Poetry | Short Fiction | Creative Nonfiction
The toilet paper aisle is void
of anything to buy
The hoarders came like locusts
and we had to wonder why
But now we see the auctions up
on eBay rising fast
I’m down to one thin precious square
I’ll have to make it last
Stay well everyone, and for now, stay put.
Signed: Quarantined in Galveston
WHEN is a time that’s coming our way
and as it arrives we say ‘now’
THEN is the time that ‘now’ used to be
it’s magic and no one knows how
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
The mind’s eye
is a hall of mirrors
Where light chases its tail
in its own light
And shines into all the places
an eye is keen to be
How is it that we ever
lift those lids and look around
We own all the visions
but we can’t control the witness
unbroken
fasting, feasting
to let a hundred summers
play it by ear
until I find you
eve
after the apple
the world at night
the way of all flesh
now and then
in such dark places
paradise burning
One brief clash with a batted lash
And in that blindered, lossless moment did I pawn
Everything to be with you: so how do you do?
And under this spell, we do so remain
For the snap of a finger, then slip and away
Before the vows can have their say
A lusty panache, drawn to eyes, and ass
I will again, and soon, give my heart away
In a peerless fraction of the live-long day
Yours truly, P.S.
My head once more is turned
To flirt is divine, is what I’ve learned
A housefly caught
in the bedroom buzzes
between the two lamps, back
And forth, the cat
watching: fly has no clue
where it is, how
it got here.
Come morning, up
and out: I will buzz
around among the lamps
of my world, the cat
still watching.
photo by me, 2014
Words mean what I seem to think
So I insist that’s what they mean
And I seem to think that you think you know
Upon which page we think we’ve been
By turns we’ve come to disagree
At what is true and what is scheme
Now don’t let’s come to blows my friend
We’re likely in some pedant’s dream
Every moment is bundled
with a multitude of beginnings
and endings and we feel we’re right
in the middle of it.
But this locale, this fixation
is penciled in with a wink
and cannot be held, numbered
ordered, kept or used.
Gathered up, possessions
summon the negations, come
then clap, the knowns disperse
like startled pigeons.
Who can make way in all of this
without faith or handholds
when enlightenment is the activity
of no one in particular?
A tricky business
this name-dropping the Buddha.
Don’t be quick, don’t dash or start
or do one thing beyond the pause
of pristine silent gloom
Light outside’s been slowing down
in days of narrow corridors
that all lead to my room
—Solstice, December 21, 2019
poem was plywood ugly
so I burned it, and the smoke
wiped its greasy fingers
on the lower skirts of sky
and flicked, for good measure
a bit of ash in my eye
