drudgery

Sun shines cozy gold,
the sky beams brilliant blue,
while I sit inside,
toiling the daylight away.

Published in the December issue of Four and Twenty : A Short Form Poetry Journal.

Download it here.

feeling the fall turn

Tripping over abandoned railroad tracks, stumbling amongst the obscure docks and semis and delivery vans. Criss-crossing the hulking metal ghosts, spent for the night. The tide rolls gently in and out. Irregular waves echo, pulled not by gravity but propelled by benzine, lightly rumbling along I-84 led by incandescent winking.

The rain tears imperceptibly, streaming gracefully through the cylindrical, amber halos created by bare bulbs. My gaze drawn up to witness this natural eloquence, my eye bats and flickers with the liquid bolt between my lashes. The drops keep falling, cooling, refreshing.

Silence. Relative to the club and deafening boom. The only moment of peace. Solitude. After so many bodies and voices.

A place where I can let go of gravity. Let my body melt into the asphalt. A placid spot in a concrete jungle. The bustle only stops for an instant, even in the madrugada.

Looming warehouses, bleating sirens. Awake. Serenity can't survive here.

hondureña

Yes, I googled "hondureña" today, and what have we learned?

1) Hondureñas are sexy, especially when filled with beans and cheese.

2) Financial services are important to Hondureñas.

3) Cervezas are important to Hondureñas. I recommend Port Royal, the only one that comes in a green bottle.

Have a look for yourself, there are videos further down.

why...

Do I take thousands of photographs and then neglect to even view them for years? Here's some Italia nostalgia on my Flickr page.

Mi mancano le belle giornate pieno di sole e vino rosso.

bon voyage

home

pastels

eye spy

Dark, empty windows stare blankly across the dull steel sea with pairs of vacant eyes deeply set in aged facades, vacuous minds impaired by scant use. Homogenized rows of faces, void of identity, stained synthetic earth tones – beige and sepia, cream and chestnut, trimmed evergreen and topped with rough slate – that stand out sorely against peat shores. Lanky firs with bare trunks point like hors d'oeuvre toothpicks garnished with daubs of greenery to clustered rooftops below. The fog lazily seeps down from a high, enveloping the dwellings, lulling unlit corners to fall into a frozen, dreamless, daytime oblivion.

Nocturnal beings blink awake as the gloaming descends. Four, fifteen, fifty pairs of eyes pierce the black night. Peering, spying beacons that cast peppered reflections all the way to my toes. Thinking unknown thoughts, living behind flickering luminescence only to fade again at dawn's first gray streaks.

looking glass

sea salt

divergent

five minutes

soup

paparazzi squall

Flash bulbs, splash bulbs constantly snapping. Tongues cluck-cluck-clucking against the roof of a hundred mouths ringing a hundred muffled sloshes a second.

A giant with a fistful of chalky, gray stones skipping them all at once, fast as shooting stars across the night sea. Over and over again, producing ripples of whitewater.

Or just countless glimmering, silver herring bellies hopping and flopping like lightening bolts, lit by a full moon through sheer cloud cover.

xtratuf

the hunt

Awoken at midnight in a war zone. Distant musket blasts rumbled in the still, moonless air. I cautiously climbed the cold, iron ladder tightly grasping each gray rung where chipped paint revealed spots rusted by the damp, salty environment.

Exposed and wishing I'd not left the cozy comfort of my bunk below, or at least that I'd put on pants, I gazed across the dark waters and into the fog banks drifting like sleeping ghosts, gently pushed by the fragile breeze.

The shots came closer. Echoes crossed the flat sea, passed through my body, and continued for the island behind me. And with them signals of misty smoke rose vertically from the water's surface. An underwater bunker of hidden humpbacks. Firing bursts of oxygen followed by fumes of wet, fishy eruptions.

I crawled back down into the fo'c'sle burrowing deeper into my bed, disappearing under a patch of scratchy, crimson wool to sounds of breathing, nighttime exhalations, steady and rhythmic in the inky gloom. And the echoes bounced off the walls of my cave as my eyes gave in.

A gray day marred by lingering fog masked my surroundings. A magician versed in misdirection deftly camouflaged rocky beaches with smokescreens and threw noises from contradictory directions. "Now you see it, now you don't," murmured the morning as ships vanished and shores materialized.

Yet the battle outside the bay waged on despite the poor visibility. One, two, three blows announced a presence in the canal. Boasting, warning neighbors.

As the day marched on, a mirror fell across the sea. And looking into this glass I saw an azure sky flanked by billowy clouds made somber only by hints of remaining, sooty moisture. Clouds above an eerie calm. Complete stillness abruptly broken by hushed gasps. Long, sputtering puffs moving nearby.

A sudden explosion. A 40-ton torpedo surfaced with a mighty spray and fell clapping the water. The roar hit my ears with the force of trees snapping like twigs, gunshots cracking in the tranquil afternoon.

