A canary flewthrough the broken windowand perched on the edge of my desk.It tilted its head, yellow featherscatching the dim glow of the splintered dawn.Black beak madness.“Who are you?” it asked,voice sharp as a fillet knife.I shrugged.“I’m a base poet,” I said.“Dropped on my head by life a few times.Eyes like a kicked dog.A beard […]

On the edge of autumn,I see the sky and trees ablaze with color.I can still smellthe smoldering fires of fierce youth,when the landscape of my heart was wild,a wilderness that wouldn’t be tamed. But I’m afraidold age has quenched my thirst for adventure.Even my poems have lost their teeth.Gone are my scabbed-up kneesand swords made […]

As a child, I had that fleeting beliefthat life would be a battle,a raging war,and I’d come home a hero. Dragons and monsters in the rearview,blood and guts on my boots,a house with a light on for me,a family waiting at the door. I believed in that kind of ending.I wanted that kind of ending. […]

I wake to the ache in my bones,the muscle spasms in my back,a quiet coup under my flesh.The mirrors say sixty,my hands say forty,my mind thinks it’s still seventeen,wants to skinny dip with my girlfriend,run down a fairway,cruise to the pond,rod in the trunk,fish on a line,heart thundering like the feral fields of youth,lungs full, […]

I believed I could mold it—that if I kept my voice measuredand my reasons alluring, debauched, persuasive,the wrong thing would come out clean.I drank the elixir that coronates a manwithout asking where his kingdom lies,a liquid that turned appetite into law.I mistook wantingfor knowing.Everyone stood silent while I triedto forge it into shape.I don’t live […]