Tag: contemporary poetry

Wastrel Words

Wastrel words, freely falling,
proliferate across the civic square—
each one a coin debased by minting,
spending itself before it’s there.

We talk and talk and fill the air
with syllables that cost us nothing,
the public tongue grown fat and dull,
its silences worth more than something.

What once was said with care and weight
now tumbles out, familiar, free—
a currency no longer backed
by thought, by blood, by what we’ve witnessed.

Speak less. Mean more. The word that waits
inside the throat, ungiven yet,
is richer than the thousand loosed
and already, mercifully, forgot.

The Icon

Gold ground. White horse.
The lance always descending,
the dragon always caught —
not slain, not winning,
that suspension my daily bread,
the point perpetually
at the point of.

I returned to it as to a chapel,
the dragons within
held by that stasis,
by what the icon
promised and kept.

Then —
the gold ground shifting,
the lance no longer
quite descending,
the dragon lifting —
St. George,
for the first time,
imperiled.

The always
became
was.

I am undone.

Caught

The brevity of life catches one short of breath.
We thought there was time to inhale once more, only to discover a final exhalation.
Was it a dream, a hallucination, or merely the meeting of the circle?
Stars. Dust. Return.

Minnesota Winters

darkness descends, light abates
breath quickens, pulse skips
not clear—do we close our eyes or flee,
inhale, inhale, inhale, gasp, grasp, break the spell
rush of air, icy, thought commences,
but edges, shapes—the outline of what must be done,
or what we leave undone

Sans Tempo

A note—
E, D, C♯—
held, not going anywhere.

The rose at the window—
petal and spiral,
not in stages.

The notes fall like sand—
broken,
and whole.