Nothing is what it seems,
or as it feels it should be.
The world is full of
smoke & mirrors --
neither here nor there...
And yet everywhere...
& everywhen.
Illusory [Free Verse]
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Category Archives: Free Verse
Condemned [Free Verse]
Condemnation placard
Stapled to the church door
With the commanding tone
Of Luther’s notice.
The Condemned has stately bones
But its skin and viscera
Are in shambles.
Sun pierces stained glass,
Bathing dirty surfaces
With bright color,
But the dust and rat shit
Remain to create a
Miasma within.
One day a wrecking ball
Will make good on the
Condemnation.
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Nightmare Hotel [Free Verse]
The image was hung on the wall
in an otherwise clean and well-
managed business hotel.
I can't really say that I'd ever had
that particular nightmare before
I checked into the room,
But I know I've had it many times
since.
Set atop a post on a brutal white
sand beach in a stifling burlap
onesie -- a onesie that one
would have to have been sewn into,
for it had no zippers, buckles,
buttons, or Velcro.
What was the nightmare?
To be seen, while not seeing?
Suffocating slowly -- held under
the high tide with waterlogged
cloth clinging to my face?
Arms pinioned as the seabirds
went to work on tearing through
cloth and skin in as few
vicious pecks as possible --
pristine white growing
blood crimson stains,
running down the pole,
dripping onto the sand.
All of the above?
I never have a good memory of it.
That's why I'm not sure that I
didn't have the nightmare
even before I ever saw that
poster on the wall of an
ordinary hotel -- far, far
from home.
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Forbidden [Free Verse]
One afternoon, in the
Forbidden City,
People roam about --
Sightseeing.
The very next morning,
A single line of tracks
Through freshly fallen snow
Cuts across the very
Same yard.
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Wind Snitch [Free Verse]
The straight-stemmed turbines
are tattletales,
telling all about the stealthy
thief sneaking overhead.
With no clouds in the sky,
the wind could slip
out over the treetops,
and no one would know.
But the turbines turn,
slow as Taiji titans,
letting no movement
go untaxed.
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Whiplash Weather [Free Verse]
Mountains are the
Lamborghini of weather --
from gray and dismal to
gloriously sunny
and back again
in record time.
It may rain and the droplets
burn off before noon,
leaving no trace of
the gloom.
One day may feel
multiple ways before
the sun goes down.
The human mind isn't
built for such whiplash
emotional experience.
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Martian Mindscape [Free Verse]
The light of day's end
brings out the sandy
grit of the arid
landscape.
The light of day's end
matches & compounds
the color of the
desiccated vegetation.
The light of day's end
turns the world
into someplace new --
somewhere I've never
been before.
My body knows this is
nothing like Mars;
my mind does not.
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A Walk in Winter Woods [Free Verse]
In Winter,
when blue sky shows
between the twiggy,
bare branches,
the forest is not so
claustrophobic,
but sound and wind,
alike,
carry through.
A mind can roam
between the bracing
breezes.
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Operation [Free Verse]
Opening bleary eyes,
back on a cold, hard surface...
I know not where...
All I see,
All I know,
is a confluence of
sharp pointed tips:
hard points of unknown purpose
from which my brain attempts
to gauge a distance as
they come into razor clear
focus.
What hard robotic purpose
have these mean tines?
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Gods & Monsters [Free Verse]
the lion wind blows.
all about is rippling chaos,
but for the goddess
who dances in the
furious center,
pausing on one foot
as the dust swirls
in angry spasms.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 