poem

 Opposites

The world of opposites hangs

Together in mutual reciprocity

One thing owing its existence

To the thing it’s not.

A tenuous foundation, to be sure,

For up and down are ultimately 

Contingent manifestations of gravity

And the difference between black and white

Hinges on the intensity of available light

But there’s a larger world

Of things lacking opposites

Abandoned nouns floating

Aimlessly, lacking reifying polarity 

Other than existence and non-existence 

Which isn’t as clarifying as yes and no or now and later 

Your dog is just your dog

And ice cream melts 

Mad has no opposite other than not mad 

And love laughs when you try to insist 

It would vanish if not for hate. 

Then you have this strange dichotomy

Between me and everything else.

Without the world I never exist

But when I’m gone the world remains.

How can this be? Where is your elegant symmetry?

Whatever happened to the comforting

Duality of semantic codependency? 

The truth is, I'm just sad.

The world, apparently, doesn’t need me and never has.

I’m all the radiant colors of a coral reef

Bleached white by an unexpected acidity 

I’m not the missing piece, the chiral molecule

Reflection the world sees

When it decides to gaze

At its face in the mirror.

I’m not the devastating loss that makes 

Its ultimate victory taste so sweet.

I suppose this is why I feel so alone

And remain a stranger even to myself.

There is no opposite to me,

No black to my white

Locking in a solid identity.

All I can do is make a substance of absence

Leave behind a big enough impression 

In the mold of the world

For someone to pour a sadness into.

I’m just here, a black pupil

Arrayed against the white 

Of the eye of the universe 

Letting in as much light as I can.

But once I’m gone, whatever’s left 

Goes back to being the darkness

That never knew how brightly

Its light once shined 

For a boy on the roof

Of a sad, broken home 

In a dying small town 

So long as I’m gone 

Not notice the stars

How much they shine

A darkness within 

A light never known 

So long as we shine

Like stars over homes 

For a boy all alone

A light in the dark

A night between days

A boy on a roof 

In a small dying town 

Not knowing it’s there

So long

   I’m 

Gone

8/10/25

poem

 The Big Game

Overheard in the line at the concession stand at halftime of the Big Game:

Man in white t shirt: We structure everything meaningful in our lives around the downtimes, the gaps in between the expected action. Here we are seeking sustenance and hydration and, frankly, human fellowship in the form of conversation only because we find ourselves in this defined interval known as halftime. We can talk about whatever we want here. Not just passing on first down or the wisdom of prevent defenses.

Man in green shirt: I've never liked that term. It’s debasing. 

White: Which? halftime?

Green: Exactly. You go to the theater and there is an “intermission”, sometimes two. It sounds cultured and urbane. There’s no reason why it can’t be the same here. We aren’t animals.  

White: So, we're in an intermission right now?

Green: Second intermission, to be precise.  Between the 1st and 2nd quarters is first intermission. Then a longer, more leisurely 2nd intermission and then finally a third intermission occurring between quarters 3 and 4. 

White: Hockey does that.

Green: They have to. The experience would be too barbaric otherwise. 

White: True. Men are allowed to strike one another. Men have been slashed. Men have bled out on the ice. 

Green: Football is brutal too, but the violence is cleaved into short pulses of duration. Not free flowing carnage like rugby or hockey or even soccer. Between each play is an opportunity to catch our breath. The players mill around, grab quick refreshments. Take their helmets off. Become human again. Look to the sidelines for guidance from the coaches. Time itself stops, occasionally, as when the action ends with the ball carrier getting forced beyond the boundaries of play. And when time stops, there ceases to be a difference between instantaneousness and infinity. While the players huddle, we have a choice. Right now is either eternity or a series of fleeting moments stacked on top of each other, eternally. Six of one, half dozen of the other.  It either lasts forever or gets wasted in a series of lost moments.

White: What if the player is tackled in bounds and the clock keeps running

Green: Well, then, we become slaves to time. Time is all there is. It can’t be stopped. It can only run out. It exerts its control over us by eliciting anxiety. Every attempt to get it to pause or elongate is met with futility. It’s a nothingness we think we can defeat by hoarding.

White: You can always call a time-out

Green. Yeah, but only a few times. And most people waste them too early in the game.

White: True. A good coach is a good clock manager.

(a roar reverberates from the inner bowels of the stadium)

Green. Indeed. It sounds like the teams have returned to the playing field.

White: Our intermission seems to be drawing to a close

Green: Not to be rude, but I could use a little break from this particular intermission

White: As I said, everything occurs in the spaces. There are even gaps between the gaps.  Between the moment I verbalize my order and the first bite of the hot dog. Between the mustard and the ketchup. Between the final horn and the sound of my garage door thudding shut. 

