Still Missing Flight Myself

Tweet

I’m pleased to announce that my collected poems are now available for purchase as Still Missing Flight Myself.

Some of the best cautionary advice that could be given any writer—young or old, famous or obsucre—is to never forget that not every word you write will be worth preserving. Much of any writer’s output is . . . → Read More: Still Missing Flight Myself

On Collected Poetry

Tweet

One sure way to feel like flat cola in a wax cup, baking under July sun, is to wait six months and read what you’ve written. Revisit your own congealed feelings, words which have suffered the linguistic equivalent of an expiration date.

One absolutely sure way to feel like broken teeth in mottled gums is . . . → Read More: On Collected Poetry

In the Bath

Tweet

Sitting in the bath, a poem written on my thigh, in water- soluble black ink, melts faster than you’d think. The first stanza into the second, pooling and becoming concentrated, thick tears the color of collected rainwater in an ashtray.

And it accomplishes nothing, except to remind that all art is quite an indulgence, senseless . . . → Read More: In the Bath

The Consultation

Tweet

I’ve already penned two full books of poetry as art therapy when the diagnosis comes back negative. I’m not Bipolar after all, it says. The doctor assures me I am nothing of the sort. I am healthy, best anyone can tell.

I want to ask, then, what the blue fuck my problem is, but I . . . → Read More: The Consultation

An Uninspired Onanism

Tweet

This won’t be love- making. It’s an empty construct. An abomination. Keep reading and I will promise you no symbolic language, no archetypal characters, no deus ex machina, no meaning buried beneath the text—except a lusty reverence for the very act of creation. This is poetic masturbation. Likewise, it will soon spiral out of control. . . . → Read More: An Uninspired Onanism

Best of Luck Placing It Elsewhere

Tweet

The editors of your fine magazine will not accept waxing of any kind on love, sex or dying.

The editors of your fine magazine issue an admonishment, insisting that there are other importances in life.

The editors of your fine magazine want snow-shoveling, jazz or maybe verse on the verse of others.

The editors of . . . → Read More: Best of Luck Placing It Elsewhere

Ars Poetica

Tweet

At dawn, when the water is a sidereal, speckled checkerboard of marigold on violet and blue, row past the breakers out to the mouth of the tide; fill an iron urn with the briny saliva from under the tongue of the sea.

Spill it out midday into a flat-bottomed blown glass pan. Take a nap; . . . → Read More: Ars Poetica

It Rained

Tweet

Yesterday, I spared forty-one poems from a sudden apocalypse. An unfortunate three-hundred-ninety of their kin didn’t make it through the maelstrom and tribulation.

They disappeared in an act worthy of a fundamentalist’s Old Testament, angry god. If I wanted to feel grand, I could tell you I smote them.

It had become clear that they . . . → Read More: It Rained

Defining the Art

Tweet

It’s a center-cut round of living tissue. Butchered, dense flesh; the porous core; an animal heart still beating, cross-sectioned and bleeding out its meaning.

It is preserved and perforated sweetmeat pressed between the pages, kept as a memory. Like a lost tooth, a lock of hair, or the foreskin from an only son.

(2004)