Seafoam
I was happy in the sea
You convinced me
to breathe
I tried it
learned to like it
even drowned a little in your mouth
before you spit me out
ADR poetry published in 2022
Seafoam
I was happy in the sea
You convinced me
to breathe
I tried it
learned to like it
even drowned a little in your mouth
before you spit me out
Masters of the Wheel
We were victors, we were gods, we were keepers of the crown: we had plucked the fire’s eye, we had worn the monster down. We had pierced creation’s heart, we had brought its pulse to heel; we had cracked the atom’s code, we were masters of the Wheel.
Yet we withered at inflections, we wallowed in our psalms; we watched our brute reflections as we wiped our sweaty palms. So stranger prayed for stranger, and father wept for son. Then came that awful moment when the sirens wailed as one
And the world went mad
The Big Bang as the moment of creation
is impossible to fathom,
whether in a morning coffee shop,
the shower, or listening to a lover’s rant.
All dissolves into a metaphysical dream,
Hamlet’s to be or not to be.
The search for origin as elusive as drowned
Atlantis.
Glitz
All of us are stardust
beneath two courts
held in high regard
We clamor
as these gilded asters
open to pyrotechnics
to flares of flashbulbs
And firelight reveals
those weighty scales
the odd constellation
named for an object
A few chosen stars
draft our destruction
across the night sky
while we judge
base metals
masquerading
as bullion
At the end we hold
our earthly bodies
in the expanding dark
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Image Credit: Libra constellation [wallpaperaccess.com]
Alternative Endings
for Pierce Gerety
In my simplest imaginings the plane
winks out on a finger snap
or at the end of a lightning spear:
Poof! a full manifest tugged out of the sky.
Here. Then not.
Spaces Between Words
I have attended to your words
One vowel, one consonant,
One syllable at a time, their
Flow into a stream of thought.
Medusa Buys A Car
Medusa’s weave is bulky of necessity, her glasses dark,
she’s buying a car, but the salesman’s calling her
little lady, and darling—
darling, my thousand-year-old ass, she thinks.
Then he offers her an insurance rate she knows
is much too high, her hand is inching up
to her glasses, the snakes are stirring,
and she feels a bit like Dr. Strangelove;
it would be so satisfying, but this jerk’s not worth it.
She stands up to leave, and he’s all I can get
you a lower rate and if I said anything,
but she’s gone, googling
woman-owned car dealerships and
what was she thinking, walking into that place, anyway?
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Image Credit: Combine an attractive Medusa [cleanpng.com] with her viper car [topspeed.com]
Collards and Kale
Lex, the lich, lurks in the low country, leaning long, hard
on the history of bar-b-que in the deep south.
Careful, his cafeteria, collards and kale, keeps
a vegan menu but that faux banana pudding
made with coconut milk, sows a slow, slouching desire
for ribs rubbed ruby. His secret? He lies. Condensed milk,
a teaspoon of coconut sugar, and magic scraped off
the backside of General Lee’s casket and baked
into the vanilla wafers, round out his sordid
list of ingredients designed to make a soy boy
a savage soul-sucker in one serving and forty-
eight hours of suffering. It’s ministry, renewing
primal drives in the civilized, spreads the good news
with burnt ends.
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Image Credit: Pork belly burnt ends and collards [orwhateveryoudo.com] for the sonnet-like poem
Harmony
Selection of fragments, abandoned, then lost in the halls of an old, Lethean mind
I. Harmony’s Prologue
Jesus Thinks Back Wandering the Desert to his First Life
Soul for Sale
In a losing war
One warrior’s fighting, his skin riddled by
A thousand scars
When he no longer can
He finds his way to no man’s land
and knocks on the Devil’s door
Soul for sale, he shouts, for my people’s peace
Rip my heart out, but
Make battles cease
It’s impossible, the Devil says, awed
You have brought to me
What stumped your god?
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Image Credit: Fire Angel [wallpaperaccess.com]