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My Favorite Picture 

Organizing a cabinet today, 
I came across a photo of you. 
It made me pause, 
close my eyes,
and take a breathe. 
It made me think in metaphors, 
and feel the pang, 
subdued and gracious 
lacking want.

That was a good day, 
and this is a memory of the light, that I hold outside of my body, 
in this cabinet,
reflecting your smile,
from then to now.

Eternity isn’t a long time, 
it’s always been a place outside of time. 
I loved you that day, 
along with each time I forget, 
and get to remember it.

Kodak 

Kodak and…

Twin lenses meeting eyes 
sun-kissed silver, salted black. 
A ghost’s whispered cool tingling 
and tepid tapping at my back.

A fixed moment, 
begging for another moment, 
a spark of chemical desire.
A jewel pulled from the char,
burning deep red like a fire.

One day fades to two 
who love what’s made in the dark. 

Freckled Finch 

A little freckled finch chirps from behind the callous layers in my heart, 
and it gives me such a feeling
that I wish she’d take me with her whenever she flies.

So I drink whiskey, and spin around till I feel like I might fall 

and maybe learn to fly on the way down, 

but some birds never learn to fly do they.

Cursed Creation 

I could write of the rapturous terror felt in your presence, of your eyes, your smile and such,
But thats not where my interest is sustained.

We gaze outwardly together 
in the same direction. 
Shared vision, shared passion, 
a shared bitter drop of poison, 
That elusive third thing between you and I.

I want to spend my time supporting you. 
I hope for dementia in old age where my only memories are of your laughter, 
So whenever I close my eyes 
you’re the color among the phosphenes.

I know how things are. 
That my honor is beset by horrors on all sides,
by the nature of the cost
of actively becoming, always becoming. 
I know that I am the red one, 
with the black felt hat,
rekindling your long abandoned dreams
Gripping the thickened nerve in your gut. 
I’m the heated ringing in your ears,
burning in the dark corners of the songs sung in tequila nights.

This is the despair, 
in Mary Shelly’s wine.
To love the monster, and curse creation,
for your love. 

The Genius of Jazz 

Chicago Jazz and one or two too many, 
makes me think of you. 
I wanted to tell you, 
I love so many aspects or your talent, 
it’s the deepness I value. 
I’ve come to appreciate the delicate and untamed corners.  
You are beautiful certainly,
but that almost gets in the way.  
It’s deeper than respect, 
or friendship, 
deeper than desire, 
deeper than ah-ha beauty or art. 
You’re very special
and I’ve fallen for you in my way, 

but there’s no ground to land safely, 

so I’m improvising.

Choose Samsara  

People resist being pried,

even if it’s from their aching ignorance,

but no one can think their way out of loneliness,

though I could miss myself all the way to you.


 

The ridges of fingerprints

touch of velvet and Prussian blue,

gently and slow from the smallest courage

overcoming fear by one strummed spider’s silk.


 

The road to hell

paved with those warning me.

“That’s too much work” “They deserve better” and “Money is Love”

But my inner child walks with the lightbringer unafraid.  


 

I want remarkable, and deserve deepness

I desire a dark and twisted tree

with knots to put my timeless trinkets

and branches full of lovely hoodoo spells.

Blessed Bitter and Bloom 

A whisper wrapped in Shakespearean lines, 
delicate in shadow like absinthe and orange blossoms. 
Bringing the thumping chorus of o-negative hallelujah, 
complete with broken throne 
and cut hair.

I cannot name the spirit,
but to the red ghosted silhouette in my chest, 

I confess my savoring the bitter in this teaching. 

To Know You From a Dark Room. 

It’s late and I’m in the darkroom printing the image I made of you. 

Sazerac in hand I realize there’s an image I make of you in my mind. 

I think about how we all do that to each other everyday. 

It occurs to me the we cannot even know ourselves without bias.  

Maybe the collective unconscious universe can know us truly.  

Here now finding you in that flawed old emulsion, monochrome in two dimensions, frozen at one beautiful moment in time, distorted by the light passing through the moving rinse water,

I think I might like to fail to know you. 

Love or Sazarac? 

Like burning incense  
I find that you surround me, 
with the lightness and curvature of wafting smoke, 
peppery and aromatic when stirred with the sense of the world.  

Like a salve that’s seeped through my skin, the medicine has been doing it’s work inside a pulsed fever,  
burning some old demons, who pretend to perish rattling their cages.  

So if you have hired the craft of a Faye apothecary,  
I am fallen  
and my name is David.  

But if the whiskey has been presenting mirages it may be that, next morning, a cold shower is in order. 

The Locked Heart 


I see her in everything.

every piece of art,

every romantic gesture,

every heartache, every poem,

each sunset.  

Beyond reason and a world that always makes sense,

my inner everything yearns to hear her whisper my name,

to sleep with her in my arms,

to see her smile and be everything she is,

and everything she is capable of being. 

My heart is locked with one known key,

and it’s been thrown in a drawer,

not thrown away, but kept as a beloved 

useless thing. 

Daguerreotype  

Chest a flutter
thumping in shadow, 
with fragile wings sealed behind glass. 

Passions thick 
in brown glass bottles,  
fix little silver virtues.  

Red ethereal mercury  
a gilded mirror of madness awaits any with careless ambition.  

