Eight Minutes and Forty Six Seconds on June Twelfth, Two Thousand Twenty
The rain continues. No thunder dares ring. No winds howl. All is silence, save the sound Of distant trucks down on the interstate. I tell myself, pretend it is the sea That all this rain, perhaps, will wash into. And I remain in silence. What must...
Rust River Valley Rail Crossing Three, Pop. 527
From the valley they say you are going I can see why you would. And I know As the slow grinding years Grind the hills into tears Each year grinds a little more slow. From this valley they say you are going. From this hopeless collection of...
Autumn Interrupts
It's easy to forget what autumn means In tired lands of sun-stuffed tedium; Assassin breeze the blackfly never weans, The forecast is extremely medium. It's easy to forget those ragged skies Crushed, throttled, splintered by the frigid light ...
And I Shall Rest
Sun going down. And I am far from home. Sun going down. And I'm out there alone. On the roads, I'm one more weary soul Searching for some place where I'll be whole. With my loaded backbone bending And the pain jolts up my arm. I will reach...
Ragnarok - VI
"In coolness of that evening we stood guard Atop the knoll our mastery had turned To barrow. As the hidden sun went down We watched the pit as does a mongoose, for The snout of the great serpent to appear. While there we watched we argued: How to...
Blank Verse Essay On The Futility of So-Called "A.I." Art
My husband, sometimes, draws erotica, He has for years. I'm sure you know the kind, A tiger man and husky man, perhaps, Or handsome fox and manly-smug raccoon, Or fatherly but dangerous wolf, in all The situations that might give excuse For them...
Ballade of Three Birds
The morning miles of liquid cold that hang between the spheres Will bear you up forever, but will not veil your eyes. The clear wind and the clouded and the misted wind that mirrors Will show you every corner of the old hills that they clean. ...
Maybe All Confessional Essays Should Be Written In Blank Verse
This started as a question, in my head. Why can I not write love a happy end? Why, when I try, must I write mourning, loss, Bereavement and the need for elegy? I write unto my husband, whom I love, And it becomes a prayer for his soul. I write...
Haiku on the Collapse
Fiddling while Rome burns, If a fiddle's all you have, Is hardly a sin.
(Scene, An Room Within ye Strongehold of the Pyrate Lord O’Donnel.)
(Enter James McCloud, and Wolf O'Donnell. They bring with them Richard and Robin, bound and gagged.) Wolf: I had hoped to escape affairs of state! James: For you and I to scape them, so must they At least a little while. This dismal cell Must...
Maybe Stop Telling This Man What He Wants
"Man wants but little here below Nor wants that little long." How often hath that platitude Been strangled into song? By men who do not want, but have Their little and their more. In rhymes perforce, in meter bad, They serve it to the poor. ...
Afterword by Ted V.
Some say it was all folklore, of the sort civilizations Will sprout like fungus from the leaking seams as they grow senile. That those who live like wolves among the ruins may find comfort In tales that make the wolves out in the wastelands to seem...