Skip to main content

Needle

A splinter of bone makes a needle
that can prod a splinter out of flesh.

A needle can shrink a swollen knee
or swell a basketball.

A needle in the lobe pierces your ear with gold.
A needle through your ear drum silences the world.

Lovers needle each other,
taking stitches in the heart.

A needle plunges poison in your veins
or pulls out blood to reveal your cure.

Two needles fashion a sweater to warm your chest.
Two needles hold thick hair to cool your neck.

Pine needles stay alive for three years.

21st Century Totems

Little dirt track that cuts away,
folds back like a geographical wrinkle,
just dry blown wheat swaying,
sun bleached, summer drunk,
upstanding citizens after the rain
but they snap like brittle chicken necks
between my fingers.

Tin-can roof and creaky veranda chair,
they string up the 21st century outside the door,
suspend it from wooden poles
tall as ancient totems, and
summon black feathered gods,
who sit high above on their electric thrones,
though their worship comes cheaper
than a dollar a minute.

Little dirt track that cuts away,

Why Do You??

Empty spaces, empty places, empty dreams Leave them untouched Do not prop them up with your pillars of False hopes, false fantasies, false fancies Why do you weave stories that don't exist? Why do you imagine feelings that were never there? Why do you think there is a place for you which never was? That oasis is just your mirage - a figment of your loneliness Trying to hold on to something that never was Trying to feel the emotions that you never experienced Trying to look for something that you will never have Why do you think there is an otherwise? Why do you still hope for the next week?

Demonic Text

Our inner demons text
“You up?” asks yours
“Come over” purrs mine

Our inner demons leap
Raging seas of lava
Between our sleeping selves

Our inner demons cross
Volcanoes and galaxies
And a queen size bed

Insects of Mass Destruction

Some say assassin bugs, some scorpions,
but in the second century AD,
the Hatrians, as if with magic wands,
forced Severus’ besieging men to flee
with frightful potted bugs hurled at the throng.
One of the oldest types held bees in hives
flung at the enemy, who knew those long
barbed stingers could be nastier than knives.
And then there were the plague-infected fleas,
bred on the blood of prisoners of war,
that Ishii unloosed on the Chinese,
taking four hundred thousand lives or more.
Yet Man, by far the world’s most wicked bug,
shrinks from a spider crawling on the rug.

Blackouts

My better judgement fails me when it guides me through the vacant lot, towards the bridge that waved you goodbye.
I’ve always wondered if things would’ve played out differently if I had been there to slam the brakes on time, but at this point who knows?

From the bridge when I look closely, really look, I can make you out gazing back at me from out afar and when I lean out as if to reach you, the bridge’s railings stop me as you smile before it all goes black.

Equal Rights

Thousands of poems describe doors:
Doors symbolic or metaphoric,
Old doors, gold doors,
Doors that never open;
And forests have been leveled
On the plenitude of verse
Heralding swords and guns.

With the right agent,
Plus a pleasing profile,
Even such homely objects
As baths and beds,
Kettles and shoes,
Have infiltrated
The finest publications.

But what about the rest of us?
Toothbrushes, nail clippers,
Hair-dyes, cheese graters,
Spatulas, fire extinguishers?!
Where are our odes, our sonnets?
Who yearns to write the ballad
Subscribe to New Poems