Emptiness eats at the heart, more surely than time itself,
yet some days we are blessed with company
enabling us to see just beyond the emaciated self.
Though the day ahead seems barren, a friend
will sometimes bring along all the light you lack to coast
above the dour grey slates and chimney pots.
So we make our soup of fresh tomatoes and basil
in the garret kitchen, and the knots in the stomach
loosen their grip as we make ready to eat and talk.
No time now for last year’s man, or any lost inventory
of sights not seen, things not done, time wasted
in procrastination, or dreams hardly begun.
And though we are still both dreamers of sorts,
we stand beside immense facades, telling the other
there is no need for touch, or sex, or love.… ...continue reading
Of course I’ve noticed
how you’re drawn to
what you call my
wounds symmetry
doesn’t beckon the eye
no— disruption &
disorder a lopsidedness
reminding you you are
dreaming the rest of
your life asleep in
expectation until a
patch of bark shows
you a swirl & a
swelling about a gap
that once was
wholeness my
surface wavy like old
glass the slow
assemblage of cells
moving in to cover &
protect rippling up the
roughened river new
growth a whirlpool
whose center narrows
by season & I know
you want nothing
more than to stick your
hand into this soft-
edged opening to feel
reparation what we
trees are go ahead
touch me & awaken
to doubt
– Mary Buchinger… ...continue reading
Names. You’ve got this thing with them. The names of plants, rocks, native species. Concrete details have become a favorite pastime.
Vehicles, clouds, chemical compounds.
You file names away in no particular order but know right where they are when you need them. And you will. Need them.
Architecture, muscles, functions.… ...continue reading
Hope slips through fingers
like time spent waiting
often just a tick ahead,
visible, but elusive.
Or it hangs back like a stopped clock
no longer viable.
Hope survives fire, preserved
beneath blackened structures
housing every possession.
It resides beneath blankets
of the terminally ill until handfuls of dirt
hit casket lids.
It drips down the sides of chilled
liquor bottles and heroine needles
passing through moments, days, years of addiction.… ...continue reading
Abiquiu, New Mexico
I return to Leopoldo Garcia’s home gallery
where, this damp morning-glory morning,
he wears overalls and one tennis shoe.
Yesterday his litany of augurs, acrylic and clay
flowed like red nectar. Hummingbird
in his studio, I bring a gift of poems.
Leopoldo paints with a hole in his heart
pierced by a priest darker than a cassock.
He grieves for the children gone forever,
mica tears grafted on flat masks, tiny
eyes, round mouths. Nearby his studio
a weathered red and white figure… ...continue reading
12/21/16 @ 11:28 a.m.
I walk my dog
Through liquid air
Miniscule droplets
Pelt my forehead
As I make my rounds
Of the parking lot
The winter solstice
Less than a day old Only yesterday
The morning sky
Not quite fulfilling
Wakefulness Yesterday
…………………………………………………………………………..The shortest
The sky Of the year
Blue-gray
With a tinge of white
At the border At the horizon
Like an artist’s canvass
Not quite ready
Prepared
Flat
Waiting
… ...continue reading
In search of light and love and lost time,
the months are flying by
faster than either of us imagined.
Loneliness speeds us to the grave
more surely thandisease,
yet we remain impotent in the face of it.
Try as we might to cling to the past
and each other, the present
has a proclivity for mass murder.
Wind swept and shell-shocked, we stand
on differentshore lines
ineluctably alone, defying the odds.
Our fates inextricably bound, written
by fear and solitude,
unerringly devoted, waiting around to die.
– Mark A. Murphy… ...continue reading