Self care is noble
Look after yourself today
Serve others tomorrow
Exploring both Haiku and Tanka writing is a revelation. As dark and cruel as some of my poetry is, one should never mistake the heart of the artist with their work.
At one with Cosmos
We pulse with Universal
Love and Stardust Light
How proud your colors once – now tied in baling wire, bleached grey weathered tatters dangling.
Captain, my captain, your hull is torn, black bottomed asphalt weighed down as the Forest calls you to water.
Anchored on cinder blocks, your sails hang in rags. With Mushroom sprouted barnacles, you await the dusky leaf sea.
You are beached, broken, sinking slowly in suburbia.
Shipwrecked.
Finding an old sailboat parked by the side of the road, her best years behind her. I see abandoned and broken cars all the time – never boats.
gun brass
rains
on street
tinging
echoing
in a
blood
timpani
of violence
Working in the Haiku format is such a precise art. 17 syllables. No more. No less.
Dream now of the beach
Warm forever sands, clear blue water
Yet lungs strain to reach
Breaths that start later
And end rattling in wet-mold banquet
A mirage to hold in final decay
i hope i live long enough to make the beach in PR when this is all over i will write poetry and run a little cinema lumiere and make photos.
ABABCC Rhyming Meter
Seen on road side sign
‘Abortion is Murder,’ here
I have killed then.
I live in Gary, IN – like Detroit, Michigan, it’s a depressed area with a clear color divide. Outside of Gary, white holy rollers preach the gospel and tell women what they can and can’t do with their bodies. It’s a fucking disgrace.
reloading i spat back
protests
complaints
requests
attacks
demands
i stood on
the high ground
of history
they didn’t care
as they
machine-gunned
me
down with
racism
rhetoric
reason
capitalism
profit
we honeymooned
in new jersey just
across the river
from the
big town
some guys
above
us wd piss out
the windows at
night and drop
used condoms
on the
fire escape
hanging out
side our own
window swollen
with their seed
it was the best
time of our lives
and we didn’t
need condoms
we had
each other
I remember this time so well as we had found this place online and it was a shithole with puke in the common bathroom that my wife would clean because no one else would have and we had to use it for the three days we were there
Reading “The Poisoner’s Handbook” by Deborah Blum. Remarkable tales of true-crime and the tools of the trade in the 1920’s. I loved the tales of criminals, coroners, cops and kooks who made poison such a prevalent pastime.
Speaks became real Jan. 20
Where hootch of all kind sold aplenty
As Prohibition ground hard
The local boneyard
Was stuffed with the rich cognoscenti
Down in the Bowery, the Smoke
Is a drink that will soon make you choke
It’s pure alcohol
Charcoal filtered through coal
This poison is really no joke
In Ill-mannered times
Your worth would have been even less
Than anything I can scrape from my boots
Your kindness lost, your soul a mess
Of worm-meal dung and sick
I thank you twice, that’s the trick
Reading about archival insult poetry and taunts. ABCBDD Rhyming Meter.
Jane smashes the bar
Drunks wallowing in her rage
‘Who wants to fight?!’
No one raised a hand now
But they would once she slept
Writing in Tanka form – 5/7/5/7/7 syllables.
Outlaw Poetry 