As I sometimes do, I was writing poems while waiting for tonight’s open mic to start. After one or two ‘ regular’ poems, I thought I would do something different: I filled a whole page of my ginormous sketchbook/journal with a single poem. But here’s how I did it: I wrote alternate lines from the top [...]
Not a very productive day… Whirlpool eyes chestnut hair the thousand-watt smile smoky voice and a way with words From a face in the crowd to a face in my mind straight from the page outside of time Long nights endless mornings a single point of convergence A fantasy nothing else to me in my [...]
Continuing my verbless journey through May… Fire in the trees color, light, heat, ash Symbolism with intent a cocktail of confusion A sea change worlds in flux jazz afternoons blues in the night Fear of knowledge fear of youth Resistance—Pushback—Struggle—Conflict One way or another the inevitable resolution Lessons from the imagination (3 M3ay 2016)
Neither a pantoum nor a poem about politics.. This is fifty-three It’s been that long since the moment when I became me Some of the hair is grey the eyesight has started to go— Actually, so has the hair… Everything’s a bit thicker above the belt and the knees aren’t what they used to be [...]
Not a pantoum or a poem about politics (yes!), but necessary. It always starts in the same place: at the back of the neck below the base of the skull just above the fold At first, I don’t think much of it Perhaps I slept wrong or it’s a knot that can be loosened with [...]
Managing to get some things down on paper despite being mostly occupied with meeting a Monday deadline… I don’t think rainbows have ridges but that’s where we seem to be going From end to end short-wave to long-wave colors bleed and the mist makes an array of millions of tiny lenses that seem to follow [...]
Inspired by a photograph by Hisatomi Tadahiko… The shadow makes you look like a statue a warrior in shades of grey your sharpened features ready to show no mercy poised to attack from every angle Your expression is blank a cipher open to interpretation but giving nothing away not even your full lips and heavy-lidded [...]
Inspired by a photograph from three years ago (and an English subtitle from a Japanese drama I was watching on Hulu). ‘…but you weren’t yourself after all.’ The world you knew had ceased to exist; everything was now different. Even the little bit of same around the edges could not change this new essential truth. [...]
Imagine a corridor lined with thirty-foot statues. A bright light shines off in the distance. As you walk along through alternating shadow and light, gazing up at the stone figures that tower above you, the shadows move across their faces, occasionally teasing your eyes with moving figures that quickly disappear the moment your glance shifts. [...]
