CLADOGRAM.

I wrote this in early 2013. 

FOR MY SISTER.

As our talk leaked

like the last-call beer

dripping past the 

evening’s ash, I saw

a change of you.

Somewhere between the

banjo-bite of the Blue-

Ridge grass and your

surge to master words,

all glimmer of girl left

your hazel-flame eyes - 

you’d embraced the life

of the mind.

More Medb than maid now,

warring on and strong, a

woman who knew the true

sound of the name born

by our blood - my sister,

yourself forever. In pride,

we smiled. 

I wrote this for my sister's college graduation, May 2012. 

LUCY, LUCRECE, LEGEND.

I wrote this in the summer of 2012, as part of a collaborative project with NYU's Lucrece Project literary magazine. It is based on John Dyer Baizley's "Yellow" album artwork. 

CANTICLE OF COMMON LIFE.

Marble heart, oaken bone - 

in death’s head profile,

Sum ibi - the cenotaphic

stature of the city, all

adrift in the ocean of 

mumbled smudging light.

A picaresque foot out

my door - a slight step

of ebullient will - and I 

breathe draught air again. 

Light that blurs sight

doesn’t temper true blood.

The craft of heart and bone

alive even in this Hephaestian

husk, the street beats in my

stride-time. A wroughter of

world-to-word - I crow

this canticle of common life.

I wrote this in spring 2012. 

COELACANTH.

No gods, no masters, not even

the dusking moon and her turning

tide-time -

to swim a day as coelacanth,

scale-mail untouched by change

in brine.

To pass through the scorching dredge

of great eyes that sear celestial

deeps - 

to be found unchanged and whole,

nothing but heart - a Parthian ride,

no real retreat.

No impossible goal, no dinosaur act,

a simple fish that got it right; Lazarus

taxon, arise and swim - 

Is it the hollow spine, the uncouth taste,

or the fat of brain that wore the 

paradigms thin?

If I - dead eyes and silver stars,

wolf-paddling against the charging

depth of mind - 

could swim a day as coelacanth,

I might learn at last to understand

how common creatures try.

I wrote this very early in 2012.

YOU ARE MY PERSON.

In the fourth year I’ve known

the scar across your nose

and the uncruel peculiarity

of your seasonal shoulder,

I intone the same moan

forlorn - still, without quiver

or qualm - you are my person.

The authentic celestial crunch

of my bootsteps in the snow

alone, without your long-legged

stride to pace the too soon,

too late reverberation on the 

ragged land, roads together

with a scarlet cheek and heart - 

at the dusking of the day come 

whitherway, to see the goddess

face and spit, to only see

druidess-you again - the scar,

a creature of clay, a shoulder

golden in the white, a cheek rose

in the dark - you are my person.

I wrote this around Christmas 2011. 

TRUE BEAUTY OF BIRDS.

The willow plume, true

beauty of birds - arrowhead

swallows swoop upon the 

august austerity of a red-tail,

weathering feather ruffle to

maintain a raptorous stare

upon his park, only living once

forever. 

I wrote this one in autumn 2011. 

THUS THOUGHT DIARMUID.

The deleterious delirium of

the Styx-swimming feeling,

I breached out of a warm bed 

to a cold world and thought how

cold the bed was too. The distance’s

ache to the pill-bottle popping

for vitamin C, another silence splitting.

~

In the park, the au pairs’ arms

oil-rig pump th e swings to gush

blood to the legs of the occupieds’

orphans, their simpering smiles

shrouding the tears they knew their

mothers could keen back home,

wherever land heads lie.

~

I trembled like young December

next to the native growth garden,

new-tree simulacra of deep forests

forgotten, and listened draught-full

for advice on how to stand, when

to bend, why to grow.

I wrote this in the autumn of 2011.

CARNIVAL.

Your eyes, green as the bluegrass, 

drowning in the moon-pulled tides 

as the bass slides like mud and 

a cricket-cantor creaks up: sound 

bursts like a whip-poor-will with a 

woodgrain Ozark battle cry,

the Alabama nocturne of the 

carnival - I am gone - 

Feeling the reel, 

I hold your waist for dear life,

terrified of losing counting

breath as the stars turn.

Drunk in love and alive, I

dream to the empty bottles,

the short-cut shorts, and the

trees where the spruce-

notes roost; I dream for you.

I wrote this at some point in the summer of 2011.