I am often inspired by dreams, and many of my poems contain dream images.
“Meet the real woman behind the voice of Siri.
My computer’s possessed!
Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes.
You’re not a dish, you’re a man.
Can I show you some really disturbing math?
There’s never been a better time than now to focus.
Being a person is complicated.
Hey there, got a little misfit inside of you?
Do you want more clarity and empathy?
There are situations when you need a serious power supply…”
“…Tonight I’m connecting the stars on my own
in a house the color of midnight.
I was experimenting with electricity
and found a rip in the galaxy—
an open circuit, a breach in polarity
where the mysteries of trinities glow
Is it too much just to be happy?
I don’t need to invent the microwave
or write a symphony.
I just want the simple pleasures
of photosynthesis.
I’m waiting, and waiting is a sentient life-form
you can feed snacks…”
“Oh, what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
In your sleep, listen
to the hum of latent sunrise—
the crickets of dawn receding
as dreams trickle
down the celestial bolus
like fireflies into your open veins.
Nebulas strain
against the edges of blackout curtains.
The entire universe is trying to trespass
with all its available light,
and you’ve mistaken it for a burglar.
Mars is insistent: this isn’t a joke.
Will the sound of glass breaking awaken you?…”
Before the sun rises, I let his shadow hold me.
Dawn threatens the blackout curtains.
Another day waiting, another sun and moon
giving way to more empty rooms
in the dayless patchwork of quarantine.
I remember how he is when his words are flesh
and his voice isn’t saved up in a jar:
(with random reflections on the pantoum form, flash poem writing, writing as therapy, and Bob Ross)
I’ve stuck my hand down the drain.
Reached around the spinning blades.
Pulled things out from the grime
the likes you’ve never seen.
I’ve reached around the spinning blades
and seen my face shining in them
like you’ve never seen
before. The bones. The eyes…
You know you can’t stay here.
Every heaven on earth has its fall from grace.
Every rhythm eventually breaks.
Someday, you too
will get that deployment call,
maybe in the night, when the kids are still sleeping.
You’ll pack your belongings, but not all of them.
You’ll leave behind memories and a history
and start off in some unknown land,
where no amount of explaining
will unveil your stranger’s cloak of invisibility…
…He drew a line in black ink,
squiggling around shapes
of buildings, people, trees.
I followed it around the corner,
curious where it would lead.
I followed it all the way into the subway.
Sometimes I drew things back.
The city opened around me
like the glass teeth of a mosaic dragon
breathing smoke and the fires of sunsets
between buildings. their underground organs
pumping and hissing with hydraulic precision.
I was so young…
The fluorescent lights in Rite-Aid
cheerfully pummel my senses. It’s 4pm
in the Quabbin milltown, in this January where the sky
holds tightly to its snow-stash.
I’m here buying laxatives, because it’s come to that:
everything is backed up. The government’s shut down,
my spinal cord’s frozen, peristalsis is a memory.
Even the clouds are stingy now…
The world outside this room is buzzing
with fireflies and summer, and a thousand problems
hover in the heat outside our window.
I’m not listening tonight.
I’m locked in this soap bubble some nebula blew
that somehow sealed around us, mirrored and shifting.
We’re safe here. For now, until the rainbows turn silver,
and time’s up. I hold you, lying still—
not wanting it to burst…
The strangest pain is too much joy—
I stagger under its weight.
Born too bright,
I crave shadow,
my face fading
in the burning light.
There is no skeleton,
only skin—
There is only pleasure,
never sin.
I levitate easily into the sun:
in dreams I float right in,
dissolving
atom by atom
in its permanent grin.
…Aeons.
Asleep in an amethyst cave
under a canopy of stars:
a struck geode, my skull’s soft cockle forms.
The shore evolves —
rhythm wet, slowed and cooled,
water — salt — moon —
shroud.
The pointillist smile of stars.
On the black shore,
bauxite — giant crystals,
opaque, white, and sandstone —
cacti of calculus,
tall mothers of the tide,
pale in the moonlight…
…The brain is a confusing place,
a space of fear and forests
and tests, where the inquisitive
won’t rest until each corner’s
mapped on some handy GPS,
but if passion leads you
to burn all the trees
and ask too many silly questions
you’ll be left with only brushfires
and a bad case of depression…
