Advice to Somebody
Posted: February 17, 2019 Filed under: I'm awake | Tags: advice, poets & writers, prose Leave a commentWhen you find yourself punctuated at the far end of a sentence, begin again. When the words have not been summoned properly, fill the lungs with air as warm as lemon water in the mornings. Climb back onto your gunning cowboy perch. Swallow that slippery pride. When the dead-end of day has been reached, go the other way. Take a cold splash and damnit just do it. There is no easing in. Punish yourself just a little, then dump those thoughts beneath the bed of indulgence and take the light to your shame. When it sees you coming, it will no longer hide.
Memento II
Posted: January 5, 2019 Filed under: Sleepwalking | Tags: memento, poems, remembering Leave a commentThe ephemera of my blinked
existence live in shoeboxes,
cigar cases dust-lined and
discolored as if from slow fire
smoking through teenage
correspondence, solemn feelings,
molars and other artifacts
dropped from us
and kept for the reason why
there may be birds which
forget to find their lives beautiful
when nesting, when soaring and
anxious on telephone lines
I dig up the source
but am pulled under
because there was more to
the story that had or hadn’t
happened:
tickets and once-scented kerchiefs
and the newness of love,
a mirror that isn’t,
we ultimately do not stumble
upon ourselves, only someone else
who remembers by keeping
The Bourse
Posted: December 14, 2018 Filed under: Sketching | Tags: olde city, philadelphia, sketch, thebourse, urban sketching Leave a commentUrban sketching event at the Bourse in Olde City — pen and watercolor