POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.
I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.
we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts
Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”
here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome
You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.
my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house
I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.
and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place
I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.
Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.
