Poems & Other Lies
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...
Shorted
Shambling along, we stumble through our daily routine with the dead eyes of Daylight Savings Time
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...
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...
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,...
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 ......
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....
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...
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,...
I Got Burned
When I look at photos of you from your youth, I laugh and say:"I got burned!"You do know I am just kidding?You were beautiful when we metand you are beautiful now.When I look at you I still see the beautiful woman I first met, all those...
The Mystery
The clouds are gone. Bright stars wink, sprinkled across the black sky. I close my eyes to meditate, breathing, but the stars call to me. As I open my eyes a shooting star burns across the southern horizon. I give up on the breathing exercises and stare into the...
26 Degrees
Dawn breaks, the color of old lead; an almost invisible icy mist wafts down. I hear it rattle the dead leaves and feel its tentative caress on my face.
Season To Taste
Amy tells me I add way too much salt when I cook. She laughs because I never know how much horseradish is too much until after my first bite. Eyes watering, mouth afire, my nose tingling like a funny-bone tapped exactly wrong. And sometimes, I pepper my writing with...
Footsteps of Winter
I am startled by the scurrying footsteps of dried leaves fleeing across the frozen ground before a winter gust
A Dander of Snow
Tiny bits of white fluff float before me driven from the east on the faintest of breezes but never in a straight line they dart and swirl here and there interrupting their descent to rise through their fellows and drop again eventually to dander the heaps and drifts...
