gold and dross

Beach Scenes

II.
A chill midday haze
layers over me slowly
rolling from half-seen sea,
siren’s breath made manifest
bids me stay and brightly blurs
all else till only I breathe hers

Beach Scenes

I.
I stoop to hold small
weather-worn stone
sun-soaked till
warm as when first born,
no more alone.

An ambler at night
is told morning is near
but he scarcely believes
he’ll see clearly his way even then –
all his life he’s lumbered through
sunless and moonless rotunda
sans light but expanse-shrouded fires
nigh older than time

He's tracked the circular tread
of their wandering ways overhead
and studied their rolling reflections in vast black
span of the

O Vapor of vapors,
just how long do you think
you have before you
find your faint edges fading
into the ether averaged
from so many others
in the Brownian motion
of verbal exchange?

How long can a borderless,
tasteless, odorless, waste of
cloud last when met with
the constant gale of Time
so practiced and masterful
at exhaustive dispersion?

You begin
to exhale

Food For Thought

I lie famished in the midst of food (of which I am a part)
surrounded by a salty stench that renders me too sick to start
imbibing, on a ride gut-wrenching, worse than any ship or cart.

I am the most reluctant morsel.

I lie alone in utter darkness far beyond the reach of man
in grave to which I gave no thought while walking on the

While walking a cobblestone street yesterday
I happened to glance up just in time
to see a wonderous thing, a thing I’d say
was miraculous, even divine.

Above the gas lamp post hung in the air
a single brown leaf, unbothered, unmoving,
and my thought as transfixed I stood there
was the power its stolid behavior was proving:

a resistance of gravity, wind,

in the age of externality
no one gives a damn
all upstream remains hidden
we don’t look e’en if we can
things are much easier that way
in our age of externality
where we’re taught to just accept
that slaves build all our goods
and young consumers are bereft
of their young ages
due to externality
that’s just the way it has to be
if we want toys and phones and

I Wish I May

They say there are millions out there,
but I cannot see even one tonight;
the sky is a ghastly gray, sick with city light
caught miles away that hangs in the air.

A lonely cricket
cries out wide and far
but is drowned out
by a sole sedan
coming back from the bar
which is drowned out
by the on-rushing roar of a jet
jammed full of business

Signs of Fall
VII.

My eye slowly follows
another flamed herald
descending to cry
its unwelcome tidings
against all life run wild.

Woe to you who desire to dwell long outside!

For sudden and swift
will calamity come
in meteorologic form
with a cold, solemn rift
in the unbroken string
of smooth weeks like pearls
glistening deep as the sea
where they grew in their