Poems & Other Lies
Brittle Bright
Very early morning, the sky like back lit plate glass. If a bird hit it just right it might shatter into glittering shards of yellow, orange, blue and pink, revealing the infinite beyond. Brittle Bright was originally published in vol 1, issue 2 of the Syzygy...
read more
D
Everybody dies Do not rush towards oblivion Pause here with me Let us keep each other company, linger just a while. Tomorrow or the next day, or even some time after that is soon enough.
read more
Improbable
This is the most improbable anniversary since this time last year. My darlin' wife has put up with me for nineteen years! I always love you, Amy, even when it seems like I am thinking only of myself. I am looking forward to the next couple of decades. ...
read moreMissed
His glossy flanks glisten in the morning sun. Sleek and shiny, well fed on corn, he runs along the fence line, moving faster than my finger on the trigger. I will see you again after work, Mr. Rat.
read more
TMI
If you don’t want to read a slightly vulgar complaint about the discomfiting realization that I am becoming an old man, stop right now. You are under no obligation.
read moreHarbinger
Swarms of beetles emerge from the receding snow banks on the first truly warm day. Sunbathing on the south wall, a mass of black bugs lined with red, their excrement stains the window trim. Some find their way inside the house where they crawl into my teacup or...
read more
The Rooster
In the darkness a rooster calls for the sun. His brothers repeat his insistent crowing, like echoes up and down the canyon. They will drag the day from beneath the eastern ridge by sheer force of will. Deep in the shadows, a lone frog applauds their efforts. The...
read more
Shorted
Shambling along, we stumble through our daily routine with the dead eyes of Daylight Savings Time
read more
Bark!
A single bark rings out, exploding like a gunshot, echoing off the laundry room walls. Walter wants out. Now. A short while later he will demand to come back in with a similar bark. The stars look like paint splattered across a deep blue drop cloth. They provide just...
read more
Fog
The fog moved through the trees and we moved through the fog. It was as impenetrable as a wall, as ephemeral as a ghost( a thought half formed? a memory not quite recalled?). We were boxed in; at times we could only see one hundred feet, sometimes we could see one...
read more
The Latency of Morning
It has been snowing for a week It snowed all last night It is snowing yet. My world, confined to what I can see, is a shapeless mass of amorphous heaps. A rumpled blanket hides the ground. Everything is pale and colorless. The paper birch, branches laced with snow,...
read more
Naughty Nuts and Bolts, a Creative Talents Unleashed anthology, available from Amazon
Three of my poems - Yes, You Are, Animal Nature, and Last Night I Heard Your Voice - appear in Naughty Nuts and Bolts, a Creative Talents Unleashed anthology, available from amazon.com, to be released February 14, 2019 VW "The theme of this anthology, is ......
read more
Twice Savored
This story first appeared in the Lit Select anthology Love Slave: Sizzle Vol.5 March 2016 Ralph walked across the lobby to the phone, then hesitated, turned to walk away but stopped again after a few steps. Ralph was nervous. He and Clarice hadn't spoken for years....
read more
Words
No matter how close you think you are to a person, there are things you can never say to them, neither truth nor fiction, not in earnest and certainly never in jest. Words can be a knife or more often, a cudgel. I knew that, but somehow chose to ignore it. I find...
read more
Mortality Waits
In the ominous gloom of predawn, behind and somewhere above the henhouse, an owl poses the question: “Who? Who, who?” Inside, the hens shuffle restlessly, murmuring their fears and discontent, unhappy to be awakened before sunup,...
read more