016 – stumble

i’ve stumbled across words unable
to contain the depth
of the ocean left

in a turmoiled world
of barbed wires too small
to rip holes.

015 – song

fire | painted across mountains | my unheard song

Inspired by: Karen Bozick’s “slovakia” and Steve Veilleux’s “when world’s collide“.

014 – frenetically

and then words, escaping me,
drop on to fluttering pages,
clawing to breathe –

or perhaps only my fingernail
scraping away my reality.

013 – for scout

i sat in my wicker chair once,
cocooned in ropes of
rose petals and smoke,

and honeysuckle

and the heaviness
laced on our summer nights.

012 – blanched

my outstretched fingers
have touched rainbows

that i could share –

but how would i paint
with color

in your world
of black and white?

010 – bookends

we’re like bookends, you and i,
carved to weather the weight
of words contained by gilded leather.

bookends also crumble with time.

009 – innisfree

a road unraveled,
and your eyes drifted
away with the clouds

past the soft folds
of linen sheets

where my hand
still lays outstretched.

Inspired by Susan Gibb. 

006 – from derridas and homi

footfalls in the vacuum of millennia
become drumbeats echoing,
like words always already spoken.

today you will feel
only as only you do.

005 – seasons

seasons weave through cherry trees,
and through my fingers, decades slip
in a handful of moments.

life changes to remain the same.

002 – cosmos

a vortex, a rapture, a swirl of caramel
in the milky way;

god’s eye or not,
i’m still always a speck of dust.