Calliope Sounds

What a funhouse mirror is love
Our carnival act closed on a
Two bit train to another town
You the tattooed strong man mustachioed and bald
Vulnerable flesh concealed by
Sleeves of translucent dyes
Patterned scales and tribal offerings.

What was I but your Pagliacci
Sad clown to make you smile
Our tragedy a comic affair
Now that years have swept the last of
Cotton candied sweetness
From our sudden summer spectacle.

I look for you among lion tamers
And stilt-toting tall men
You the organ grinder
With your dance monkey dance
Who will play for me
When the train moves on?

More recent poems

Bibliophile

This one was put in a jacket
Binding cracked, chapter three now removable
As if its words, quite unnecessary
Could be dispensed of entirely
Dependent on the reader’s mood

These time-yellowed pages, a second skin
I admit much smoother than my own
She carries her own set of scars
A coffee stain on page seventy-three I could
Attribute to the dog but I’d be lying

Lines on margin notes
Small doodled stars and open
Circles perhaps she is
More pocked than I
The years I have studied her

Her form now safely shelved
This simple covering
Betrays not her condition
Both well worn
And well loved

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For L., now five years mine

Recumbent Anubis
Ears piqued to grasp the breath of a dying dream
Creases of skin and hair black as the dead of night
Black as the Nile soil from which you came
Jackal Terror Guardian at the Gate

Take this heart to the scales of Ma'at and weigh it
Is there truth enough in me
Love enough in these deeds

Mercy me Anubis
As I follow you through the dark
To the tombs of my Fathers
My Kings and my priests

Scavenge this remnant to the Kingdom of Osiris
Smile on me with feral eye
Something so familiar
My companion in this world
Guide in the next

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Creating Poetry - FNAR 6394

Last night our prompt was "today, I started..."

today I started shifting
like the sky in a storm
blue to gray and green even
darkening and darkening

did you see it when the light flashed?
my face a fury, the dream and its awakening
the bliss and the afterglow
the summit and the space from which once crested the summit can be seen

today I am a changeling
both a part of you and yet my own
I am a weed, a wild thing, dandelion
weave me in bracelets and bangles, tether me as you will
but I will not be beholding

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What I'm reading:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

by Seth Grahame-Smith










How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

by Edward Hirsch