metonymy4u

sea spray covered my life
and saw nothing
form the too wide aperture
that obtained.
will you claim the progress
of an enlightened mind?
yes i see that you will.
well, i too should like
the advancement of contracts
never resumed.
so i’ll sail downriver.
be exhumed.

Read Full Post »

on this chilly autumn day
i suddenly realize
i could see myself
dancing towards mother earth.
with each leaf.
i might not even think to ask
about anything
resembling happiness.

Read Full Post »

                        the world is not just an idea in god’s mind


where upon what do mad fingers play
our lives all along,
like a wicked wizard trick that never had
any joy in its song?

life like god was amused with all that he
created so great:
a block of ice, a trick of rocks done for him
evil trade, laughing snake.

justice delayed is justice betrayed and although
i never knew
a blind man’s couch, a drunken man’s doubt
a nothing you,

despite all that i like to think
of all that’s been
as once upon a child’s story—a wish full
of more than sin.

Read Full Post »

            Poetry Leaf


Are you beautiful?
You were to me.
I loved your veins.
I held you close.
I knew your name
and something else.
What light to me
burned so bright
when I called you out
when I let you be?

Read Full Post »

Because I don’t want to tell you goodbye,
I declare a sunlit day. I declare
a wonton sale of salacious rapture
a dawn of unrepentant trust,
birth of mornings everafter.
I declare this journey won.
I declare the quest complete.
I declare the mountain overrun,
and from the dead-night collector,
all our dreams set free.

Read Full Post »

                        my mother and i were both therapists

You can dance away the silence
that comes hard upon a poem’s end,
just grandstanding things aside
that you long to defend:
like my mother choosing psychology
over music, music that went
from love to family weapon.

Still, I think how sweet she chose to write
out the answer to her prayer—
a mint of hope in the book of a life,
wishing the earth would open
to swallow her pain hidden care.

And anyway, what would mine be like
if her father had stayed over yonder
beyond the sea, beyond the snow
in the land of frozen hate,
the land I was born to know?

Now we sweep the same floors
polish with the same wax.
And a bird on a daisy told me true
that there are people walking around
still alive because they talked to you.

I suppose this and all is all
that we carry,
carry underground.

Read Full Post »

after a trope by christina rossetti

many in aftertimes will say of me
that i was a wind in the chimes set free,
a trove of fear gone bad along the seams
a chest of ghosts, grease and dreams.
but you, you were the note in some refrain
that bent the trees, those lingering remains
of your one night kissing a boy to death.
then left by the road to die an end
cold torn. homeless.

Read Full Post »

about the poetry of Dick Allen,
it’s like a something you can’t quite put
your finger on because of the clutter in your office
or a tree that blocked your way on the way to work.
either way I wish I could enter that world more fully.
a world of events hinting that to go this way or that
might be best if only you could stop and listen.
but stopping isn’t really the point is it?

Read Full Post »

disembarked with heavy
air and beset with
a quiet evening tide
to a world in nothing smaller
than this baby fist
not yet unclenched
round of the round
i search my belongings
but the toothbrush is gone
left at some lodging

Read Full Post »

whisper silence to me
and then keep it up
i loved it so much
i drank it all up
you refused to refill
my cup of stone
it was not right you said
it was not alone
just only what it was
and so you left
left me alone

Read Full Post »