I’m sorry that…

Photo by Camerauthor Photos on Unsplash


I'm sorry that...

I ate all the marshmallows.
The cat knocked them over and there were grackles.
Timbuktu was too far away
You make lousy coffee.
There is no vaccine for that.
I don’t want to go on Tuesday.
I haven’t finished Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.
Thursdays are always bad for me; they come after Wednesdays.
Your check was late.

It's too early in the morning
	to discuss anything 
	so fraught with unexpressed meanings.

Originally pub­lished in Pittsburgh Poetry Houses.

Published on the Laundry Line, 4 Feb, 2025. 

Arithematic

Arithmetic 

beside our daily lives
concrete rituals enrapture love
desires like so many Lego bricks 
erected we 
finish building our
growing collection of voodoo figurines
hapless hopeless held up by an
ignorant God without 
jokers in the tarot deck
kept semi-comatose in the
lock up behind the 
mini-mart
nobody can say who
opened the gates or who
pinned back yesterday’s
quandary
right now today
surrender to the surgeon who will
take us
under the ruinous river to
verify our
wraith full
Xanadu our ghosts who
yearn to be eaten while the
zoetrope flickers 


(From Loose Change - Ghost City Press, 2023)
Published on The Laundry Line, Tuesday Jan. 28, 2025

Nights

enhanced star picture of orion's sword. source: astropix.org
Nights 

I carry a lifetime’s worth of nights in my throat.
But only one at a time will fit into the coin pocket of my jeans.
The crows keep stealing my dreams.
They pawn the grubby rags
	for a couple of cents a pound.
When the burrowing owls 
	pull down the moon and fling it at my heart,
	they intend to maim but miss
	and spill marmalade moon shine
	on the floor.
I cannot stop to wait for you to breathe.
I cannot stop pointing out 
	the disappearing stars.

(From Loose Change — Ghost City Press, 2023)

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Love Song for My Devil

Love Song for My Devil

My worship of you ends in dismay
as my wound becomes a dispatch
full of sweet licorice lies.

Adultery becomes advantage.
Motels morph into mother-cells.
My cheap dress becomes an even cheaper dressing gown.
My shoes with their stiletto heels,
now walk on stilts, unable to carry our heft. 
A fetish for pain is transformed; 
remakes itself into fetters for the painted lady’s 
	transistor.

Was your mastery of me,
a mastodon’s 
bondage to bone?

Did lust overcome fear
as a lute overcomes feathers? 
Or is memory just a whisper,
a mendacity, a whistling swan?

(From Loose Change — Ghost City Press, 2023)

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I want to kiss the moon

photograph of the moon - side lit. source image:https://www.astropix.org/image/eso/eso9903c European Southern Observatoryl
I want to kiss the moon
	sometimes
the way I used to want a smoke
to have its light fill my throat 
	and steady my
thudding heart 

I want to feel the moon’s
cold breath
	in my ear
as it whispers all my secrets back to me
and to hear the stars mutter 
	their threats
and sing of terror 
	and nightmares
those horses of my dreams
running blind in the desert

I want the dry kiss of the moon 
	on the back of my neck
as it calls the predators in from the woods
wolves who raise the dead from the earth
and set them to following me

I want to kiss the moon
the way the moon kisses the sun
to cover it with my darkness
until only a halo shows
	a gold glow through
the smoke-hazed clouds

I want to kiss the moon,
will the moon kiss me back?

Originally pub­lished on The Laundry Line. Subscribe to get more poet­ry weekly.