Were the giants surrendering or celebrating?

Mammoth heads rose bearing chins pocked with pallid tubercles. Spyhopping to reveal half of their bodies, only to bellyflop with a whooshing splash. Breaching and rolling like dizzy children, playfully misting one another with gushing blows. Long pectoral fins sliced while white bellies gleamed triumphantly in the shimmering waters.

Feeding, whirling, dancing, twirling. "This is just a game," they declared. And once they'd tired of their victory cavalcade, raised flukes receded below the sea and the troop swam on.

out to sea

sea smoke

the sea bleeds green

And it's not that mysterious sea green of unknown, emerald depths but an artificial toxic green. Waves of toxicity, a wholly unnatural slick of luminescent green in the pitch night.

Her undulating surface is a magic tablet, a touch screen of life where every slight depression creates a living, glowing reaction.

Every tear of misting rain punctures the sea, stimulating thousands of pressure points and triggering her to come alive, radiating pinpricks of synthetic green and gold.

Each perforation is a miniature underwater mine blast. A living fireshow complete with pyrotechnic explosions and invisible hands waving sparklers, painting vanishing pictures, writing hidden names beneath the sea. Emotive flashes that last just fractions of a second. And quickly dissolve.

Just the moon playing a nighttime trick? Making refracted light masquerade before my eyes?

But then the wind blows, and the ocean bleeds unmistakably. Every glacial chill touches a million points and she responds with fine lines of faint and brilliant luster. Silken cobwebs powder the blowing swells and flow along the ripples.

Hordes of aquatic lightening bugs buzz and surge across wave rips, each piercing, an acupuncture prick trickling one more incandescent lime drop into the waters. Trying to slowly cleanse and calm the restless.

It's no trick. And the moon plays along, disrupting her majesty sea all night long. Twirling his moonbeams across her beckoning curls while she flutters her flickering eyelashes, tossing, turning, tormented. Until he fades stealthily, she continues bleeding, only placating with the climbing, embracing sun.

Why she allows herself to suffer for such a careless voyeur, you can ask her tonight.

guardian

blink

I've never looked a whale right in the eye. Really made eye contact, really bored into its soul.

I've never had enough time to see into that immense, glassy eye like a bowling ball. Really, they've never given me the time. Really, it's not their fault. I'm going my way and they're going theirs.

But I've heard staring into a whale's eye is a thrilling experience, an emotive moment. There's a connection. Communication. I've heard.

It's not like vapid adoration in the eyes of a labrador or the blank, winking stare of an iguana or the calculating, mischievous crescents of a calico cat that we're used to. Not like that at all. So they say.

That eye pierces. It's life changing, I've heard.

A behemoth mammal. Plodding along yet close enough to offer a salutation. Close enough to spot pallid barnacles like freckles across a flat nose. Close enough to see natural black rivets in the leathery hull ofa living submarine.

A dinosaur of a beast yet elegant. So large that each movement lasts for ages. A slick humpback breaking the surface followed by its boomerang tail gradually disappearing before diving deep.

The chance to glimpse that pupil is fleeting, passing. Just like the pod across my bow.

But for the chance to peer into that sphere, to share a connection, to watch synapses spark. Let that eye bore into mine. It's captivating, or so I've heard.

It captivates my thoughts.

karluk

goodnight

good morning

( between ) two worlds

Like snowflakes, no two are alike. And like the artificial sleet in a snow globe, they drift idly in suspended space, quivering inside a living gelatin.

This flood of velum-thin salmon scraps is flushed from the dock back out to sea. One species waste is another's feast.

Thousands of gray specks bob on a swelling emerald and cobalt landscape below an evergreen mountain and cyan sky.

But my eye is drawn to the flutters, swoops, and dives of aggressive, thieving gulls. Black-faced with sharp ebony beaks, white-faced with golden beaks, white-faced with black beaks, or soot-speckled seabirds.

A little skimmer must battle the flocks for a nip of milky, floating flesh. Buoying on an air current he selects a target. He bombs nimbly and with a flash of flaps he dips his bill to emerge dangling a stringy treasure. He swallows in two rapid, choking gulps while fending off vicious competitors out to steal his prize. Bigger and stronger rivals attempt to stay a flight slapping their coral-red feet along the surface while those thoroughly beaten simply alight onto the sea.

Gulls that have gotten their fill lay alongside the frothy path that leads out of the bay with the tide. The crowd chatters and giggles like lunatics in an asylum. Cawing and crying as wings audibly cut the crisp yet faintly slimy air.

And on the other side of this transparency feed cannibalistic pink salmon, slithering amongst the powder in the snow globe occasionally breaking the plane between air and aqua with spontaneous, surging hops.

But a lone, fallen, ash-tipped feather swirls, dances amid the debris, peaceful between two frenetic, carnivorous, swarming worlds.

summertime

king

jumping humpy

What's it like to see it rain falling on an unbroken ocean plane in reverse?

