Poetricals
September 24th, 2025 "Strangetime"
White citrus groves creep through densities of its like, thickly settled droves
aggrandized. I never want to stop honoring the pale light, never stop abiding its silence.
A bicycle is its near greatest reliquary, armchair a modest second. The pale light passes by each time
never the lesser, and it is called Strangetime. Ever the thoughtful, nestled in its triumverate.
Pulped, pressed, clean is the unmarked plane of this rare sourcelight elusion, this morning stasis. The primitive
ancestry of Gibson’s dead channel; question marked clouds are the unseen theme of it all.
When dusk jukes us into this revenant time, when night breaks outward to the empty flash of a moment.
Any work done during this time feels mostly like the open parenthetical, holding agape the electric vacuum of
futility. No, Strangetime asks only for strange acts and odd waitings. Passerby you have never before seen
and never will again. Conversations on a cracked sidewalk that pass no noise, never to break such an agreement.
The world lilts at its onset, ruining clocks and pallor and the prismatic circadian dirge.
August 22nd, 2025 "Braid"
these cockcamber scenes found asking to
heave that great unwieldy hammer -
this blunt instrument - on tendons
nicked and delicate clockwork, a fragile pin
misaligned. nor the right tool for the job,
neither right name for tool.
would that i make good on my complexes kept,
to trundle these gears into the peoples great
subsexual compartment (the social encounter)
undo restraint besides! programmed as much,
eschatologue golem making ends meat.
would someone to hold that pain in for me,
to make nice the gauche demon Insistence
and to pick up my binder from school.
a year is past since my mother died and now
that the year is past a spirits oversight
unwinds itself, hair an indrawing spool.
air currents turn tail, glacials excrete the plain.
(i can’t account for the times my times
reverberate, then dampen, reset and
called back. it is found resonant and with
some frequency: anachronic chill, rectal
administration, yellow pus. a faint tug at the
edges of the mouth and of all things.)
i haven’t been pretty since april but i have been
still. yearning but frozen solid.
i’ve been the bound rope to your crosstrek
outland mush, your sled a pontoon of
memory. ever taut and creaking. never taught
landseeking retrocraft weathergrade fails and
curtsies into a tailspin. man made foils a
distant rock on a sleek slick pane.
speaking a silent slant languish, trampled
underpaw there the slight ozymandias,
the scent of their bulbous heads
gnawed roots to reach and wane.
i ask my therapist whether my methods of
coping are healthy. a graveled bludgeon rests
beside the cockpit and my hairdresser
prescribes me tetrominoes for PTSD. beneath
the diffuser a wide shallow triangle bobs,
lacking definition or parallel or limit.
July 11th, 2025 "FOMO"
i imagine the packs that must meet somewhere
behind a windowless building
shouldering light between circuit breakers,
two tone electrical sky
jam band across the river rouses
for the second half of the night
the pack prattles and capers
punch bowl treatise on moist lips
bright leaves of the Old Town
on currents under umber ships
where merriment is free, not we,
the joy we plant costs the rest of our lives
slick teemings under arm first and last to reach the
dock, old song stains before the first chime bestial
chorale with which we wrap and interlock and dive
July 2nd, 2025
i’m steaming my nostrils over plain boiled water and
matching pitch with the air conditioner
im starting to remember that forgetting can be
temporary.
it hurts seeing what the big kids see.
to be small and powerless
filled with wants
and bound by rules they can’t understand
left paw, eye dominant
like a catapult being launched
the capacity to boil shoes
not an easy chew.
i hope you’re asleep, mine.
you say violence is dirty and disgusting
but you know you.
you know you.
June 23rd, 2025 "Paul Atreides Doujin"
Crass traps by haft, the neon striped mall rat,
seek hide seeks hide. LiveLeak bait in the walls
really living. Carton findings re-lost
like dead content behind the building.
You unwrap the package. I take mine slowly,
yours all at once. Linocut footnotes spell gods in
crudest yiff. What I don’t smell is work last undone:
chaff-prefaced testament of vampire prince,
ice buried, unbetrayed.
From weather whence, bundle baned, up, up.
Dreadlords nest at these peaks. Threads and bale
and fiber webs. Sit crossed with me, little doll,
leg-tangled dross and nipping at the benefactor.
Bereft canneries forge new alloy, leads and shale
for optic dregs. It’s a mountain plane, and simple.
Travel garb for the journey. Splash squash adhere,
across. It pours it pours and I take you, Cain, to
plinth and fane, to the one-room schoolhouse
where the old Jewish sages will teach you to weave
threads in the pattern.
And wizard you’re golden.
“all of this matters,
and i care so much”
From sleep you light dungeon torches (banish night
visions) for the day is finally come. It roars, it roars,
it shakes you to core, memory culling carrier spren
by the arrowslit slain sideways by grief and by pain.
