
Pyrokinection
chilly dusk...
the taste of dark chocolate
in her kiss
Shamrock #30
-Through The Fire-
In the suburban ghetto, I wait for starlight to pierce the tattooed dermis of black smog above us, injecting a crystal glow into the streets that vein up through the shaking arm of Nine Mile, scarred from cutting.
midnight coffee . . .
whole galaxies
between the bars on my window
I spend my nights alone, counting stars and writing shitty poems. I feel so insignificant. I feel like no one gives a fuck what I do and there's no one to tell me I'm a no-one. I'm nonexistent. I was never born, in the all-seeing eyes of the galaxy. It’s like committing suicide, erasing myself from existence, until dawn comes and drags my soul back to the real world, like a doctor beating on my chest until my heart pumps again.
crumpling up
another suicide note . . .
morning birdsong
I’m just a lonely stoner, wandering through the back-alleys of a buzzed daydream, searching for something of value inside myself. I find only an old homeless man with an unkempt beard, who claims to be me. He sits on the steps of an old crack house with tears in his hazel eyes as I walk
away, back toward life.
cradled in the darkness
of my waning mind
all the answers
I return to find the apocalypse of myself, where a new species spawns from the toxic mutation of unrecognized emotions. Others worship the monuments of twisted steel that once upheld the towers of my sanity, in a skyline that brims with glowing smoke. My fingers are possessed by their
fabricated idols, remnants of sensual art that hang in the endless galleries of my own perversion. They fly across the keyboard like the fast rhythmic pulse of a starving pianist, contemplating the madness of his inner Beethoven.
starry horizon
I jump from the edge of earth
to fly
My breath will finally cease when the dome of darkness above us breaks its rhythm, scattering starlight across the dirty floor of Detroit, like a string of pearls yanked from the neck of lady midnight.
empty street —
followed by the footsteps
of my shadow
Prune Juice, May 2014
-Longest Night-
In a tattered shanty on Superior’s frozen crust I toss my line into a dark hole, baited with moonlight on a worm’s back . . . and nothing more. As sleep lulls me to its warm cottage, this strange darkness pulls the fetus of a dream from my fingertips, then subsides, as if the sole purpose of its nibbling was to abort a vision that might have changed my life. I pull up the line to find only a chunk of the worm remains. But it’s still enough to send back down.
winter solstice
I suck a pearl of blood
from my thumb
Contemporary Haibun Online, July 2014
-4 AM-
I stare into the coffee mug, into the blackness that's no longer bitter and think of life. I haven't been asleep yet. It's amazing how fast time can pass when you're gazing at the stars; a lifetime is nothing to them. I feel immortal with their light in my eyes that have seen so much death — but what is the death I’ve seen to the supernova that will kill them? Their perishing song will shine for millions of years. I'll be gone and forgotten in just a few, and my skeleton will have gnawed out of my wrinkled skin by then. But this morning, I watch them disappear into the lightening sky, while I sip coffee so black that my younger self would've cringed. I think it's just right.
my tiring life
caught between dreams...
the fan hums
Cattails, September 2014
-Harvest Night-
The cemetery gate holds the moon between its rusty bars like a soul trapped in the cage limbo, exposing the graves that pull satin shadows over themselves to keep warm in a dreamless sleep. The path that leads through these hollows is paved with pebbles, millions of years old that sit on just the other side of this pad-locked gate. I don't think it's been opened in years.
last birdsong of dusk
...this pulse
shaking my skeleton
Cattails, September 2014
-Freak Show-
My mind is a circus train, that runs on a rusted track over gorges where dragons swim. The colorful carriages are filled with thoughts dressed as clowns whose makeup is streaked by sweat, after all having a turn with the bearded lady. They’re not sure what town they’ll stop in next, but it’s been a while since the last show. My hand is on the throttle, but the rails decide where I’ll end up.
