I can best describe my poetic style as
an erratic, eclectic, electric patchwork quilt of romantic,
experimental, and innovative imagery and language. My work has been
published in Digital Americana, 4 and 20, Midnight Circus, The
Rathalla Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Deep South, Black Heart Magazine,
Belle Reve, Obsessed With Pipework, Hello Horror, Dark Moon Digest,
The Belleville Park Pages, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Rat's Ass Review,
Better Than Starbucks, The Front Porch Review, Sick Lit Magazine, and
The Scarlet Leaf Review, as well as upcoming issues of The Dying
Dahlia Review, Down in the Dirt, and Jersey Devil Press. Having
suffered from bipolar disorder for most of my life, I hope to inspire
and comfort others plagued by mental illness with my words.
Interstate, Idle
It cost the moon
and its coterie of stars
to resist your polish
your laurel wither
your celadon stirrings
ripening, undaunted
ripening, because
It took a highway
and its gridlock hysteria
to unleash your eclipse
your fragile granite
your aphotic strikes
darkening, unsparing
darkening, despite
Ode to Anonymous Annulment
nothing more to unearth
by the boroughs of Mexico City
Tolsa bronze, Rufio Tomayo, Reforma Avenue
the onslaught of star-strung shores
shipwrecked in the azure breeze
nothing more to retract
by the thirsty plains of Peru
Colca Canyon, triple-tiered waterfalls
the grape grappa’s stinging bite
pottery porn, Chicha in the shantytowns
no more to seek
with fuming fever
by the indigenous lace
of erogenous Paraguay
parted paths
along the Pocosol River
exacting Costa Rica’s coral kiss
those Ultimate Lights of Havana
rectifying all renunciation
Suicide Attack
I raised the dead once,
by the handhold of a coma,
beneath the ruin of our grave.
They came stumbling
with their graceless marrow
clamoring from cobwebs,
gasping for the breath
reserved for my last rose.
They sobbed with transient twilight,
choking on severed shadows
from terminal sunsets
and blood-boiling moons.
They asked me, voiceless, waning,
how did I see the sky?
I answered:
in every battling, burning color,
in every flicker of foaming fire
beyond his storming seas.
Cave Art
the runes remembered
this cliff face charnel house
harboring celibate snakes
feral pirates eroded by waterfalls
a porous pottery tomb
enameled with windows and reflection
arsenical bronze atonement
work-weary malachite odes
paleolithic princes chiseled
and chiding in charcoal
red ochre epochs outlined
with torch marks and eventide
megafauna manganese
bellowings of bison bones
whittled wartimes and reindeer relics
embroidered clashes with the sea
hematite harlots inciting
horseback holocausts
the extinction of aweless echoes
within this null necropolis
within this elegiac eve
Now Lucid
What we took from each other
were not counterblows,
but inspiration and blue fire.
Diamonds line our memories
like sizzling constellations.
There will be no more of our
bareback alleyway love,
raw scars ripped open
on rippled shoulders,
mutiny in our mutuality.
We forge the illusions
of our idols, chant to gods
of earth, lust, lions, wars.
There are no more calamities
to weather our shivering nights,
no more bee stings to relish.
If we suffer at all,
we suffer in phantasms, chimeras,
paling next to statues.
If sedition ever spread
its incestuous seed
into the trenches
of our feral gardens,
our tatter would never
traverse the war.
Our malice melts history,
boasts itself in buoyant headlines
forged of burning gold.
We shallow our heartbeats
with gaudy show tunes
and campfire ghosts
from the embers
of childhood convolution.
We steady our heartbeats
with the whispers
of our grandmothers,
breathing endless farewells
through stubborn vintage phones.
Wednesday Night on the Ward
you listen to them
rave and riot and rehearse
long enough
you start to sprout wings
take flight
inside your own sedated hell
you begin to repine
all of the footholds
you chose to omit
not so very long ago
the distinctions
escorting you to the gallows
when you were smoother
and more wondrous
illusion still glazing your enamel eyes
in your cousin’s attic
channeling saffron and cedar
we opened fire
against the lemon-scoured walls
atop a quilt fussy with foxgloves
forever shed to should have never
the altitude of a scalawag star
when they snatch the lights
the nurses haunt the doors
imposed unspecifics
whitewashed in the bowels
of the disenchanted tower
where i first wounded my mother
where I whispered good-bye
too late once again
to my well-founded father
two disfigured decades later
too intemperate to contemplate
his silently roaring absence
until it struck me like a startled viper
inside a coward’s waking dream
leaving me with rotting ambition
a mummified marriage
strung out on the spinning night
a powerless undoing in my belly
unwinding me into the warring sea
ships collide inside my heart
I have been here before
in this defiled unmarked cell
in this perfectly-polished prison
wielding unspoken weapons
where they shuffle us
into conga lines, resuscitations, recitations
I will swim continents and car lengths and cataclysms away
we embrace the embroidery
of our grandest wild gardens
calendula spice, canterbury bells, pink-bellied anemone
the ones we water only
in the momentary moonlight
when the winter branches
are free of opulence
for once unencumbered
by nature’s every last
daredevil whim
A Distant Relation
dexter ain’t no butterfly
hacking open baby lizards
in the craggy kansas sun
taking ole tammy lynn
for hair-trigger spins in the
flowing molten cornfields
his granddaddy abandoned
to narcoleptic scarecrows
wallowing in wireworms
five or six cyclones ago
White Light
the river remembers nothing new
i regret
that i regret nothing
at all
the savages of your solace
the donnybrook you opined
sweep their bitter boiling smoke
up toward the fasting sky
lotus blossoms inherit no meadows
balladry wanes with faith
and what fathoms of remorse
haunt the bottom of your heart
no one grieves for harlots
turned to rust
nor weeps for wizards
bespelling dust
fortune-tellers of amour
we weave our astrometry
into stars seen only
from your tower
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