Bar Code

It’s 1:49 in my neck of the woods.

Time to head home….

…softly…

 

Coming, Going & Sitting Empty

Drive, a haiku sonnet

There is a robin 
singing in a tree somewhere,
telling the world he

is looking for a 
mate. A robin sings in a 
tree somewhere, telling 

the world he has found 
a mate. The tree somewhere is 
a tulip in the 

neighbor's front yard. Spring 
has come. We drive by the same 
people, sleeping in

bags on the sidewalk, waiting 
for the world to warm.










(Been a little minute since I wrote one of these...)

Dog and Bird with Red Velvet Chair, Cage, Windows and Trees

A beautiful boat

That's what we had, maybe. 
One day before our faces.
Now, this is where we are.
Trying on well-fitting boots.

We bought them.  The book.
The line.  The sinking thoughts.  
Them too, we bought.  “Fuck the 
farm, we bought the boat!” 

The oars and the ocean too. 
And then we threw them all 
in.  Chopped the little ones 
for our chum and threw them

in too. I can see them now, 
our pieces, moving up from 
the dark like bright fish. Our 
beautiful boat is eating us.







This poem first appeared on my friend Jeremy Nathan Marks' project, 
Poetry of the Resistance.

Between Beginnings

This very moment, as you take in a breath 
to speak the next line or just to whisper it 
or just to sigh a little, a girl is letting out all 
of the breath in her lungs for the very last 
time as the building around her collapses.

A man who is really just a boy is
holding his breath without realizing it 
because he cannot grasp the fear that 
he feels as he starts to pull the trigger.

He has no words for what he feels
and she has no time to make words.

And me? I am still 
breathing in.





(I wish, on this day, to remind myself that what was for us an extreme punctuation to 
our otherwise and comparatively serene lives is in fact a fact of life--yearly, monthly, 
weekly, daily--the substance of the narrative--for so many people in so many places.)

(This is, in a sense, a follow-up to this post, many years on)

This poem first appeared on my friend Jeremy Nathan Marks' project,
Poetry of the Resistance.