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A few of the better poems I've written.
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Mother’s Day
A day to remember
your voice, your hair.
A day to see
if the mirror finds you
in my reflection.
A day to cook and clean
and continue as if
nothing’s wrong —
though every atom is
out of place
until we meet again.
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Where Beauty Lies
Gray sky
uneasy peace — the sudden
kind — like the silent moment
after thunder cracks.
It doesn’t mean to be serene.
The storm’s calm,
the ruse.
A plane drones overhead.
A clock clicks.
Birds — tens of them —
ravage the backyard,
then retreat to the trees,
screaming in turns.
Beauty is in the dying tree:
Its branches brittle,
its bark half lost.
Beauty is there.
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We know it.
The light, the glow.
What’s left of them —
not memories
(those are here).
But the flash
seared fast into us.
The fused part
where we meet.
Where we’ll always meet.
Dense as the dark now,
but for a sharp impression
snapped across the sky
then gone.
There’s the trouble.
The absence of light —
knowing what’s gone
once was not gone.
Once was here,
was illumination —
life.
How can we not know it?
The spark, ash
— already.
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untitled
Can words erase words
spoken long ago? No matter
how pleasing how dulcet —
The carving up’s been done.
The skin puckered, sealed.
The wound’s pale impressions lie
disturbingly undisturbed.
Old words keep.
Healing doesn’t remake the whole —
it only keeps the fragments fixed.
Trace the scars.
Each one recalls the cut.
Forgiving precludes forgetting.
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Storm
Dark, heavy clouds
moved into place
in the sky
earlier today.
We say: They threatened.
It took them hours
to work up the rage.
But now they’ve done it.
Apt storm — violent, loud,
unsettling, sudden —
like bad news.
The pills, the pills, the pills
help absorb the shock,
the rumble.
In the quiet after
the damage is done.
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Art
You can't ignore it —
it moves in like an
unwelcome guest.
You can't fight it —
it is Atlas-strong.
Or accept it —
it might be evil.
But you live with it.
Learn to love it —
like the dying
learn to love
death.
It's a disease.
It spatters energy
onto canvas — or
pages — or into
a melody sad enough
to break hearts,
strong enough
to survive,
beautiful enough
to be forgiven.
(from 1989)
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The Impetus
Waking to this hell,
I roll over and over
like I'm on fire —
trying to put myself out.
But I'm consumed
by wakefulness —
burned to life.
I rise up — a ghost
drifting through the days
not knowing why —
knowing only
that I must search.
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Katydid (for M.C.)
I bite an apple — crisp, cool,
sweet — and I think
of you, how you don't like
to taste
anymore.
How long is suicide?
As long as forty
Librium pumped out
of your empty stomach?
No.
Who are you? You're not
with me playing
with Barbie and G.I. Joe
on the floor of my bedroom,
1972.
You're palsied and dying,
at twenty-one, like an old man.
If you didn't want to live,
you could have let the Librium
digest.
I could shake you like a rag doll,
but you won't live — you'll die,
day to day, however long it takes
until you're satisfied
with your
suicide.
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From This Place
The sky's filmed over
like a smoke-stained window.
The sun doesn't quite
get through.
But the colors of spring
are here — they glow
iridescent, eerie
as a ghost story.
It's too still — Earth's rotation.
And the car that breaks
the silence doesn't matter —
doesn't count.
Only the birds,
twittering madly,
fill the soundlessness
like thunder.
(from 1989)
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Words
I have broken the universe.
It stalls intact for seconds
as I wait
for the thrill
of the crash.
What have I done?
Will everything fall
from the frame —
the shards of
a smashed mirror?
And who will sweep it up?
I am now a splinter —
small and sharp —
ready to slip
under black leather
night's skin
to infect it
with light.
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More Poems
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