soft shoes listening to a ballet lesson on a wed toward evening. obviously, they are just learning, positioning tender hips in first, awkwardly stretching arms to fill space, shrugging shoulders in anxiety. it’s in the notes, in how simple the rhthym is and how it drifts, methodically, down the corridor. i can tell there are…

On a Sunday with a rich summer weekend rolling to an end, I guess all I’ve really got is my name. My small first name, a little lyrical, a little biblical. In Hebrew, some say my name means “bitter.” It’s hard to tell. My name, you see, hasn’t always been spelled by this way, and,…

I have this song, this September second song.  And it’s about drinking and a man who chases his own death and I listen to it on this day, this September second, every year and one week later as well. This year, those are consecutive Tuesdays with the second marking the funeral, the ashes in the…

I feel as if there’s this constant backstepping and waving, a retreating goodbye.  And it seems as if I’ll keep walking and going back until I hit the wall behind me.  It’s like I wave so absent mindedly that I back up without seeing I’ve finished the room. And if I stood there, waving from…

To these prairies, there is such a vastness.  The dense nights make the earth almost impossible to see, as if darkness really could penetrate the lights of heaven.  And, out here, the sky rolls and rolls, like a metropolis of stars racing for the horizon.  It’s the season before Christmas and this a hamlet for…

The last footsteps of the dead man are leaving And to he who takes over, Take care. Take care to tread lightly, Disturbing little the nest of faith, Built from old things and vases

I am watching, from the silent swing The night’s sea birds moving From the beach to the path that leads East through the mountains And I’ll go too Following the highway through the desert, then up And out across the sunrise To the Rockies where I’ll find home And then to the woods where I’ll…

i like the heat on, the fall smell of cinnamon. the air has shrunk with the chill, and i get this sweater, this day. my tepid garden is well-fed and there’s a rising bloom or two. i’m sleepy. the calendar condones a nap. the day evolves with a weak sun and winter’s promise.

Bowing to the recalled memory of given Back keys and unattended Leave taking A well-groomed apartment still Smelling like a girl’s farewell shower And bowing too to committed forgiveness And years of it Or the stopping heart for which she was patient Bowing at last to the rest that comes After it all, to the…

8 parts gin and 1 part tonic, katz at the pizza place, brian frain, granola, 4th, desert, david…always…david, sheila slayton, smokefree nooners, great weed, “it wasn’t me,” boys with nicknames, maloney’s, o’malleys, sobreity fish, fear, loss, baby, adult, bike, tar, black dog, motorcycle death, mt lemon, lost car, lost years, lost baby, wandering hands, mozart…