Tarot: 7 of Swords

 (2025) 

So many ideas still swarm in my Aries head,

but now like a dust cloud.

I haven’t enough discrimination left

to choose the better of my ideas. Look!

I’ve already lost two thoughts,

like dropping swords, points buried in the mud.

These are likely the best two, but who knows?

I’m forgetting memories, rejecting plans.

 Pharmaceuticals, or age, or just plain tired—

I walk into battle fields and kitchens both

not sure what drew me there. It was some object

I needed to find, or an online task, some duty,

a necessity, and already

most of my mind’s blades have become blunt.

Carrying them in a bag on my back

has become burdensome. It’s time

a protege should pick them up,

but no one has the vision I seem to have lost

I shouldn’t have imagined myself impervious to age.

Tarot: 8 of Swords

 (c) 2026 

All my doubts form a fence—

my insecurities a blindfold—

and the stories I tell wrap me like loose ropes.

What if I find the stories sweet?

What if I find pleasure in the lies?

The waters beneath my feet are shallow,

and nothing in my heart is so deep

as the rivers of previous weeks.

In the distance I hear the obscene hurrahs

of soldiers finishing war games—

wiping blood from their blades.

The King and Queen in their castle are half-asleep.

I am insignificant and therein lies the beauty--

I can stand still and think.

Tarot: The Lovers

 09/2025 (c)

On paper the lovers would likely have not felt the attraction

Their uniqueness seen more as disparity than as harmony.

One of them is a tempest. An updraft. A whoosh.

Another is a soft rose. A square of velvet.

There is water. Sometimes stagnant but usually gurgling and slurping.

There is fire and there is stone, but who is to say which one holds what cards?

What split-off personalities do I need to re-unite? Just how much love

may I give myself?

I recall the obsessions, the perfect fit of two hands touching

as though touch were a new thing.  Turning his off-hand remark

into a koan, into a worry stone to rub away into an iridescent hue.

I recall the ideal weather, the luminescent being whose flaws

didn’t require forgiveness. Even fault lines were perfect. 

Part of my soul is a tamed bird. Part is a wagon wheel.

Part prefers solitude. The other is already looking for a way out.

Sport

 (2009)

I remember fishing, once.

Caught nothing I could keep. 

Under three inches and thin as my middle finger. 

I unhooked the hinged mouth

and threw it back, already dead, or if not,

left to live out its days

with a gaping hole in its mouth and pain. 

This is what is called "sport".

To alleviate boredom I attempt my first BlackOut poem. March 7, 2025

 

Mewling

 (c) 2/25/2025

Most nights I stuff myself, ravenous

for high-fat foods, alcohol, anything

to push my skin outwards, to increase the plane

the surface, to create space, a range

so that my skin will be brushed

absentmindedly on the sidewalk,

walking in and out of doorways.

I look for opportunities to visit the doctor

and though it pains me to be seen

I drop my drawers in a second. 

All those mammograms. The pokes and prods.

The drawn blood. The speculum.

It is as intimate as the transactional

pedicure, manicure, and massage.

And in grade school I was the target,

pummeled on the playground every few days.

Maybe that had nothing to do with their demons.

Maybe I was genius, making myself mewling

pathetic, a kicked dog. Maybe I knew

it was guaranteed touch.

And Still.

 (c) 2/25/2025

No trip to the Louvre. No fumbling je veux

as we ordered croissants. The plan for Paris never happened.

The week in Tobago, the delicious honeymoon he promised.

All the sea turtles nesting on Irvine Back Bay. No. 

No cross-country trip. And no new couch

even after he ripped the back off my old sofa

 to free his pet corn snake.

 The newest model mustang was repossessed. 

The fake job he listed on the sale document,

that job he so bragged about, no income.

His whole resume a fraud.  Degrees unattained. Positions

never held.  The zirconium wedding ring

to symbolize his love. So much like my father. 

Every year with him was diminishment. And still,

I stayed.