Hallway to Nowhere

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  • The Perfect Joy of Summer Squash (Poem)

    how can I not remember you? how can I forget?

    at the market you would gently pick through summer squash

    to find the ones that were just the color of the sun

    and hold a blueberry to the sky before tasting it for sweetness,

    then at home, you would spread all we bought in riotous display

    and circle it talking aloud to yourself of the delicious possibilites.

    sometimes when we cooked, you’d dance around the kitchen

    and grab my hands to pull me in until I joined you.

    you said I was too serious always and your job was to make me laugh.

    oh love, long ago and too soon gone love, you did that so well

    that still I remember your lessons and the beauty of your smile.

    did I hold you enough? no, never enough, yet I tried to the very end.

    though you slipped away to wander the unknown fields of death,

    you remain with me in unexpected ways, forever my abiding joy;

    forever my happiness; forever my heart.

  • Dangerous Things (Poem)

    when I was young, I knew so many dangerous things

    boys risk their lives for chance

    in brief suicidal encounters with other boys

    girls buzz their hair in swagger

    for langorous forbidden dances with other girls

    bodies hide different meanings

    with changes and revisions often unseen

    words and stones hurled from car windows

    are equally capable of inflicting bloody wounds

    queer fag dyke tranny used on us like knives

    to carve their imagined shame into our very being

    but

    the most dangerous thing I knew is what I still know

    we are here, have always been, will never not be

    our risk brave, and we pay love’s cost

    our swagger pride, and we openly embrace

    we have taught each other magic

    made our scars into marks of beauty

    transformed their scornful terms into rallying cries

    when we look at you with clear unafraid eyes

    we see who you really are, so that you turn away

    because you know, have always known:

    we are the dangerous things

  • Wonder On A Blue Ridge Platter(Poem)

    what can I offer on a day that begins

    with a walk down the street

    in the company of a small dog and a small duck?

    sometimes the world presents whimsy

    wrapped in thick mountain fog

    and the wing-beat of swallows rising in the clouds.

    this is enough to fill my heart;

    just this, reason to breathe.