Poetry
3/3/2022
Melting
I don't know what I want
I don't know what I need
I don't know right or wrong
I would forget my plans
forsake my home
cast off my clothing
dissolve my name ...
3/2/2022
Wonderland
The Beloved herself
is incidental—
neither Heaven nor the Way,
just a white rabbit passing by, living
her life, luring you
into freefall. Maybe she becomes
your lover, maybe your dearest friend,
maybe not, maybe ...
2/20/2022
Nine
A homeless man wrapped in a greasy coat
and an otherworldly calm approached me
as I rushed home from work
down the sidewalk.
"Greetings," he said. "I am you
from the future. ...
12/4/2019
Bucket List
Do nothing
having done everything.
11/11/2019
Negotiation
Maybe I was wrong
twice—
love is neither finding someone
to fit an ideal,
nor welcoming someone
as she is—
9/10/2019
Meant
I am learning
to distrust certainty, and learning
to trust
slowly
as destiny comes clear—
not as providential future
but in looking back, noticing,
and choosing now—
Everything led to this,
all this was meant to happen
because
it happened
and we are making
meaning—we are choosing,
this is …
3/24/2019
Containment
I shed my coat and wondered
how my old friends would react
to the tentacle gliding
across the table edge, fidgeting and feeling out
textures. I have been letting it
explore me and my old haunts—
curiosity killed the cat
but I am not a cat
today. I am a …
3/3/2019
At the Crossroads
The only right sacrifice
in the timeless temple
is to leave
by but one
of the Thousand Thousand Ways.
It would seem a sacrilege here
to forsake
Nine Hundred Thousand
Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine
perfectly good
roads to happiness
and right living
—Nine Hundred Thousand
Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine good wives
each …
12/20/2018
Silent Night
I need space.
Public spaces are filling up
with noise and flashing lights.
Parking lots are filling up.
Hotels and guest rooms are filling up
with homeward bound.
Family rooms are clogging
with tinsel and stagnating stuff
and credit card purchases and tripping hazards.
Kings are hunting children.
There is …
12/16/2018
Meiosis
I can feel their subsonic moans
out there beyond the membrane.
Swimming through the metacosmos,
alternate universes
are drawing near—
other ways
how everything could have been,
how things could be.
It could all go wrong.
It could all finally go right.
My universe secretes something.
These others swell with …
11/19/2018
Dealings with the Shadowlord
Witches whisper of partnering
closely, carefully, dangerously
in the dark
with certain gods
or goddesses
fickle or willful, playful or demanding,
surging with power.
I found the scat of a large animal
full of claws and fur
of the animals it devoured
on the trail I walk daily
between the …
11/14/2018
Inviting
Habdur, "the inviting
here and now",
"the space
of invitation",
waits
at the Nexus of Possibilities,
calls
at the Crossroads of Multiverses,
cradles
in the weaving of the Thousand Thousand Ways
we could have lived,
we could yet live.
Here we rest our heads
very near to past selves,
future …