How To Take Back The Night

night is no longer mysterious and free

but hidden and anxious 

a time for counting hours

slippery condensation of whiskey and rocks

i wake in the morning feeling mugged

as though i was clubbed in the head 

and someone stole my time

but unjustly no crime was committed

if the curse of immortality is bloodthirsty

there are endless vermin in the world

send them my way to drain and a bottle

then just whisky and words and howl at the moon

Invocation III

You came barren with your sisters from the sea,

hair to your breasts in braided ropes and dripping brine.

Emerald eyes of flickering torchlight shine

set in your radiant face of dusk lit gloom.

In a single voice your triplet message sang,

Give us children, and we will give you songs.

So there in seafoam and flotsam we made you three,

and now my hungry soul cries out to thee.

With love, these songs for you, and yours for me,

Hecate.

Let's Lay All Night Wound

Let’s lay all night wound 

                                    in each other’s arms,

our tongues busy with life, 

                                    and love, and language,

window open to fall’s chill, 

                                    a square of streetlight,

and leaf shadows on the blanket 

                                    clothing our joined legs,

sighs mixing with quiet sounds of tires
                                    on the rain-soaked street.

Vagaries

measured quantities of routine 

form worn familiar footpaths

        in repetition well-traveled trails 

        become tiresome

vestiges of a once varied but stable life

        adhesive labels on dry cardboard 

        stuck too tenaciously to tear away

        without sacrificing some skin

is it always inevitably eventually 

        the choice of a boring life or a painful one

and how could it be so narrow with such wonders

        words birthing worlds and colors astral cars

        calling and calling to come delightedly astray

Of Silence and Rain

A silent house on a rainy day

is full of potential distractions,

but I like to open a blank book,

to smell its mellow, vanilla leaves,

and sketch in peace with steaming coffee;

to make marks, hearing the subtle scratch

of the sharp pen nib bleeding black ink,

birthing an expression of nature

filtered through attuning consciousness,

itself a bloom of orchestrating earth.

Sepulchral Rose

the tomb lights the rose

deplorably too

even the sun goes

thorned vines shade the tomb

i succumb to you

dancing little doom

A Curious Fear

something lingers there just outside my sight

at the outer edge of my consciousness

some vague essence always peripheral

calling me to toss my blindness aside

throw curtains of awareness open wide

overcome the repetitious and dull

all reactionary responsiveness

and lift my weary face toward the light

but what rapacious creature craves my view

not being sure i keep my gaze askew

Poetry Moves

poetry has moved me

in with friends and lovers

then back with my parents

from Corning to Fredonia

from a student dorm to a trailer

to an apartment half underground

back to a dorm

it once packed me off 

to Rochester then to Buffalo 

with a woman and her child

from a mall bookstore gig 

to café work then a bookshop 

on the Elmwood strip

it moved me in hospitals 

for the births of my children

through divorce and marriage

a custody battle

too many deaths

poetry keeps moving me

around Long Island

by Babylon and Whitman’s home

and Melville’s namesake

Deer Park and Lindenhurst 

it still moves me

moves in me through me

moves me

One Wish

my love, to go back

simply to be unselfish

and give you that gift

Old Lessons

anguish is automatic as breath

here where so much death 

is both needless

and financially inevitable

and tonight we drove past someone

sleeping on a bench behind the bank

folded in a filthy American flag

we didn’t stop to invite her to a meal

or sleep in our house

the imagined danger was more real

than her unsheltered shivering there

some lessons obviously out of step 

should be cut from curriculums 

like when we teach our children

what as children we were taught

to share

Some Thoughts On My Recent Experience With Art Block

For the last two weeks I’ve felt a lot of resistance to making art. I started this daily writing practice again to combat that same feeling, but now I am experiencing resistance in going to my sketchbook or standing at my easel. I’m not practicing, so I feel like I’m falling behind. 

And the guilt I feel as the result of putting off making art is getting all tangled up with the good feelings I have when I finally manage to pick up my pencils, pens, and/or paints and get something right.

Often now when I get the urge to draw or paint, my first thought is, “Who cares? Nobody gives a shit if you paint or don’t paint; draw or don’t draw; write or don’t write. So, who cares?”. And a lot of the time, that asshole voice wins. I feel discouraged, and the sketchbook stays closed, the easel light stays off.

Now, two weeks later, I’m starting to get angry. Who cares? Who gives a shit? 

Well, the answer is: I do.

I started asking myself last night why I diminish my own interests in art, and why I keep letting that asshole in my head discourage and bully me.

The other bullshit excuse for resistance I give myself is, “You can’t do that. It’s going to look like garbage, and then there goes that canvas/that page in your sketchbook.”

Well, so what? That’s what sketchbooks are for. And if I don’t paint and draw, I won’t get any better at painting and drawing.

I have to be allowed to fail. For every painting I make that I love, I need to allow myself ten to twenty that I don’t.

That doesn’t mean I’m going out of my way to make crummy art. It’s only to say that I am still a novice. Mistakes are my bread and butter. I know mistakes are how I’ll learn what not to do. I know what I am capable of, but now and then I’m bound to fall short of the mark, and that has to be ok.

I recently heard, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Also: “Done is better than perfect.” 

