Why’d I dream of Skinnygirl?
She was hardened,
with wise eyes and a smile for sale.
In our yappy group,
standing in the drizzle,
we fussed and discussed,
looking to trust.
But she stood out,
most quiet and calm.
Our magic Ellie.
Her pounds were 98.6
Our linchpin,
our Skinnygirl.
Category Archives: free verse
Follow the moon
What sieve
can distill a dream?
A thing of moment
intimated,
but confounded
by dictionary devils.
Enticing in its grey distance,
alluring in its apple wholeness,
it follows like a moon.
One wakes
to the knives of morning,
mourning the loss of the thing.
Struck dumb,
as it were, in regret.
The root of a problem
It’s a bitter little thing.
As I bid it adieu
and sent it on its way,
it spun a smoky path,
bloodying the bystanders.
Finding no hosts,
and diminished in the seeking,
on it travelled,
parasitic in its contagion.
Shortcuts
Make cuts carefully,
in concealable places,
so as not to be known
as an attention whore.
Bundled in fives,
as at Shawshank.
You and I know that it’s better
than a serious spanking.
That it’s our punishment,
our atonement,
for speaking with the Devil.
Hurry hard
Each of us wanted safety.
Father, from trouble’s horde.
Mother, from father.
We chickens, from the storm.
All of us were running,
and love was hard pressed to keep up.
Adolescence held confusion, guilt,
and strange desire.
I looked for yellow bricks,
on the cusp of a fireworks life.
The names we pin
Be not offended
If I don’t remember what you told me.
Or if I tell you something for the second or third time.
I need a good defragging,
And, now that we are all homebodies,
It’s excusable to forget what day it is.
The names we pin,
The borders we mark
On borrowed continents.
A cure for the chills
Me, I like a slate-tinted sky.
Shales of ice,
opaque underfoot.
The remains of thistles and rushes.
Holistic winds that purify
all but notions.
Think: How our bones and tears
have fed the oceans.
But now, I am for home.
Pour myself a cup of tea,
and think about the bubbles.
a working man
Old Man.
He come every day
at twilight time.
I hears the bony drum,
cicada’s hum.
He wear raggedy clothes,
canvas cap,
yellowy beard.
And his work he does.
Cranks that gear handle
round and round.
Powers up the tiny lights.
Pinpoints
in the pinwheel spiralled
sky of night.
Ancestral memory
In want of stories,
and of someone to read them to me,
I spoil the fun, envisioning
hillsides of mossy flow, far off in a fog.
An anxious kerchiefed woman
watching her man hammering a glowing sword.
Then, his returning, cut muscles bound with cord,
staunched with a maid’s cloth.
In here
So many, here,
write words of love.
Words of yearn,
longing and lonely.
Are they for one
who is here,
or has left
and cannot come home?
For one who wants a conjuring
to bring warmth to a sad siren.
In dream, I conjure you,
the writer,
with hands
soft, warm, and strong.
Alone.
Aremyfeetofftheground 