June 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Summer in MacGroveland
There’s all sorts of construction around the neighborhood in the yard, around the house. Big slabs of concrete, all uprooted and stacked on the sidewalk buckling the streets with piles of gravel and these huge, deep holes that never drain out their water And the contraptions! All kinds of them! Designed to pour concrete and dig tunnels or shave away the asphalt are just left on corners...
1 tag
How we remember things
I don’t remember the feeling being there, leaned into the cabin my palms hung on the door frame and my skin warm stuck to the wet aluminum With all those corn fields carrying on out into the evening carrying you out into the evening leaving me alone in the lightless parking lot I don’t remember the feeling of being there I am far from it.
May 2011
2 posts
1 tag
The color of quiet moss.
I woke up in a thunderstorm
one that, with heavy eyes, I first mistook for
construction outside
with how it shook the house
The violence of such movement!
cold ivory light cutting through the blinds was still comforting
as it took the last of last season’s long life
When I awoke again a few hours later all that weather had burned off into slow and steady rain
that left the whole city...
1 tag
An Evening in May, After the Wednesday Mass Let...
Tonight in Cathedral Hill the wheels collapsed with spokes and rims folding into the pothole and into each other sending me crashing into concrete and creativity awash on summit avenue with blood and bright, twinkling mystery my body convulsing with divinity and this divine sort of inspiration that flowed from my forehead onto fingertips red hot iron I watched...
April 2011
2 posts
Re: The Office Falcon.
No, as a matter of fact I don’t think it’d be a good idea to have an office falcon. Imagine that for a moment, we’d all have to wear heavy leather falconry gloves. We wouldn’t be able to use our track pads at all.
2 tags
Refrain
Write and wait for epiphany
March 2011
10 posts
1 tag
Maybe a sea, I'm not sure.
I dreamt of driving along a very large lake, for days It wasn’t much more than that just the feeling of the worn out bucket seats in the subaru with my hand on your leg and these ribbons of light crawling across our bodies
3 tags
Small, Good Things.
It’s five thirty in the morning and my hands are full of heavy blood. I’m going to have arthritis, I think—all that typing can’t be good for my fingers. I hold them above the radiator next to the socks I left here last night.
This is a harsh time of day but, warms socks and other small, good things can peel away the unpleasantries. Besides, you lose a lot of body heat through...
3 tags
Again with the light and the morning.
Saturday, and the slow spoken questions I am permitted to consider. The ivory white that hangs from the windowsill in the sun room reaches out to the edges of my feet. Warm and welcomed, it invites every possibility other than the present.
3 tags
County Law.
We walk out of the bar
somewhat too drunk but still sober enough to drive in the country.
Besides, there aren’t any cops this far north just county law and the department of natural resources out on the ice busting deer shiners and spear fisherman. So we crawl into the car. Hit a snow bank leaving the lot, on the way
into that cold darkness with our heads pressed against the glass
...
4 tags
Atlas.
I am neither an island, nor a body of water.
***
These blankets are ocean sized folded and creased, they tidal wave to the bones beneath them bones and skin and tissue tectonic movement
Sheets wrap my forearms subducted, down and under and around my body
I wake up, with half of them shoved off into the corner, thinking
...
1 tag
Everything I have seen.
There are things that are pure good and simple even if surrounded by complexities
I will go after them.
1 tag
Old wind.
Ghosts aren’t real they aren’t in the attic or outside, dragging their fingers across the door they do not fill my bed with a body of cold air or draft into the house from windows I didn’t leave open Ghosts aren’t real only the wind moving old air away.
The sweetest little song, by Leonard Cohen
You go your way I’ll go your way too
3 tags
Preparing Dinner.
I was coming home with a cut of bison to fry hot and finish with mushrooms that would take to the cast iron smiling and accepting of all those familiar flavors. When, In the parking lot winter stirred pulled a sheet over itself and whispered “Not yet.”
That evening the meat was rare but really, just undercooked. It happens, you know. Plenty of things are pulled from the pan too early....
1 tag
In the right mind.
First:
what a troubling thing to feel like maybe there isn’t anything worth sharing
Second:
I am sorry for the way I’ve been living
1 tag
The End of February, from Third Avenue.
I’m not supposed to be here or at least, I’d have guessed I wasn’t supposed to be here, yet But this is comfortable in its context and how that can be so disarming.
