—“For all practical purposes a lie is as true as the bias of its believer.” —Roshi Bob Plum of a Lie If I told you a lie would you believe it? ….. Will it be a true lie? Will it ….. pierce my bias to the bone? Will it ….. meet my need? Does that matter? ….. As sure as…

Bread Upon the Water Every book just speaks, and every light just shines, and every touch just feels, and every look just finds, and everywhere just is, and every road’s a line — So, throw your bread on the water and beat your feet to the chimes and if you have a daughter and count…

Blink . . . In a blink the sun comes up over mountains sublime and the sea laps it’s rim like a pup . . . regal elms come and go . . . splayed trunks broken by blight, . . . limbs corrupt future and past together abide, winds whistle side by side, bodies…

Compost wonderstuff of summer declination that’ll grow my beets and beans and other rations browner than the mere idea “earth”, archetypical as sacrifice, more wonderful than virgin birth more promising than the phantom wealth of nations more essential than human beings of highest stations shoveling this wonderstuff into my wagon sifting it through hardware cloth, screening stems &…

Standing Under Without Understanding Horizon’s circle, beyond which you can see no further in any direction other than up, hems us in, but looking up you can see forever, or as far as lightspeed allows, or until more time passes or, more accurately, until it shifts again, now. But by then, you yourself may have passed, whatever that…

Replacing the Gates If I’d broken the laws of light— if I’d been caught by a black hole and sent to prism, would you visit me with spectral frequency and split waves with me? Would you help cleave white into colors and set them free to carom off of everything in sight replacing the gates…

Stardust —on a celestial photo look to the spiral arc of stars of which the nearest star and you are part and see your milky way and climb your finite climb and run your finite run and whirl and turn and wind while they spin their finite spin and glow their finite glow and give you…

What A Moment Is A moment’s a poet’s take of a singular blur as tentative as an airborne bubble and hard as a hammer blow to thumb, the smallest thing able to contain an unimaginable universe, a universe able to imagine the smallest thing. Her’s one now, notice how quick— joy, gone. Hear’ s  another, …

Homes we all leave home eventually, leave the dark comfort of wombs, leave the home of childhood, some earlier than others depending upon the warmth or not of particular hearths. inevitably some step out and abandon silver spoons like Siddhartha who was not comforted by comfort, while some break from huts of sheer neglect. eventually,…

“Parrots, songbirds and hummingbirds all learn new vocalizations. The calls and songs of some species in these groups appear to have even more in common with human language, such as conveying information intentionally and using simple forms of some of the elements of human language such as phonology, semantics and syntax. And the similarities run…

“The past is inevitable”  —Delmore Schwartz, Poet I’d Never Thought of it Like That           though it’s likely to come, tomorrow’s not set, …….. this day’s loose ends twist in the wind ………like kite tails in blue jerked at the end of present’s string, ………they’re codas no one can sing— ………the future’s…

Who Spoke First? who knows from where the echoes come, who knows who forms the echoes? if, in a canyon, I speak loudly enough that echoes come,   I might think it’s me,     I am the maker of echoes,   I belch a series of wave forms toward a mirror of cliff and hear myself return on…

Making Way —Narragansett Bay —1960, first time out We part from pier slow as disengaging lovers one landlocked, the other a floater who won’t be kept at bay The diminishing dock slides back, its bollards and planks deploy to some other place not here —to a distancing otherworld The tether breaks as stern-first we pass…

A Sprawl of Cemeteries Blood for blood is in our bones, the bass line of a ceaseless requiem. Justice screams carpe diem, but none of the dead are soothed as the living gloat and hoot, or wail Why did it have to be her, or him? Satisfaction’s not been found in the pages of our “Good Books”.…

Terri Amig

Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck 60 years ago and, in a matter of weeks, by simple challenge, introduced this then 18 year-old who’d never really read a book through to the lives that can be found in them.… —Thank you Anthony Gaeta and Edmund Budde for your life-altering input.…

Schrödinger’s Cat . I’m in a box in two states at once, dead and alive —what am I Schrödinger’s cat sniffing out mice nose to the sky? I hear the high art of a sparrow sound, I catch a honeysuckle’s scent in a mire of duplicity or worse, my neurons spell disparities in verse which…

—on the song, Twelve Days of Christmas; words here: https://genius.com/Christmas-songs-the-twelve-days-of… ________________________________________ Twelve Days of Christmas and Other Mysteries What does it mean exactly, the chronic return of a partridge, which, swaddled in melody, follows an accumulated bullet list of things my true love gave to me —what must I have missed? — We start with…

Fundamental Disunderstanding ….—thoughts on Oct. 7th and Gaza everything ever written or said everything drawn or played or sung every headline that cried or bled every fresco, every poem everything wrung from our cranial sponge every inky insult flung every bomb that leveled a home ….and left a child to fend alone every instrument ever…