Sunday, March 30, 2025

BIGGER BLACKER DEATH

I CAN ONLY ASSUME
BOB KAUFMAN SWITCHED
TO ALL CAPS
TO SCARE AWAY
THE BURNING AMERICAN 
SON ALONE 
FOR ALL ETERNITY
AND RATTLE THE
BLEACHED BONES OF A POET
BLEEDING OUT IN 
POEM AFTER POEM
UNTIL HIS OATH 
OF SILENCE
BECAME PERMANENT. 

March

We are expectant 
mothers eagerly 
awaiting your delivery 
room to open 
mouth roar then 
in a yawning 
bore and
indiscriminately sprinkle
green
EVERYWHERE.

Matisse millions
of unblended strokes
unstruck matches
stiffly wait 
to be sun set 
afire. 



This Poem Is

a bridge to an island
inhabited by 
a single person

uncaged intimacy
holding light up 
to a place that has only 
existed in total darkness

unrecorded names
etched in stone;
marking graves I 
never dared to recall
or memorialize

a sacred sanctuary 
where I can run
into myself and discover 
we speak the same language 
in a crowded land

a rule-less expression
children know instinctually
but, adults carelessly shed;
forgetting that a captured 
imagination makes
our dreams real

an urgent call, 
an uncorked bottle,
a game of telephone 
where contact turns silence 
into a permanent 
and pertinent connection

effective action after
being idle for too long
expanding self 
into glorious multitudes 

a bomb 
shelter for one
that ensures my survival
should the world
come collapsing down 
around me

a microphone
at long last 
that no one 
can drown out

the actual sound of my voice. 




 

Friday, February 28, 2025

For Lira

Buttery coos;
hello birdie.

A voice
in your rosy
breast fine-scale
woos the new
day to peer
over the horizon
and stay
fixed upon
dueling syrinxes

in disbelief of
competing radiation
touching bare
sky first.

I don't believe in heaven,
only your

                                       g
                        n
         o
s
         o
                        n
                                       g


Sunday, February 23, 2025

On Notice

I.

Aging 
is squatting
in a burned out building 
whose earthly real estate 
is worth more than 
the crumbling 

con
     s
     truc     tio
   n.

No 
one is coming
to rebuild 
us back to 
our former glory. 

II.

The eviction 
notice 
will be served 
without warning.

Surrounding 
landmarks will
evaporate to make 
room for the new.

Increasingly unfamiliar,
in just a few years,
we won't recognize 
our way back                                   home.

This is urban planning
of another kind.

Unkind.

III.

So busy 
becoming, that 
we forgot to 
notice we were 
all-ready 

history.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Lost in Layers

Tired stars 
burning crisply.
Peaceful corners
blown to   o       bli     vi                  on.

Hoping hopelessly,
but you know
things are slow
to change

Canvas stretch
-er pollack primed.
Pedantic notes,
eyes dripping
this is

my blood.
Your blood.
My blood.
Your blood.

It will be
over when 
its all-over. 

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Popular Standard

                             PRESCRIPTIONS   



CANDY


CIGARS                                                      ICE

                                                                  time

NEWS PAPERS                                         CREAM


MAGAZINES

     Two                         bobbed socks

     ga-Zeldas               lean           

     While                      rising hemlines

      Play                       pleated peekaboo

      With                      freckled knees.


     Infinite                  adolescence.


    Possibility           isn’t about a

   Tomorrow.          It's about the

   perfect rag        curl and     reminding

the camera that “I’ll never     smile 

   Again” is          L more       than NCHE

      just a                      popular

      stand-                   ard.



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