Down the Road

Down the road is an old burnt-out house,

Its silo a flagpole to the sky amid plains of corn and soy,

Streaming forward, forward,

The house craning back.

Light filters through the beams and dust,

Onto time’s leftovers, a spoon of tarnished iron,

People practical,

Even in better years when the chimney spat black.

Timbers grayed, blackened roof collapsing in

Slow, torpid decay,

Asking favors from entropy,

Aching in the fibers of its wood,

Pleading in unison

Particles waltzing in a lazy fashion,

Their steps slow to conclude the dance with the end,

Forgotten, eventual nothingness.

But the roof lies submissive to the heavens,

And as the sky breaks, it’s the one two three, again.

Across the street—it’s paved now—

Is a New Construction house made of things better than wood,

Plastics and polyurethanes,

It has a grass yard, a swing set, a TV that echoes images though

The windowpanes across the flatland on clear nights.

A lazy stream of gray drifts from the chimney,

And the blades of grass hum when the wind blows,

As to whisper the secret to the myth of content, of

Neutral tones, yet the door is red.

A child’s laugh

Bicycle wheels spinning

Helmeted heads and a tan Forester SUV

And the grass and plastics and polyurethanes are chanting,

Oh they’re all chanting, chanting,

We are the new generation.

We are the new generation.

We are the new generation.

The chant echoes across the road and dissipates into

Fields surging with green and stalks taller than your father’s head,

Its remnants weave through corn and soy and soil, to find,

A black-toothed smile silhouetted against the sky

Consuming the harvests, fears, and sunrises,

Wind whistling across its timbers of its teeth,

Like the hiss of an old woman laughing

Further down the road is a graveyard. 

"This Is Goodbye, Then?"

In the halfway house, I met you

My mind swallowing particular phrases,

Your beliefs weaving their way back into

Consciousness, mine at the fall.

Some people said we lost our way in

The conviction of chalk-bone eyes and with

Our Father, Son, and Holy Ghost hearts crossed,

Delighting in dirty water.

Yet something was right, I knew not what,

The night sprawled into day, and

Your eyes saw something dead in mine

Come back alive.

There was a way in which you said,

The things that jumbled across

My folding table of skin and bones and tricks,

Mouthing a smoke alarm of substance.

You know what I said—

When the fruit was fingered to its core?

I meant it then, when our thoughts collided,

As the passing of a jilted lover.

I mean it now.

Cross-eyed like the lone cat,

That came to call at your doorsteps,

The night that we both left,

Feeling yellow with nostalgia and fever.

bodies in disguise

clinging to the stem of my neck and the

            tender, soft walls

                        of my mind, you’re a body in disguise,

                                    and I want to tear the…

                                                shadows to flesh, watch your clothes

                                                            fall to the floor

                                                                        are you now as I remember you were?

                                                            Still following,

                                                the same scent

                                    of your thoughts,

                        trailing around…

            like a leashed dog

biting the heels of its loyal master

                                                                                                for want of freedom. 

Disordered Well, At Best

The night’s
solemnity calls out in
feeble mews,
like the bare-wood
chapel pews,
softly moan.


I present myself
a gift to you,
do partake
in my body,
the song of a thrush,
calls out your name.


In suppressed sighs
I hold this night,
a child holding
sand in his fist
on a crowded beach,
drifting figures, moments.


His mother takes his
hand, unclenched,
the sand
falls away, and
in this night’s solemnity,
the present has no taste.


                        …the tight knob of your dresser is so tightly shut,
                           while mine is loose, it spins and wobbles,
                                      like drunken feet on steady ground,
                           open the drawer, your clothes, how neatly packed,
                           and mine? if they find their way back,
                                      are disordered well, at best…

The Devil's Doorway

In the devil’s doorway,

I stood awhile,

Contemplating faith.

He had great wings,

It made me smile,

To think of the angels.

I asked for soap,

Something to clean,

He had bleach.

I saw the devil’s teeth,

White as I burned,

Cleansed into nothing.

But fear not my end,

I watch over you,

A mirror reflection.

Go ahead, child,

Give the dead another glass eye.

"I Breathe Souls"

The sky breeds logic,

The earth passion,

The atmosphere our souls,

For you I would reverse the world round.

