on the angelic demon

Fire is so simple in its form and function that it still defies understanding. Fire is a giver of life, an empowering oracle to those that control it, and a devouring beast when allowed to burn unfettered. Such is the fire of eros—providing dazzling lights at a distance, warmth upon approach, burning glory and majesty that inspires fear and awe as it extends to the threshold, and a fatal devourer once it surrounds on all sides. How does one escape intact? Burns are unavoidable, but what of careful cultivation and tenderness? Can fire be maintained indefinitely? The attention, concern, focus, and passion of the wardens must not waiver. Embers will die out and hungry flames will seek new fuels to satiate its single-minded consumption.

what where how when

and WHAT is the proper response when
you awake to find yourself pocked with fishhooks
a puppet on bundled strands of vinyl?

and WHERE do you aim your venom when
you recover to find kites tethered to helm warring with anchors entrenched
a rag-doll kicked and torn by the current?

and HOW will you cry for help when
you surface to find a liquid sky and insubstantial earth
a fish on the carpet, wide-eyed and gulping in sight of the tank?


WHEN did life become a gaggle of peripherally related episodes taken in like a sitcom marathon on late night cable by a bleary mind’s eye that would just as soon watch a marathon of peripherally related episodes of flat idiosyncratic punch-line salon models than be forced to continue consuming the even-flatter banality of my so called life?

to be, to truly be... or not?
that is, in fact, the question.

poiēma (my brood)

once i decided to write 50 poems in 50 days. it didn't quite work out that way. but i did write an accursed share.

today i came upon those neglected infants. sloppily conceived in a single pass, yes. but who among us wasn't?

culled forth and then cast aside, each; i have never since attended them. i shall not wash from them their curd, their crud, their crude.

instead I will carve for them an orphanage and merely prostitute them there, one at a time, for your...

(consumption? appraisal? pleasure? contempt? voyeuristic viewing?)

poiēma

.