True & Softly Spoken

Have you heard the tolling bell
that proclaims a happy wedding,
that weeps of tragic death
that calls loudly from the steeple
have you heard the bells of Sunday?
 
Have you heard the shouting diplomat
who gestures to grey capitals
who outshouts the lesser one
who pulpit-pounds as if he were a bell
have you heard of the election?
 
Maybe you’ve heard the blaze of [...]

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Oh, the Morning (Ode to Her, Asleep)

The dawn sighed softly like a mother
and shrugged the tattered rags of night
into corners below mountains
where the shade stowed ‘way ’til dusk
and the rustling of those tatters
roused the land from sleep
 
When times are good
the dawn-lit mornings glitter on your skin
in the bed where I am early up
and you are always sleeping (but that’s fine)
these days, [...]

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On Last Stands & Sacrifice

Every once in a while, the rain pours hard
and denies it could be shrugged
from the shoulders of man
onto pavements or sidewalks
into gutters
and out of memory
 
These are the days that I’m reverant
 
Every once in a while, the snows pound down
impetuous and proud as a futile cavalier
whose bitter last stand, a failure,
dissolved into the spring
into memory
like an [...]

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Blues in Red

Blues in the morning, burnt and black
crimson charred on an angry dawn
those blues at night are hiding in the back
and the men with knives, they want them gone
 
Blues from the traitors, blues from the thieves
nothing payed is so much owed
blues of ice and blues unrelieved
heavy in the pockets, dead as snow
 
Nothin’ happy in the cold [...]

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Be Sick

I’m so obsessed
with sighs because
they rip so cleanly through me
and I’m just so obsessed
with me
that I wrote this in
the first-person
 
I’m so hung up on faith
and all those gilded trappings
it’s such a chiselled block
and it’s called my name before
so many times that
now I just
don’t answer
 
I wouldn’t laugh so hard
and I really wouldn’t strut
if I ever thought [...]

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. . . And They Closed the Roads

Part I : they closed the roads
 
There will be no more vacations,
no smiling happy trips down lanes
no quaint and quiet for the old
no time to grow the young and
nothing else to see
 
The dollar is unhappy
I am unhappy too
what are you and
why aren’t you unhappy?
 
There are no more trees
but there are shovels
there are no more seeds
but [...]

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Spacious

Jesus Christ, it’s cold in here
and a little hollow, getting worse
it’s so chiselled, empty,
awfully vast and frowning;
what, I’m not welcome in my own
poem?
 
Get it together,
get it over with and
get out, get out!
 
Tripping over synapses,
so much junk,
don’t worry . . .
I’m going, I’m going!
 
All this air, it’s got me thinking,
how there’s all that space to fill
Three [...]

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Cheshire Funeral

I am reluctant to die
because I have always been
the cautious sort
and never so stupid as to trade something
for nothing
 
I live within the human box
and partake in nothing to shake your earth
but it keeps me warm
and hungry
I am nothing beyond
imagination
 
My poems and pens will go to Anna,
who keeps me sane and steady-paged,
all but one for which [...]

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Poem for Late Nights on the Ocean

The stars in here,
so jagged,
all cock their eyes when I come ’round
and they’ve always been stomach-full of
light and heavy
but never ones to argue
 
All those hummingbird lights
that hang above my street
their eyes are all so drunk and their
wallets, tonight,
are empty
their cold wrought skins are tame now
as they hum a little tune from
the throats that sag with
melancholy
 
The [...]

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Petals Under Snow (You’re There, I’m Stranded)

I’m irreconcilable
with the lights on and
incoherent when they’re
not
 
I speak of radios
and think of trouble
just because I’m
malleable
whose time do you have,
mine or yours?
I’ve been looking, is all
it’s not really
a problem
 
Her curves draw the heat
into my face
and pull my lips into
a smirk
yes, it’s really something
how the weather never gets it right
forget about the forcasts,
I mean the weather
 
My [...]

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