Alone, with friends, a date, amid a crowd I shuffle up an incline, down a stairs. Why does the music always seem so loud? I navigate the knees and coats and chairs. And, as the house-lights dim, my gut grows tight. The endless ads bear down. The trailers race. I'm stretched with...

Beside him, silent, stately, on his right, the old magician's fair assistant stands alert, yet selfless, keeping out of sight the trove of secret props held in her hands. Just so I'd like to think you're guarding me I know you're watching, fear you're judging too. You are the...

"Tunc praecurrit comis..." * Years ago, St. Jerome-- Don't give me that look! I'm NOT off the subject and this is NOT a shaggy dog story (though there IS a dog in it) I'm trying to tell you (You want the truth and you want it "Gospel" but you take me "Apocryphal" before I even...

Used wrapping paper, plastic cups, faux hair, cliff hangers, instant coffee, child-proof caps, repeated jingles, static, squelch, dead air. Oh, every other driver, cell phones, snaps, all polka dots, and pot-holes, power lines, stringed lights, long cords and cables, tiny type, those...

Sharp trickster, how we loved to watch you tie our muddled minds into a knotted maze. Your jests and jokes did twist each question, "Why?" till heart and head were drugged in deadly daze. Wise cynic, never have you had such praise for tense distortion, farce and helplessness. With...

It doesn't have to be a germ at wait. Just anything my body thinks is strange, some substance I inhaled or touched or ate and instantly my body starts to change. My skin grows hot or cold. I sweat or shake. My head becomes too heavy for my spine. I gag. I gasp. My muscles cramp and...

I wish I had more heinous sins to hide for all the grief I suffer and for what? Reflecting back past follies pierce my pride Aflame in shame, my heart hides in my gut. Who in their twenties isn't foolish, lewd, at thirty striving, forty-five irate, by fifty overwhelmed, at sixty...

Perhaps you don't want me to know you're done. Your thought's complete. Perhaps you don't want me to note an insert, clause, or series has begun, or when a thing's possessed, or strange, foresee omissions, "quotes", or something that's left out --as in an after-thought, some (F.Y.I.)...

“But Poetry's dead,” they say “And Song and Drama, Painting too! No Muse. No Bard. To write in verse and meter's simply wrong and rhyme is only for a greeting card. There's nothing more to say. It's all been said.” “Not so! If you, like me, must answer to the call, we have to reach...

i I wish this baby, flannel, oatmeal, bells, Balloons a kite, a bike, a cat, a phone . I wish her tryouts, outfits, ocean swells And dances, love notes, babies of her own. But dare I wish her fevers, bruises, tears? (Who knows what trials life will make her face (Strip searches, sirens?)...