Language

What do you see? A land taken by zeros? More zeros than you’ll ever know? Taken by money changers That take all they want In exchange for their soul? If that’s all that you see You’ve only read headlines In the red letter press This isn’t your land This isn’t my land This is my father’s house And he’ll see you to the door If you think you’re any better If you’ve got the nerve...

Let the new year begin And let the last one end As the keys punch the headlines Into your skin Burning hot like cattle brands Will you have a choice Or will it be out of your hands? Will you see what is written? Will you read your last rites? Will it be everything black Or everything white? Everything day Or everything night? Is it all or nothing? Just this or just that? The record...

When the ones and zeros No longer add up And the printing press Runs out of flesh And the ink Has nowhere to run   I’ll pick up the pieces Build a temple of song Made of discarded words Metal vowels and consonants Foraged from fields Like seeds for migrating birds   And the truth that reflects On these mirrored pages Will cut deeply down to the bone Like mist and like light Like all...

The word that I am Was first spoken fifty years ago To this very day And when I entered the kitchen this morning Groggy from all those years of stumbling through life My wife greeted me With a truthful embrace And with a loving smile And asked if I felt older today Or if anything felt different at all Just like one would ask a young child And immediately I blurted out without thinking  ...

A day like any other They all end this way A flash of brilliant light The golden hour Becomes the golden years   And we look back on the day And all that we’ve done Reading the stories of our lives Words and letters Cut from different periodicals From newspaper advertisements And waiting room magazines Like a television ransom note Sent by an anonymous psychopath In hopes of blackmailing the publisher Into printing just one...

Words create worlds And fill them with life You are a word And so am I Spoken into existence Past, present and future tense Each of us a word With our own definition And connotational leaning And without which this poem Would be missing a line And also much of its meaning For when love speaks truth Fresh ink gives birth To new lines in the poem And new meanings between them But when the...

Look out of any window… Dividing the morning And the evening And the day into thirds   What’s a window but a box for the sky? And what’s the sky but a box full of birds? And what’s a bird but a box for our dreams? And what’s a dream but a box full of words?   And what’s a word but a box full of meaning? And what does it mean to be a...