If (Rudyard Kipling at his finest)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And [...]

Spider’s Lament

and now the world hangs
by a string -
this single, silken thread
glistening,
threatening.
the brood hatched
with the Hunter’s Moon
and has stolen away
while I slept,
finding, I pray,
the choicest dark corners.
I would meet them there
and see them off,
but even now I wane
and have not the will
to swing down
and down
and
down.

…Nevermore

Yeah, this is definitely happening.  I had a wonderful meeting with my young friend Adam this week, to begin work on a collaborative project.  And unlike most of what we wannabe writers do (cloister ourselves away with books and pens and journals), this project is a team effort.  Adam is a film maker, one with [...]

Quoth the Raven…

 
Recently, a conflagration that had apparently smoldered in my soul for some time came to full, roaring life.  I found myself devouring Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” and, mysteriously, identifying with the poem in new, strange ways.  Something is coming, brewing, developing, and I am interested to see what shape this new dark shadow eventually [...]

Cold Pre-Winter Curtain

So this is how the autumn comes:
flooding my pasture,
drenching the weeping corn stalks,
floating pumpkins off protesting
the injustice of too much rain
and not a wink of frost.
When it’s dry, the land scratches by
instinctively,
barely moving or breathing,
inching through the suffocating dryness,
content to exist another day
still standing,
reaching toward the sun.
But let it rain the gray streaming rain
of southern [...]

A Beginning?

So, “Recipient” (see below) was selected by poetry.com for their Editor’s Choice Award. I’m not really sure what this means other than that I received a congratulatory email from the chief editor and the poem will be included in their upcoming anthology. But, perhaps it is a beginning, a marker that I might return to [...]

Despairing For Anchors

where have you gone
you golden-haired wonder
diviner of mysteries
parter of seas?
were they not enough:
the blue, weeping masses
the quivering faithful
disconsolate trees?
or were you betrayed
by the folly of longing
misplaced adoration
the erosion of ease?
and now with the flotsam
you’ve jettisoned hope
despairing for anchors
lost by degrees.
(for joshua)

Visa

I am no longer what I once was
nor what I am soon to be:
there has been a closing
and a silent reopening,
an invitation addressed to myself,
a visa
enabling cross-border
exploration,
the misunderstanding
of self-imposed
exile
in a world of
pedants
miscreants
contractual obligation.

Red Ovation

Blow with me, love,
upon these embers
now,
so faintly aglow,
yet glowing still.
Can they spark and live
again,
and rise in red ovation
to warm this fading room,
this shadowy heart?
Our fuel’s spent,
and only breath remains
now.
In misty expiration
we lean toward
the heated hearth,
stirring coal and ash
to one last hopeful flame.
Should it burn again,
miraculously,
let us arrange ourselves
in full view
of the apparition,
partaking of the anomalous [...]

Morning Bells

I awoke to the tolling of bells:
the ancient clanging,
the mystic jangling
of the heaviness of bells
in my heart.
Deep did the brassy throat call
to me
in spectral salutation:
ghostly yet familiar,
like the ashen, expressionless face
of a love departed.
Did I sleep through the changing of tides,
eternally swelling
estuarine telling
of the age-old story of tides
in my heart?
Long did the briny voice sing
to me
in reedy [...]