It’s a rarity that I’m struck with the urge to write poetry. So when it does hit me, it hits hard. I’m not saying these are incredible, but they’ve stuck with me as representative of some powerful emotions over the past thirty years.
Enjoy!
Panic Fire With A Flamethrower
An unutterable word
Sledgehammer to the skull
Falling free in the confines of the mind
Pulverizing steps
Exit wounds and naked singularities
A hole blown through the confines of the mind
Endings before beginnings
Definition of destruction
Final silence punctuated by clicking walls
Fleeting glimpses of shadowed faces
The burning begins
Wild spin chaos storm
Vapor of lightning laden with sulfur
Motion gets triggered
Pulse pound pure power
Segmented vision captures the tang of hot blood
Reload.
Untitled #1
It is not seemly for you
To torment me
Manipulate and deceive
My mischance
To think you
As fair in measure
As in skin
I would love, nay worship you
With delicate lust
Easy whispers
And languid petals
Alas lady your bitter beauty
Hath much madness
Silly Poem #17
O ye of unsteady foot!
Get off the bloody road
You drive like shit,
I’m sick of it
Thy cock of doom hath crowed.
O ye of unsteady foot!
You heard of cruise control?
I try to pass,
You hit the gas
I’m left here in the hole.
O ye of unsteady foot!
Get off the road, old hag
You cannot see,
You’re dissing me
Why do you own a Jag?
O ye of unsteady foot!
You swerve across the lanes
Where are the cops?
In the donut shops
How horrible your aim.
O ye of unsteady foot!
I hate you, every one
Use the accelerator,
Flood that carburetor
Or get that car back home!
In My Arms
I’m lost in some sort of foggy haze
I’m strapped in a chair on a plane ride from hell.
I can’t see.
I know where I am, and I should be able to see.
The temperature: moderate. The scent in the air is fresh and
clean. I can’t see, but I can remember.
The vaults of my mind open their locks and spill forth
Fool’s Gold.
I remember everything around you. The scent coming in
through the open window of your house.
I smell that scent from the dried soap on my cold and shaking fingers.
I feel the texture of your black leather jacket
Which is only the covering of the seat in front of me,
I think
I’ve got a glimpse of your ice-blue eyes. Or maybe the
flash of fire in your hair.
Or maybe a glint of light from the stupid movie screen in
front of me where my eyes should be.
Now I see
Your surroundings focus like the cabin of the plane.
There’s your stereo in the middle of the stupid movie
screen. And your bookcase seems to have grown portholes.
But I feel you in my arms.
I smell the scent of your hair in the nippy spring breeze coming in through the open white window to your right with the fan in it and the cat next to it and you in my arms –
–Empty air in my arms as I stare, white-knuckled
at the bulkhead of the plane whipping to where you are, but where you cannot,
will not,
see me hold me kiss me love me.
Pictures Of The Other People
I want
To see someone’s smiling face
I love
The pictures of the other people
No, I don’t know them
No, I don’t care
No, they aren’t related
Yes, I’m really all there.
In a cherrywood frame, behind cheap glass
Sits a picture on a flimsy piece of paper.
He’s smiling, she’s laughing
The kid’s holding a red balloon.
No, I don’t know them
No, I don’t care
No, they aren’t related
Yes, I’m really all there.
You get them all the time
You get them for free
Do you know what you have, my friend?
Treasure.
Don’t break the glass
Don’t shatter my frame
Don’t splinter the wood
Don’t burn the faces
No, I don’t know them
No, I don’t care
No, they aren’t related
Yes, I’m really all there.
They’re mine.
My friends.
Loyal
Sweet
Innocent
Silent
I need to have them, and I don’t care what you say.
Untitled #2
drunkard
go hither and yon
seeking idle grace
produce only foul discontent
warrant delirious symphony
my melancholy friend
Perfect Timing
Six ways to a Saturday
Five ways from the edge
Flickering candles and the sound of falling snow
Sting in the ears
Easy on the eyes
Assault around the mouth
Assailing the senses complete
Whole of an empty vessel in full
Anything and everything
Thank you,
My friend
Snowswept She Stands
Winter’s night, two o’clock
Snow blows sideways ‘cross the streets
White covers road and tree and rock
Most people huddle beneath their sheets
Staring out my window and listening
to the silent sound of snowflakes as
they drift to the ground: falling, freezing
From out the corner of my view does she come
Moves slowly, drifts like
the flakes which catch in her flaming hair
Clad in black; stark white spike
of light reflects on her there
Like a hole in the fabric of the
whiteness
A hole with gleaming
Red hair
Away from a streetlamp, but reflected upon, she stops
Seeming
to sense the viewer from above, silence loud
in her ears, she stops.
Standing
snowswept
is she
Her hair hangs like red mist in a delicate white shroud
Cold-blown face, I greet thee
Know thee well, do I
You walk upon
the streets of my soul; snowswept
forever.
She fades from view, the hole in the white
Gone
Though on snowy night
she hugs the shadow, redden hair spersed with flakes,
her snowswept rounds she makes
The Painted Corner 