Green: When you think about it, most of all this is just interlude. The defined events barely even register. No wonder entire lives are forgotten.  

White: Atoms are 99.9% empty space.

Green: Everything you say, if you notice, is followed by a pause before a reply

White: Days from now all you’ll remember is how good that Vienna beef dog tasted, though.

Green: I wish you were right here in the silence before I respond. 

White:

Green:

White:

7/27/25

poem

 Sunflower

We attended the charity event for cancer

One weekend on a sweltering Saturday in July

A live band was belting out industrial covers

From the 80’s— Pat Benatar, Poison, Motley Crue

The trees put their faces in the breezes

Like dogs hanging their heads out car windows.

As we were coming in an older couple my wife knew was leaving

It was 19 years ago, to the day,

That they had lost their son to cancer.

We’re going someplace so he can eat and soak up the alcohol, she said.

But I didn't think he looked all that drunk— just sun drenched and sad.

He gave me whatever drink tokens he had left.

7/13/25

poem

 Roundabout

The town transitioned from its inefficient grid

Of four way stops and timed traffic lights

To a flowing amalgam of roundabouts 

Consultant engineers had determined

To be the secret to continuous motion—

Blunt the points, soften the edges, blur the margins

To preserve an earned momentum.

But if you can’t stop

Maybe you never even started

And it’s always been like this,

On and on, a series of glancing blows

That take us in new directions

Avoiding head on collisions. 

We can survive tangential contacts

And passive diversions 

Curved like commas linking clauses

In a winding sentence that goes on forever

The way curlicued shavings on the floor

Are more interesting than the hollow totem

We’ve carved to honor the god

Who tells us when to stop.

7/13/25

poem

 Priceless

I’ve always been overly protective of any knowledge

I’ve acquired, regardless of effort involved

I’m a hoarder of facts, solutions and hermetically sealed arguments. 

They fill my closets my attics and basements

Each one gets a number and assigned space

In the catbird seats of my patchwork personality.

Like all hoarders I’ve reached the point of believing

My hidden cache is all I really have 

And so I guard it with my life.

It represents my entire net worth.

Even to question it undermines my own profitability.

To doubt would be like hiring my own burglar

And who am I to question the methods that grant

Me the ability to afford this comfortable lifestyle.

My wife and children would starve 

I’d have to leave, shamefacedly, in the pre-dawn morning,

Travel across multiple time zones

To the land of my own ignorance

Seeking to borrow someone else’s wisdom

Which never comes for free

7/13/25

poem

 Reading in the Dark

The light reveals itself in objects

Not the other way around

The way you appear to others

Depends on the light you’ve found

Your particular shape teaches

The light how it must bend

All matter is a moon 

Shining after the sun has set

Heaven is the light you see

When you learn to read in the dark

I go to a place devoid of light

When I get like this

You aren’t there 

But my hands are here

Even though I can’t see them

They always find each other in the darkness 

Every existence is a gravity

A fold in the fabric  

First felt as loneliness 

Which soon becomes a heaviness

Spiraling closer and closer

Until our fingers entwine

It isn't necessary to see 

To be surprised by what you find

7/13/25

poem

 Solitary Confinement

I keep them under wraps.

It’s a surveillance state in here

Of long windowless hallways,

Heavy locked doors and keycards

Dangling from lanyards 

Slung around thick necks. 

Get out of line and you

Get a cold arthritic fist

Wrapped around your throat.

Don’t worry, no one dies. 

I always release my grip

And let it breathe—

Anger, joy, jealousy,

  even the melancholy—

For another day longer,

As per the terms of its sentencing.

But then it’s straight to the hole—

Solitary confinement for 30 days

Which hardly seems like sufficient punishment.

You see, I’m not like other people

Buffeted by a stream of feelings 

Free to come and go as they please 

Without the elaborate trappings.

Mine are doing hard time

Just trying to survive

7/13/25

poem

 Analogy

Chuck a rock into a pond

And the moment 

It strikes the surface, it’s gone

For a few minutes waves ripple 

From the point of disappearance

But it never lasts 

Before long the water

Smooths and stills and silences 

Alternatively, you can skip a stone

Across a river, land it safely

In the mud of the opposite bank.

It’s cool to watch

But you’ll never get to that side yourself 

This tortured analogy is brought to you

By an idiot sinking rapidly

In the depths of his own fetid lake

When I get to the bottom

The water clouds with a sediment 

That never quite settles 

You’ll never see me again

7/13/25