Category Archives: poem

Bull Street [Senryū]

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the bull doesn't feign stealth,
yet gets close enough to make
shoppers poop themselves

Deep in the Forest [Free Verse]

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What happens in the
strange, nearsighted
isolation of the forest? --

sounds dulled by 
thick, soft moss
and masked 
by burbling water,
and insect buzz,
and bird song

What happens to the
rude mechanicals
who venture too deep
into those soft but terminal
lands? --

where the last stand
of life plays out

Mythic Love [Free Verse]

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Myths cheapen love
with potions &
pointy passion projectiles,

pansies squeezed over 
the eyes of cold souls
[when paired with a proper
incantation] 
can make love from naught
or turn love on its head,

but that which can be
turned on its head
is not love --
& never was love.

Cold Stone [Haiku]

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winter: stone sculpture
of snuggled infant & mother;
my bones grow cold

The Axeman [Free Verse]

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Hangman...
Axeman... 
Guillotine art-eest...
Stool-kicker...
Lever-yanker...
Elongator of necks...

His motto:
"Making them deader
than your average beheader."

Sharpening his blade,
Split hair-testing

Precise as the 
Taoist butcher --
blade between bone,
no nicks allowed

Killer of killers,
an audience thriller

Step right up...

Any last words?

Masked & shirtless
+
pudgy & sweaty

He's the hangman,
the axeman,
a killer of killers.

Anarchy [Free Verse]

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Anarchy
evokes
chicken body 
bumper cars.

Constant movement
that is not only 
undirected, but also:
fast,
violent,
random,
chaotic,
and doomed to be 
short-lived.

Anarchy 
seems like space 
in which
many participants
would soon be
on their backs --
legs churning 
in spastic bursts,
ineffectually.

Like toppled robots
or 
cockroaches that
waded through
gassy trenches.

Limbs moving,
as if confident 
that they can 
right the ship
and
recover the upright.

But everyone watching
knows they can't --
that the laws of physics
won't support it,
that it's just wasted
motion.

They might as well be
in night terrors,
for being able to move 
ineffectually seems 
only moderately less 
terrifying than not
being able to move at all --
when faced with a situation
from which one wants badly 
to get away.

But, maybe,
I've got it all wrong.

Maybe that's not 
Anarchy 
at all.

Self Speculation [Free Verse]

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What's a Self?

...a soul?
...a set of neuronal activity?
...an illusion?
...a ghost in a machine?
...the body, the brain, &
the whole enchilada?

Memories can be false,
and some always are.

Thoughts can be illusory,
and some always are.

Feelings can be flighty & fickle,
and some always are.

If one loses a little toe,
is one a diminished self,
or still whole?

What about if one loses
a pinky toe-sized mass of brain?

So many possibilities:

...death,
...changed personality,
...emotionlessness,
...speech pathologies,
...blindness,
...memory loss,
...coma,
...no discernable change,
and so on.

What's a Self?
...a dog?
...an embryo?
...an AI?
...an extraterrestrial?

What is a self?

Am I a self?