I’ve been threatening to publish another poetry chapbook for at least a year now. I have a completed manuscript, just haven’t gotten around to editing it. I think what has been holding me back, is that I want to do something different with it in terms of format and form. I played around with releasing it as a graphic novel:

And i’ve played around with rewriting it as a series as a flash fiction collection. Or even a series of experimental videos. Not sure yet. But, anyway, here a few of the poems I’m tinkering with.

Something Different

I came to a road that
Looked familiar to me
I asked a bird where
the road led. She said
‘to a place you’ve already
been.’ But I yearn for something
different.’ That’s what all the boys say,
She said and flew away.

**

She rubbed her thumb
across my palm, rewrote
my past and my future

She put her bookmark
in my heart, then walked away

That was All Saints Day

It’s November now, a pale
cold night. I walk the streets
no passion in my heart

I can’t admit these thoughts
to her, she has her own
demons to chase. I turn my
coat against the cold and walk
into the night

alone

**

She Could Only

My sorrowed eyes looked
beyond her vintage lips.

I could have wandered on,
lived my life half wake, a
broken wing, crushed by
your ignorance.

I never really understood
why she said she could only
hate what she should love.

Old Maid

Rimbaud looked over
my left shoulder as I
read A Season in Hell.

He pointed to a line in his book.
I read it and wept. I knew the meaning.

“What an old maid I am getting to be,
lacking the courage to be in love with death.”

The only remedy I could
think of was to spit back
the words of Dylan Thomas

and promise to myself to
“rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

(for a few seconds anyway)

I don’t have that kind of stamina.