insomnia is invisible
but hard as concrete
blackout poetry created from Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
Slipping
one by one the trees they fall
and before you know it, the forest
Metre
do not watch too closely
cogs in the wheel of time —
observe their passing as
the rhythm of a poem —
not clicks of the abacus
Lonesome animals
“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — ‘Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’”
—John Steinbeck, letter to Peter Benchley, 1956
Dissent
I do love my friends who wouldn’t dare judge me — but we all need to be judged, sometimes.
What is life?
“A simple definition of life: The chance you’ve been waiting for.”
—Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Fragile
Grief is looking up
to see Never
at your window —
rapping on the pane
of your heart —
Tickle me pink & atomic tangerine
I can tell it’s probably not going to be much of a productive day when I spend ten minutes over morning coffee trying to match each color of the sunrise to its corresponding crayon.
Uplifting
when winter gets deep
into languishing hearts
poetry promises spring
Branching
this winter afternoon
i stare between bare
branches of gray trees
in the distance i see
an unreturnable past
or a dwindling future
i can’t tell which but
the silence is sublime
Chilly bedtime thoughts
Winter is the slow-down
Winter is the search for self
Winter gives the silence we need to listen
Winter goes gray so we can see our own colors
Hard to escape
Even happiness worries sometimes.
Only bruises
Poetry allows
my soul to age gracefully
my mind to land softly
amongst the new gray hairs —
without it I’d have thunked
into my forties with
tail bone, funny bone
and spirit broken