And lichen remembers the rain.
Hooves alight!
A choral bray, soul-burned
pages unlost to handling,
a pair as one, extinguinated
the host unfurls
a cost abated
engines flair
gods abide
fabric tears
oceans rise
You touch down and the wind whickers
fractal hopscotch (mirage of blacktop)
on checker-marked obsidian
(cold milk white hot). A thousand kisses, prince.
Toward thither thence, to abject friends in
far places, standing staring fresh on lesser years
I know. I breath. Believe what I see, the joy
you bleed when you say that’s it,
that’s the whole thing.
So here’s to Cleveland, or something. Bearing tithe
in sliced apple and fresh scones, I remember the
dreams as we send out, call upon our neighbors,
and read from the Book of Lio.
May 28th, 2025 "as if ternal worlds are, too imtracted"
o
remote start of course,-correct:
a catamaran style behemoth called a lay barge
changes the channel
so the la dodgers no longer pay tribution
you said k’t made you trip
either k’tamelatonin is dock’ted for scrip
or troubled ‘tines grought and gangled
e’er a way to face the floor.
surface active corals :: oxidative sleep-sheen
Apparently,
a psychiatrist needs my meds more than i do
sheared! in feckful and triumvirulent fashion.
every footstrand out
~~~ (strands)
has been more days en memorial host,
kept tabs for the attendance awards*
and it leaves unceremoniously
it is years in the making
o
i am wrestling you in that garage
Trashing you
and that dyke thrashing me
Harangued on a short leash-
-and putzing with friend Stuck-In-Teeth
trying to remember how exactly your poem likens the action to prayer. oo
coldstone sheets O
*in the vanilla folder
i liken it to an aching tongue
i am bagged and tagged on galveston island.
i brush my teeth.
I’m in 6th grade and boys ask me to look at my fingernails (the way I position my hands will determine whether I am gay)
I see this coming from a mile away, positive I can handle the situation
I hold each hand differently as if that would confuse them,
severely underestimating preteens’ grasp on the bisexual o
I am still in control,
embarrassment only stands where you let it,
at their prodding I make a bold gambit
the most popular boy who doesn’t bully, I call him over, a calmness pervades me.
don’t start with the caveat, you’ll lose the audience to denial
the topic came up, I think you’re the most attractive guy in class
I don’t have a crush on you or anything, I just thought you should know it
caveat second ensures I maintain control, like it was easy to claim the first, nothing to hide nothing to lose
the brush cleans me and then i clean the brush. O
i put on face lotion. O o
body lotion.
clothes. o oO
o
together we die.cast the net
considering each excuse for a stake o
replaced through the years
the interior of the shed grinds slow passage behind me
from croquettish bag of bags
to the space-x dupe selling shuttlecocks
the dreamscape is mt of flesh.
. o
i am a tomato plant. oO
.Oo Ooo o. O .
O .o o o. .
oO .OO oOo. o o
. o OOOo
oOd in squelching lockstep, do we
guide inhesitants through the stepped plane
this, “Industrial Park”
keep your pamphlets ready
and kiss your stuffies on the mouth.
O
o
o
o
May 20th, 2025 "Yarzeit"
Beef stew, in familiar hand on card stock. A substitution with purple carrots relegates nostalgia to the tongue.
On the drive north I spelled out my options, both dispelled on arrival.
“How long do we let it burn?”
“The candle should go out on its own.”
“I shouldn’t have used such a large candle.”
Could we just leave it going overnight?
“The cats.”
“Imagine if you asked Mom that, she’d say are you insane?”
“It wasn’t enough that I would rinse spent matches in the sink. She used to soak them overnight.”
You did everything for me except teach me how to do it myself.
~
We take turns reviewing our newest therapists.
“A whole year now. It’s funny I meant her to be more than just for grief.”
I study my scissors intently.
We watch tiktoks you would've liked. Dogs and babies, I don’t dwell on this.
The flame hasn’t made a dent.
I wonder what stories Rabbi Hurwitz must be telling about her after reciting kaddish. I forget that he is five years gone.
Briefly I suppose of Manischewitz and move on as well.
“What are you making?”
Your dining table has seen more costumes than Cirque Du Soleil. I break another needle.
“Had it in my head the unveiling needed to be within a few weeks, then Regina casually asks to have it in August! Just like that.
After all that stress.”
I microwave stew after every dish is put away.
“Almost every night still. We’ll be at the old house and I’ll ask her how are you alive and she dodges the question.”
~
The sewing room teeters with wall-mounted organizers and labeled bins. A muted purr comes from somewhere. I make my choices delicately:
Velcro, for the belt. Black thread, my reason here. Your measuring tape, too like a reliquary to touch. You wanted to start a sewing business.
