The destroyer of worlds speaks with one thousand mouths. (From "Tears wet the sea colour sky")
"The Thread," "Tenseless Love," and "Perfect Meaning"
(The RavensPerch, August 6, 2018)
"After the Flood" and "The dead know more than you allow"
(Poetica Magazine, Spring 2014, print edition only)
(read now)
"When I told you I was thinking about nothing, I lied" and "is Joy"
(Cobalt Review, Issue 10, Winter 2013)
(read now)
"Becoming and Coming", "Our love is suns' fusions thick", and "Of the Universe and My Insects"
(Poetry Pacific, 2.2, August 5, 2013)
"In Light of Judgment"
(Dead Flowers, Vol 1, No. 10, May 31, 2013)
"The apocalypse in my mind"
(Sleet Magazine, Spring 2013)
"Stars Fall Nude" and "In Summer Nights"
(Sleet Magazine, Fall 2011)
"It is still too much the mystery, our love
(Belize, July 2010)"
(Welter, 2011)
(read now)
"The voices in the hallway I’ll never tell you about"
(riverbabble 18, Winter 2011)
"The letter n"
(Xenith, June 2009)
"A Theory of Everything"
(Dogzplot, Spring 2009)
"Dear Love"
(Slow Trains, Spring 2009)
"The End of the Lexicon"
(subscription required) (The Vocabula Review, October 2008)
(read now)
"When you are in your moon and I am in my sun"
(subscription required) (The Vocabula Review, October 2008)
(read now)
"My mind’s a cathedral, exploded in"
(The 2River View, Fall 2008) (audio files, too)
"The Reverse Funeral"
(The 2River View, Fall 2008) (audio files, too)
"See the work of His hands"
(Manna, Vol. 12, No. 2, Fall 1991)
"fighting without and fear within"
winner, Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Scholarship Awards
Kent State University, Kent, OH, 1986
"After the Flood"
(first published in Poetica Magazine, Spring 2014)
If every word mattered,
I would shout above the storm,
and you would hear through the silence afterward,
how my love is like the somber waiting
for the return of the dove.
"The dead know more than you allow"
(first published in Poetica Magazine, Spring 2014)
Let’s raise the dead like he said we should
or are you afraid
of what would stagger
forth by name
from your crowded graves
to sit down with you
and tell.
"When I told you I was thinking about nothing, I lied"
(first published in Cobalt Review, Issue 10, Winter 2013)
Marry me in some tomb of king or prophet,
Say you are my clay and captured stream,
You of tree and field and rock and fish,
Hidden by time’s bright pocket and memory’s maps.
Sing me with a language you alone will tongue,
Say you are my awful scriptures, planet dust,
You of backboned lace and cleft wonderings,
Driven by life’s pointed heart into my undone hands.
Be me for my lonesome cry,
Say you will take brain bone and cock,
You who destroy worlds and backlogged crosses,
Made to adorn our lives with unspent suns.
Electrocuted words whisper epiphanies in drums.
I ride where I fit.
No sands of our last desert could stop me from my steep reward.
is Joy
(first published in Cobalt Review, Issue 10, Winter 2013)
my cells clawing their way with need from re-membering
pieces of our love,
tongue touch praise and song,
my suffering ends where you begin
dressed in sacred skins
sheltered and holy
unfolding slow
rainy delights
and I weep
knowing you will never know
with what joy I recline at the table of your body.
"It is still too much the mystery, our love
(Belize, July 2010)"
(first published in Welter, 2011)
It is still too much the mystery,
still too much like fusing suns
coming burning and mirrored split
across the sea’s table
where we know to tread cool, melodic waves
and dare to sip to slake the thirst
that madness brings.
See the jellyfish seethe beneath; I point to the canopy.
Your red toenails at the end of our bed
exhort me to my kingdom.
"The End of the Lexicon"
(first published in The Vocabula Review, October 2008)
A word can just paralyze.
Chronic words, neat completers.
Experience distills meaning.
Experiences mother meanings.
My father is dust.
Fresh.
We recite braille to the deaf
carrying tomes from a decrepit youth.
Every conversation cries out for parentheticals and footnotes.
Dictionary definitions are useless
when everyone’s walking around
with a different dictionary inside,
blind and shameful and lonely and
finally glad
"When you are in your moon and I am in my sun"
(first published in The Vocabula Review, October 2008)
When you are in your moon and I am in my sun,
our many-prismed passions chained, ribbon our fleshly prisoned souls,
unreflected fetal light bends to time, succumbed,
to each we mouth a shout, listening to the vacuum sing reluctantly,
when you are in your moon, and I am in my sun.
When you nibble your moon and I consume my sun,
our often-tiered hearts palpate methods to construct
labyrinthine mausoleums to our coddled gods
who genuflect on glass kneecaps to their clownish creations;
when you nibble your moon and I consume my sun.
When you walk your moon and I run my sun,
time twists cruel icicles through our marrow,
our isolated bones call each to all. My flesh does not fit.
Our hallowed sighs rest on crucified stars, falling,
when you walk your moon and I run my sun.
When you throw your moon and I tempt my sun,
the dark matter between us mocks and cries its need:
Rockets love best when they explode.
Her now-anonymous diamond bleeds.
When you throw your moon and I tempt my sun.
When I am exiled on your vacant moon,
and you are swallowed by my swimming sun,
I ask the only-obelisk questions:
Can you ever know my marbled mind?
Will I re-touch your uni-starred soul?
"See the work of His hands"
(first published in Manna, Vol. 12, No. 2, Fall 1991)
The spider falls she
floats on
to the puddle
spreads
fantastically to its cement edges
under over
hanging sticks with taffeta sprouts
water stuck colors
water stuck spider
spider splash
legs kick to the sun.
Not submerged she
wriggles,
bringing water up over
her rounded belly
open,
opened to the sky
my eye stares with her.
Her web above remains soft light.
"fighting without and fear within"
(winner, Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Scholarship Awards,
Kent State University, Kent, OH, 1986)
if i could give my fears up of everything i have like
letters on their way and rain fall falling
falls down downing around the bend it lives
about the world and me and you, my friend, sit still cornered
in a four square corner licking wounds you got from him
over there, under ground. now the blood cries
over land and sky and deep deep sea
washes through the sands, up on every shore
picks each stone in every bubble blowing
for size and fits, encloses in the skin
new life blown in seeks fresh skin it
breathes on in and takes control once had but never lost
just gave because He loved and gave enough to make receivers
hate, just enough to die alone, every one does, every one will
either way you see or don’t it works you must
believe the fears you know are not yours alone and never were
were made to conquer, be conquered, as the time will be
the One who came, there you lie overthrown in a deep
corner. up that tree you climb, down that red hole, no good
you know, the price of blood covers All.
