I Left my Body Behind to Break the News

“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.”
- Tony Robbins

They sat rocking

in their chairs

for a long time

appreciating the silence

as the sun disappeared.

Things Will Get Better, Eventually

I haven’t remembered anything, only the names

and that their dates have been replaced by fees

toted up out of mischief:

a whopping yellow sun, finesse swallowed hard,

a scrapbook of pantyhose dawdling beside some Shreveport-like expanse.

-Bill Berkson

My memory seems to be malfunctioning

images sparked from charged synapses'.

The seconds have all been paraphrased;

drenched in opacity, rotting

as only the half-forgotten can.

Was she wearing flannel or jean?

Did she return the squeeze?

Where were we and is it possible

that nothing happened at all?

That she walked past one day

on a subway or in a restaurant

and seeing her I disappeared

into my own skull?

Leaving that place for this.

Time deranged, comatosed daydream.

Will I return when she is gone?

Back to some world where she never

even slowed her stroll.

Hello Darling

Dalliance in the eyes of man.

everything is missing.

Ghosts, Both Living and Dead

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living." - Clarke

You do everything you can

except what is needed.

When my knees were still skinned

I would play tug-of-war

and keep pulling

even after I knew

It was over

Recently, I have been infatuated with images of women's backs. In one sense showing your back to someone is the most intimate thing a person can do, it demonstrates a primal trust, a belief that nothing will have changed when they turn around. Yet to turn away is also the ultimate sign of rejection; to walk away, to depart without a backwards glance.

I wish I knew which of these two forces attracted me to such photos.

Everything is Exploding.

Inspiration is usually a coincidence.
You enter a room where the light slants across the floor
in geometric squares and you step into one of the squares
and are given the next line or note or chord
in the work you are doing.
The natural world has set aside its usual indifference
and come down into your path to illuminate a step.
But inspiration is mercurial.
You have to hold it in and savor it
and get it down before it’s gone.

-Fanny Howe

now that we are old enough

to frown on punching

certain words scare me;

voodoo whispers

sounds thick with venom

whole sentences spoken

in gendered tongues

silence is a flinch.