In the night, at first, I painted pictures of my insides with words. The tired eyes, still and icy, inviting as winter snow deepened, followed the lines, learning me. Leaning over the barrier built of quiet struggles, handfuls of dirt up around the old firepit of love. The meeting left me naked, shaking. Cold. Awake….
On Broadway: ‘The Encounter’ Gets in Your Head
The Arthur Golden theater on Broadway, built in 1929, is housing a one man show run on haunting technological fervor through January 8th of next year. Simon McBurney and a team of sound operators and projection technicians bring to life a sparse but electrifying set made up of a handful of microphones, packs of bottled…
What We Can Learn from the Autumn Garden
Spring gardens get the glut of our attention for their buzzing, dripping, luscious display of new life. The bright green of new leaves bursting from buds and the many-colored petals surround us, echoing bird songs and the scratching of other newborn tree-dwellers scampering up the bark and home. It’s intoxicatingly merry, the gardens of spring……
Entry 82316 – Overexposure
It rings in my ears, the words “why are you showing me this?” Already insecure that my past The dimly-lit corners of my self would be an obstacle to being loved, “Why are you showing me this?” made me want to hide away, Good God, hide away and forget I ever let the light shine…
Entry 72616- Now is the Time of Monsters
As I sit sipping black, sweet coffee, The sun pouring into my room A weight is on my shoulders, though I am not called to duty My heavy heart echoes upward to my mind, though no one is asking anything of me. The gravel in my throat and fire dimmed in my belly are much…
Entry 53016- Questions for the Dead
My mother married a preacher’s son Who fished in the pond behind his father’s church during sermons. Her mother married a soldier Who left school at 13 to work when his father died. Before her, my great-grandmother wed an Irishman Who’s family called her “red skin” and treated her like a servant. Before that, I…
Entry 92115 – Floater
With a world waiting under waves, I met you at the surface Your home was within sight, under the moon, alone. It seemed sturdy yet weightless. Longing crept into me, For a home with feather pillows, Where sunlight was Less than a visual effect, Warm and direct. I told you where I came from, Splashed…
Entry 92115 – Harsh light on the softest memory
I would run back And turn on all the lights And kiss your lips so hard they bled, Hold your body so hard you bruised me Release you only to return softer, More certain, survivor of my desire. If I hadn’t been so different from that, We might’ve had a chance. Now you have the…
Entry 11416- Beyond What Poems Do – A Response to Poet Ntozake Shange
My Response to this magical image: Oh, yes. A poem is A thing that wants to be caught, but only by someone who can and who wants it for exactly what it is. You and I are poems.
Entry 1916- Bad Thoughts
Ungraceful and caught-up in historic suffering The nights are full of bad thoughts, If you let them in. I let them in. The bad thoughts give way to names Names of people and places Uncovering memories necessary to That letting go of pain. They crumble to reveal the names of emotions Categorization, measurable, and real….
121615- Cutting Hair
In the mirror I was not who I had been Before my hair grew long, down past my waist, A mass to take in stride like a sweet memory, Honey silk and thick syrup dripping, suspended, swaying from my tired head. For every inch contained wanting. I cut it one night, I took up the…
121615- Grief Song
What impossible decisions I’ve made, the weight of them, The scars and time it’s taken to heal enough to breath forward. Onto what I know not. It wasn’t pulling weeds, no. It wasn’t cutting fat. God no! These impossible determinations, They’re a burning heart that makes ashes of fear And hands that tear at brush…
