poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
Ash And Stone
Perhaps even the abuse
was the best they could do.
We are none of us prepared
to shepherd a helpless life,
to watch it grow beyond us
while still needing – or worse,
not needing – our guidance.
I tended the fires of rage
until my heart ran out of fuel,
until in the ashes that remained
I found a stone that was
warm to the touch, and silent.
/ / /
11 May 2025
Charlottesville, VA
close
every encounter is a mixture
of delight and regret
I’m pushing the big rock
up a steep hill
am I strong enough to let go?
will it roll over me?
my headphones block the sound of the train
as it carries me fa(r)ther away
past a hundred rectangles
divided into a thousand rectangles
I turn on Coltrane, sit back
watch the blurry trees
/ / /
19 April 2025
Washington D.C.
For John Breen
We’ll probably never know what he did
when he was overseas in a uniform.
He kept most of that pretty close to the chest.
In fact he kept most things pretty close to the chest.
He was a classic man of his era.
He served, he worked, he did what was required.
I once watched him eat two slices of pizza
and wash them down with a full glass of milk.
He was, if memory serves, the only person I ever knew
who preferred Wonder Bread to all other kinds.
I sat at his table one afternoon,
having decided to unburden my emotions
to this least likely of hearers.
When I was done, he told me
to get my head out of my ass.
He wasn’t wrong.
/ / /
31 March 2025
Charlottesville VA
For my Uncle John,
who passed away on
March 29, 2025.
Indigestion
At the tail end of a stomach ache
that has lasted for hours,
like they did when I was young
and in pain more often than not.
Doctor after doctor told me
nothing was physically wrong
because nothing ever showed up
in their tests and pictures and probes.
Nobody could explain why I’d be
doubled over in pain almost daily.
As it turned out, they were looking
at the wrong part of my body.
The problem was in the attic
rather than the basement.
Abuse leaves its marks, inside and out.
The blow to the face, to the heart —
they both follow a path to the gut.
Anyway tonight was just too much dairy.
The family I’ve chosen is better
than the one I was given.
/ / /
15 December 2024
Charlottesville VA
Thanksgiving Day, 2024
The Dallas Cowboys are playing
on a totally legal stream in the living room.
When I was kid in Lenox my mom got me
a pair of Cowboys pajamas because
they were my cousin Todd’s favorite team
and he was my favorite person.
We’d play The Incredible Hulk
(Bixby/Ferrigno version)
and he’d always let me be the Hulk.
When it was time for the gamma rays
to change me from a mild-mannered nerd
to a big green monster, I’d whip off
the shirt of the Cowboys PJs,
throwing it to the ground just like
Big Lou did on the TV.
And of course I’d flex my arms,
holding them down low in front of me
and growling just like the Hulk.
Maybe an octave or so higher.
The Cowboys are playing because
it’s Thanksgiving. The first one
with my new partner.
It’s a day we have qualms about celebrating,
although we got prepared plates
from the grocery store and heated them
in my tiny oven, which smells like it’s
poisoning us every time we use it.
After eating (which we did before noon
because these days we get up earlier
than either of us would probably like)
we went to the queer anarchist bookstore
and sat in the comfy chairs and leafed through
books of protest art and queer resistance
and anarchist theory and then we bought stuff
because we always do.
I’m pretty far down the page
without having mentioned that three hours away
my parents and my sister and my sons and my former wife
are all having Thanksgiving dinner together, a dinner
to which I wasn’t invited and which I learned about only
in passing during a phone call.
It’s 8 PM. My kids haven’t called, but my sister did.
When I was growing up, this is the kind of thing
my mom would have made me feel guilty about
if there had ever been any chance at all of my breaking away
to spend a holiday elsewhere, which of course
there never was.
I decided not to be that parent to my sons,
so I told them I only cared about two days a year:
Father’s Day and my birthday.
On those two days, I said, I’d like a phone call
if we can’t be together.
Perhaps I overplayed my hand,
given that now nobody even thought to ask
if I’d like to join in the family celebration.
And sure, I don’t speak to my parents,
but I’ve already seen them twice this year,
when each of my boys graduated,
and that was bearable enough that…
Anyway, it matters, but rather than say anything
I’ll just write it down here in these lines
and then go back out to the living room,
where my partner has turned off the Cowboys
and is reading one of the books we bought today
after our first Thanksgiving together,
just the two of us. I don’t know what Todd is doing,
but he’s probably with his former wife and
my aunt and uncle
and his daughter and her husband
and a bunch of dogs. That invitation
didn’t come either, but they’re too far away
to have expected it.
Funny how these days turn back the clock.
Funny.
