Category Archives: Poems

The poet who sang at the end of time

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The bland design falls, outward bound.
The swilling beast groans with cheap ecstasy,
Sometimes interior,
Sometimes superior.

What is exterior obliterates me
Until my fragile image asserts its wee voice,
Lost in a chorus
Of wee voices.

I know, I know, I am the only me,
The only conjunction of these points,
But how could you have failed to guide me
Through this hidden path?

Was I supposed to intuit mere chance?

As it is, I’m left to glide along
Waste-bound avenues,
Street grime the color of storm clouds,
Tipping into a middling redemption

Unawares, using old navigation charts,
Useless azimuths, discarded distances,
Captain of a bottomless vessel,
An occidental sailor upon oriental shores.

See there, where no destination lies.
A simple ending, no beyond, no before.
Not even a reason for despairing.
We’d mistaken the moon for a song.

Genealogy II

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Somehow, a mitochondrion wormed its way
Into our native beast, and, having found shelter,
Settled in.

We have twisted it to our liking,
Harvesting its life energy,
Binding it to ourselves

Like an indentured child
Harvesting the boundless sunlight
For a wizened mole.

Those walls have long since dissolved,
But part of us still seeks
The primitive new,

The strange echo of mutation,
The protean coil,
That entwines alien virtues.

But for every meld there is a sever,
How can I embrace you
If we have become one?

And for every sever there is a mending.
And so we spin and part our helix
Until end becomes beginning.

Regret

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Regret nothing? You must be joking.
Regret all of it, wallow in it,
Hate yourself. Feel it searing your heart
Like the barrel of a spent machine gun.

How could you have been such an absolute brick?
How could any organism have survived
Millions of years of primate evolution
Only to humiliate the very worms from which it rose?

An oily spasm of muck would have done better.
A cabal of ooze would recoil from your touch;
Your slime would contaminate the corridors of Hell.
You could not rise to the dignity of a snake fart.

Ichor trails your every step.
A stench rises…

Why are you laughing?

Now

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Now I think I’d like
To do something different
Now that I’ve ripped out my heart
And presented it to you on a dinner plate
Now that I’ve stuck out my neck
And left it stripped naked as
A discarded dancing pole
Now that I’ve left my fears flapping
Like so many ragged prayers
Now that I’ve strewn my desires
At your feet like bruised rose petals
Now that my darkest self
is common tattle
I think I’d like to try
Something more personal

Caro Federico: An homage

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Inspired by the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca.

This flaming music
Cannot stop itself
Useless anyway!
The guitar sings of things
It dares not understand
The surly birds of a dead spring
Of bloody spades
And sinking sands
And cameliatic brands
This life without death
These pointless arrows
These wineless cups
This meeting without understanding
This whimless moon
These bullrings
Ringing endlessly
Why?