Most read stories

Frail Flowers, Sitting Monks

13391339 views77 comments44 favs

The world is slick as alabaster, taking the guesswork out of the rain. Junction Road moves like thick grease under the tires of my '89 Skyhawk. The old car's making a clicking noise somewhere underneath the high-beam switch and the damn…

Study in Contrast

13391339 views44 comments11 fav

But tonight while your finger glides across the glossy pages of Popular Science I hold a séance for the Holy Spirit in utter seriousness among the book clutter and crumpled manifestos in the basement

These Gothy Days

13391339 views77 comments11 fav

(haiku)

Exceeded

13391339 views22 comments11 fav

I am exceeded / by a leaf

Composition: 3 generations and a porch

13381338 views88 comments66 favs

It is 1939...

the heart would have unnatural reverence

13381338 views66 comments44 favs

The heart would have unnatural reverence, exalted, bursting with evil, rolling in sloth, if it did not at once reveal its innocence. I saw you again, on the morning of the sun. It was you, or your double, or a son you might have had. Your beautiful bloo

Downland Ballad I :Photo-disintegration

13381338 views11 comment11 fav

Like a distant memory of past expectations I wander through past journeys, delineations chew on the fresh air like a discontented Wordsworth now free, free to roam where I will..

Laughing All The Way To The 2020 Election

13381338 views55 comments44 favs

After President Trump was elected, my first impulse was to spend the next four years cowering under the bed, whimpering.While I knew that I needed to keep track of what our new commander in chief was up to, watching the news made me too angry and too sad and just too…

Lullaby

13381338 views99 comments55 favs

I never meant to shipwreck you, I didn't even know I was singing out loud. I just stood on my rock a little too boldly, and hummed a tune you wanted to hear.

The Sound Of...

13381338 views11 comment00 favs

What if Everything I have been doing Hasn’t been heard By anyone?

Angelic

13381338 views99 comments33 favs

Remembering his body makes me think of Egyptian cotton sheets dried in the sun. He smelled crisp and clean even after sweating hard. His hair fell in golden spirals down his cheeks, his back, over his forehead, and captured light just like the gilded halos on…

Old Friends Getting Older

13381338 views33 comments11 fav

I just amuse myself by buying old guns and refurbishing them in my basement as I listen to old Bohemian polkas on cassettes.

Bookstore Reading, Telegraph Ave, Berkeley

13381338 views55 comments55 favs

There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife And groaning: “Oh God, oh God” And all I can think from up at the podium is This guy must absolutely hate these poems I am reading

391 Costume & personal appearance

13381338 views22 comments00 favs

I can’t deny you’re beautiful, though it’s unsure how many of your defects are fudged by my myopia.

Lessons from Survivors

13381338 views00 comments00 favs

You cannot go back, you cannot go home, you cannot cannot cannot…Only in memory is it possible to travel back in time. We all imagine it. We relive happy moments, sad moments, we exist, time exists and it passes. We cannot stop it.

77 Words Sparked by Insomnia

13381338 views66 comments55 favs

Mice dreams are a reality ...

Abyss

13381338 views1515 comments1111 favs

When Lois finally found him down there, Johnny was wedged between a large rock and the trunk of an old, long since fallen, cottonwood tree. She said as she got to him, she heard his gurgling breath, fighting fiercely to stay alive. When she saw the deep, gathering, red…

Things As They Really Are

13381338 views44 comments44 favs

I slide my CD toward Eric Burdon who sits, smiling and gracious and fatigued from Seattle traffic, at the table at Silver Platters, where I have just purchased ‘Til Your River Runs Dry, and stood in a line of old gray heads to have him sign it. I remove my hat and…

After the Flood

13381338 views1010 comments88 favs

That TV you got me? Ruined. And the ionizer fan? Ruined too. All your clothes you left over here, all my work scrubs and weekend dresses too, soaked with that river stink water. I kept thinking bout all the dead creatures.

Name

13371337 views11 comment11 fav

Every day, I write myself further away From the East Where we began

Forecast for Mid-December

13371337 views1717 comments99 favs

In the next week or two, the red oak/ will loose and lose its leaves

Ghost Town

13371337 views1111 comments77 favs

She had just done it in the backseat with the man she decided would be her father. Or maybe it was the cast of his eyes under the dim bar lights. Maybe she insisted that this had to be done, to relive the night under the stars, under a dented roof of a station…

Secrets; Opening to "Woolgathering"

13371337 views33 comments00 favs

Some of us, however, turn our secrets over in our souls, churning them with the fury of the howling winds of a January night. They are eroded and shaped and fine-tuned with the precision of a jeweler; the deeper and darker they are, the more brilliant of

On Women

13371337 views44 comments11 fav

She was prepared

To Zephyrus

13371337 views66 comments44 favs

In a field of barley, I see you, ...

early spring

13371337 views77 comments66 favs

the late snow, though not welcomed...

You May Telephone From Here

13371337 views88 comments77 favs

There's something in the space youare tonight that's for me asweet presence in my own life,and so like any othercoward I write a poemin vain. It will never beseen as itself by you, butpossibly be mistakenfor an open window. Somewill definitely call itfurniture, some will…

The Best Kisses

13371337 views1111 comments55 favs

So I told her think of it this way: you’re my unlived life.

Another Way

13371337 views55 comments22 favs

If there was another way to describe emptiness, I'd word the endlessness of the sky, of the ocean at low tide.

No Word for Enchantment

13371337 views1111 comments66 favs

fanned lashes on rouged cheek a glamorous sea creature in violet perfume