driving to therapy
for the first time in years…
I take the long way
A Hundred Gourds, September 2014
-Alaska-
In the fall we slept in old boxcars to keep warm and shelter ourselves from the snow, as we were pulled far out into the tundra by dreams that whistled at caribou in the distant reach of their warm light. The lumber mill was about an hour north of Anchorage. It was so dark out there you could see the glow from the city in the southern sky like a faint and motionless aurora, with unseen life dancing through the night below. But once the boxcar door closed, it was just darkness. No stars, no moon, no Anchorage in the distance. Just the thought of another man in our bed and the somewhat warm floorboards beneath my sleeping bag.
marijuana smoke
wafting through the darkness —
I warm my hands
with a friend's lighter
and think of you
Prune Juice, July 2014
-Mental Supernova-
She kept their bones in a glass jar, propped up against her books. These books were filled with spells of resurrection, written in Old English. She quit school when she was ten to take care of my grandmother so she couldn't read most of the words. I guess she hoped that the bones would absorb the residual energy of the voice from whoever owned the books before her. When she got sick she told me to place her urn on the other end of the mantel against those books. This went completely against her wish of being scattered over the valley, a request she made when she was sane some several months prior. Her house was in foreclosure, though. I would've left her on the mantle if I could have, but I buried her urn in the backyard, in a shallow unmarked grave with the jar of cats she loved more than her children. When the house was resold I donated the books to a used bookstore, owned by a woman just starting to wrinkle — fascinated by the books I brought in. I should've buried them with mom.
stars pulse
on the first night
without crickets . . .
my daughter asks
if grandma's a ghost
Prune juice, July 2014
-Only Witness-
Wind wrinkles the new snow like time, as a weathervane shifts slowly east towards dawn. This farm has been empty for generations, but icicles have hung from the barn all winter. Soon they’ll start to drip.
last star
the weight of snowflakes
on my lashes
YARN
-Harvest Night-
The cemetery gate holds the moon between its rusty bars like a soul trapped in the cage limbo, exposing the graves that pull satin shadows over themselves to keep warm in a dreamless sleep. The path that leads through these hollows is paved with pebbles, millions of years old that sit on just the other side of this pad-locked gate. I don't think it's been opened in years.
last birdsong of dusk
...this pulse
shaking my skeleton
Cattails September 2014
first chill...
a lily awakens to
the sound of shadows
The sound of Shadows Chapbook
I dig a moat
for a forgotten sandcastle...
morning drizzle
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
morning moon —
a stranger's scent
in my bed
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
cemetery sunrise...
the old padlocked gate
shudders in wind
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
breathless
in the chill of dawn...
a winter birdsong
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
no turning back...
morning blushes
in our whispers
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
asleep on the curb...
a gentle rain
tapping his bongos
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
shoreside grave:
continents of fog
adrift on the lake
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
twilight drizzle...
raindrops cling to the clothesline
in a breeze of shadows
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
darkening sunset...
I watch a mosquito
fill with my blood
The Sound of Shadows
talk of past lives...
the slow pulse
of a firefly in my palm
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
darkening twilight —
will this mayfly
outlive me?
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
desert motel
darkness nestles
into an empty cow skull
The Sound of Shadows chapbook
graveyard raven...
my shadow shackled
around my ankles
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
desert junkyard...
in an old chevy's mirror
a million stars
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
skylight moon...
how thin the veil
of my wildest dreams
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
invisible
to my lover, in the dark...
midnight thunder
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
fade of midnight rain
reawakening the song
of crickets
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
a dark lighthouse
hangs over a moonlit sea...
unspoken love
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
tethered to the call
of the midnight owl;
I dangle over a dream
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
christmas eve
the beggar's palm fills
with snowflakes
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
-The First Time I Saw You in a Dress-
I touch your face in the casket
and feel the bone just below.
Soon you’ll be a skeleton in a blue dress
and the smile I loved since birth
will peek at me between the aisles
of Walmart around Halloween.
It will be your new face, come October
I’m not sure how long it takes
but once I close the lid
you’ll never be the same.
I shouldn’t have come
because this is how I’ll picture you now
and it doesn’t even look like you.
