"the disturbing muses" reinvented as a one-act play for two voices

why do you write?
he asks
and i answer i don't know and
even here
two thousand miles away
i can hear him take an
involuntary step
backwards

passion is the word he
needs to hear

burning maybe
or maybe consuming

descriptions of war and disease
turned inside out
but listen

i walked away once
for almost two years and
i don't remember missing it

i have no explanations

is it enough that i'm back?

that i bleed?

the trick is in asking the
right god
the right questions

avoid mountaintops
and open wells

lie
if necessary

this is the true power
of language

new poems

3 new ones at WORDS ON THE WEB

autobiographical sketch from the last days of the age of miracles

and you sat next to me in the car
and said
give me the sun in december
and i said nothing

and the hills spun
silently around us and
the clocks all moved forward
and the bombs were silent from
this distance

the dead held
their mangled hands up to god

a small act of faith
and then the moment was gone

2 new poems

in the latest issue of Perigee

the bleeding horse, denied

the bleeding horse, denied

open 24/7 for your convenience

waiting for rain, for paradise

i came hear having heard about
the streets of gold

was born 1968 in the
dying light of autumn

grew up in vacant lots and
behind fences

in the rooms of strangers and
with the salt of their skin
on my lips

with their names peeling away
like old wallpaper

dogs in front yards or at
the throats of young boys

woman dead on the kitchen floor

no notes and then her
husband doesn't come home
anyway

she's found by her son
and i am not him

i am finally grown up

will only cry when the
last holy note has faded