--THE LIGHTS ARE GOING DOWN IN EVERY CITY, EVERY DOWN

…I had these poems, and some others, published in the anthology "Men In The Company of Women":

The View From A Skyscraper

I have never learned how to draw perfect circles.

The centers shake me off

like shrugged shoulders, sharp shudders,

a tongue-twister with all of my

past mistakes rearing hard, offering this:

a barbed fist

Gatling gun

guillotine blade.

I have never written the right words about you.

Even the letters get lost,

the kerning and tooling of certain fonts

bleeding and blurring,

the syntax of breath making meaning

out of ink the only way it knows how,

pungent and orderless.

I have never learned how to sleep a full night.

Some people find their power in naps,

others pull strength from Freudian jigsaws

while my dreams are less laundered

tattered fiction,

sprung screen doors

hinged in nothing but wind,

unhinged by the lingering scent of

your maladjusted ghost.

Predictions From The Woman Who Raised Me

The wrong side of history showed up

this morning on my walk through the woods

where saplings, warped by the persistent sheen of summer sun,

had their spirits split open

broken like tinder or kindling

which took me back to youth

that scare place

staring at crooked linoleum tile

instead of eyes,

her hot breath like

jalapenos in my face

saying, “Boys don’t cry.”

saying, “Fairy tales are jelly lies.”

saying, “You and your future don’t stand a chance.”

My Sweet

I’ve been instructed otherwise,

yet I often think of the girl you were before—

buried in bubble baths,

favoring foot lotions and

lilac-scented cashmere,

bursting out in song or

giddy laughter that could shake a room.

Now fluff from the afghan collects like diaphanous peach fuzz

around your chin, one feather

latched in the deepest crease of a cheek,

laugh line put there from your steady smiling,

before the stroke,

before all of the dead-end silence.

But when I move to wipe away a dribble of spittle,

your eyes hitch with a diamond glimmer

before flattening out again

and I know what you’ve done,

that you’ve just smiled at me,

saying, I’m here,

saying, My Sweet.  Don’t forget us, My Sweet.

The Bad Queen

She has skin like ash,

the shade of aspirin

and just as bitter when taken without water.

As I kneel to kiss her hand,

she says,

“That’s right.  That’s how you treat your mother.”