What does it hurt
to give way to imaginings,
at least for a time?
To close all the doors and windows,
pull the drapes,
and make some hot tea.
To conjure some moors
and wuthering weather,
hear a rap tap tapping
at your chamber door,
and the neighing and stamping
of white horses.
Category Archives: poetry
Doctor Doctor
cigarette burns
under the sheets
the temporary bee stings
of random needlings
pinpoint pricks purposely played
bait for a loon’s scratchings
mad reveries in broad day
draw attention to comic despair
Oh Doctor Doctor
Can’t you see me burning burning
Can’t you see me burn?
The road is long
In fable days
I took a dare
to try the mortal maze
They shut the door
when I went in
to walk its narrow ways
I felt a fool
and out of school
unlearned in errantry
and suffered doubt
and went without
a thought of parentry
The road is long
I sing a song
in vain, apparently
Devil’s Waltz
Looks like we’ll dance once more,
brother-in-arms.
My accoutrements are lacking now,
and I must bear this bareness.
Tear off a strip
if you will,
or make the unkindest cut.
But know
that I’ve developed a taste
for immolation.
We come from the sun
We come from the Sun,
they say to me,
from the wrong side of my ear.
But why?
Why for?
I mumble in cotton.
For answer,
they show their hands,
oven-mittened.
See. See our thumbs.
They are wide.
Splayed and strong.
We will gentle you,
raise you from the gorge.
Life is but a dream.
***
Art by Michael Richardson
We interrupt our broadcast
We are sorry, Earth,
for the interruption.
I’m sure we’ll be back at it soon.
You won’t even miss us.
Meanwhile, have a rest.
You deserve it.
Teach the roots and shoots and buds
a new season.
Give them lemony dreams
of a humming summer.
Simpleness we will need.
How to love you.
The weaker sex
We come to you.
Some, in lifelong love.
Others, in fickle infatuation.
More, in savage force-
As bestial as the barnyard
or the jungle.
Assuaged until the next rut.
Unable to accept
a blame deserved,
an ego bruised,
instead becoming
the destroyer of worlds.
Who, then, is weaker?
A second chance
Somewhere
in great Andromeda’s arm,
little Donelda comes to herself
at the sound of trickling water.
In the stream’s iridescence,
something bobs-
circle-twirls in the undertow of an eddy.
On this day, the water is warm,
and her thin fingers feel no change
as she scoops up the doll.
Raggedy Ann has made it through.
Together, they’ll be just fine.
I’m a frayed knot
Muffled.
The world cannot get in.
I can’t get out.
A purchased illness to assuage another.
Recycled thoughts,
boring in their dirtiness.
I devise a fool’s plan
to use this tedium.
A grand flourish.
Since I have no sword,
I’ll untie the Gordian Knot.
Just listen
Childlike,
I imagine that sound never decays.
That I could put the needle on the record,
and listen to whistles
that can’t come anymore.
That we could hear childlike things
we once said to each other,
but have forgotten to write down.
Cry for this deafness and dumbness,
at last.
Aremyfeetofftheground 