On becoming a poet — My writer self was reborn about a year and half ago, when I began penning stories from the dark times during my years of alcohol abuse. I had been free from addiction for two years, and the words were screaming for release. I have been writing furiously since then —…

A poem of casualty — Two shots for the tragedy, then three for the sacrifice. The temperature drops 60 degrees the day after a mother is taken too soon from her sons. Lives become frozen at the time of trauma. What if we knew we couldn’t live another day without love? Would we be lying to ourselves? The lie is thinking love is…

A poem of inspection — I see the evidence of us scattered about our cold little portion of earth — three basketballs tucked by the side of the house, a forgotten toy crusted with dirt, the rusty wagon overturned to keep out the rain. The cat stalks a hidden animal in the unruly lawn. This morning is a curious child…

A poem of abdication — I have reached an age where my heroes have become human. There is a softer kind of magic to believe in now — That a body can bend That a heart can turn sour but ripen again That friendships are meandering, and loyalty sometimes means dormancy and patience. I have…

A reverse poem — shadow passes and you recognize the brilliance of life knowing existence because of your proximity to stars filtering space dust and riding the wave of expansion in darkness so that you may bring light like pinpricks of meteors dancing around god (Now read again from bottom to top) A reverse…

A poem of transition — it is an act of magic how water can turn a gray river rock emerald green as if its brilliance was just waiting patiently for this moment of consequence how as we age, even our most lucid and palpable fantasies snap and scatter like wishbones and smoke, only to be reborn through surrender, cracked…

A poem of comfort — He flings an extra-long string-bean arm across my back — Stay! — a command from the back of his heart, the soft delicate place behind where his nine-year-old bravado waves its shields, and I know his tender need — I am his safety, his nucleus, his beginning. I know that primal, animal yearning for Mommy…

A poem of delusion — Where is all the chaos? she said and seeing none she called it forth like a hurricane her own personal apocalypse designed through self-loathing she: the epicenter alone again, akimbo amidst the fallout of fallen friends proof that she is and will always be unloveable. After reading Brene Brown’s latest…

A poem of recognition — Clouds rearrange themselves like fingerpaint ink blots: a ballerina chicken doing the splits, a hot dog waving goodbye. Her dreams are spun sugar, changing faster than mine, rising into towers of thunderheads and potential energy. Her day is a light year, and she can fit a galaxy in each one. How many earth-planets do…