Poetry

Selected works published from 2007 to 2019.

6’3”

“In my opinion, a five-foot…shelf would hold books enough to afford a good substitute for a liberal education to anyone who would read them with devotion, even if he could spare but fifteen minutes a day for reading.” -Charles W. Eliot, on his Harvard Classics collection

The layers of my skin could have been the layers of Dante’s hell,

My veins could have pumped Odysseus home.

But instead, a brain that could have been The Origin of Species

Is left to question whether my large stature

Is a colossal waste of space. I could have contained

all the pages of literary history deemed worth preservation

With a foot and three inches to spare…

Leaving room enough

For the next Tolstoy or Poe

To prove himself worth his height.

Pocketful of Words

I wish you could take the words from your lips.

Those words you said to me that night,

And slip them in the pocket at my hips.

I’d cut them out and paste them down in strips,

Into the book I read by candlelight.

I wish I could take the words from your lips.

I’d write them down in postcards bought on trips

We’ll never get to take — no not quite —

And slip them in the pocket at my hips.

I would touch them with my fingertips,

Braille for a man who’s lost his sight.

I wish I could take the words from your lips.

I’d paint pictures with the words from your lips,

Covering the white with colors bright,

And slip them in the pocket at my hips.

But, from my mind, those words have slipped

So there are no pictures to paint or cards to write.

I wish you could take the words from your lips,

And slip them in the pocket at my hips.

Haikushi

The menu at Cartucci’s is a collection of Italian sonnets.

At the local café, it’s a vivid exploration of free verse.

But at my favorite sushi joint, the description of the food

Is a testament to the haiku.

California roll:

Avocado, Cucumber,

Tempura crunch, crab.

There is no space on

the quaint half sheet of paper

For boasting about

The freshness of the avocado -- the crispness of the cucumber --

Or how the tempura shrimp is lightly fried to a delicate crunch.

No, there is no room to reveal the beach off the coast of Ishigaki

Where the crab is caught and flown in daily.

No need to mention how the ingredients are packed tightly

And rolled into a thin layer of seaweed

Held in place by a coating of fluffy jasmine rice.

It is understood

That the dish will come with a

Side of wasabi

(Exhilarating

paste blended from a root grown

in pure spring water)

And will be garnished

With the subtle, sultry spice

Of flakes of ginger.

The simplicity

attests to the mystery

Of Japan’s cuisine.

And perhaps more fitting,

The descriptions, like the sushi rolls themselves,

Can be digested in a single bite.

Prue Sain

My turn signal taps out the rhythm of a CD I borrowed from a friend.

I would like to say I will return it,

But there’s no use lying to the open road.

I am on my way to a new place,

With new friends, and new songs,

And I’m not looking back…

Except to check my blind spot as I drift across the yellow line.

Half-Watching Infomercials at 3 a.m.

A man in a plaid business suit rambles on about how a blender could change your life forever.
But you’re too tired even to change the channel,
although the remote is already in your hand.

So you lend him a piece of your dwindling consciousness.
If you were more alert, you’d be skeptical.
It would all seem too good to be true.

Your grip is released and you drift off to sleep,
As the remote is consumed by the couch cushions,
Swallowed like a weight-loss pill
For three easy payments of $19.95.

While you camp in the dark woods of slumber,
The man is wide awake, plucking dreams from your head.

Your brother-in-law, who is helping you build a time machine for some unknown reason.

The dog you never had, who has broken free from his leash and is eating cake at an outdoor wedding.

The plaid man throws them all into his blender,
Laughing his carnival laugh, and pushes the button marked PARFAIT.

But you don’t notice a thing.

When you first wake up, you see a glass
Over-flowing onto a self-address stamped envelope.

You consume the smoothie, too groggy to realize what you’re doing,

As the sun spills through the window,
Consuming you.

Painting a Paradelle

“The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d’oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words.” - Billy Collins

Someone once painted a picture of a sunset.

I looked at it and said, “what the hell?”

Someone once painted a picture of hell.

I looked at it and said, “what the…a sunset?”

You stood there before me with no clothes.

And I sat beside with a paintbrush.

And with no clothes, I stood with you

Before a paintbrush sat there beside me.

Immortalized on canvas, your body is a masterpiece.

Sign my name in the corner.

Immortalized, your canvas body is a sign on the corner --

My masterpiece.

Someone once stood there with a paintbrush,

And painted a picture…you.

I sat beside, immortalized on canvas.

I looked at the sign before me, a sunset with no clothes,

And what it said: “Hell is a masterpiece.”

My name in the corner of your body.

A Slower Burn

My friend was fired in Winter ‘07.

He went to work one Tuesday, and left

With a box holding three decades.

I went to work that next Wednesday

And watched people staying busy,

Formatting their resumes.

Already displaced,

They worked many more Thursdays.

Reading Poetry in a Dorm Room is Not an Easy Task

Under a mountain of dirty clothes
And half-eaten bags of potato chips from last semester,
I find a book of poetry.

I retrieve it,
And a hundred poets of ages past are finally able to breathe.

My roommate asks if I mind if he turns on the TV.
“No,” I reply.

But I do.

And so does Walt Whitman,
Who finds himself having to scream
Over obnoxious sportscasters and the squeak of shoes

On an old gym floor.