/ / /
28 November 2024
Charlottesville VA
Defense
That little boy
in the shiny blue suit
couldn’t defend himself
from the much larger man,
so he built a wall inside, instead,
and sits quietly behind it,
hoping the monster
will pass.
/ / /
18 April 2024
Charlottesville VA
NaPoWriMo Day 18
April 16, 9:30 PM
For S and H and L and H
On the radio, the Red Sox are
coming back against the Guardians.
I traveled in time today, talking to the people
of Wednesday and Thursday and Friday,
all while playing music
for the people of today.
I kissed the person I love in the morning,
hugged more people I love in the evening.
Times pass, memories fade.
The crack of the bat, the taste of chai.
/ / /
16 April 2024
Charlottesville VA
NaPoWriMo Day 16
When We Come To It
The road had been there since at least the 1830s,
if the cornerstone on the red farmhouse was right.
At some point it had been diverted up the hill,
rendering the little concrete bridge obsolete.
The boy had moved there in the 80s, into a log home
on what had been a vacant bit of hillside.
He found the bridge one day while exploring past the pond.
When he found the bridge, he found the creek.
It led back into acres of forest, all the way to the 4-H camp.
He followed the twisting water into the trees,
the sun’s rays reaching, but only just.
A few years later he brought a city kid out there.
The kid jumped out onto a tree limb hanging
over the water; the limb sprang up and tossed the kid
several feet. He was surprised but not hurt,
so neither of them mentioned it when they got back.
The boy had many adventures among the trees:
daring escapes and forest battles and wilderness hikes.
Even when somebody bought the plot of land next door,
he still snuck into the forest and followed the water.
Sometimes in the summer he could hear the PA system
from the 4-H camp, calling the campers to lunch or dinner.
Eventually he grew up and stopped visiting the bridge
and the creek and the forest. Then the house was sold.
The new owners changed the color.
/ / /
4 September 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 45 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a CommentHappy Birthday
It wasn’t all bad.
There were lots of nice moments.
Eventually, though,
the negative outweighed the positive.
Love shouldn’t be conditional.
At least not a mother’s love.
I was not always blameless,
but I was always your son.
I went to therapy.
I took my meds.
I meditated.
I tried.
You grew, too, in some ways,
but not in any that required introspection.
You were swept up in a cycle
started generations before.
I’m typing this alone in my apartment,
left by the person about whom
we had our final fight,
but my son is on his way to visit me,
so maybe the cycle is broken.
/ / /
3 September 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 44 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a CommentAncestry
To go down into the mine
again and again,
searching for one more seam,
one more rich vein.
To walk the dark tunnels
deeper and deeper,
until daylight fades behind
like a rumor.
To hear the trickling water
drip and drip,
making the way treacherous,
slick, unforgiving.
To chip away at the walls,
harder and harder,
until the dust
defies breathing.
To return to the surface,
levels and levels,
clutching a meager find,
holding it up to the light.
/ / /
27 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 37 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a CommentBut I Am Your Child
My father never looked for me.
In more than 30 years he never wrote,
never called, never
showed up outside my school
or at my job,
never spotted me through a fence
playing with my sons at the park.
It’s been four years and my parents
are clearly content
to let this silence stretch
into permanence,
to hold on to the other child
and pretend she was the first
and only.
/ / /
24 August 3023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 34 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Contingency
I had a plan.
For if it happened again.
A late-night,
tiptoe-to-the-kitchen,
find-the-right-drawer,
then-back-upstairs plan.
I came up with it as a kid,
never expecting to need it
as a middle-aged man.
But there I was in the kitchen
with his rage-trembling body.
I went for the drawer
but she stepped between us
so I ran for the car
and drove away.
/ / /
20 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 30 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Worth It
for John
The scar on my left knee
is from crashing a BMX bike
I was only riding to be your dad.
/ / /
17 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 27 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a CommentTreasure Chest
for Bernie
I cradled you in my arms as the anesthetist
held the tiny mask over your face.
Your soft eyelids lowered.
You were cooing as I handed you to the doctor.
It was the gentlest sound I’d ever heard.
Parting from it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
He took you through the double doors.
I returned on shaky legs to the waiting room.
/ / /
15 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 25 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
Leave a Comment
Eventualities
We talked about what would happen
when one of them dies.
“All The Things You Are” is playing.
I have closed the curtains.
Anyway when one of them dies.
Is what we talked about.
By the way that song is over.
The neighbor is mowing again.
The thing is, see, when one of them dies.
I don’t know the name of this next song.
Perhaps I should have another iced tea.
There will come a day when it’s over.
We talked about this.
/ / /
10 August 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 20 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.