Monday, September 23, 2013


the light and the dark

the sky
it darkens-
and nothing is left
but twilight.
and the world
becomes shadow,
the only lights in the sky
the bright, eager stars.
and though
the stars
are beautiful-
fabulously, undeniably, beautiful...
the thing that lights them?
it
is still
the darkness.

Friday, September 6, 2013


her head, she thought, had always been full of ideas,
just the way a lightbulb
might be filled with light.
it had always been that way, she thought,
and sometimes a something good might come out, onto the paper.
but it didn’t usually, 
and when it did, 
it was good,
nearly too good. 
they stared and oohed and aahed-
but no, she thought, 
they didn’t really get it,
but then, neither did she, only knew that it was 
something
big and peculiar 
and that it would always be there,
like a memory, or a photograph.
and sometimes it would work,
the thing,
and gears would spin and locks would click-
and when the words stopped coming,
she told them,
she read to them, 
and they would say,
oh, it’s so good!
but then she realized-
didn’t they know she wanted it to be more than good?
couldn’t they tell?
but she also realized
that the words would never stop coming,
so she came to a conclusion-
the words were all she had.

the light bled from the sky in colors-
because that was how the world 
expressed itself.
silhouetted against the twilight-
was a tree,
lone,
watchful,
gnarled,
yet still there,
though totally,
utterly,
alone.
darkness blankets
slowly-
yet fast-
you could not watch it, 
yet it falls thick-
tangible,
seeming hard to miss.
tiny winking lights
scatter the pitch sky
drawing unintentional pictures,
but
unintentional
is the most beautiful kind.
a luminous bloody circle
is suspended from an invisible wire-
hanging in entire contrast
from the black-
from the black, that envelopes and sucks everything away-
the mountains,
the light,
the hand in front of your face,
the warm person next to you.
the world does not again return the land-
until the first paints
color the sky,
pinks and reds and oranges-
and a fabulous array 
of everything in between,
everything to beautiful to put into a single word.
this day is not a cold one,
where it begins with blues and grays and black.
this day is ancient,
the first day
and the last.
and once again,
there is a silhouette against the horizon-
a tree,
lone, 
watchful, 
gnarled,
yet still there,
totally,
utterly,
alone.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

When there's nothing left to say

Sometimes
you can hold a person in your arms
you can cry with them
you can do everything you will
you can imagine
you can greive
you can think of the different ways that it would go
if nothing ever happened
you can look into the sky and wonder,
you yell, stomp, talk, scream,
but sometimes you don't need to-
because there's nothing left to say.

Monday, January 28, 2013

The woman that came from the forest
Who lived with the baker and the florist
Even they don't know her name
The woman who came from the forest.

Others say she came from the sea
sheltering in
a wild
golden oak tree
there's more than one,
tales of pride
and glee,
and everyone knows of the woman
from the forest
and the sea

a broken heart

she scattered the letters across the table
in a way
it used to drive me crazy
She used to leave the change
splayed out across the table
in a way that drove me crazy
she used to leave all the doors open
but even the air in the house
mourns her
so I don't close them
because if I moved the letters,
the tears would come again,
burning hot and angry, 
and if I used the change
whatever I bought would end up in the trash
and if I took all the kale out of the fridge,
I'd end up
buying more
just to remind me of her
so I slouch through open doors
and cook at a penny scattered table
and stare at rotting kale
the air from the fridge, cold,
feels like my heart
and right then it cracks
so through modern life
one would wonder
why
there is no cure for
a broken heart