All the Cool Kids

We interrupt this blog's suspicious silence for some important news!

I'm following in the footsteps of some of my favorite artists and writers to bring you exclusive content and prizes via Patreon. If you're interested in supporting my work in a more direct manner, please check it out. And if you have any suggestions, drop me a line. I like to hear from you .

This blog, where I post unwieldy word-children who are not professionally polished, will always be free content. My books will always be available via Amazon if you're interested. So if you are not willing or are unable to support the Patreon, do not fret. I have not disappeared. I am building. And plenty more is coming in the (hopefully) near future.

Thank you for always supporting me in my crusades.

precocious

Some claim April rain
brings the blossoms of May, but
trees here are hasty.


This is the opening stanza of this month's format challenge over at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. We're writing a renga together, and I'm so excited to read the finished result.

it's true

The inexplicable bourbon is nearly always all my fault.

the former

Red lines
her dark-brown eyes,
where once black kohl smudged hard.
Pale hair showing dark roots and grey,
messy.

Mama,
the word burns her.
Once, the bloody world fell
at her perfectly manicured
pale feet,

but now?
The carnival
sunset over the sea,
signaling marina lights, means
bedtime.

Buildings,
innocuous
in summer day, grow lewd
crimson faces, leering to draw
lost ones

rushing
into things best left
to their elders, if not
their betters, who now only taste
regret.

L'espirit de l'escalier

Light is embroidered on your skin
where the shadows dance against stone walls.
We move, swaddled in music, around
marble pillars, between dripping beeswax
tapers, an ocean of heady honey scent
rising from the dim orange flames
and we are lost in the idea of loving
another person, another twisted
lost soul--just like mine, we think.

Loss is a verdant ocean,
deep and green as your eyes,
now swollen with the days of tears
spent on finding my replacement
on the idea of loving someone
anyone
who might understand the echoing darkness
in your head, the music
that could come from anywhere.
Here I am!  Still watching you
from this velvet corner,
waiting, impatient breath held
for the day you cease to mourn.

Love is not always a brilliant blaze,
manufacturer of its own light,
not always something beautiful
and easy to see.
I would give my embers
into your keeping
in a breath, if this empty shade
could still breathe.

one, this is one

Orlak, where have you gone? I have searched the shimmering flames

for the timid giant of Medicine River, salesman, king of my secret heart.

His ocean-blue eyes fierce, comings and goings as mysterious as his name.

Surfing the wake of an adagio of hurt, I pile my listed hates into his cart:

Portabella mushrooms, driving to work in the snow, political pundits make me weary.

Ignorant passers-by, heat, the taste of meat, lazy writers, noisy interfering Denis Leary

and the weighted, unanticipated fist of Orlak's child pressed into my leaden womb.