Poetry
Containment
I shed my coat and wondered
how my old friends would react
to the tentacle gliding
across the table edge, fidgeting and feeling out
textures. I have been letting it
explore me and my old haunts—
curiosity killed the cat
but I am not a cat
today. I am a …
At the Crossroads
The only right sacrifice
in the timeless temple
is to leave
by but one
of the Thousand Thousand Ways.
It would seem a sacrilege here
to forsake
Nine Hundred Thousand
Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine
perfectly good
roads to happiness
and right living
—Nine Hundred Thousand
Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine good wives
each …
Silent Night
I need space.
Public spaces are filling up
with noise and flashing lights.
Parking lots are filling up.
Hotels and guest rooms are filling up
with homeward bound.
Family rooms are clogging
with tinsel and stagnating stuff
and credit card purchases and tripping hazards.
Kings are hunting children.
There is …
Meiosis
I can feel their subsonic moans
out there beyond the membrane.
Swimming through the metacosmos,
alternate universes
are drawing near—
other ways
how everything could have been,
how things could be.
It could all go wrong.
It could all finally go right.
My universe secretes something.
These others swell with …
All God Is
Through depression
Parker Palmer learned
that God might not be a god
after all
but a wordless creature
way back in the woods,
deep in the base of his animal brain
wanting to live
after all, and
if that's all God is—
And it would make sense
that in a …
