Poet's Biggest Fear

The Drabble (Online) January 2018

Hanging out with the fictionauts and the prosers, he fears, may have damaged his poetry.

These days, instead of concentrating on linebreaks and imagery, he worries about commas and semicolons; thinks in dependent clauses; ponders parallel constructions and parenthetical prepositional phrases.

When he writes, he no longer recites each phrase aloud to hear it sing.

Instead, he declaims his work from start to finish, paragraph by dreary paragraph, from beginning to end to ensure that it makes sense; conforms to the norms of grammar’s logic.

Sometimes it puts him to sleep.

He’s afraid of writing a nightmare.

Haiku (flute)

Haiku Journal, Issue 56 (Online / Print) January 2018

 

alone on the porch
a man welcomes the morning
Spanish cedar flute

Death Of A Salesman

Coffin Bell (Online) January 2018

In the absence of the bird-thin body
that usually haunted their perch
two crows found tenuous purchase
on the rusted chain-link fence
where the dealer normally dealt.

They muttered and chuffed
a secret revolutionary code
about the day that would come
when all the corners of the world
would be theirs and theirs alone.

Klling That Bitch Again

Coffin Bell (Online) January 2018
--originally published at: Your One Phone Call (October 2016)

Last night in the arcane landscape

of darkness, while my actual body

remained in the safe soft confines

of headboard and fitted sheet,

I drove some wild dirt back road

at 80, dust everywhere, radio loud

 

her beside me on hot red leather

all at once terrible and terrifying.

I knew it was her again. As usual,

I couldn’t see her face but I knew,

when we found ourselves naked,

later, the musty room sun-slatted,

 

it would be her again, urging me

to pay the voodoo priestess, drink

deep from the proffered chalice,

let the ravens circle in and dive,

dive. I knew it would be her again.

When I raised the knife, I knew.

Zombies And Werewolves Need Not Apply

Coffin Bell (online) January 2018

https://coffinbell.com/zombies-and-werewolves-need-not-apply/

 

He’s sick to death of reading about people who spend all their time reading about werewolves and zombies.  He tries to spend at least an hour every day in the bookstore café, having a quiet cup of coffee and writing about whatever else comes into his mind, but—no matter how hard he tries—his fans come in to stand behind him and prod him to wake the sleeping dead, outfit the living with glowing eyes and fangs.

“There must be something more,” he thinks, knowing full well that there isn’t.  He turns to confront them, but it’s clear that resistance is futile.

They unzip his skull and feast on his brain.