lockdown

in theory

there is light

some have called it

golden or warm

you might wonder

why i have not seen it

which is a natural

question to ask

so let’s say

i live in a home

and the walls are

so black and thick

i find myself isolated

thus filling with ache

and let’s say this ache

is quite monster-like

spawning long tentacles

that entomb

my body like a mummy

cloaked in darkest night

*Published in The Ekphrastic Review’s Guillermo Wiedemann’s Writing Challenge on 4/24/20

so light the match 

tonight

there will be no rest

not while black knots

sink into my core

you i

i you

in the end where

there is only oblivion

in the end where

i become death

where i trap you under

my soot-sullied boots

where the only word

i breathe is blaze

within the fire

within the fire

to start again

within the fire

within the fire

*Published in The Ekphrastic Review’s Mark Rothko Writing Challenge on 8/16/19

Cross of Mine

Inspired by Hans Hoffmann's Laburnum

It is in chaos that I thrive,

in the spirals and drips

of my thoughts made manifest, splashed 

frantically in your gaze,

in the the push-pull affair between 

colors warm and cool. 

Could you exist here, too, 

not just as a spectator in your 

familiar pose: arms akimbo, legs 

planted flush against earth,

but as a lover, a dancer, 

a gunshot, a virus in my veins?

Will you be the one to finally hoist 

up my red-soaked cross,

the one I have carried west to east, 

south to north,

the one I mend and cradle daily 

while you merrily dream?

Or will you walk away

and give back 

the spilled blue of my essence that 

reached for your pulse in song?

*Published by The Ekphrastic Review on 3/24/19