I’m asking you to haunt me, like you promised.
You said when you die I’ll feel you in the breeze
but it’s March
and the wind is cold.
Poem of the Day, Dark Poetry.com, June 5th 2014
-Our Kingdom in a Casket-
Where have you gone my love, and why are you breathing? You said you felt dead in my arms but I know you've been reincarnated in his. I want you to be under the ground with me, cuddling in a lightless box wondering how the world outside is changing. I wanted to spiral into an unsavable depression with you. I wanted to build our own world, our own little afterlife six feet under the dirt of that depression... It wouldn’t have be much, but it would've been our kingdom inside a casket where we would lay cuddling in tears, picking which worms to let inside our bodies and which ones to condemn. We would've been gods, sitting together on a throne no one else could see.
I wanted to be recluses together, never surfacing as our skin peels away with holes from dirty needles. We would've been skeletons living off the invisible government, the new American dream! Was my apartment not a cozy enough coffin for you to spend eternity? Or was it the smell of those rotting cats in the garbage bag I kept in the closet to accompany us into the next life? I promise you, If you step one foot on my grave I'll reach up from the dirt and drag you down with me, into a plot so deep that no medication could ever pull you back towards the sun. I wanted you to be my crying queen, I wanted you to grow pale as me in my lightless world hazed by sage and cannabis incense. You would've been everything to me, not because I loved you but because depression is no fun when you're in it alone — and you're the only one I thought I could drag with me. I'm rotting away, and soon gravediggers will find me in this stuffy apartment, lifeless with the needle still in my arm as you walk down the aisle to wedding bells under a setting sun.
Poem of the Day, Dark Poetry.com, November 10th 2014
frozen wind...
the first scoop of dirt
on your casket
Frozen Butterfly, issue 2
the toddler
blows a kiss to the corpse...
christmas rain
Prune Juice, March 2015
new-year's carryout
I find my resolution
in a fortune cookie
Prune Juice, March 2015
no regrets --
fresh graffiti
on the dilapidated boxcar
Haiku Scout, report #3
-Through The Fire-
In the suburban ghetto, I wait for starlight to pierce the tattooed dermis of black smog above us, injecting a crystal glow into the streets that vein up through the shaking arm of Nine Mile, scarred from cutting.
midnight coffee . . .
whole galaxies
between the bars on my window
I spend my nights alone, counting stars and writing shitty poems. I feel so insignificant. I feel like no one gives a fuck what I do and there's no one to tell me I'm a no-one. I'm nonexistent. I was never born, in the all-seeing eyes of the galaxy. It’s like committing suicide, erasing myself from existence, until dawn comes and drags my soul back to the real world, like a doctor beating on my chest until my heart pumps again.
crumpling up
another suicide note . . .
morning birdsong
I’m just a lonely stoner, wandering through the back-alleys of a buzzed daydream, searching for something of value inside myself. I find only an old homeless man with an unkempt beard, who claims to be me. He sits on the steps of an old crack house with tears in his hazel eyes as I walk
away, back toward life.
cradled in the darkness
of my waning mind
all the answers
I return to find the apocalypse of myself, where a new species spawns from the toxic mutation of unrecognized emotions. Others worship the monuments of twisted steel that once upheld the towers of my sanity, in a skyline that brims with glowing smoke. My fingers are possessed by their
fabricated idols, remnants of sensual art that hang in the endless galleries of my own perversion. They fly across the keyboard like the fast rhythmic pulse of a starving pianist, contemplating the madness of his inner Beethoven.
starry horizon
I jump from the edge of earth
to fly
My breath will finally cease when the dome of darkness above us breaks its rhythm, scattering starlight across the dirty floor of Detroit, like a string of pearls yanked from the neck of lady midnight.
empty street —
followed by the footsteps
of my shadow
Prune Juice, May 2014
-Longest Night-
In a tattered shanty on Superior’s frozen crust I toss my line into a dark hole, baited with moonlight on a worm’s back . . . and nothing more. As sleep lulls me to its warm cottage, this strange darkness pulls the fetus of a dream from my fingertips, then subsides, as if the sole purpose of its nibbling was to abort a vision that might have changed my life. I pull up the line to find only a chunk of the worm remains. But it’s still enough to send back down.
