Poetry, Fragments, etc

Poem 03.09.2021

We are

Bodies of water

At rest and in motion

In sound often the

Same, sometimes different

In footfalls on textures

White as snow

Dark as tarmac

Slipping on wet leaves

From last autumn

In motion and at rest

A body of water

A state of constant flux

Equal to the idea of decay

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Poem 01.21.2021

The Quiet in silence

is less than complete.

There is a tone in the dark.

Distance matches sound.

Shadows move based on objects.

Stillness is the quiet of

an internal vibration.

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Poem 01.19.2021

Puzzles have pieces, discovered by seams

We use wood to find water in underground streams

We have brief memories and moments of dreams

We scrub to be clean until we're red in the face

we race for a cure until we're blue in the face

Gather for parades only to stand stagnant in place

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Poem 11.16.2020 (bit of a laugh)

A tiger's tail

quick as an elephant's trunk

Drinking from a boat

that has already sunk

Thirst is a tide that

dust will swallow first

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Poem 10.18.2020

An uninterrupted room.

A place for shadows at night.

The windows age differently than the walls.

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Poem 09.25.2020

Smell of rain-

Composite-

Fracture of light-

Atmosphere,

Weight lifted.

Autumn drains-

Multiple directions-

Fracture of water-

Terrain,

Bent for tomorrow.

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Poem 09.20.2020

The scale of things, being equal, rarely accounts for it

The feeling watching air move from stillness to rustle

Which can only be registered as it moves from tree to tree

Putting one to rest, setting one to flutter, to imitate the shape of air

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Poem 08.26.2020

Transportation by slow devices

Lattices of nerve endings climbed

My feet feel flat on the ground that I know is curved

The sun falling is us turning rather

Another slow device

Having grown darker, having grown quieter

I realize I have been ignoring the buzz in my ears

Poem 08.24.2020

The silence between words stops.

The words stop.

There is a long distance, and a short time

There are blinds, and the blind.

The floor tiles are in sequence. The silence stops in sequence.

Between the words that have stopped.

For a short time we are held in silence.

The sequence of silence starts.

The words start. In a short time between silence.

Silence is a word that starts a sequence.

Muttering through a held breath. Shadows on floor tiles.

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In 2014 I was asked by my friend Dave Sullivan to contribute a spoken word piece to an album on which he was working. At that time he knew he would be moving away from Portland, and wanted to work with friends and musicians on a musical collaboration before he left. He gave a loose idea of the project and the title he had in mind, The Lodge, I wrote the following piece and recorded it at his house in a couple of takes. His album was released under the name "Lodge club" in 2016 by Braxeling Records. In 2017 he returned for a visit, and having planned ahead, performed the album in full at a local bar. I am happy to say that I was able to be a part of the performance, which is the only time I have appeared on stage.

Poem (August 14th 2020)

I am at a lake house, as a child.

As the same child, I am digging for worms in a grassy backyard.

The sun goes down when I am slightly older, I eat an ice cream cone

I move forward with my hands in my pockets. There is a voice that tells me not to do so.

More agile now I climb on and around the remains of a fallen oak tree.

There are gaps. I am always walking. An ocean shoreline is on my right.

I am at a lake house, as a young adult. On a dock watching the water lap at the shore.

I move forward swinging my arms at my sides. With fewer teeth, with strained eyesight. The sun rises. The sun sets. Ice cream melts. Trees stand. Trees fall. Worms burrow. Rivers feed lakes. Rivers feed oceans. There are gaps. I kicked a can, over and over, until it stood upright.

Poem (August 9th 2020)

Darkness shines

In that moment I ask that the phone be disconnected

Asking will not make it so

I don’t dream a wish, but wish for a dream

Edge of an eyelid closing

Itch as restless

Weight is a breath held by gravity

You can move your fingers in piano motions, those songs are alone

Memory we say when we mean agility

Itch as restless

Edge of an eyelid brushes an idea

Wish for a dream that is waking, waking does not make it so

Test pattern landscape

Darkness shines

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Fragments 2012-2019

2012

Stacking up disfigurines
A minor interior

2012

Crushing flashcubes with our hands
To see stars on our fingers

2012

There are times when I glide
Over aspects of ice and fallen leaves
Past dog walking young mothers
Dressed thick for the weather
And a hint of sunshine there behind me
I glide across my own shadow
On aspects of ice and fallen leaves

2013

The hwy drowns everything
The ambient noise a wave
A crush made louder in my headphones where
It is trapped
Eno strategic guitars lost in the mire
No feelies no vu..

