Category Archives: poem

on unemployment

I am the cold rain drop sliding down the window
Sliding into my chair with a defeated sigh

Looking at the phone Looking at the phone Looking at the phone

The rain drops make the asphalt jump alive the rain
Pours so hard it makes the world one large gray cloud
The rain only has one way it can go
straight down I tend to follow

Waiting on the call Waiting on the call Waiting on the call

untitled (Alan S.)

Alan, when I should have been crying about you,
I wasn’t. It was suddenly my grandmother’s funeral—
The church looked the same, that one hymn… oh I wept.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t feel the sadness of your death, Alan.
You were young and cheated. It was just
That all I heard and felt reminded me of her death.
All that surrounded me, suddenly,
Shuddered and quaked in my bones so that a flood—
Him, her, them— all those dead and gone came over me.
In that instant, I saw my friends, family,
at my funeral, and I witnessed them weeping. I realized they too
May be crying for someone else.

Twenty-six

Pen on paper. Sometimes I curse learning
those 26, curse that pen on paper.
If you say I’m a writer, I’ll slap you.
Just smelling that pen on paper
makes me queasy, makes my hands shake.
Don’t trust anyone claiming to write original.
Blame the alphabet, blame the ego that
all us opposable thumbs possess, just
don’t trust words on paper.
The narrator lies. The pen knows only one path.
It’s all been done before; there are only so many
combinations possible.

Upon Reading Annapurna

For some reason, I can’t stop reading Himalayan books, adventurous accounts of men and women who have conquered the highest highs on this planet. I needed to jot this down now~ hoping it will lead to a more full-fledged poem. let me know your thoughts!

Upon Reading Annapurna

somehow the ocean child in me
has been consumed by mountains
striking blue glacier passes
towering ice faces
impossible crevasses and
threats of avalanche
Annapurna, a beauty I’ll never know,
doesn’t whisper or whimper
Annapurna roars her mind’s will
imposes all in her frosted shadow
captures us blasphemous ocean fools
and lifts our flat horizon
straight up to the moon.

life just is

We’ve all but forgotten the heartache
jon
cause life just is–
the days dwindle from when I spent
warm evenings with you,
the weeks slip and slide
and before long
I won’t have a good clear picture
of your face
only a haze from something that was
so overwhelming once
to see our best friends carry
that heavy casket
to see only pictures lining the room
to have the unspoken
hanging heavy fear that
we won’t remember you
jon,
I still have your photo on my desk
our triumphant return from the Keys
in your broken car
I remember your eyebrow raise
your voice laughing
“shut up jody”

with headphones on

wrote this little piece during my first job out of college, sitting in a cubicle, working on a task…. actually “pre-iPod” but still relevant, maybe more so now. since I’m “working” on this Sat morning, I thought I’d post!

with headphones on

a lucid dream
where legs in blue jeans 501 walk by
in time to the drumbeat in my head
and the carpet has a twinkle
and the lights a wilder state of white, pulsing
one gray shirt circles and pirouettes
unaware of his own awkward grace just being
in a hurry
the music crescendos and although there are walls
i am not alone but with you
while something of a fevered world, those
conferences and committees, i see
him and her
move those fat cat lips
but there is no sound but me
hustle and bustle on by you world
i have my colorful Thelma and Louise escape
where my wheels are the heavy rhythm
and the sky is
my eyes filled with blues