winter solstice
I suck a pearl of blood
from my thumb
Contemporary Haibun Online, July 2014
-4 AM-
I stare into the coffee mug, into the blackness that's no longer bitter and think of life. I haven't been asleep yet. It's amazing how fast time can pass when you're gazing at the stars; a lifetime is nothing to them. I feel immortal with their light in my eyes that have seen so much death — but what is the death I’ve seen to the supernova that will kill them? Their perishing song will shine for millions of years. I'll be gone and forgotten in just a few, and my skeleton will have gnawed out of my wrinkled skin by then. But this morning, I watch them disappear into the lightening sky, while I sip coffee so black that my younger self would've cringed. I think it's just right.
my tiring life
caught between dreams...
the fan hums
Cattails, September 2014
-Harvest Night-
The cemetery gate holds the moon between its rusty bars like a soul trapped in the cage limbo, exposing the graves that pull satin shadows over themselves to keep warm in a dreamless sleep. The path that leads through these hollows is paved with pebbles, millions of years old that sit on just the other side of this pad-locked gate. I don't think it's been opened in years.
last birdsong of dusk
...this pulse
shaking my skeleton
Cattails, September 2014
-Freak Show-
My mind is a circus train, that runs on a rusted track over gorges where dragons swim. The colorful carriages are filled with thoughts dressed as clowns whose makeup is streaked by sweat, after all having a turn with the bearded lady. They’re not sure what town they’ll stop in next, but it’s been a while since the last show. My hand is on the throttle, but the rails decide where I’ll end up.
driving to therapy
for the first time in years…
I take the long way
A Hundred Gourds, September 2014
-Alaska-
In the fall we slept in old boxcars to keep warm and shelter ourselves from the snow, as we were pulled far out into the tundra by dreams that whistled at caribou in the distant reach of their warm light. The lumber mill was about an hour north of Anchorage. It was so dark out there you could see the glow from the city in the southern sky like a faint and motionless aurora, with unseen life dancing through the night below. But once the boxcar door closed, it was just darkness. No stars, no moon, no Anchorage in the distance. Just the thought of another man in our bed and the somewhat warm floorboards beneath my sleeping bag.
marijuana smoke
wafting through the darkness —
I warm my hands
with a friend's lighter
and think of you
Prune Juice, July 2014
-Mental Supernova-
She kept their bones in a glass jar, propped up against her books. These books were filled with spells of resurrection, written in Old English. She quit school when she was ten to take care of my grandmother so she couldn't read most of the words. I guess she hoped that the bones would absorb the residual energy of the voice from whoever owned the books before her. When she got sick she told me to place her urn on the other end of the mantel against those books. This went completely against her wish of being scattered over the valley, a request she made when she was sane some several months prior. Her house was in foreclosure, though. I would've left her on the mantle if I could have, but I buried her urn in the backyard, in a shallow unmarked grave with the jar of cats she loved more than her children. When the house was resold I donated the books to a used bookstore, owned by a woman just starting to wrinkle — fascinated by the books I brought in. I should've buried them with mom.
stars pulse
on the first night
without crickets . . .
my daughter asks
if grandma's a ghost
Prune juice, July 2014
-Only Witness-
Wind wrinkles the new snow like time, as a weathervane shifts slowly east towards dawn. This farm has been empty for generations, but icicles have hung from the barn all winter. Soon they’ll start to drip.
last star
the weight of snowflakes
on my lashes
YARN
-Harvest Night-
The cemetery gate holds the moon between its rusty bars like a soul trapped in the cage limbo, exposing the graves that pull satin shadows over themselves to keep warm in a dreamless sleep. The path that leads through these hollows is paved with pebbles, millions of years old that sit on just the other side of this pad-locked gate. I don't think it's been opened in years.