2013

I am a witness to
Chimney apertures

While the air is cool and
Relatively quiet

2013

I appear
A ghost in a reflected surface

An ever more distinct shadow
In brighter growing light

Head, barely formed shoulder,
Incomplete but present

2013

Feels like I am gliding at waist level over a shadow of myself

2013

I love to exhale
Up onto the clear stars
On an autumn morning

2013

I am a statue with teeth.
I am a statue that speaks.
I move as the wheels move
Under me.
The quiet is mine.
The movement is still. The
Movement is fine.
I am a statue that peeks

2013

Every month rain must fall

Wiping away that which I reflect of you

Each puddle a promise
Each ripple a certainty

2013

Yellow of the marsh grass
In the long sunlight setting,
A face neutral in expression.

2014

Days of cold
each day less significant then the next
Chitter of leaves on the crisp lawn
Where a boot might break heel
A step is just a step in line with my foreseeable breathing

2015

Growing up in a rural area

I would often walk at night

Distant light of stars overhead

Ribbons of narrow roads that rolled over hills and made way around creeks cut lines in the canopy of oak tree branches

I would walk

Head up following the gap in the trees

The distant light of stars being too dim too diffused for observation

Lead by the stars. With a mix tape playing in my ears

2015

Past events have weight to them that no current event can match.

It is not only nostalgia in which they are steeped, it is context. Context and the underlying string and contact of other seemingly unrelated occurrences that add gravitas to each past event.

Different so for everyone with different contextual webs bringing us to the surface of present tense.

2015

It rained last night

And the smell left behind

Is not one of clean air

But of dirt disturbed

Raindrops have popped apart on

The surface of dry earth and penetrated

Beneath and within

A spoon stirred then tossed like a stick for a game of fetch

No one act distinguishes the other

2016

Time is a tricky thing.

By that of course I mean the measure of time

Passing as it does or does not

As we view it, taste it, wrestle with it

And turn on and off things atomic

I was never one to dwell on what might be

What might happen in the future

Making plans with my eggs in different baskets

And now I find after personal acts that have in effect destroyed my physical connection to the past

I have no future

Or what might be described as an ever moving forward omnipresent "now"

For which I can only be present

Like gravity, constant, never telling

2016

Look at an object

See it for the first time

Not to discern it's qualities

As such but to see yourself

Looking at an object

Out of body...

2016

Leaves in the wind

Mice without reign

One pink slipper

A bit of syringe

The various free papers in small piles

Angled by the wind corridor

2016

The pressure of field

Optical illusion

Trees off far

A man before them

Horizon dips or the man comes closer or

Walks away

The man is gone. No shoulders or head

Now only pale trees at a distance

2016

The quiet world is never silent

In the dark before dawn

The globe dips as a sailing ship to one side

An under murmuring of scratching ant limbs & moth wings stretched

At near six feet high the light breeze has a sense of movement and no sound

At Ground level no engine can make the natural world

2016

Breath

So much

So many that

It drips

Condenses in a fall

As I imagine an injured bat must

Fall as dusk darkens

Deepens it's stain on the yard

Breath settles colder than

When exhaled in the portioned

Train floorboards

Others step aboard

Often the train stops at a vacant station

I settle back

Spine, torso, face

I settle in

2016

Effort

Ugh

More like the thought of effort

Walking

There is, a ghost in

My sack of bones

2016

I question the name of things.

I question the reason for the names of things.

I question the name of broken things.

I have a red book. A list of names.

I have a blue book. A list of opposite names.

I have a yellow book of empty pages. A list of names for broken things.

The names remain. Although function has finished.

2016

Vacation ends, routine begins

Reality numb and torso first

This is where I find myself, over there

2016

Catches the eye

Something that dances left

So alive

Just caught in bits of breeze

That tests dust and discarded fabric

2016

4 am ghosts

In the still dark of possible

Rodent death

Between cardboard boxes on the curb

And diffused street light favoring leafy shodows, post fractal design

Footfalls mote motion than sound

2016

Too often the absence

Of our actions is inconceivable.

Too often we step forth

Not knowing,what we might do

If we accepted the thought of not walking.

The stand still. Lessening one thread of universal vibration. One less voice from the bottom of the well.

2016

Light plays tricks

Travels along distance

Heads

The underside of foggy wet

Power lines

Structure

From source to sight

2016

Memory can be a prison. It makes one separate from younger and younger generations who co exist with me but have completely different life experiences.

I have a pre internet viewpoint. Pre google, pre Starbucks...

I dialed a rotary phone to call someone. I used the number one to dial long distance. I remember when area codes signified the state in which the person who owned that phone number resided.

I remember buying records based on cover credits. Who produced the record. Or based on a band I liked, their stated influences and likes.

These were times when certain records were badges of honor and possessing them meant you were in the know. Coming across another person that had that same record was remarkable and worthy of starting a friendship.

When you met someone who knew about the records by the band Big Star, you wanted to get to know that person. Prior to 1983 or 1984 Big Star was like a family secret. Something treasured but kept quiet.