Such a beautiful thing  
a living myth of salt and quick 
developed in darkness,  
for you my love,  
unique for all time, and yours to keep.

Let Me Show You 

You are not regular 

You are not plain 

You are a blooming triumph 

the most wonderful 

and unique person I’ve ever met. 

You are the recipe for filling the hunger of my soul. 

You fill me to the brim and I overflow. 

What you consider flaws are unquantifiably beautiful. 

You are not selfish, 

You are not ugly, 

You are not plain, 

or undeserving. 

You are a beauty that fire can aspire to. 

You are what kindness became thankful for, 

and what wisdom calls true. 

You are what the universe watches through a telescope. 

The stars gather at night in awe of you. 

They light your countenance, 

so the darkness cannot touch you. 

Your smile is the craftsmanship of your heart 

your kiss soft, and electric. 

and your embrace?...

to be wrapped in your embrace 

is to be wrapped in eternity. 

 

My only love, 

My only temptation, 

My only satiation, 

My only words, 

My only admiration, 

My soul’s only desire, 

Just my only. 

Let me show you, 

everything that you are.

Barely a Man 

I am a better man 

and a terrible one 

I am a genius 

and a contemptible fool. 

I am compassionate 

yet disconnected 

I am warm 

I am cold 

I am kind 

I am cruel 

I am mentally sound 

and howling at the moon. 

I am society’s disease and cure 

The culture's most despised and most endeared 

I’m everything wrapped in nothing 

I want to live forever, 

I want to die tonight. 

In peace, and in pieces. 

 

I've known the breath of eons that barely existed 

I've known the torment of what is everlasting. 

I've sobbed tears 

of defeat and maniacal triumph simultaneously.

My face in my hands, I tell you now 

what you already known. 

I'm barely a piece of the man I was,

but sometimes I'm a thousand times the man I ever was.

A Lucky World 

Meadows grow tall, 

and Rivers overflow 

so seeds grow. 

Stars shine carefully, 

and Bluebirds wear blue dresses. 

This is one day.

This is the world.

A Lucky world.

Define Beauty 

A fan called me. 
She had recently read one of my poems, 
and she wanted to know 
how I would define beauty. 

I told her that, “Mankind has tried to quantify 
this very concept since alpha, day one!” 
I joked that I would write a piece, 
said I'd do my best to describe beauty, 
goes something like this… 

eh hmmm… 

To the crackhead, 
a new pipe, carefully crafted 
is a thing a beauty. 
Especially if it's got crack in it. 

To the dung beetle, 
a steaming pile of excrement 
is a thing of beauty. 
The more pungent, the more beautiful. 

To the monk, 
a single blade of grass 
may have the answers 
to eternal beauty. 

To the rich, 
numbers arranged on a screen, 

and their mastery of them 
is a thing of beauty. 

To the poet, 
words arranged on a page, 
even just the look of it, 
is a thing of beauty. 

To the starving man, 
a sandwich 
tastes better than any meal he can remember, 
and is a thing of beauty. 

But to me, 
you, 
and the hope that you bring, 
are truly 

beautiful.

Everyday 

I love her like magnolia wishes 

and children's laughter. 

Like a bee's dance in white daisy fields 

and a gentle moonlight shining on twilight's doorstep. 

I love her like that bird hopping in the snow 

like a good wine's warm company 

and embraceable darkness. 

I love her like a black velvet midnight 

and the smell of a breezy lilac meadow. 

I love her like time's first flight 

and violet skies over Alaskan lakes. 

I love her open spirit. 

I love her lines, smells, and tastes. 

I admire her 

I love her 

I just love her, 

everyday.

Reason and Madness 

I think that love is a reasonable madness. 
How awful life must be without a reason for madness.
I did not forget, celebrate tomorrow, 

but today is reason enough without it.

The Meaning Meets It's Costs 

These old artist stereotypes are alive and well.

Cleary the culture can't support human values

without twisting them down into the uncanny valley,

but it's too late to complain, isn't it?

I chose it.

It's Wednesday and I have $19.02 in my bank account,

that's fine, I guess,

just enough for food and gas to get me to the weekend's gigs.

 

Deadly thoughts come artistically now 

poverty, distractions, romantic sentiments, and addictions 

all cause and prevent what feels inevitable, yet is impossible. 

The seeds I've sown, bare the fruits I've earned, 

and they are ripe with a sadness sickness 

that reveals itself most pointed when meaning meets it's costs.

 

My emotions were manipulated by dogma for so long

They still terrify me, all of them from then,

but I wonder what minor god I seek now in my suffering.

Tumbling the rabbit hole of the artist's life,

the will to really live finds me again.

I find the beauty of it all in a wider frame.

It's there waiting for me every time.

The Morning Book 

I lay here with the book that is my memory,

left opened by my dreams,

opened to where I’ve earmark,

to where I have gilded the pages,

where each smile is inked in red letters,

and all the notes she wrote in the margins remind me of her limerence. 

They say a man can never give the same love twice,

and that someday somone will light a fire inside of you that can not die.

“They” whoever they are, have never said a thing more true.

In the dew of morning hours,

in my daydreams,

and when twinkling stars brighten an otherwise despondent sky.

I love her,

and for the rest of my life I can not wait to love her,

I can not wait to live for the dream of every terrible pang in my heart.