I weigh no more than my soul,

Like a dandelion laughing in the wind,

I seed myself in pavement, as the sky rends,

And watch logic grow in the ground.

I am no more than a tribal dance,

Like a wolf feeding on dirt and grass,

I hunger because my heart never rests,

Passion drifts, no longer earthly bound.

I breathe souls,

Inhale, exhale, lives in transit, they come and go,

The smoke of a thousand souls, all that I’ve known,

Dark lashes of the earth’s soil turn round, sift skywards,

The clouds darken and look like dirt.

I know you’re here,

Where logic grows in the ground,

Where passion is no longer earthly bound,

Where your soul is sound, safe,

For when all is burnt,

The sky will clear.

"Moral Posture"

Sit this way now, darling, don’t hold your head like that,

Feet straight, toes arched,

Muscles tensed in ways thought to be pleasurable.

Jigsaw spine ironed straight in childhood,

Now hold yourself,

Like a woman experiencing a fertile wave of vulnerability.

Smile lucid, bright,

Eyes flicker flutter and focus,

Shoulders down now, dear, don’t look so uptight.

Lips open, breathe quiet,

A glance of straight teeth,

Glimmering like temptation on a Sunday afternoon.

Lips stained, but not so dark-

Tramps don’t get what they want.

The curve of your cheek must be distinct, yet supple,

Tense your ear muscles when posing for a picture,

It’s more high-brow.

Shoulders back to reveal your delicate neck,

Flatter yourself,

By pleasing others.

"Self-Reflection"

I am trapped.

In a bowl.

That could hold a fish that will fight and eat another to its death,

Watery fleshy bits floating,

Sink tub ocean of the mind,

Orgasmic loathing, heave out another sigh, you landlubber,

Bubbles rising to the surface-belch!

Breathe now, hiccup and it’s done.

But I’ll never have gills,

Inadequate, I fear, for aquatic life,

Rising falling rising falling.

Yeah, that fish, I put mirrors in its bowl—

And so it swam in circles,

Eating itself,

Its own enemy, flesh and blood.

"Like a Shiver"

Like a shiver,
That runs through your body,
Rain drizzling electric through your veins!


Fog holds up traffic,
Red light pours through dimlit stairways,
Touch radiates like a thing alive, with its own malice,
Oh, I know it’s impossible, then
to help me, learn me, love me.


I am the multifarious nature of being!
I am the wind that cannot stay in one place too long,
I am the journey that led you here, where you will soon forget,
I am the moss that is tread underfoot.


Do I not summarize myself neatly?


I do not want to leave,
I want to hold him, here, warm, breathing,
Fires raging but I keep my mouth shut because the words will come out broken,
And my point lost, most likely.


He is looking at me,
Saying things to make me want to take off my clothes,
To help me rationalize the act and stop thinking,
But I can’t stop thinking, my mind’s churning, and my stomach hurts,
It hurts like a dead stone aching to break into beautiful, golden sand.


His touch recedes violently, and with only murmurs,
I sift away in the night.

"Like Dust: Part 1"

This poem has been selected for publication in The Hyphen Literary and Art Magazine.

“Like Dust: Part 1”

Like dust

On an old man’s sweatersweatersweatersweater

Had it so many years

It’s seen so many things,

Mostly closets.

Buttons buttoned in better times,

Lithe young bones set right

In place.

Disjoint feel-joint conjoined lives,

Now she’s gone.

But her perfume he can still faintly smell on the lapel,

Young, beautiful, out of control,

A pipe with sewage and sparkling water bursting

With love they held each other in the evenings,

Sweetly,

Sweetly.

Six pence for a pie, sir,

But no one uses pence or pennies anymore.

Soon, he thinks, I’ll be the dust on a sweater,

No more, no less, for worse or better,

He’d recited his vows backwards,

Like love had come dyslexic through his teeth

Conjoin, our loins

In holy matrimony.

He puts the sweater on his back

Aching, aching, stoop like turtle

It’s warm, it smells of her,

It makes him feel a little bit younger.

Old man with a head full of memories going to black

Head-set with a bald head and no tattoos,

Though he’d thought of getting one when he met her,

Foolish boy.

Foolish man?

Finding his woman in a sweater he hasn’t worn in fifteen years!

Nostalgia worsens with age, they say,

Just like your back.