Chance sometimes brought fellow listeners together. I have life long friends, people I have known for over thirty years, and we met over nothing so much as a love music, and the occasional beer.

2016

I face the wind

And it is like I am a hollow of air

Open mouthed drawing in the rush

That escapes through every pore

The length of my body

With every step i take moving forward defying gravity,

Just a little bit

2016

In the smoky air

Security lights stretched

Too thin over hard pavement

No one, just dry leaves in the wind

2016

I find delight in the light

That changed in the wind

2016

A life lived or bogged down in the details

2016

Sun dried here hours ago

Hours here dried a sun ago

Here hours a sun dried

Hours ago a sun dried here

2016

Railway debris

Leaves caught on ties

Cigarette filters

Some form of cotton ball

Various types of fast food plastic

Compounded together gathered by wind

And rain, decaying at different rates, forming

A cement of sorts next to the track

2016

Extremities in extreme weather

Fingers and bits of noses and toes

The moisture is drawn to the surface

And scalped by the passing wind

The moisture is a thing made clean

Leaving one with dead feeling digits

And noses, cold burnt skin cells waiting to

Be pushed off in the dust and debris

That eventually is cornered

The corner is a thing to be made clean

2017

Below freezing

The distance between power lines

Is a visible fabric

Of charged air

2017

People I view with suspicion

Those with a short distance between

Thigh and knee, who can fit between seat

And barrier on a train

Those with legs so short their feet swing

When seated

2017

Between the dark of

Street lights

A train window slides

On a train with passengers

Glints of light on teeth, phones,

Jacket buttons zippers

Stray overlong Christmas lights

Outside

Feels like there is bottle glass

On the house angles under rooftops

And side walls

2017

Sound

Is just noise

In the air

2017

Dark is night

And ever so shall

Remain

No sword of eyes

Will be taken from

The sheath

2017

When you meet someone, someone new, you generally do your best to make a good impression. So that after you have parted that person is left with what amounts to a better version of you. Like a king tubby dub track with some parts removed to emphasis what remains.

Meeting these people again, confronted by their impression of me, I find myself wanting to be that impression, that better person they see and seem to know.

Over a lifetime, doing this so many times, it is difficult to the point of near impossibility to be myself, to find myself, among the shards and shapes of good impressions I have left.

My inner voice speaks to a shadow of myself, going dim and more dim as light fades behind a cloud of self doubt. Until such time, it feels as though there is nothing but words bouncing along and back the inner walls of my skull cavity.

2017

Clouds often look tall

Like a wall at the horizon

This does not take into account

The curve of the earth

The flat sense of the wind

And that objects are closer than

They appear

2017

Not just a memory of being in a desert town

My memory of being in a desert town

Sun long stretching the shadows of buildings

To the other side of street

Air tasting as if it had already been exhaled twice before

Each movement every footstep heard for miles in the quiet

You may well be the tree as it falls

2017

The full moon

Showing borrowed light

Shining the same over new York City

Omaha, denver, as portland

Time difference and atmospheric

Conditions changing

Color and texture

Nothing revealed

Save for this is

Where we are

2017

Sunrisen light

On eastern facing leaves

Above my height

2017

Moist smell in the air

Of earth turned

I settle my feet for

A moment on the

Curve a universe makes

2017

There are twelve notes.

The scale of it is beyond me.

There are twelve steps.

There are bakers dozens.

There are twelve rings.

There are twelve children.

And twelve more. And twelve more.

The Scale of it is beyond me.

There are ten fingers, for twelve notes.

There is music.

2017

Lens flare off streetlights

Stabbing straight lines

Squinting I can see feathery curves

A reflection of my eyelash

And lines of movement the

False evidence of moisture in

The air that smells wet with

Summer yesterday's evaporation

2017

I select

The path of least destruction

The one that avoids the

Most fallen fruit

2017

I have cut ties

With the wrists of my

Past actions

Once a suicide plunge

Now just the hope of hitting the bottom

One spins

The other reels

Never too late to to not decide

2017

Trees

Buses

Tables

Chairs

Lakes

Buildings

Cardboard

People

Candles

Flags

Irregular stones

Metal

Tin siding

Corkscrews

Formica

Coffee cups

Railroad ties

Traffic signs

Blood as it drips from a cut in the skin

Sandwich bags

Pencil lead

A smell on the breeze

Record albums

Concrete dust

Water

Eyeglass lenses

Pharmaceutical pills

Cash registers

Ice picks

Rusted shovels in the dark corner of a shed

It's all just a con-flux of atoms

2017

I am a time traveler

a sleepless drifter in my own

Life

My own body

Each blink of the eye

Now coupled with heavy drifts

My legs are hollow and do not welcome

The thought of grain storage

Train windows flutter past fence posts

Interior light on curtained windows

In a stop motion film that later is

A memory

2017

Five birds flying

Vaguely north against

A dwindling blue sky

2017

Some days buoyant.

