What they don’t want me to say – Poem

what they don’t tell us is that one plus one is not confinement.  your life is no lid to the jam jar, no swearing off of the glitterfish upstream.  the phosphorescent light of the sun does not debunk the flash of a night run on an island when the water talks in color.  i am … Continue reading →

How Dangerous – Poem

At the right of the bumper a man screamed up hellfire in a warning at my blind creep into the crosswalk of fiction.  A mad heap of adrenaline rushed through me and it was my father in the dark room of cancer crying out in pain. How can I help? What can I do? It … Continue reading →

How not to eat every other thing

I know I’m ungrounded in my topicality.  Plot?  What plot?  Subject matter?  Why does it matter?  I write about music, about light, about stress, about salvation, about love, about teaching, about order and it’s twin opposite.  Perhaps it’s because I’m a philosopher as much as I am a writer.  It’s not that I can’t choose … Continue reading →

How not to eat everything

Lately I’ve been so hungry.  In addition to sending me videos, a few students have baked me cookies and/or brought me treats.  I want to eat it all!  But I’m participating in an experiment.  How does life feel when you eat not for the taste of the food, or the pang of that craving, but … Continue reading →

Freedom Lovers

Two days ago, I received the third email of this video by Lana Del Rey. It’s always been students and young adults, saying it reminded them of me. It’s disturbing how much this was once my dream, and how transparent I am. I don’t know how I come in wearing herringbone and cableknit, and this … Continue reading →

A or B – Poem

Point to the shackles I have clicked over around you, the attack I’ve waged on the isthmus of grace where you find no threat no fear, no infamy so great as a teacher.  Tell me, this B, this letter, this scrap of the time I put into loving you, is that reason enough to hate? … Continue reading →

Infinite Intimate 2

Children grow up with keys around their necks, delivering themselves to school, afterschool and then home alone.  Teenagers feel the clutching synchronicity of new friendships, only to realize that it was a phase, and they are not, as deemed, important to said new pals.  Just today, my Juniors read Slam poems aimed at attacking social … Continue reading →

Infinite Intimate 1

Dear god, I don’t want to be infinite, I have no desire to be so vast. That’s your job. Stop showing me things I can’t have, do, or be. Why give us light, if we can’t warm ourselves at the flame? What use is a voice when you live in the land of erasers? Is … Continue reading →

Quiet desperation

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.  Form the desperate city you go to the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.”  (Henry David Thoreau) Continue reading →

Rabbit – Poem

I understand that like the top-hatted man in the 8pm show you have to pull off the disappearing act— I get that you think the show is about that The puff of chalk that passes as smoke, The pull of the wand that electrifies air, And the gasps in reveling ticketholders. You and I were … Continue reading →