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is one of cleveland's most talented poets. his chapbook, "crooked river", was published in 2005 on deep cleveland press.
MOTEL room love, living for a night
The bars closed, their neon's blinking across
Highways
I taste not only of your flesh, no longer yearn
But with the time-pirates steal galaxies from
Nothingness.
I See Paintings On My Eyelids
portraits mostly
too fleeting for the Louvre
in profile or head on
my life's work
on red velvet
I see paintings on my eyelids
none of which are you.
The Terror Of Infinite Loneliness Mingles With The Regret Of A Wayward Son Which Becomes The Sound Of Emergency Vehicles Hurtling Through The Dark Of His Soul Where Unspoken Love Is Falling Ever Falling
Sirens blast the honking horns make way make way
keeps the memory constant that I never rode with my mother
as they searched for a good vein through parchment skin
hitting artery instead blood spray bouquet
I never rode with my mother
filled with fear dread terror of intubations
how would I get home? call a cab?
but that wasn't it
the sympathetic magic chant was
that I would see her well again at the hospital
not
not hear her soul flutter
amid the honking horn the siren's scream
the sad absurdity of poems is emptiness
in black dawns when sirens wail
for the genealogy I cling to
cannot bestow the sainthood you deserve
nor bring me surcease when the sirens wail.
Absurdity
Have you ever stared
at your ceiling and
felt the whoosh
of the blade
like some Poeish
nightmare and
hugging your pillow
screamed at reality.
Dark Terrible Reason
annihilated now / no doubt
your dark eyes / the murderer
neither reason nor doubt.
As Leda ( not her real name ) Lies Dying
Strange the madness
the mad killing of beauty
madly strangely recreates
and deaths beauty lives
as the yolk of sanity
drips from her thighs
staining her feathers.
The Church On Winston Road
That one moment
when I realized
I loved you
not just body
but soul
dumb struck
liquefied
that moment passed forever now
into the void of the unsaid
heart of all that was holy
in the church on Winston Road
with no stained glass
no plastic sign
no markers there of any kind
the garden gone
to grass and weed
the sacred now profaned
perhaps more sacred now
now new communicants are fed
the heart of all that is holy
in the church on Winston Road.
And He Will Come
It's late September
the students return
intent on life so serious
their poetry taking on great themes
with archaic forms
the language of death
drips timeless
lips just beginning to feel
his caresses
while I turn to the anthologies bio's
for the dates alone
1889-1966 ah, she lived a long life
1893-1945 only 52 and unpublished till 1965
1899-1986 a long life and sharing the prize with Beckett not a bad thing
1899-1932 just 33, he jumped into the sea
1899-1936 murdered by fascists the deep songs still deepening
turning pages
leaves turning as death smiles
that passionate smile for those who come to him
walking into the sea or pistol in hand
and we will come to him
intubated & frail with rotted teeth
poets with incomplete bio's
and not yet dated poems
still burning our Septembers
as the students return.
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