“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.” – Shakespeare
The power of fire is not that it burns
but that it distracts:
We save what burns because it burns.
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poetry
In Whose Custody the Flags?
January 10, 2017
The flags are at full-staff
Though Jackeline is dead
Of dehydration
And the Guatemalan boy whose name
Has not been released
Is dead
Of the flu—
What One Gives Up
August 16, 2016
My heart has grown docile, less inclined
to thrash about, to strain at the leash.
Maybe that’s the way it goes: We come
into the world like lava, we burn and blaze
and flow, and then cool into something solid
In Polite Society
November 15, 2015
In polite society we hold doors open,
Say thanks and please, wear crisp
Suits when we drop bombs.
The Letter
October 14, 2015
One day she arrived
like a scab dragged across a ballad
of iodine,
a sequin of stars
stitched to a dormant volcano’s lapel
The Savage Harvest
November 18, 2014
Dogs know how to live and die with grace.
I don’t.
In my hands are wet grapes fit to burst
and beyond my reach…
Nothing is Enough
January 21, 2014
“When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.” – Vincent Van Gogh
A mystery consumes me. I pass the morning in ardent search of last night and furrow my brows as though dreams would return in the grooves of my forehead. That is not enough. Nothing is enough. I never can go faster or slower than one second at a time. My enthusiasm teeters between the unbearable and the blissful. I want to scale the heights of human knowledge, to create art, kisses, love, peace…but the next moment carries the enormity of my desire, and I fall upon the ground of my being like an electric charge in a puddle of amino acids. So I continue, neither collapsed nor elevated. Every sight I see, every thought, however subtle, every word I read or write only adds to the fury: nothing is enough.
The Gardener
December 2, 2008
We have pitched an innocent man against the
thousand blades of grass.
Once a week the battle is waged;
each green sword glints with dew.
In the Shadow of the Alhambra
November 27, 2007
I promised no more poems of that night at the Alhambra, holding hands beneath the moon Lorca once adored, for to dwell on love’s sleight of hand is to risk breaking its spell. It was decades ago, in gentler times, […]