The Rooftops of Kyiv
On the rooftops of Kyiv we master the circle dance, the feel of wood that can still support our weight.
The Business, Politics, & Poetry of Change
Welcome.
Here you'll find a mix of my poems and essays on a number of topics, including social change, business, and finance. My motto is “Invent. Invest. Implement.” Why? Because I believe advancing a more just world requires that we make full use of our minds (Invent), our resources (Invest), and our hands (Implement).
Featured
The Machinery of the State
A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions, / flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned, / mists the mown grass with evil's sputum...
Latest
Enlightenment
I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe sunset drape itself over my mind,…
poetry
Foul Weather Friend
I am a foul weather friend, dear poetry.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings
poetry
First Game
There in the back of the closet
of the room that was once my room
and is now a museum to childhood
is a photo, slightly curled with age,
of ten scrawny kids in awkward poses,
baseball gloves stretched out as if
to catch a ball just out of view;
and there in left field am I, shielding
the sun with my glove, tracking
the fly ball, an ice cream truck playing
its melodies, metal bats ringing on
nearby fields,
poetry
Fulfillment
May the road to fulfillment
be long and steep and smeared
with fog, moss-lined, leaf-strewn,
rockslide-prone, oft-closed for repair,
haunted, the darker the better, no sun-
or moon-light, bulbs of streetlights,
if any, smashed, filaments exposed
to the cold like nerves, scarred by
lightning, by overturned freight trucks,
by mudslides left uncleared, the only
life or light that of your high beams,
flickering, weak like a voice shouting
praise at a waterfall, how beautiful,
how
poetry
On Recent Advancements in AI
On a perfectly normal Saturday, the kind where normal humans do normal human things, I log online to check my bank account for fraud...
poetry
Writer's Block
Whatever touch I had is gone. Maybe I never had it. That would be better. One can't throw away a non-belonging. Can't chase after the dump truck for some treasure that isn't there.
poetry
Mother’s Day
I didn’t get you roses from Ecuador, nor one of those cards you grab, in a rush, at the checkout line...
poetry
Good Habits
Mom used to warn me that too much of anything —piety, vegetables, even reading—can be harmful. But growing up, I brushed my teeth irregularly at best. In the chaotic mornings, no one had time...
poetry
A Dog’s Life
Often, as the day’s doleful hours grow too heavy and I long to set side my many cares, I think of my dog in his bed, how he has no funerals...
poetry
Extremes
A poem must be as short as the poet’s life or millennia longer: there is no in-between. Either it dies with you or lives on, this strife, and if you conclude I’m given to extremes
poetry
The Ant
Keep poetry simple, like a single ant atop a blueberry, catching the light without shining.