untitled

i drive more slowly
passed cemeteries
these days
to look at the mirrors
littering the ground.

i know...
you see granite and marble
broken with history
and tears,

but all i see
is my reflection,
scattered and lost,
searching the fractured
landscape
for a hint of reassurance.

lately
i've been frightened
of flesh and bone and breath.

lately
i've been colder than normal,
and the pains in my gut...

i digress...

i'm boring you...

poetry is for living,
even as i hear
death cracking her
feeble knuckles
just out of the corners
of my eyes,
a shadow dancer
teasing me with a blown kiss...

my reflection
spins drunkenly
as clouds creep slowly
across treetops,
sowing fallow earth
with their bitter elixirs -

urine on the communion table -

napalm in the nursery -

and my reflection,
broken and twisted,
     laughs and dances,
          pleads and weeps,
     cowers and sinks
in the rancid mud
of illusory graves -

dysphoria in the cracked reality
of a mourning sun.

My newest tattoo...

Here's my new ink.  It's an owl that Sophie, my youngest daughter drew a few years ago.  Sophie literally means "wisdom", so it's fitting she went through a phase of drawing owls.  It is on my inner right calf opposite a sun drawn by my oldest daughter, Abigail, whose name means "father's joy" (the sun is a symbol of joy).  The two are my own little yin/yang - day/night, light/dark.  I am balanced.