Poetry

Homage to Skip James

(pace Al Moritz’s The Garden)

The Depression?  Orchestrated pretty ugly indulgences
of contemptuous melodies
due to diminished motor skills
of bony-digit “get-tar” pickers, fidgety pianists,
who had to humble down and join … Read the whole text

 
(Excerpts from the forthcoming collection, “Echoes from the Hills”)

1.The Lights of Kigali

In your darkest cloudy nights
I look across your many hills
This City of a million lights
Natural and manmade incandescence.
Perched on one of your … Read the whole text

The Heist

Transportation’s tough,
if you want to be transported:

the blockbuster museum’s hush
is uniform, like sand. 

Adjust the audio tour,
and behind the curtain

of information hiss
streams of static—

what’s art but marked
exits, the urge to … Read the whole text

Canadian Raising

My father’s father came
with songs in seven tongues
and no-one to sing them to.

His Polish elbowed German, Dutch
and Yiddish to hear a flat vernacular
push liver pills on sidewalks,

while his children learned his … Read the whole text

Vs/&: Two Free Haiku

1/ Bird vs Wind

The bird strives to catch
The wind, but it is so strong
It traps the bird instead

2/ The Cosmos & My World

Just as our cosmos is, supposedly, where
Light … Read the whole text

Communion

Darkness weighs
about seventeen kilograms per unit.
It tastes like salt and iron.
I have held it and tasted it.
Believe me.

The feel of darkness varies.
Some days it has the consistency
of cold molasses,
other days the … Read the whole text

My father loves in a practical way

My father loves the way only an ex-soldier can.
He loves with things handy and familiar.
Like steel or fist.

My father is practical.
The way his belts love my behind.
The way … Read the whole text