My Blog

Category: Book o’ Verse

  • Tying my shoes

    There comes a time when
    shoe-tying is
    serious business.

    High stakes.

    Like, I’m starting to think
    all my shoe-tying up till now
    was just about
    getting ready for

    < bends >
    < ties >
    < upright >

    like that.

  • Take off your glasses Dan

    Take off your glasses Dan
    let the trees blur
    soft let the sound
    cotton fluff let
    the smell haze pulse
    let your thoughts
    melt like a plastic bag
    you flicked with a lighter so
    the words drop and
    splash the ground take
    your glasses off.

  • A friend’s recollection of 9/11

    Post-it notes in the air.
    Finding his way

    from the east side, near Grand Central
    to a friend’s place in Brooklyn

    over the Manhattan Bridge
    by foot.

    Everyone was walking in the same direction.

  • No matter what sidewalk

    Finding your rhythm
    there are familiar patterns you can scratch at
    to remind yourself
    your feet are your feet.

    You drag them along in new sneakers

    no matter what sidewalk
    you’re pounding
    it’s still

    those same toes.

  • Dad’s watch, again

    I’m wearing dad’s
    watch again to turn
    my left arm into his left arm

    to give him an easy way
    to remind me

    how time works and
    that the world keeps turning, the face scratched

    by him, by his dad, and now me.

    The seconds in
    some kind of rush who
    the hell knows why.

  • A case

    Is there a case to be made
    a first affirmative delivered in defense
    of collating those second-rate thoughts

    you might not see again (or even miss)?
    Shake them out of your hands, those
    drops of borrowed blue electric ink

    to make room in the sides of your fingers
    for some top-notch scribble sent down
    like a message

    in a lunchbox on string
    you once lowered through a bannister
    to rest on the carpet down below

    just in case
    someone curious walked by.

  • A beep

    A beep from the phone
    a text from someone and
    why not let it sit? Perhaps it wants to sit.

    Maybe it will
    ferment or blossom decay
    or dissolve
    into a small pinch of
    dirt in your slacks

    given
    enough time
    a little time

    time to rest and

    some loving lack
    of attention.

  • Wonderful, powerful

    Wonderful, powerful, important words
    I found today in Deuteronomy:

    “for our lasting good.”

    “Our” in this case, a people. Not a person.
    “Lasting,” to think past the moment.

    Now there — there is a phrase worth diagramming.

    Worth pondering, worth knitting, worth chatting about over breakfast.
    Worth adding harmonies to. Worth writing down.

    Worth being reminded of.

    Worth passing along.

  • Collateral Love

    I’m the victim of a collateral love experience.
    The love that tears through the space around,
    tries to connect and disassemble
    people sitting around and
    behind me.

    I’m caught in the love bomb.
    Irradiated.
    Stabbed with shards

    with melodies
    that tear into my shoulder, my
    back, my knees. The
    walls buckle as the wave bounces.

    My wife is there too. At my side.
    And she feels it
    burst through the room, along
    with the singer’s smile.

    She feels the love that wasn’t
    meant for us
    at least not just for us
    the love aimed
    at the back of the wall.

    We collapse into it.

    We break together.
    As the theater lights
    blink on.

  • Ways I may have changed

    It might be that my exterior melted a bit last year
    that it’s shinier now, more like fiberglass, which I hadn’t noticed to be honest
    until just last week.

    That it’s a little more weather resistant, which is nice.
    More sun proofed. Akin to the skin
    of a sailboat — a sunfish sailboat like the one
    my dad wanted to buy when I was a teen, and he was in his forties,
    when we took that class about
    tying knots.

    I used to pride myself on my permeable skin.
    I would chat with you
    we would chat about this or that, and through our chat
    I would find myself replenished.
    My roots. My happy roots.

    But now things bead up on me sometimes.

    I look down at my legs, at my hands and I see water beads
    I shake off those beads and I think

    this is a way that I may have changed
    a bit last year.

    Ocean ready I am.
    But covered in beads.