poem

 Unfinished

We assume it has to wrap up tidily 

That all things come to a definable end

Yes or no, good or bad, heaven or hell

Maybe it’s better if it ends unfinished—

The almost masterpiece whose artist

Dies in his sleep the night before

He can apply the final brushstrokes. 

The featureless face of the statue

Whose sculptor never decides

Who it should look like.

How heaven becomes a hell of perfection 

While the damned begin to hum

The plaintive hymn of grace and salvation—

Back and forth it goes,

Where are we now? And why?

Caught equidistantly between 

The beginning and the end,

Feeling good about yourself

Just as you’re about to die

1/27/26

poem

 Genesis

In the beginning

There’s not a huge separation

Between a good person and bad.

Good people have usually fucked 

Plenty of things up 

And damaged a few others beyond repair.

Well, he knows it.... As soon as he does it.

And maybe not at first, but eventually,

He comes around to owning it 

And just like that

He becomes one of the good people—

Out there doing his best,

Taking responsibility for dumb 

Decisions and ill-conceived actions

That damaged the ones

He should have protected.

And there he is, chipping away,

Desperately trying to make amends

For reasons that are nobody’s

Business but his own. 

The bad person has also fucked up,

No more or less than a good person.

But the bad guy denies it, elides it,

Blames someone else for your suffering.

There’s nothing to fix

In this perfect world of his own creation.

Most people hover around the nexus

Of good and evil,

Sometimes choosing to see,

Sometimes self-blinding

Like Oedipus Rex

Who gouged himself, not as

Punishment, per se, but self-preservation—

Better to endure it in darkness

Than risk the chance of passing a mirror and

Seeing it written in the lines of your own face.

At any rate,

Whichever one you choose

You have to be careful:

The next time it gets easier

And the time after that. 

Every prevarication removes a stone

From the load you were supposed to carry.

Before too long a significant divarication 

Opens up between you and the center—

Like sister languages calved from an ancient

Mother, evolving so much, each in turn,

You now a need a translator

To be able to talk to her.

It’s a short distance between good and bad

But takes a lifetime to get there, blah

Blah blah, someone said that already—

Who cares, it was new to me. 

Here, in the bad place 

What’s “good” is only desire

Achieved by force of will

And the “bad” things mere invectives

Shot like arrows into the hearts

Of anyone who claims otherwise.

That’s all it boils down to—

Lie to yourself or tell the truth.

Write the story of yourself, yourself

Or ask the people you love

To write it for you. 

1/27/26

poem

 Belongs to the Blade

How a scar belongs to the blade

By way of inscrutable intermediaries.

Its only agency is to fade.

The way pain belongs to loss—

Peace of mind, a dazed complacency

Never to arrive so easily again.

The way love belongs to helplessness

In the face of great mystery—

Hieroglyphic of the inexplicable

Lexicon of dyslexics

Cicatricial remnants of intelligence 

Even the simplest man fails to understand

1/13/26

poem

 The Mixer

Every good novelist is a good conversationalist

You find them at parties thronged by crowds

Shouting out answers to every question he poses 

Bad novelists are just monologists

By the end of the night their audiences

Have all dwindled away

Poets? Poets are good to have around

Depending on the quality of the verse

But don’t think of it as a free pass 

Outside, misted in the darkness, bad poets

Make the sound of bony fingers

Tapping on thin windows 

The good ones stand alone in corners

And wait for the silence that arises

When the stories have all ended

Just when we think there’s nothing

Left to say the poet steps forward

To salvage the evening 

He takes the awkward silence and squeezes

It into a compact ball that fits in your palm 

And before long

We all begin to hear the beat 

Of it bouncing, a sound 

That has been there all along 

Everyone is already dancing

1/11/26

poem

 Writer's Group

I’m in a group of other

Failed writers who meet

On Tuesdays in coffee shops

To share our latest scribblings.

You’re not allowed to laugh

Or tsk or scoff when someone

Reads but you can ask questions.

This is supposed to be a safe

Space where wounds are revealed.

Roll up a sleeve

Show me your chest.

I'm the annoying guy who always

Ends up asking how it got there,

What caused it, and did it really

Hurt and they always say

You should be able to

Tell by the shape of the scar

1/11/26

poem

 Side Angle Side

There are many ways of proving a triangle

Exists. Side angle side.  Angle angle side

Angle side angle. Side side side.

If you put your left leg here

And prop your right ankle

Straight as you can, on my shoulder,

My body, ramrod stiff,

Forms the hypotenuse

Of a right triangle architects 

Of the future will use

In the design of structures

Built to protect the last

Of our precious assets.

No one can draw a perfect circle

But we insist they also exist

1/11/26

poem

 Levels of Maturation

1. I’m a special boy

2. I’m a piece of shit

3. I’m actually a little of both

4. Forget about me. It’s boring

5. Tell me about you

6. I think you’re very special

1/11/26

poem

Sleigh

There’s an empty sleigh in our front yard

No fake presents stacked in back

No reindeer team harnessed to the front

We never got around to decking it out.

So it sits out there as film school metaphor

For the hollowed-out decadence

American Christmas has become.

Even morons are insulted 

By the heavy-handedness of it all,

Rage honking their horns as they drive by.

One night I tried to sit in it, a little drunk,

Fell over and broke it.

Laying there in the snow, in my underwear,

Pin-nippled, ball-shriveled,

I epiphanied a vision of meaning

While the stars swarmed above me

Like a buckshot black screen. 

Since that night we decided to tell

Some people the empty sleigh represents

A void we’ve all given up trying to fill

And others it’s there to symbolize

That one person we all notice is missing

Just when the rest of the world insists

We ought to be most happy and joyous.

I hope you don’t ever get what you want

Most things are conjured myths

Quick to melt in your flushed hands.

I tell her it means nothing, really.

She whispers, in my ear, an answer

We now tell ourselves

If either of us asks.

I had never thought of it that way.

Wouldn’t you like to know?

poem

 The Seminar

Who are we?

The question haunts the audience

Like a pending diagnosis.

But the doctor has called, wanting 

To discuss your recent results.

Is now a good time to speak?

You step outside the room, your work, your life

For the moment it takes to receive the fate.

Everyone knows the answer from the beginning.

The seminar goes on as if it were someone 

Else’s turn to speak.

More people are arriving.

There’s coffee in the back

Next to the sign-in sheet

1/11/26

poem

 Black Cloud

Some surgeons are black clouds.

Disaster follows. Thunders down

From the dark mountains

In waves of cumulonimbus.

Sturm und drang. Waves of pain,

Shivers and rigors. 

Perforated colon in a cirrhotic

Internal hernia in a hostile abdomen.

Mesenteric ischemia.

Intractable bleeding.

They wait in the call rooms

Like angels of darkness

Who emerge when beckoned,

Wings extended to block out 

The warmth of a sun 

Only they ever feel

1/11/26