Phantom Self

soul shaped hole

do you pray to comprehend it

qualify coincidences

repeating names in mirrors

until the murdering ghost appears

until all such superstition is known

the conspiracy of existence

falls to mutable arithmetic

rubs its elicited form against gravity

and shapes a miracle mosaic

of proliferating life

what more magic is needed

what more enticements

will you still cover mirrors at night

Thalassophobia

marred salvation hard-won brined

in the lachrymose soul of the sea

for the cross we’ve counted a chorus of storms

fraught stories of resurrections

naïve fictions of returning safely home

what fools know could fill an ocean

is there value in this pen

do you find value in your words

queer but passing they say i’m leviathan

beneath the water and waiting

tell me what i bother passing for

god is an ocean 

for peregrinations and absolutions

so many kneeling on the beach

blinded to the indifference of waves

Driven Days

muse, 

what festivities drive days so quickly to years

as much as we might try to cow the seconds

your enigmatic era lingers pregnant with possibility

while all of my certainties are religiously squandered

the grand sadness tinted now perceived as inhuman

experiences have no taste for secrets only answers

they insist squandered vigor leads to desperation

and old parables sentimentality for human life

as though vigor ever could be squandered

as though human life needed stories

to be tender and sad

Nothing Is My Foundation

nothing is my foundation

so i can’t be sequestered with traitors

solid ground is only good 

for retreat to a bedroom

covers overhead drowning

the world in smothering darkness

nothing is my foundation

it’s too deep and vast to ignore

i’m solely responsible for my path

and treading in the air i can see

a solid world is cold and demoralizing

the noiseless rumors of waves

mask us all from ourselves

issuing forth from the void 

words that split and dig into you 

saturate and lay you bare

there is no perdition 

in these raw red branches

and no need to retreat into 

molding disintegrating matter

the sweet ejection of the phantom essential

tell the enchantresses no i reject you

and spend your hours with me being truly

The Starlit Sea

these poems like waterlogged stars 

unquiet gems gleaming warbling

acquiescing to my derangements  

what a garden that eternal blue

it stretches on forever into fertile black

blooming forth with the radiances of night

so many stars cut and fitted around the moon

come cure me of my copious heartaches

make me transparent with collected light

Untitled 7.26.23

I.

questions bloom on pages 

as flowers on vines

II.

are we so moored to man’s day

we can’t take a moment sitting on the quay

to watch the light split 

spilling its colors on the water

the reflection of the numina here

with us at its vertex

slack-jawed you’ll have to carry 

my face minus bone

upright through the maize and home

III.

oh chaos my companion

pair with me most urgently

my love is naked and desperate here

on the stone and curved as a comma

heart soberly tapping out beats like a piston

while you with a gentle composure of body

remain regal and Egyptian even 

in this traumatic humidity

i’m perpetually in debt

to your darkly lined and heavy-lidded eyes

repossess my love and speak your tongues

with my mouth

The Business End of Creative Writing

 Hi everybody.

Just a quick post to let you all know I'm taking tonight off. My brain won't perform and my heart's not in it. I started working on something that sounded more like a rap than a poem, so I deleted it. Then, I tried to start over and my mind went blank. Well not exactly blank. Just all over other things.

For example: Before my second attempt at writing a poem, I responded to an email from the Director of the Adult Education program for our school district confirming that I will be teaching a class on creative writing this fall. Instead of thinking about poetry, my mind is very much on what my syllabus will look like, and what writing exercises I will give my students.

Anyway, I hope you're all having a great week so far and that you have a good night.

Be good to each other.
~MS

Any Moment Now

as the earth winds away

red sun drops behind the jagged horizon

a shockwave of unholy fear

despair that rises from insignificance

the bombs could fall at any time

and all would be absolute dark silence

the moments of knowledge before

could only be filled by the sharing of love

arms around those whose lives

are worth more to you than your own

tightly now in gratitude the last whispers

Seasons

mourn for the sacred days

long for the light

mourn the deepening

darkness of night

long for the greening

mourn for the hearth

long for light leaning

on grasses’ warmth

mourn for cool shadow

long for the change

mourn the lost length

of day on the range

long for the firelight

mourn for the yield

long for the isolate

snow-covered field

Dread For Nothing

nothing much wrong today

only the vaguest sense 

everything is out of joint

time passes thickly on

a friction prickling thought

ego trembling afraid

before the sun descends

dull ache in the brain who

longs to be unconscious

In My Misspent Youth

in my misspent youth

drunken swinging blindly in a rage

ring fingered fist connecting with

the acned face of night

loosening a tooth or two 

satisfying crunch

flat of the fingers between knuckles

firmly into eye socket 

like lovers just right meant to be fitting

into each other again and again

swelling pulsing feeling 

the lifeblood of night

in my misspent youth 

those who claimed to care gently

sheltered me from caring for myself

Attraction

humans are fluid

like the earth inside spinning

magnetic bodies

Last Words

at last

more than four years past

i let myself delete her last words

and her past messages of contempt

not that i exempt myself from fault

but i can forgive myself at last

and let her be passed

Journey In

sheltered from the rainfall
warm ripe resonating
both mind and hands of use
simply connecting with
authentic core
that closest most crucial voice
peels back misconceptions
falling transformative 
to unknown territory

