poem

to capture the sensation of a stone in time
wafting without realization, unconscious yet conscious of it,
adrift in change without fear,
yet lost, excited,
confused,
ordinary and helpless, but despite that undying belief,
desperately believing that not a word of it true,
that within the exceptionally ordinary there exists
something like a universe, or something of it,
all of us creating it, contributing to one another,
and yet angry for semantics, definition in discourse,
anchors, anchors, anchors intertwining unraveling and exploding out like
smudgy little steel balls on a cheap newton's cradle:
an arduous endeavor, and yet effortless,
full of self-doubt and self-loathing,
cathartic and fulfilling, daunting, ultimately empty, signifying nothing.

forget another

don't worry about those abstractions you wrap your mind around;
you've had your whole life to look back on the
dirt pounded between candy-shell cobblestones
and words sounded out that seemed familiar except
somehow different-
and i'm tired of reminding you that
it might not perhaps be as simple as
you think it is- in fact, it might be even simpler,
and such a complex person with such a head mixed in with the
last-minute misgivings and missed whispers
in crowded airport terminals
would probably miss that if it weren't for
things like the leaves of the trees (they're so green)
and the sun's glimmer on a beetle's back.

penitence

i find myself temperamentally unsuited to face the jeers and chuckles of
the whistling rabble, who, thumbs plucked from pocket tops they
precariously hang upon with the weight of those
broad, wind-catching shoulders that strike their positions, even as they
seamlessly blur into an unchecked pirouette with that uneasy diffidence
cursing us all, will offer up in way of a rhythm's return
these bland assertions,
quips that kill a room and strap my tongue from any its apt remarks,
in such a demonstration of the consequences plaguing those of a more
calculating mind befitting a young...I'm lost for a reference.

there is not much to be said for
the art that gets you by the daily
struggles and their empty
nests in
empty thoughts abide

new photos

those awkward kids that adopt
steely looks and
treated hair
to me betray the simple past
they spent like moments
of a waking dream, or
memories of something
new, deja vu, so it seems;
i remember one,
sprinkled, pimpled, freckled
cheeks,
now rubbed to
glisten under
neon lights,
her hair was chopped, a mop
now smoothed into
locks of fine thread
weaving around her ears and
neck,
that innocence that
hovered about her
stained red lips, now glossy hard
a visage, adult, sophisticated
but mostly
just a fleeting image of
decay

holds

there is a moment that
holds me together like
a warm brick wall
newly stacked,
gently padded with cement and
laid atop one another
across and across
by a sweaty man's
calloused hands

brunette

my renegade daughter
with hands that
unravel and explode

an adamantine smile
that rides the
easy wind over

collapsed around
decades of her eternal
growth

wrapped carelessly
in existential questions
and flights of fancy,

stirred with chamomile,
drunk in slowly