Words Gone Wrong

Connotation, denotation, simile and context gone astray

My Medium portfolio of poetry

A sample of my poems available on Medium.

• Science Fiction:
  There are things that passion doesn’t know,
  things passion can never tell us
  except that our loins grow
  together with the rising of…

• The Science of Attraction
  We can reduce the science of attraction to four laws:
  1. The force of attraction can be strong or weak.

• Reflections during a moment of solitude
  broken glass
  alone on table
  wine stained cloth
  like dried blood…

• Viewing Easy Rider
  In the end,
  Just before Dennis Hopper shot the bird at two
  Shit faced rednecks who shot back with both barrels…
• Melancholy: with apologies to Yeats
  One had the blue jay’s voice
  And two or three had the charm of
  Porcelain figures that pee
  When you drop the coin.

• Black Soul:
  Eb slammed the door, shook our house
  from wall to frame. My China
  plate fell. Shattered like the
  hard shards of his black coal heart.

• Boundaries
  When you build
  walls on borders
  you think you locked them out…

• Indigo:
  In the spring of passion,
  on the springs of our beds
  we fucked away our future in
  thoughtless careless love.

• The Sexual Dynamics of Underpants: with apologies to Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  In fifth grade, Johnny Burnett glanced
  up Susie Holden’s underpants and shouted,

• That first kiss, when I focus only on you: That moment, as certain as truth, that we wish to preserve
  This kiss, like fruit, will decay;
  like truth until words intervene,

• An open letter from Pocahontas to Persecutor #45:
  Do you, with Jackson’s portrait hanging over your head,
  do you expect to channel his warrior spirit, and
  scrub brown skins from this stolen… (with video)
• The Murder of Jessie Hague: A noir tale in verse (with video)
  Light fades
  as I fall
  further and
  further from
  the surface

• Love Isn’t Roses:
  Love isn’t roses
  or
  chocolates
  or
  flowery cards with rhymes
  printed in Kansas City, Missouri…

• Broken Promises of Spring:
  Spring teases. Verdant pastures
  wither beneath blistering summer sun.
• Sand. Surf. Scent… a Triptych
  Svengali? Never heard of him. For David she’d kick off her pumps, cook casseroles and carry children. She’d study 50 Shades like scripture, crawl naked on the floor, cudgel clamped in teeth, wax his shoes with her tongue. His name rolls across her tongue. Dah-veed. Blonde, Israeli, two-point-two percent body fat, thighs like oaks, biceps cut from concrete. A voice as deep as thunder from the horizon.
  Through her open window
  scented summer breezes drift.
  Warblers prophesy.…

• Impressions:
  I planted my son’s first kiss
  on his forehead in my wife’s
  room which she shared with
  a chain-smoking waitress
  who rattled off tale after… (with audio)