I’ve been through unemployment three times in my working life, but it wasn’t until the third go ‘round that I was able to define the above stages. Because the second and third stints were so close together -- only one year apart -- it was almost as if I had taken a...
Come, Let Us Gather,here in the grotto of our mysteries,of bluebonnets and paintbrushes,where minty spring rains play messiah,resurrecting wild things from winter dyings.Come, Let Us Gather,here at the Holiest of Holies,where the holiest of blues –music, sky, water, the eyes of a beloved –speaks the word incarnate,to release our headwaters,to swim Yanaguana dreams,while jitterbugging with... Continue Reading →
There’s no sense in worrying about something you can’t avoid, he reasons. Butwhat about olives stuffed with fat cloves of garlic and preserved lemon? I ask,desperate for a concession I know won’t come. What about red wine glidingthrough your veins like a gondola on a river? The first few seconds of eachmorning before my brain... Continue Reading →
1. Water is dripping from the kitchen ceiling,pooling on the laminate.I’m soaking it up with a mop,wringing it out in a bucket,but it won’t stop.Suddenly I’m not in the kitchenbut on some nondescript college campus.I see you in the distance, broad-shouldered,clad in a tweed jacket and leather beret.You’re walking away, getting smaller.I call your name... Continue Reading →
I don’t do eloquent;I do raw and realStraight to the pointno unnecessary pontificationbecause what is the pointof speaking only to be misunderstoodI don’t do riddles;I do reasons and requestsWhen I talk I want to communicate,not complicate or confuseI am an open bookstraight to the pointrip the band-aid offhealing only comes when we are opened and... Continue Reading →
There is no moon and back for us, there is just a love that isindeed, us carved out like initials and it is ample, cherishable,enough. Tell me there is something like a venerable smoke between us inheriting our existence with its thick fog-like mesh, and we will never really part, vapor offerings as we are. When you write... Continue Reading →
Geraniums in the studio—so much red, so much hope.You said to send you some faith.Geraniums in the studio:art albums, quilts, old photographs,the canvas spread on the wall.The smell of paint, the ritualof a hundred brushes,the sunlight kissing Pikes Peak.Prayer and the sound of a mandolin,the echo of dance. Energy, arduous audacity,luminous arching of daring. Song, rhythm, fabric.An... Continue Reading →
I wonder, are the plastic flowers dying?The daisies' heads look like they are lower oris that my head that is bowed?Am I looking up at flowers? Uh, oh.Am I dead?No, I still feel the pinchof inflation.I still cannot see up closewithout glasses, I still feelcold and trapped by retirement. Should Ipush up the heads of... Continue Reading →
The first thing to purge is plot.Poetry is not why you feel but howyou feel,how mother wore a flower-print dressand stood at the back screen door,while you hammered pegs into plastic,seated on the kitchen floor,and didn't see what surely must have beentears streaming,and didn't hear what surely must have beengasping sobs,all you knew was the... Continue Reading →
I never cared much for hanging around.The picture is my father.Photogenicity was not in the genesinherited, but I am tallerthan the other kids who sat at the tableThanksgiving days. A motherwhose large family lived nearby,and one indirect auntwhose cigarette dangled clandestinely, while the family,in their Christianity, awkwardly but of necessitypretended not to see the stomped-out... Continue Reading →