February 2011
5 posts
3 tags
At The Ballard Market
It was warm on Sunday so, we filled the car and drove up to the Ballard market
Where children and dogs
examined each other
and stumbled through the knees
of adults who, in such weather seemed to share that same sense of excitement, too
There was music from the homeless and youth. All those goddamn hipsters! but, as things are, how can we really blame them? for hammering at their guitar...
3 tags
Washington, by way of Colorado.
Do you remember when I told you about that evening in Colorado? That burning hillside in Boulder, the air hot with ash the strong smell of memory
Coming out from the flats of Nebraska running wild with all the emotions and equipment that Midwestern men always seem to carry in their cars
Well, now all of that evening feels, further.
...
3 tags
Warmth in the Body of Lake Country.
It was warmer then, and had been for some time So, fog had come to rest over the ice. There was snow on the lake and I pushed through it. The trees, black and grey Norwegian pines, faded. only my footsteps followed away from the shore Soon I was alone. I continued on like this, and did for some time. Until I came across another’s steps, But I moved over and onward. Then night came to rest with...
3 tags
Sense of Place. Constructed and Ideal.
They sound like wind off the lake or the last few minutes of snow late in the season and she said: that’s what it means to be from a place and I agreed
January 2011
15 posts
4 tags
Sense of Place. Rationalization.
Even in the city’s towered streets the sensation of wind in a birch forest
crawls through the branches above
and reminds us: We were not conceived in the shadow of mountains we were born in lakes and streams
destined to closet the wool we’ve worn all year
so as to choke in humidity
To hang our spirits on august nights and wallow cotton heat that...
4 tags
Sense of Place. Movement.
I woke up in the aisle seat to the sensation of the descent —at once falling and lifting.
Over shoulders I could see trees. Tall, dark pines. Then navy ink water.
Our plane slid out over the inlet and banked, pushing me into the chair.
The world rotated. The landscape rose and closed fingers around us.
We straightened and the familiar sounds of landing filled the cabin.
Metal movement and...
3 tags
With the Heavy Winter Bearing.
It is in this moment with all that wind and winter blowing That I can lose hold of the reigns. Stagger out blind into the night Lost to the journey Building fires in lonely places Out there shivering in caves clutching to myself with frostbit fingers. Blue-tonged and blind to the warm bodies that pass by.
3 tags
A Strong Perspective.
We’d spend entire evenings up on the hills at Northview Elementary. Man-made, they were short and steep. When you ran down them it was as if gravity wouldn’t let you go. It was a two mile trip from Erin’s—maybe more. We’d leave our bikes at the bottom, climb up, and spend entire evenings there. We’d talk about how the handrail in the back of the school was shot in...
4 tags
Well intentioned but uninspired.
It’s midnight and I am still up, at it again in the silence. Tapping at the keyboard. Taking black paint off the backspace. Shuffling through albums. Cutting at the quiet. Spurring at something well intentioned but wholly uninspired. Tonight my words are a tied horse while a stampede springs from the stereo stallion-like dripping with soul and stumbling over its own convictions.
3 tags
Wednesday Evening Mass.
A cathedral of table cloth
s with arched and narrow knees reached up the vaulted architecture
of the table’s hidden leaves and I, in a pew of linen pant legs folded fingers and prayed to the long skirt of circumstance
kneeling there on the linoleum
3 tags
A Doubtful Light Snow.
The room was bright Between slats of the blinds I could see snow not falling as much as suspended in the cold air as if unsure the direction snow should fall I rested, opening and closing my eyes breathing deeply in silence only interrupted by rustling sheets
3 tags
With Great Purpose.
It’s shallow, or at least simple. But, When that time comes, all I really hope is that I can look at you and say I had some really good lines back there and you’ll look at me your whole body smiling and say yeah, some of those were real good.
4 tags
Cold Nosed.
My bedroom is cold. When the alarm goes off I wake to numb toes and a nose that stands on my face, frostbit and upset—like it’s been waiting there for me to get up. I run the shower. Step on the scale. Set some goals I’ll forget by the time my skin is dry. My hair drips on the tile floor, freezes on the commute and thaws by nine. My shirt collars stay soaked till noon.
4 tags
My Bathroom Floor.
I stare at the tile floor and wonder where all that dust comes from. Our bodies, our heads. It’s all skin particles and hair. We leave a lot of ourselves lying around unintentionally.
I think about mopping it up, pushing all that brown water around. Squeezing it into the bathtub or toilet—I don’t own a bucket. Most of the time I just pour some soap on the tile, get the bath spout...
4 tags
Living for the Birds.
