Better I Die

I jump at the touch on my shoulder,turn and find no other one there.I’ll feel a warm sigh upon my neckand shiver here in my chair.The face I spy when I scan the crowdI haven’t seen in years.The voice I heard the other daywas one no one else hears.You still haunt me everywhere I go…

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Hobbled

Here by this window,beneath this desk,these feet march and scuff,wild as a mustang whodoesn’t know the confinementof a corral or, God forbid, a stall.But here they are,hobbled by an old man’s bondsto this space at this time,rather than the slow walkto it-doesn’t-matter,in steps this way or that,instead of up and down,

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Running the Out

If I still could, I would,busting out of my two-pointwith a stuttering shimmy-shake,crossing over to turn the DB’s hipsperpendicular to mine and then,about six strides off the line,quick-angle my shouldersand eyes toward the middle,plant my foot and take thatlong stride to the sideline,looking back toward the QB,expecting the ball to be…

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Thought So

What if we could talk?Just me and you.The you at the endof that last sentence.Face to face and eye to eye,no imagination interruptingmy listening and consumingyour words,like a hungry wolf.No preconceived notionsscreening your receptionof mine, like a shieldfending off proffered flowers.Could we manage that?I guess it doesn’t matter,

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Wading Again in the Stream of Consciousness

I suppose it’s not very brightto toss my line back in this stream.I know the fish prob’ly won’t bitea hook baited with hope and a dream. But that’s all I’ve left in the cansince all my night crawlers I’ve used.Those words wriggled in my brain pan,tangling in the dark, all confused. Though, once untied, in the daylight,

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Calliope and the Race to Nowhere

He would love the warmth of her heart, while she knew the beauty in his soul.And yet, it was, they strayed apart, while somehow they still made a whole.Nothing like that which might have been if they’d raced along together.Never competing, more akin to escaping their lives’ bad weather.But that’s a race that can’t be won…

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On Days Like Today

It’s days like today whenI’d need walk next to the water. Didn’t matter if it was the river, the park pond or the one on campus, even any fountain tossing prisms of light and sound at my senses. They all spoke to me, while hanging art on the walls of my imagination. Too often they were pictures of you or melodies upon which…

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Back When

I’ve lost so many memories of back when I could remember, back when a leaf may have spoken to me with two voices whenever I rubbed it softly between my fingers, back when I had the time to watch how the minute hand would crawl from the 58th little line on the circleto the big 12 it wore like a bindi…

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I imagine…

I imagine…So much of my discourse sets sail on those two words.I imagine you this or they that.You know, I imagine it must be rather nice to or painful if.If you stop and are mindful of your langua…

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I imagine…

I imagine…So much of my discourse sets sail on those two words.I imagine you this or they that.You know, I imagine it must be rather nice to or painful if.If you stop and are mindful of your language or thoughts,you, too, might cast off from the empirical to the perhaps more than you can imagine. …

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going there alone…again

“come,” i hear the voice say,each sleepless night to my closed ears and open eyes.“where?” i sometimes ask, when any destination might do. “does it matter?” replies the voice i might recognize from any yesterday if tomorrow wasn’t the closer one to me. “are you going with me?” i hear from that small space within, dim-lighted from dying hopes…

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Some Someday Song

my fingertips are soft 
so to play for you is possibly painful, even though my fingers are strong.
but i wish to play you a someday song, so pain is possible
no matter how gentle
the strings and i commune. better perhaps applying my fingertips to yours. we could listen, without hearing, to our whorls and loops strum in a harmony.

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It’s Only a Poem

Rhymes I’d need would include one’s like “manic,”unless I bent the hell out of the words.So maybe I can’t write one about panic, 
though it looks like I’ve a head start on “birds.”But I love to twist rhymes, not quite organic,
where two words jibe with the end of a line.Idea’s to not clang your mind’s tympanic


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Twenty Knocks & Twenty More

The house’s shadows reach from dawn to the pines, while the oaks tower above and reach beyond them all. The coda from spring songs signal the second act of courtship as new nests settle where last …

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I Never Painted You Any Picture

I never painted you any pictureexcept maybe with these silly old words.Not old ones like you would find in Scripture,just the same la-la tweet-tweet like some birds.But if I did a picture one day p…

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At Last

The strings beneath my fingers bite like February would my ungloved paperboy hands. Lost my calluses like memories of those days, when I had more hair than sense instead of less of both. Trying to …

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Another Ambiguous Statement of Love, Loss and Hopeless Hope to Everyone But You

If it was fun, you might be rightin saying “Where’s the fun in that?”If it wasn’t fun, you’d also be rightsquinting over my shoulder asI tap away here and whispergasp,“You can’t be serious!”S…

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Shiny and New

Sometimes I wonder what we’d be like, if once again we were shiny and new.No new burdens yet to be carried on the still-unknown road ahead. No this way or that decisions yet. Just humming along sha…

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Problematic

The list would be long, if I’d stop to count. Some are big and weigh me down to my knees, others I trip over where I used to leap. I wish I could rid myself of them because they poke and prod me wh…

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Always Sometimes Almost

The words came easier to me than the others, but by then, I’d translated so many letters into mind-pictures from the bubbles above the costumed crime fighters’ pulp-pictures in my uncle’s comic boo…

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Perspective Tanka

A seed doesn’t know what it one day will become once it falls to earth. So a tree fallen beside,knew not it was born a seed.On the first day of 2026’s National Poem Writing Month (herea…

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Like Your Hands on My Face

Vivaldi gave it voice with birdsong violins and four-stringed snow melttumbling down musical staff streambeds on the way to April.This I recall because I would listen to it over and over again,
my …

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I’ll Never Touch Tomorrow

Tomorrow’s coming whether I want it or not.The next day’s just tomorrow’s tomorrow.Yesterday was once a tomorrow, I recall.The day before that day, as well.And though I cannot touch any tomorrow,I …

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Let’s Do (and Say We Didn’t)

Let’s do (and say we didn’t.)Would this small world even care?I know, t’was never in the cards,but what if I took your dare?What if I stepped out of shadowsinto sunlight with my eyes shaded?Who wou…

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Sadness Is Invisible

Sadness is invisible and weighs not a thing, but it holds me face down like some bullying Goliath. And I am no David. All that I can sling are words with less gravity than sadness, and if ever they…

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The Warmer Wings of Winter

My cheek sizzles where the wind slapped it. This complicated duetI share with winter reachingits crescendo, both of ushowling, and only one using words. No one can hear them above the roarfrom the …

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