#subtextures

then there are the dreams

you do remember 

not just wisps

which vanish forgotten

at fingertips’ ends

but the ones that cling

their razor tipped claws

toying with your heart

late into the afternoon 

at the end of winter

Each day I shuffle about the house

lost within the duties of the day.

I wonder: all these poets with their advice

full of absolutes and disdain for others—

when do they find time to write;

to sit alone with their words;

to scrape the burnt rice from the pan?

When what I see is not

making sense even in jest,

there is where the hinge bends

one plane into the veneer

of another, and I fall away

afloat in a delicate chaos

of dust through afternoon light.

I live along a distant periphery,

where change happens 

like one season to another;

a slow edge of soft magma,

where tectonic plates patiently

grind their jagged stones

into a field of dominant debris.

1.

i cannot move

too much is broken

2.

demons live in mirrors

and are trying to escape

3.

it’s almost tuesday

yet there are no doors

4.

there is a dream

i cannot see

The night is broken in a multitude

of awakenings. The dogs are disturbed

by the full moon’s motion across the sky.

Between their futile barks, I lie awake.

As dawn approaches you pull me closer,

laying your head upon my chest. I sleep,

finally drifting to the edge of dreams

where the world is neither vast nor empty.

Lately I have been thinking about death.

Not my own, nor anyone’s I know, but

Death— the absurdly inevitable 

avalanche collapsing beneath our feet:

as if I can know more than what I am;

as if I am something other than dust.

After picking herbs,

She muddles the mint

or basil depending

on what’s to follow.

She bruises the leaves

like an abusive lover

into an intimacy

he can swallow.

After all,

what is allowed

is tolerated—

no matter

the consequence,

It’s the lopsided charm

of this day’s superlatives—

the shortest day,

the longest night,

which for millennia 

provided power 

to the metaphor

for hope to console us

with heavenly promise

that peace will return

as easily as morning light

washes over dark stone.

The ghosts have returned.

Along an edge; they tremble

into view, then vanish,

if I turn to look. 

It is best I ignore them,

as they roll and tumble

near my hesitant feet.

I fear to step on them.

They are soft like kittens,

but with longer memory,

and a sharper clarity.

Details bend, slowly feel 

their way, to insert tendrils

along darker fissures

to occupy spaces reserved

for conflicts of the present,

but now quiver gently

with decades of regret.