The Purge

I want to burn it all
The filth. The scum.
The self absorbed.
The haughty. The vain.
The rich. The sin.

Galileo

Like all the famous
astronauts and astronomers
who spent days
peering at the heavens
I’ve stared too long at the stars
orbiting inside your baby blues
to no longer deny that God exists

The Drought of ’22

The body of missing teen found plastered over headlines
Barely mentioned, the lake and its 500 year low waterline

A society that buries itself in fantasy buying virtual land
Will eventually realize that our bodies cannot drink sand

If I Was The Planet Mars

If I was the planet Mars
I’d break free from the Sun’s hold
And escape into the dark cold
Forge a path into the vast black
and never, ever, ever come back

New Anthology

I am pleased to announce that my poem Some Kind of Blue will be published and included in a new poetry anthology by Ingrid Wilson called, “The Anthropocene Hymnal: Songs of a self-defining Era”

Solvitur Ambulando

This is my journey
To this goddamn place
I pace just behind the edge
Or at least what’s left of me
This, my purgatory
My paradox
My gathering
My reckoning

The Staggering Marionette

If my poems had lips they would hide in your pout like secret honey
A whispered cache of melody dripping away in a sea of awkward noise

Nostalgia Is Like Herpes

Nostalgia is like herpes
The more we get screwed
The bigger the chance
We’ll find a reminder of it later
If I can just get through this….

Honeycomb Pageantry

Her palace collapsed
Like a mini civilization
Amidst flapping wings
undulating in perfect pitch
along a downward,
spiralling trajectory
and a fusillade of rifle shots

Prelude To Winter

I remember the way my eyes fell
When she told me she was going away
There is only so much time for love
She said before making her getaway

It’s Not All Doom And Gloom

Cops push out addicts
Living under bridges
Then talk them down
From jumping off them
Suicide rates are jumping
But it’s not all bad news
At least the stock market
Reached another high

No. 13

They are onto us so let’s hide away
Inside hidden fox-holed motel floors
Intentionally mislabeled as room 14’s
We can take respite inside conch shells
And spiraling sunflower inflorescence

Election Day

Every four years there’s this sporting event
Preceded by campaign promises and vows of roses
We choose our bread, circuses and the president
We mark our ballots while holding our noses

Turn Out The Lights

Somewhere the party never stopped
Somewhere the 7th floor of the Sheraton
in Madison, Wisconsin is still shaking its head
Gathering its tables and chairs up from outside

Somewhere there are still packed music venues
With sweaty teenagers hanging on every note
By just word of mouth and zero promotion
Somewhere the ice cream man ain’t talkin bout love

Weltschmerz

My inside pulled out heart
Is a 300 gram autobiography
Broken, bleeding and revealing
Systolic wars and diastolic peace
Beats between nausea and hope
Scrawled in my lost arrhythmia
Like the cadence of a rainstorm

Asystole

The shimmer of tragedy like a haloed Belladonna morning of alabasterine dusted pounce. A snowy, dappled blanket of zagged inches anew on top of at least half a horse’s leg or more. Air crystalline, frozen breath of ghouls. Visible in speech, open mouthed, flared. Impossible to move without plowing through. Drifts of frozen water chanced to exist, hindrance blocked driveway on this windy, Wyoming moving day. My Pa fresh off just retiring, bought a house and an acre out of the city. This was his day.

Happy Depressive Sounds: Cara’s Music Corner

o I’ve been having a difficult time lately with my depression or as I like to call it, my weltschmerz. The word weltschmerz is a German word that translates literally to world weariness. This describes the feeling that I get when the weight of the world bears down on me. Luckily, I have music to help get me past that feeling. In today’s episode of Cara’s Music Corner, I am going to talk about music that sounds as equally depressed as I am at times.

Magoa

Her face weathers with patina
A spavined statue left vulnerable
To past atrocities, disappointment
And the relentless passage of time
Like the portrait of Dorian Grey
Whose worn canvas painted smile
Became a reflection of men’s sins
Turned farther and farther down

Cara’s Music Corner (Part II)

My boyfriend said listening to Bell Witch is like going to the bathroom. You probably don’t want to spend too much time in there. It’s best just to get in, enjoy the release and then get the hell out. I think he mostly referred to the low sounding vocals and growls. But on an existential level, the same could be said for mourning and grief. I only hope the next time I have to visit that paradoxical space it will be just as tortured, beautiful and epiphanic as listening to a Bell Witch song.

A Eulogy for Neil Peart: We Have Assumed Control

I feel like Cygnus has died. I feel like the balance is no longer there. Rock is truly dead. The priests of the Temple of Syrinx wrested away a huge part of my past. There won’t be another time when distortion and the electric guitar is first discovered, Just like the way of the saxophone, and the dodo and thus the time of the electric guitar has now passed…