Excerpt from a Tape Left Running
I always get slapped across the face by
these strange delays in feeling.
It comes on slowly but suddenly
All around me, all surrounding
My cortex
My will
My emotion
It takes over my senses completely and I'm reckless
In the presence of it
In the presence of this feeling
This softness I have for you
This softness you have for me
i feel compelled by it
Though...
Sunday 23rd June 2024 4:03 am
Scrambled and Sunkissed
I feel you close but far away -
In a way I don't understand yet,
In a way I don't trust.
In a way, without demand
I find my thoughts drift to you.
If just motioned by a breeze,
I feel you moving through me.
I find it's never free,
But forever attached to me.
I find time is open
But steps in metered syncopation.
I find myself frozen inside of it
I look for the a...
Monday 15th April 2024 11:32 pm
Caretaker
I talked her down until she was numb
She no longer wished harm on anyone.
Did I sedate her with my conversation?
I watched her eyes
Transform from callous to kind,
Looking at me skeptically.
I saw her brain splitting in half
Spilling herself all over the floor.
I implored her to let it be.
For now, wait and this will pass.
A frozen orange pressed to her face, she puts...
Tuesday 9th April 2024 12:31 pm
Sailboat Tales
The Fear has eyes,
It sprouts ears too.
It sawed straight through -
Now it has a mouth too.
It looks at me
Stares straight through.
It came for me,
Hope it never comes for you.
The Fear has a brain,
It has a matter-of-factness.
A radical exactness that is purifying.
The Fear is a vixon,
A seductress with wandering eyes.
The Fear toes the boundary line.
The...
Tuesday 9th April 2024 1:49 am
A Solemn Mardi Gras
I know you won't get out of this one
Though I can feel you trying.
I know you're ready for this to be done,
Made your peace with death and dying.
I wish there were a prayer I could say
To relieve you from this treachery.
A vile of mercy that would make this swift
And let you go with brevity.
I wish there were a candle I could light for you,
To shepard you through the dar...
Monday 8th April 2024 12:59 am
Common Place
In the undercurrent of a moment
She moves through,
Toward and away from me
Out to sea.
From where she came to be
Oh so much closer, now I see
So much closer to me.
Monday 4th March 2024 3:29 am
Zeitgeber
I can relate to a fractured sense of self
The pedestal you put yourself on to jump off of.
The intensity of vision
That either collapses or dissipates the more you try to look through it.
The oscillation between two opposing sentiments,
One good and one bad.
Slowly finding yourself harder to be around.
The desire to distill intermittent waves of humor,
The will to maintain ...
Tuesday 6th February 2024 5:07 pm
Limitless and Senseless
Running down the list of eventuals
The trivial and the medical
I'm in the clear of everything external - all I control is whatever's left
On a cylinder en route to the sun
Ambivalent miles towards the outcome.
Hard wired circuitry disconnected
Stranded, rearranged, out of range of the source.
Inside the circulation of a volcano
Slowly humiliating the earth.
All in graph...
Monday 29th January 2024 12:03 am
Over Me, Within Me
I pray your mind was returned to you
Upon your dismissal from this incarnation
I wanted to find you floating somewhere above me
I wanted to pull you back down here to love me
I hope it’s you, with your vast mind transformed into a citrus rind sunset
The way it always was, the way it was intended to be
Rising and setting above me
Saturday 14th October 2023 10:35 pm
Happiness, Ever Elusive
I’ll lay here still
And wait for a happy song to dawn on me
I’ll lay here with full intent and will
That it will call upon me.
A song for hope,
And a poem for good measure
Will it hold my reservation if I’m an hour late-
To the dinner I was meant to host?
Will it hold traffic for me as I cross the road?
Perhaps in the distance, I’ll know it someday soon.
Perhaps I’ll ...
Monday 31st July 2023 3:18 am
Willing Servant
The shadows of all the wounded sparrows
They enlighten me.
I will receive them,
And I will clean them,
And I will take their pain away.
I will not sorrow, for if tomorrow
Never comes again for them
I will clip their feathers,
And string them out on a line
One after the other, absentmindedly
Making tight knots out of loose ties to mortality.
I will see sorrow
I ...
Tuesday 25th July 2023 3:15 am
A Hopeful Haiku
Trembling hands, relent
Let your worried mind rebel.
You are better now.
Friday 7th July 2023 3:19 am
Unknown Caller
I'm talking to someone on the other end of the line
Convincing them to be a person
Instead of a spinning top on the brim of a mind.
It all hits at once: a sudden eruption
It all falls apart and then slowly back together.
Laying there defeated, exposed by the daylight
It strikes like the sudden slap of sobriety after a liquor-laden night
One that catches you somewhere between e...
Tuesday 4th July 2023 3:14 pm
City-Dwelling, Unwillingly
The plight of the hopeless man
Pleading for patronage at the highway on-ramp
Staggering to his feet, waving a wand in his hand
Forcing it through the ground.
To convince them, to convince himself
Of his state of desperation.
Stomping his feet
To an echoless beat;
An earnest declaration muffled by concrete.
No one turns a head,
No one's eyes to meet.
Mere passerbys
...Monday 22nd May 2023 2:32 am
Winchester's Mystery
This is a testament to my will
I'm jumping ship and swimming home
All the way to Winchester, where the doors lead to plaster
To neither here nor there
Nor any hereafter
There's commotion on the other side
Interference on the other line
I can't tell where I am
Where I'm situated
Whether I was written into the grand plan
Or an afterthought somewhat estranged
From th...
Sunday 26th March 2023 12:16 am
Impatience, Prudence
The hesitation
That gets to me
Things are rolling slowly
It gets the better of me
I sit with the discomfort of not knowing
Let it wash over me
In black and white,
And other colors invisible in the light.
I want a gradual humiliation to take me out -
Take me out to sea.
Friday 24th March 2023 2:23 am
The Defender
We will never know freedom
Underneath water, we can't breathe in.
All the fishes gawking, laughing at us
Bound by this mortal engine and all its faulty wiring.
Worry surmounts worry -
And worry comes abundently.
We walked through the valley together,
Illuminated by the light of the moon.
But the ones who brought us hence
They faded into darkness, and gave up the fight t...
Friday 24th March 2023 2:08 am
In the Midst of Dying
This here, the idle death march;
One arm holding onto us,
The other dangling off the side of the earth.
In this waiting room where we watch over you.
Observing the strange state of consciousness you're residing in
Your soul loosening grip between each breath,
And every rattle that brings you closer to death.
I try to talk to you but the words aren't coming through,
On this ...
Monday 20th March 2023 3:13 am
The Silent Toll
I see the ceiling patched up
I see those patches peeling and giving up.
I see the toll of time -
All it does to the body
All it requires of the mind.
We are specters of our decline in slow motion;
Merciless
Unaffected by our pleas for reversal.
I see the toll of depression,
How it degenerates the mind.
An atrophy of desire.
An acute awareness of time and its natur...
Sunday 19th March 2023 11:59 pm
Recent Comments
TobaniNataiella on She Says Goodbye
58 minutes ago
R A Porter on Sashaying to Byzantium
3 hours ago
Ray Miller on Dominoes
7 hours ago
Red Brick Keshner on Beneath the Armour: Reaching for True Strength
7 hours ago
Reggie's Ghost on Dominoes
7 hours ago
Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh on Early winter's day
8 hours ago
John Coopey on IT AIN'T ME, BABE
8 hours ago
John Marks on Early winter's day
8 hours ago
TobaniNataiella on She Says Goodbye
8 hours ago
Rick Varden on Sweet Memories
8 hours ago