last birdsong of dusk
...this pulse
shaking my skeleton
Cattails September 2014
first chill...
a lily awakens to
the sound of shadows
The sound of Shadows Chapbook
I dig a moat
for a forgotten sandcastle...
morning drizzle
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
morning moon —
a stranger's scent
in my bed
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
cemetery sunrise...
the old padlocked gate
shudders in wind
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
breathless
in the chill of dawn...
a winter birdsong
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
no turning back...
morning blushes
in our whispers
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
asleep on the curb...
a gentle rain
tapping his bongos
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
shoreside grave:
continents of fog
adrift on the lake
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
twilight drizzle...
raindrops cling to the clothesline
in a breeze of shadows
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
darkening sunset...
I watch a mosquito
fill with my blood
The Sound of Shadows
talk of past lives...
the slow pulse
of a firefly in my palm
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
darkening twilight —
will this mayfly
outlive me?
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
desert motel
darkness nestles
into an empty cow skull
The Sound of Shadows chapbook
graveyard raven...
my shadow shackled
around my ankles
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
desert junkyard...
in an old chevy's mirror
a million stars
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
skylight moon...
how thin the veil
of my wildest dreams
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
invisible
to my lover, in the dark...
midnight thunder
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
fade of midnight rain
reawakening the song
of crickets
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
a dark lighthouse
hangs over a moonlit sea...
unspoken love
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
tethered to the call
of the midnight owl;
I dangle over a dream
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
christmas eve
the beggar's palm fills
with snowflakes
The Sound of Shadows Chapbook
-The First Time I Saw You in a Dress-
I touch your face in the casket
and feel the bone just below.
Soon you’ll be a skeleton in a blue dress
and the smile I loved since birth
will peek at me between the aisles
of Walmart around Halloween.
It will be your new face, come October
I’m not sure how long it takes
but once I close the lid
you’ll never be the same.
I shouldn’t have come
because this is how I’ll picture you now
and it doesn’t even look like you.
I’m asking you to haunt me, like you promised.
You said when you die I’ll feel you in the breeze
but it’s March
and the wind is cold.
Poem of the Day, Dark Poetry.com, June 5th 2014
-Our Kingdom in a Casket-
Where have you gone my love, and why are you breathing? You said you felt dead in my arms but I know you've been reincarnated in his. I want you to be under the ground with me, cuddling in a lightless box wondering how the world outside is changing. I wanted to spiral into an unsavable depression with you. I wanted to build our own world, our own little afterlife six feet under the dirt of that depression... It wouldn’t have be much, but it would've been our kingdom inside a casket where we would lay cuddling in tears, picking which worms to let inside our bodies and which ones to condemn. We would've been gods, sitting together on a throne no one else could see.
I wanted to be recluses together, never surfacing as our skin peels away with holes from dirty needles. We would've been skeletons living off the invisible government, the new American dream! Was my apartment not a cozy enough coffin for you to spend eternity? Or was it the smell of those rotting cats in the garbage bag I kept in the closet to accompany us into the next life? I promise you, If you step one foot on my grave I'll reach up from the dirt and drag you down with me, into a plot so deep that no medication could ever pull you back towards the sun. I wanted you to be my crying queen, I wanted you to grow pale as me in my lightless world hazed by sage and cannabis incense. You would've been everything to me, not because I loved you but because depression is no fun when you're in it alone — and you're the only one I thought I could drag with me. I'm rotting away, and soon gravediggers will find me in this stuffy apartment, lifeless with the needle still in my arm as you walk down the aisle to wedding bells under a setting sun.
Poem of the Day, Dark Poetry.com, November 10th 2014
frozen wind...
the first scoop of dirt
on your casket
Frozen Butterfly, issue 2
the toddler
blows a kiss to the corpse...
christmas rain
Prune Juice, March 2015
new-year's carryout
I find my resolution
in a fortune cookie
Prune Juice, March 2015
no regrets --
fresh graffiti
on the dilapidated boxcar
Haiku Scout, report #3
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