The drops rise unseen to break the surface, leaving dilating concentric rings while disappearing back into the gray mist above. But before vanishing they lose vertical momentum and slap harshly, crashing through the dark glass.

Impervious to rapidly transforming fissures and commotion above, schools hover below, almost frozen in time and space, except for a slight flutter of tails to maintain their position as the tide ebbs.

A select few leap high and land gracefully, sliding smoothly into the water with silent gusto. The rest arc awkwardly and crack the sea with a cacophony of smacks and thwacks as soft bellies are pummeled by the hard edge of the frigid sea.

My peripheral vision is full of inky shapes blotting the ocean and charcoal mountains. I can't distinguish between swooping birds and sailing fish. Both inhabit a space just mere inches above the undulating tide.

And when their silhouettes mix I don't know which has soared and which has sunk.

seeker seal

Who's it here?

I know we're playing hide-and-seek, but you've reversed the rules. Cheeky. You find me first and then wait patiently for me to find you.

I can feel your obsidian eyes on me. I scan the surface from port to starboard while bobbing on glassy swells in a pea-green, pea pod kayak.

A liquid screen rolls and then falls and our eyes lock. You give me mere seconds before you slip back under, away.

The sea shivers beneath me. I swivel my head, searching the kelp blooms. You spot me. I see you.

Are you as curious about me as I am about you? I hope so. But you're gone before I can ask.

I paddle one, three, five brief strokes towards your last hiding place. Where are you now? To my right? My left? Behind me. I spin a quick circle leaving a halo wake.

You're quicker. Closer, farther away. Left, right. Could you really be that quick? Or is this a trick?

One bullet-shaped, bald head pops up for a peak on my left. Another whiskered muzzle crests on my right. I knew you had a friend along.

Let's just play a little longer.

xip

playful porpoises

Who knew a bowling pin was so graceful. Elegant even. Sleek, aerodynamic lines. Perfect for dancing ballet along the bow. Nose first, effortlessly matching our pace.

Pins that bounce erratically in an imaginary pinball machine just below the waves. Crocheting underwater patterns. Looping inside-out then outside-in. Crisscrossing before tearing seams with glossy, ebony dorsal fins.

All this natural weaving, even with a bit of proud dramatics. Three surfacing side-by-side into the salty air. Dipping, diving to do it again. Darting to and fro, zig-zagging above and below one another. And the ever grandiose side spin to bare that white belly.

Show offs.

bear nugget

for her

don't shoot

milipiés

vino de mora

burro de dios

vaqueritos

vaqueros

hermanos

pescadería

el lavadero

tampico

la lava

cadena alimenticia

mr chris y su padre

nacho

gracias

an evening in the life

Honduras is a linen sky stained with cherries hanging above a pocked road covered in a fine layer of gray powder with loose stones scattered about. The blushing air is obscured by a perpetually lingering haze that ominously fills the horizon crisscrossed by wires as the rosé atmosphere melts into jagged, indigo ridges below and smatterings of dirty, swollen clouds above.

Children grin, hailing, "¡Hola! Hello! Gringo!" Women gawk while men shoot by in trucks with blaring horns leaving a suffocating blanket of dust behind. Dumbfounded cows wander along the roadside oblivious to the speeding, rattling vehicles that hurtle by.

Each stride becomes more precarious as the light fades, and the steady whirring, clicking, and croaking cacophony of insects fills the cool, breezy air like an infinite, humming electric current.

Dirty-faced, barefoot girls pad along behind, keeping pace down the hill until they reach the bridge. Then it's time to turn around, climbing back home, "¡Adios!"

Misshapen wooden posts wrapped in endless spans of barbed wire stand alongside verdurous pines whose fallen amber needles fill the air with their scent reminiscent of Oregon summers along mountain passes.

The inky outlines of massive aluminum sheds dent the skyline with their expansive concrete slabs carpeted with milky, yellow beans line the wayside.

On the outskirts, fields of shimmering obsidian and silver flutter in the breeze lit by the distant, burning lemon glow, flickering between beaming and dull, refracted illumination. Above these polyethylene fields, incapable of decay, blink swarms of natural, neon brilliance tracing curves and shapes in the obscurity like streaking, July sparklers. Glimmering green and gold flares of lightening dip and dive between trees signaling that the rainy season is approaching.

Honduras is sitting in a cardinal, plastic chair writing by a wavering flame as the liquid wax cascades down the profile of the emerald wine bottle set upon a wobbly lawn table in my backyard beneath the stars, screams of children, and surrounded by the purr of various winged communities.

Aprovecharlo.

bienvenidos a san marcos

enrobed

el signo

emergency equipment inside

burger queen

tu comodidad es nuestro sueño

golazo

mi casa blanca

la tienda

physical change