Monday Nights Are Crazy

No post tonight.

The whole day has been too busy to find time to write, and now I'm exhausted.

Be good to each other.

~MS

Taking Down The Muse

i’m not worthy of your praise or worship

my hold on divinity is tenuous at best

flower petals butterfly wings

are near the same substance

those in-betweens are the light

look there for holy things

Surfacing

spent time this morning swimming in the past

and gasping breath from sport was wrenched ashore

dry now but spitting water blood and teeth

what’s drowning just beneath still keeps a score

Resignation

in that other life

i broke the laptop on my knee

and gladly paid the postage

sending it to the company

with my letter of resignation

in this other life

i woke and opened it on my desk

allowed myself to be held hostage

too weary to take the risk

and sighed with resignation

Urban Nature

hidden wooded track

between painted asphalt lots

the escape within

Meantime

fooling myself there’s an end 

with life on the other side

full of paintings and beauty

some utopian ideal

but Plato is long since dead

and i know end is real

there’s making it through meantime

life crushing you under heel

Weather

rain on the windows

wind giving voice to the leaves

also within me

Being A Dad

No poem tonight. I spent the last few hours having a conversation with my teenage son about our problems communicating with each other.

It seems ok now, but my brain is full.

Be good to each other.
~MS

Broke

i woke this morning with a twisted neck

my head split in two 

and went downstairs to make coffee

fingers broken

spine severed

but work had to be done

by end of business

my heart gave out

dead on my feet

same

time

tomorrow

One Song Before Sleep

tonight the light of embers falling 

over shoulders never ending 

memories and lines that i despise i write

alone long into the night 

like faded blooms that filled 

the rooms i filled with singing with my friends

but now the rooms are fading 

empty and the endings pile up 

like petals wilted brown and dry

and drifting to the pavement

in the puddles rippled raindrops

falling splashes echo out

and make the sound of shushing

voices like a lullaby i heard

and then i dreamed i was a bird

Gale

wild the wind that blows

the black clouds in from the sea

breathe deep the storm

rages in my chest

i am breaking

lightning bolts like cracks flashing 

down from my roiling brain

thunder in my chest

my blood surges to the shore

foam and coarse earth

i am breaking

From Men, Of Men

the truths distilled from walls we built

once drunk declared from a bearded mouth

monstrosity is the measure of a man

calculated in fists blood weapons of war

blades and engines noise and smoke

this is all the best there can be

Memory as Transverse Plane

take a thin slice of light

shining outlined in bright gold

cross section of a moment

Wanton Tastes

come those desirous of impossible flavors

my sentences will guide your tongues tastes

buoyant clouds of foam in potent colors

only poor rogues weeping pour less abeyant syllables

all you insouciant fops are too little equipped

your precious cotton must be lit aflame to rise

this is no place for finite tempers and tepid tones

abandon your disguise of lassitude and give in to joy

Family Visiting

Hi all. No poem post tonight. Family is visiting from out of town and it's been difficult to carve out time today for poetry ideas.

I'll be back with a new poem tomorrow.

Be good to each other.
~MS

Meander

paw prints by the stream

tiny five-fingered claws

two sets overlapped

in the soft brown mud

the water gurgled

over slick green rocks

smooth stones collected

a shelf at the bend 

there the tracks were lost

in the dappled light

shifting leaf shadows

the edge of the wood

Aspects Of Madness

fireworks flaming up the restive night 

shutter windows guttering flames light

shudder aged whispers of fluttering wings

mutter secrets glistening on the printed page

beyond calm glowing shining in flight 

be gone angry aspect and elemental glare 

turn the shadow streaking now no longer there 

bum-rush of the shadow glaring at my shoulder

once standing over sleeping women wept 

glancing fast yet gleaning 

as though tied to the mast

screaming into the storm then shipwrecked  

fairy queen blessed the isle of crystalline wreaths

finding quartz needles shoved between teeth

brought back refracted splashing 

light upon the wall

off to dreams then 

no consequence at all