Friday, September 19, 2025

THE REAL CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN

By September, flecks 
of jaundice-yellow 

marble the once brassy 
green of leaves. So it seems 

the need to mix 
frivolity and grief—

to kiss Aurora wide-awake 
and Snow White deep-asleep—

was never the province 
of men and women 

in the street's worst 
thoughts and machinations.

The stimulus 
is ductless, 

wireless, general;
the response,

decided from the start. 
Agony is the blood 

in the heart 
of every child of levity. 


Thursday, September 18, 2025

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT

Could it be 
that your thoughts—

just like
individual pigeons—

simply take pleasure 
in glomming together, 

swooping 
in formation 

over life's roofs 
and branches—then 

fracturing again 
at the slam 

of a car door, or 
the odd boom 

of thunder, or 
the approach of another 

creature who is lost 
in just such a musing? 

At first, the observation 
is a little confusing; 

then suddenly, all this
retreating and reforming 

starts to seem 
more like 

an endgame 
than a metaphor.

You're not sure 
what it is, but 

there's probably 
a lesson here.


Wednesday, September 17, 2025

LOVECRAFTIAN

It's almost unreal—
how, after a particularly 
horrific showing,

we obsessively 
ravage ourselves—
conjuring the dead 

and plumbing 
the unsympathetic
depths of the encounter—

until 
we've impossibly 
managed to dredge up

some unholy. 
tentacle-dragging, 
irrefutable cause 

who's black 
hole and absolute-
zero existence,

as evinced 
by the uncategorical 
engorgement of our dread,

we'll never 
forget, but were 
better off not knowing. 



Tuesday, September 16, 2025

THERE ARE OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE

To the sparrow 
who must have got caught 
in the grill 

of this brand new,
fully-loaded, 
midnight black Camry:

who'll speak for you now 
as the flies close in?
I suppose 

that I will—though only 
through roundabout 
questions, I'm afraid, 

whose answers can be 
felt, but they can't 
be explained. 

For instance—how  
in the world do things stay 
where we put them? 

And—is God the you
that watches you 
from deep inside your head? 

Was anything sacred 
before that word 
was invented? 

And, if nothing at all,
does that mean
everything, then? 

Monday, September 15, 2025

GOD'S EYE VIEW

It doesn't really matter 
how closely you hover—

those thick darkened riffs 
of parkland clover,

all silky with glissandi 
of tuneful morning dew, 

cannot change your 
luck for you. It's true,

that byzantine bead structure 
is a Morse code of water 

which spells the whole story 
and moral of your future—

but in order to read it
or hear how it's singing, 

you'd have to have already 
known everything.


Friday, September 12, 2025

SPIDERWEB

Gossamer 
song;

weightless 
aubade;

terse canny 
stanzas, clad in 
dew-clotted thread—

even your maker, 
her highness, 
is frightened 

by the ticklish 
recitation of this
ravishing poem, since 

she knows 
in her soul where each 
filament came from,

yet maintains 
no awareness 

of how it 
got made.

Thursday, September 11, 2025

HUMAN KINDNESS

An enigmatic  
rain puddle—
gunmetal 

gray 
as a blank-
faced cloud—

that no one 
dares step in
because 

the assurance
that it must have 
a bottom 

is only, after all, 
a milk-safe
presumption.