For Those Who Mourn

From When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman. He wrote this after the assassination of President Lincoln. He considered his friend's death, obviously, a great loss.

10.

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of him I love?

Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till there on the prairies meeting:
These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
I perfume the grave of him I love.

Across the Table

Amidst the clamour of

busy laptops, 

sipping lips

clattering cups,

I barely hear

the words:

“My favorite movie is

Cinderella.”

Both eyes roll in my head

then out onto the floor.

From across the table,

this pop culture princess

wages war

with my patience

on a front made up of

Caesar

salad trenches and

battlements of roast

beef on rye.

Retreat.

Her tic-tac grin

and gumball eyes

have turned this café

cliché.

I have only one thought:

Disney is the new Bible

and

I am

the Anti-Christ.

- Published in Touchstones in the Fall of 2002

2 a.m.

Not words,
no signs or signifiers.
Not the rancid pudding
of language,
this is the fresh baked
smell of action.
A glistening sequence,
pure.
Pops and buzzes,
the squelching
feedback of motion.
Not a sweaty compromise in
positional rhetoric
but, the moonlit entanglement of
corporal consent.
Now is not
words.
It is
a soft utterance,
the affirmation of
truth.

- Published in UVU's literary/art magazine Touchstones in Spring 2003.

Poems and Such

I've been digging through my old collections of writings from college. It's a lot of fun in most cases and a little embarrassing in others to see how my brain worked from 1998-2003. So, I think I will post the poems I've found, some stories I've written and maybe even an academic paper or two over the next few weeks.

Some will be bad.
Some will be mushy.
A few will be pretentious.
Some will be pushy.

But maybe one or two will touch me again. Make me think. Maybe some of it will be enjoyed by you. In all cases, let me know what your thoughts are. I love hearing from you.

Who knows? Maybe doing this will inspire me to write more in the present about all the things my brain is focussed on.