Selected Poems
​
Autumn
It is autumn now, the trees are withering and
The earth is bombed by bursts of color.
Sharp gusts of wind carry the leaves like snowflakes
To a gentle landing on the surface of the creek.
It trickles by at the end of the street.
Zipping cars flow past, never noticing.
One year, I stopped by to capture a photograph of
That enchanting scene, all the nature, all the beauty.
The colors were swirling over the water, like birds
Bored with flight, shedding feathers in the night.
But they did not stop for me, they kept moving by
Swiftly leaving me there on their way to die.
f/ Stop
Why do we never stop to think about how
Cameras feel? Forced to look at whatever
Grotesque, grungy and decayed items
We imagine and point them at, burning
Those singular moments into film, a slice
Of time, 1/1000th of a second, capturing
A positive, enlightening and flattering
frame- only to call it a negative after all.
How fast could a lens go before
It runs away from the body, escaping
To find a new perspective, merely having
Been lost in an aperture where time
Is a blade extending over a canyon
Of glass and refraction in which the light
Passes through, distorting and contorting with
Each bokeh, as the f/Stop raises once more.
Screenplay
In a world, an afterthought begins, a screenplay
That reaches out, finding a mirror within another screenplay.
On the pages, don’t tell, show us the emotion.
Let the characters speak for themselves through the screenplay.
Your words are irrelevant, stop
Trying to force them into your screenplay.
Note to self, they’re not great lines,
Change them! Never fall in love with a screenplay.
Take your time to format the HEADINGS, action,
(parentheticals), dialogue in the screenplay.
INT. MST CLASSROOM - DAY
He walks in with swagger, clutching a screenplay.
BRIAN
Am I too late to turn in my screenplay?
The Void
It did not take overtly long to see
The shift in which my wayward mind proceeds.
Like that circling flock of birds flying in
Proximity drifts apart in winter.
My neurons stop to fire, as if the cold
Ice in your soul has come to haunt them now
A whisper from the depths of the unknown
caverns, untraveled by all but a few.
There, I look into the majestic void
Which holds nothingness out for all to see.
It gently stares back into my eyes
And I see myself begin to ponder.
The Dark Places
My father used to sit beside me until I fell asleep during those nights
When I thought monsters from the dark places would come
To capture me, take me away into their dark incessant void.
Then the monsters gave up trying to get me, they came for him,
Their claws digging into his veins, ripping apart flesh as they
Dragged him out of his life and into their dark places.
Since then, I keep a light on, I’m always afraid that they’ll
Come back for me, realizing that I’m wide open and unprotected
Now that dad isn’t there to stand between me and the darkness.
Those were far simpler times, days in which imagination, however
Dark could run wild. I knew then as well as I know now that renal
Failure just meant that his kidneys had decided to quit working.
But to a child of age four, what does any of that actually mean?
Were the machines that kept him alive actually monsters?
Was he really fighting his disease, like Superman vs Brainiac?
My younger self will never know, I never saw my father again.
Sometimes in dreams he will visit, but I cannot hear his voice-
My lack of memory makes it feel as if it was stolen in death.
Since we cannot communicate, he stands against the wall
as he did before he was gone, watching whatever I’m doing,
and he just smiles. From it his love reverberates through my dark places.
And for a moment, however small, I leave those dark places behind.