Be The Change
Status Quo Ante
I had a dream where from an impossible height I took in all the splendor and all the pain we’ve learned to live with.
poetry
138 posts
poetry
After Running Errands, I Think of the World I Want Us to Live In: A Villanelle
What is left after the groceries are put away? Dishes on the drying rack, nothing to clean: all is as it should be, or so they say.
poetry
Regarding A Corpse
I see no headstones, nothing to mark a life, to reveal who the corpse belonged to. Was it held hostage, a bouquet torn from the branch bleeding into its vase?
poetry
During a Nor'easter I Seek Shelter from the Tumult: A Haiku
In this white-capped wind / a kite can fly a lifetime / never touching earth
Be The Change
How to Prepare for a Coup in a Pandemic
Sometimes, taking a break from the news and work, I’ll spot the collected works of this or that poet and, for a moment, have context for despair.
poetry
Funeral Procession
On a drizzly morning walk I stopped to let a hearse go by, its pitch-black paint sweating polish, and as I waited for the procession I thought about who profits from tragedy, the business of loss, and who profits no matter what,
Be The Change
Blank
In Xinjiang, 7,000-miles away, a morning sun, reflecting off the glasses of early risers, the windshields of commuters, is so bright as to redact last night’s graffiti: Down with Xi.
poetry
On Reading That Some Physicists Posit We Are Living in a Computer Simulation
If life is a lucid dream or some near-perfect computer simulation, do I risk waking up to a world in which I can’t embrace you?
poetry
How to Survive an Apocalypse
Humanity risks extinction because we love the wrong things too much. I am under no illusions. To love you is to resist oblivion, to laugh at craters.
poetry
A Love Sonnet Written on the Occasion of the Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I want to touch what aches in us, the light we guard to stay alive. My dear, come quick. I hear a knock; I’m afraid. Is it you? I dare to open and let hope come through.
poetry
Confessions of a Private Grief
I have lived as free as a fragrance on the wind, as shackled to the earth as the vine that produced it. May I confess in a poem what is forbidden us in prose?
poetry
I Remain Marvelously Alive
In the creak and give of floorboards, hollow of trees felled by storms, fists of despots, palms of departing lovers, click of deadbolts, swing of doors;