The wait for gravity

To come to grips

Extended it seems, as an

Unlikely song hums in my

Head, down the length of

My limbs, disturbing my fingers and toes.

Delightfully.

2017

The Grace that is light

Is shown at best in the gap

Between shadows as they

Move with no effort on the wall

Across the room

2018

From daylight to daylight

I am a string

Stretching between invisible cans

2018

On a train

On the descending portion of a bridge

Facing away from the direction of the train's progress

Looking down as the ground slowly but clearly becomes closer

The sense of falling nauseates me

2018

tomorrow came and went, leaving me here, up the stairs and down the stairs in a strange house

2018

The world is shaped by wind.

The flat spiral of a tree does not dance because the air has been carved out around it. It is in an eye of creation.

One speck of sand can be sent forth until it disappears. Speed dissolves time.

2018

I do not have dreams. Not sleeping dreams. I have imaginings. Ruminations. Ideas. Daydreams. Slight blackouts and a memory. Consequently little feels real to me. Looking at a river from a train as I ride over, the river moves different than I would think. Than I might dream. The words do not fit what I see. What I see is not what is spoken aloud in my head. Not that I hear the words. I do not. They are written out, as on a blackboard. I am just reading them to myself. In other voices. Not spoken. Often merely phrases I remember. I remember my grandfather telling me not to walk with my hands in my pockets. I was four. I hear him tell me that again for perhaps the millionth time. I am fifty five. I do not hear him. But the words are there. I dream in the day. I am drawn in the direction of the words while I don't sleep.

2018

Cold on the surface

Cold to the touch

Air fuses headlights to vapor

And nothing can be seen

Outside of a short distance

2018

I live between leaves turning color

And leaves falling.

Lost time never counts.

2018

The shape of air

Is partially exposed by

The way it touches trees

The curve of its bite

The heel of its hand

The rate of wind to breeze

2018

Glistening gray

Is what remains of rain

Pooling in low spots

That have discernible order

Pieces of broken mirrors left

Where they fell for luck, good and bad.

2019

Negative space.

The space between buildings. That hint of sky.

The space between fixed glares. Casual thought behind eyes.

The space between intellect and indifference.

I stare into negative space. Pour myself through with momentum from my eyes.

2019

Wish these lights would

Go quiet so i could see

The delicate blue of dawning

2019

Sun rises

And lights the tops

Of trees

Infusing the upper branches

With different shadows

2019

The natural beauty of

Everything is so

Common that it

Largely goes unnoticed

2019

Sunlight clears the horizon

And under lights the bottoms

Of leaves

Shadow segments in the light

Are cut into the same shapes as their

Objects

2019

Single Leaves vibrating an autumn song

On otherwise bare branches

2019

Fog and smoke

Indiscernible in dark tree

Branches obscuring my

Vision to the same degree

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In 1995 I gave to my wife to be a handwritten book consisting of a selection of poems I had written. I entitled this book "Dissolved by water". Here are some of the poems from that book.

Ghost houses on

postal routes

the clatter of gates

not moving about

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Adam says "mistakes grow on trees"

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Did you see me

in the heat disfigures

avoiding the cracks

calling out your nicknames

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Crushed out, thrown

aluminum foil that made us

stars, time again to

leave children smiling,

it's not as easy as just remembering, as I

remember it.

Move and we'll dodge the wind.

Coat up and play kite.

A film closing out eyes.

Candy cigarettes make you blind.

One long hair behind your palm.

Crushed out thrown,

together and away, as I remember it.

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You look at the ocean

It's all marble

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There are simple tricks

I can perform.

Watching a tree. air

running over my teeth.

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The sun

lights half of

the curve of my arm

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The air smell tepid-

like moist residue

on tin foil.

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Seeing them in

Ike jackets-

I smell cigarettes.

---------------------------------------------

Down half moon

or on the way

Passing this century

in another silent view

the closer we approach

the further the shadow

straying from the sun

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rain

like so many things

is more evident

in what it leaves behind

-------------------------------------------------

in live situations

the melody of things

is often lost in the

rush of anticipation

-------------------------------------------

A unison of parts

suspected in motion

witnessed at six becoming seven.

Dice rolling buses

on a straight line

----------------------------------

I have nothing better to do

then toss a line over my toes

and sever them one to ten

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Gravel tossed to the

sides of streets...

We may as well be

scattering ovens

--------------------------------

Already illusion, with

double glass-

porch lights passed by-

A floating bad taste

of toothache and tinfoil,

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"The sun touching down on the airport...

where's the miracle in that?"

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My latest compulsions

are silent-

There is no fever in

turning leaves over.

--------------------------------------------

Her eyelids had been

taken over by

polyps of varying

sizes and shapes.

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Inheriting is the least of my crimes

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Corruption brings us our

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