It seems only yesterday I used to believe
I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow
Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were...
No one here likes a wet dog.
You know the parlor trick.wrap your arms around your own bodyand from the back it looks likesomeone is embracing youher hands grasping your shirther fingernails teasing your neckfrom the front it is a...
This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore... This is the thick of things.So much is crowded into the middle—...too much to name, too much to...
It seems only yesterday I used to believeThere was nothing under my skin but light.If you cut me I would shine.
… I am the sound of rain on the roof.I also happen to be the shooting star,the evening paper blowing down an alley,and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.I am also the moon in the treesand t...
This is what I think aboutwhen I shovel compostinto a wheelbarrow,and when I fill the long flower boxes,then press into rowsthe limp roots of red impatiens—the instant hand of Deathalways ready to bur...
ThemeIt's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwichand a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,I am consumed by the wish to add somethingto one of the ancient themes–youth dancing with...
The fly lands on the swatter.The movie runs backwardsand catches fire in the projector.This species apes us wellby talking only about itself
The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters.And the Stone Age beca...
It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a...
I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.
When I was a young man, I understood that poetry was two things - it was difficult to understand, but you could understand that the poet was miserable. So for a while there, I wrote poems that were ha...
I know my voice has a limited range of motion; I don't write dramatic monologues and pretend to be other people. But so far, my voice is broad enough to accommodate most of what I want to put into my...
It seems only yesterday I used to believethere was nothing under my skin but light.If you cut me I could shine.
Perhaps the answer is simply one:one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,a small jazz combo working in the background.She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautifuleyes closed, and the...
In the freakish pink and gray of dawn I tookhis death to bed with me and his death was my bedand in every corner of the room it hid from the light,and then it was the light of day and the next dayand...
But did you know that at your age Judy Garland was pulling down $ 150,000 a picture, Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory, and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room? No wait, I mean he h...