I don’t want to adopt mediocrity as a credo, but I do want to feel safe and happy making art. And I want to have the confidence to make art only for me.

Fragile Thing

joy is a soap bubble

borne on a breath of air

skin of rainbows and glint of sun

child's laughter in the yard

over blades of grass

Roadside Memorial

crux of the morning 

driftwood braces grace the gateway 

crosswise and crossed out

a motorcycle ride gone wrong

crosses nailed onto the tree

and flowers by the roadside

the punishment of nothingness 

in the face of eternity

make of me an example oh lord 

where have you gone 

the invisible hand reticent 

so too the garden of earthly delights 

the writing on the stalks there spoke 

with mouths of petaled lips singing

away away go far away 

tend to other gardens 

the seeds will scatter on the wind

and make new land for you 

oh the inevitable sign of life 

that came before him out of the sky 

the clouds had boiled away 

revealing headlight shapes 

but by then it was too late

for all around cracked asphalt smoking 

rusted red in blood and burning wreckage

then only tail lights in the black

The Damned Cat

the damned cat

pissing on boxes and bags

and even the bathmat

any paper on the floor

in the corners of the couches

clean clothes left folded here or there

get covered in fine gray hair

doc says there’s nothing wrong

well i don’t want him anymore

but when we put him out

he yowls and climbs the screen door

anxiously eats the grass

pukes foamy green puddles on the patio

back inside he hides

or curls up by a window takes a nap

never wants the warmth of anyone’s lap

a scratch behind the ear will likely earn a bite

it’s just not right 

but we wait for him to die

that damned cat

The Way Through Contrition

awakened and buried deep down

beneath heavy predawn darkness

remorse is a wet woolen blanket

hands shaking holding together

the halves of my head

counting my failings to love upon love

at the thought of her love

gratitude an open window

a cool wind and

acceptance lungfuls of air

Arrest

still hours make for jagged homes

spare and celibate guests ringing

followed by hours verging on being

yes home has shown us barren nights

all the shrunken desires grow fangs 

knocking scratching incessantly for entrance

where bewildered verses are encased

under these stories of muffled shrieking

so here halted in my house 

(and worse luck it’s locked from outside)

after these branching thoughts wheedle all night

tangled dangling by shoelaces i wait for morning

Second Coming Canceled

when the too red sun is almost gone

i turn and face the coming night

the dark lavender sky

stars shimmer through smoke

flickering airplane lights

streetlights encircled 

by needles and moths

the monstrous howl of distant engines

crickets singing somewhere

fireflies and traffic lights flash

on and off trapped in cycles

and it pains me to think

i hope we don’t make it

i’m sad to say that’s the truth

and i pointlessly worry at the world

my boys will come to accept

as just the way it is and

we do what we can and

shaking our monkey heads

shrugging shoulders bare palms up

as if to say ooh ooh eee eee 

that will have to suffice

Edifice

sometimes it’s best

to learn of ourselves

by another’s rejection

and excel at the art of loving

what it seems no one else can

to alone make of ourselves

a temple of self-knowledge

to make of ourselves in solitude

a holy citadel of love

so when we throw the doors wide

for fresh air and human voices

we might recognize the one

by their equally distinct architecture

while standing grandly beside

instead of becoming small

and warily drifting in to worship

The Scales

for husband and father

art is infidelity

for poet and painter

homelessness looms

but ghosts always

absent the other half

laughter in the living room

some sweet joke to later go

over my head

a flood of guilt

washes away the will the words

and saturates the paint

absence or the unheeded call

always weighing

which i am willing to regret

The City Himself

click picture the city

shot from the wide sky

that all-consuming amoeboid sprawl

looking smashed concrete steel glass

a glinting symbol or symptom

human power over all

so far from rejecting

the Nietzschean Ubermensch

this order itself reflects

self scrabbling for more self

until only the self is left

kills reforms connects

in his plane overhead 

he shoots

taking a selfie

Back At It Again

I'm deeply sad to report that only two people signed up for my creative writing class. The minimum requirement was 6 ... so I'll try again in the spring. 

Rather than give in to this horrible emotional low I'm feeling, I'm going to pick up the habit again.

A post a day until I don't.

I think mostly what I do here will still be poetry, but I'm not ruling out short fiction or even essays. I am starting fresh and only keeping one of the original rules about posting daily: Whatever I post must be original and made the same day as the post. Inner critic be damned!

This of course means generating a heaping pile of steaming linguistic garbage by the time I take any kind of extended break again, but so be it! There should also be some little treasures in the mix. And if I move even one person with trash or treasure, I'll feel fulfilled all the same.

If extended time away has taught me anything it's that I need to write, and I need it to be routine or it might be a month between times that I try. I make no excuses for my artistic laziness, only attempts to combat it.

Not creating regularly makes me feel stuck. I used to have these dreams that I was stuck in a pipe unable to back out and unable to push through. Lately it's felt like my dreams are coming true.

See you tomorrow!

Be good to each other.

Tumbling Into September

tumbling into September

watching the low sun behind

butterflies lighting on the new sunflower

brown areole of such late hour

haloed in that golden crown

and i in awe 

so close to a goodbye letter

dear summer

put my pen back down