You wanted to decorate homes. You wanted to write mystery novels. You wanted to visit scotland. I'm holding an indiana jones themed cereal box prize.
A cat is petting itself with my hand and the little red light still works.
~
Dad keeps us foot-to-the-door in standard fashion.
“You don’t know what the unveiling, is?”
I'm sorry. I don't.
I struggle with memory.
But I will be there and I will pull the little golden cord and the velvet will part and we’ll all know the words as they come.
May 17th, 2025
woke up thinking that was not my best work
trailing kale and hardy radicchio
(boxes in boxes not hardly a week ago)
natural birth at the amusement park
i was looking forward to the party.
that kind i claim to crave
and then to not be there for it?
may as well be not there for it the old way
before honeyed peanut butter
tequila glass, mix
broken plastics
i wanted to kiss you
and i wanted to hide
strain, and muddle.
your big eyes on me
the lawnchair puddle
my open mouth
accepting spoons
one trip and i lose every blank in the basket
wet stick hewn to chips
“i am not anxious”
i’m sorry i lied.
tipsy doe tizzy to dote dippy yote?
i felt my face go hot with eyes
you walked me to my car
i watched your hug go straight to voicemail
and i settled in, thinking
that was not my best work.
May 14th, 2025
it’s inchguy season
they are floating in the breeze
they remind me what it’s Time For,
the inchguy’s trapeze
false threads meet sunscreen
and linger in the doorway
write dear johns to each others bugs
a trifle, if in surname
it’s inchguy season!
clouds by telegraph key
man brings a scope out to the river
stowes it just as quickly
a blip, a blip, a blip, a blip,
brave face to harmless things
from neath spring trees with autumn plume
the inchguy rhythm brings
May 13th, 2025
the girl with perfect ears was in my neighborhood again
honed to a point and fine and crisp in the sunlight
i replay 6 ways of reaching into those airy cavities,
i scrap them and scratch my own.
i stop and check the little libraries now, you know
i check them every time
meanwhile my dreams know how to reset the kitchen clock on the stove
just to fuck with me
and so i spend days in the hallway
mirrors endlessly reflective, tip to tip
to tiptoes, as if moments are in short supply
i see why he always writes about cars
en route from point alpha privative
but i’m proud of my home
i’m proud that there’s space on the stairwell landing
to don boots three abreast
maybe being early isn’t so painful.
Lyle at the desk shuffles his pages
and does he know?
bark once and i’ll send you
elbows first through the pneumatic tubes
March 17th, 2025 "ILYS"
carouse, tousle, tussle, arouse,
waking up to the day so quickly that my dreams continue
with you i feel free to not look at you.
i’d rather look at shapes and colors and know you see me,
“and does this eye have any special meaning to you”
my line of sight is joyful and fragile.
how many fluids can we share in the span of a day?
passing clear as my best crystal
as warm water on your back
or light reflect from left to right
and what melted in your sleeve.
you tell us how you often bleed.
i’m not afraid of your sharing pain.
rather when i freeze up its that
if i move it’s happening to me.
no, you’re not a place
i won’t liken you to a reservation
or the municipal spirit
but your name is labeled on my map.
i can travel roads and find you,
i can enter you.
i can feel the luck of being alive
and drive sober.
your big sister is kicking her feet.
your bigger sister is looking up at the rain, feeling young.
your brother ate too many cookies.
anyway i just wanted to talk to you.
i can’t shake
how your name floods these canals
that so easily dam old names’ introduction,
or Lake Heron.
March 11th, 2025 "Bug Algorithm"
In the ravings there is a place without bugs
where the only highway signs are of
the places I’m headed
every door unlabeled except my own appointment
on the day and on the hour it was set.
Bugs have more malice than legs
they want to be in my shoe
at the precise moment of impact.
I can’t sleep and the bugs are sentient.
The ceiling chips and the bugs are sapient.
No, they are smarter than me.
(For now I am safe from their plots, I fix my bangs and I keep all the lights on.)
There are exactly two people in the world.
You say please speak that way to me and I do.
From a different scene and a different body You say
please do not speak that way to me and now I am confused.
The bugs dream of my toes and
I fail to sate the person that is not Me.
The commercial break blares perlin static
a gracious chance to fix my bangs
You tell me that bugs define the season better than any meteorological metric.
I don’t know what comets have to do with this anyway.
So now the world has as many seasons as people.
It is within Time For Bugs that they accost me while I run in the field.
Eyes dreadful in the shed by the bocce
Laughter of friends hide phantom skitters.
But blessedly this warmth is not yet come.
It is still Time Without Bugs and I see no license plates.
Blank flyers stapled to poles, and surely Your needs are not so vast?
My arms ache, delivering my paws and their oils
Ecosystem is just the name of a chapter in the book I sleeved green.
I am so glad I don’t have to check my shoes.