Haiku Sonnet: Professor

He said music lies between black beads strung loosely in a faulty net. So, what else is new?— I’ll have to accept the sense of something I can’t hear. If, smiling, he said an abacus can play a sad song, I’d nod. Words are notes as well. Maybe they’ve agreed silence is logic’s sinew. Maybe [...]

One Year Later

Last week this blog circled the calendar for the first time, reaching its one-year anniversary on March 21st. That’s 295 posts (poems plus essays plus “finds”), 98 paintings and drawings, and 366 haiku (or 6,222 syllables). It seems crass to reveal the number of visitors—because what do those figures indicate anyway?—and I can’t total the [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Unrequited

Tonight he’s listing all the times he happened by— too embarrassed to arrive. Events were always in progress, eyes turned away. He appeared hoping she’d see him behind her or over there— trying to be just visible. She smiles in memory as she didn’t in life. Now she knows that face is no accident. It [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Tomorrow’s Army

In my dream, soldiers line up like wine bottles then just stand on the shelf. Their blood unsummoned, they find time to mellow. Night inside them—the dark inside stones—brightens, and at last they see we’re all made to ferment. Miracles that make us aren’t of our making, so we do better sitting, letting the seasons, [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Know Thyself*

In secret places— beneath the lining of trunks, in chemists’ closets, amid tumbling stones of a fence through a forest— are instructions to see yourself at last. No one who knows you left them. They didn’t care who might give their letters shape and meaning again, and you can’t go hunting. The instant waits in [...]

My Vote

Some time ago, I read an article in Slate setting the odds of a single vote influencing an election at 100,000,000 to one; however, if you live in a populous state and you’re voting in a sizable election—like the presidential race—your odds are probably much worse. Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, the authors of Freakonomics, [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Trouble Sleeping

Wakened by footsteps, I find the house still quiet. The only walking was through my dream, sound forming its own chain. The moon’s curiosity coats the bedroom in light that could be imagined, might be sleep leaking from beneath covers, or furniture’s true nature surfacing at last. Closing my eyes won’t help now— night has [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Eavesdropping

When he was sharing doom and the darkness he drinks, she said, “What about hope, and what about stars and planets protected from our lunacy by outrageous space?” She’s right of course, but he said, “I’m here and have only my own eyes.” The night sky’s grand carousel is a show to them. And I [...]