I had a bird’s beak in wood and willow breathing into to tiny nostrils flying circles moments of shade between wide eyes in shining sun light
oh, the time spent, hollow bones and hearts beating with the sound of gravel
rushing blood a ragged wingspan’s age flew far far in the distance
and we were timeless —saw time in seasons fools born from our far perspective so how we wasted...
3 tags
A Wind Swept Impasse.
The falling snow speaks a shared and silent language small white whispers, that accumulate in six inch stacks to send me to the sidewalk, seated in slick-bottomed boots with a cold and cracked tailbone as the cost of negotiating with whiskey and a winter evening.
1 tag
Frank Martin's
Frank Martin’s is empty save for a faint conversation in the back corner and those few leather low-eyed faces that picket along the bar
Making orders of straight and simplicity leaving polished draft pulls dusty their spigots dry. But hung like cloth to the benches and bar stools these few warm bodies give this place the confidence to keep me here.
3 tags
Big Loud Movements
Because life should be a big, loud, movement one that shows up and shakes us so hard that we end up in the living room stumbling over shoelaces and flipping the furniture
Looking to find those few truly important personal effects the parts of an identity we can’t part with and piling as much and only as much as we can carry in one arm, into it
Life should come running out the door Sliding...
2 tags
That First January Evening.
somewhere there was a countdown somewhere in the basement down there in between all those bodies all that darkness became light and in all that distance between now and whenever we all agreed this was something new that it had to be something new and it was, for many reasons.
December 2010
6 posts
2 tags
Yet,
To the feelings of absence we afford ourselves We sing songs wildly in unison.
3 tags
On the Mountain.
And in its presence, the spirit became an intent, sharing affection with the snow like familiar bodies bending the sheets. Carried down in soft lines along its face and cutting long white arcs deep into memory.
4 tags
Eagle County, Colorado.
The Honda struggles through the pass dropped down into second it whines in protest of the thin air that feeds its engine.
Headlights run shadows down the road and I cycle songs through the stereo. Lonely and red eyed, tail lights pass into the dark.
Small mountain towns. Though some larger than others, at two in the morning they all sleep and sound the same.
Quiet clicks and credit card ...
5 tags
Adolescence.
Years of this, in calm and stormy seas For nothing more than, a stand of palm and quiet shore not claimed, but conquered.
4 tags
For their worth.
And these memories will serve the egos of a million bustling teenage hearts scouring about the darkness for words otherwise written that take a further leap in reaching out into that emptiness And upon their discovery the affirming embrace of clicking like
4 tags
Hand Made Goods.
Boot leather, worn and faded marked in experience in expression of Crafted absent their authority That meaning defined in mistakes So unfortunately made and fortunately experienced.
November 2010
6 posts
4 tags
Not a sense of. Rather,
A long cold mile through glare ice and incandescence. Evening accented by sharp ales, grease covered wax paper misspelt menu items the warm and welcome —that rasp of Westerberg, the literary embrace Finn’s locked elbows. A comfort only afforded by being —true and tangible. In Place.
4 tags
It Doesn't Matter What Sticks.
It’s less about the snow than the snowing. That first sensation of waking up to all that white.
4 tags
Back to where I started.
I will quiver my heart to a towered telling-of. Those tidal shifts. Those goddamn flippant soul-gratifying deductions. Served up by every long list of places I’ve never been to. And at that eventual long-time-coming home. You can relish in the wonder Of if you went or left
4 tags
A Weekend in November.
Needle pain on our noses. Damp breath-marked scarves. Water swollen leather shoes and the constant need for dry wool socks. Such monumental journeys begin with short errands to the store on the sliding back wheels of a 1990’s mercury.
Black smoke. Gray snow. Shovel sparks, and those amber spinning- evening lights. Cold feet on hard wood. Migrating the bed like a bird to the radiator.
6 tags
Morning in the Upper MidWest.
I could take my things. Pack them for the coast. But who’d be left here, to watch over my wild pioneering heart.
5 tags
Faint and further.
Oh, the haste of our bustling assembly.
That blinking light so quickly transcribed Miles away a flashlight left flickers. Battery fading. That at such a distance may have appeared a poignant mark. Or perhaps something unintended. The faint signal of Morse code.
October 2010
5 posts
5 tags
Rest.
it would be short it would be clear.
it would set fire to nights like these. And in their light silhouetted I could sleep.
Paper Darts Literary Arts Magazine. →
Paper Darts Literary Arts magazine recently published some of my work. They are a fantastic publication and I am very happy to be included.