Even now my fingers feel the touch of sponge; as if my father's body were mutated into an aquatic invertebrate before his last breath. Since then I have been regretting me for escaping the route my father coming after smoking a cigarette. If there were a second coming of the shadow without his body, not... Continue Reading →

You have come to a time when everything is loss— your parents dead, your friends dying or gone south. You have come to a time when you have money and nothing you care to do with it, though you take cruises, spoil the grandkids, redecorate the house, which, schooled in irony, echoes as if abandoned.... Continue Reading →

Bed sheet twisted like a cyclone argument sustained in sleep now dawn, flowers still except the lavender nodding from a bumblebee its slight weight oscillating, arcing the purple stalks let me return to you let my words be as delicate Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com About the Poet: Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County,... Continue Reading →

The items you once owned, And loved, Are arrayed on the driveway, Values affixed to all their years On stickers numbered with pen. Pages once read, thumbed carefully, Will be creased by someone else. As you parcel out these pieces Of yourself, They reach untouched corners of the Earth, And you wonder about their reborn... Continue Reading →

The water streaming in from a million little holes And swirling around my white and increasingly frail Ankles I look for you To help me bail And I call your name And the water spurts in In otherwise silence To my knobby white knees As I watch it rise And I bail Calling Calling your... Continue Reading →

A positive self-talk mantra asserts that the energy of recognition helps you take a different look at yourself. We often have a lot of self-criticism, which influences our self esteem in a negative way. Fear is often the barrier for doing what we really wish to do. Recognize yourself! Recognize others! Devil inside, are you... Continue Reading →

The glass on my front window is frosted up, so I don’t know if my wife is trying to watch me while I use the shovel to push slush off the front walk. There’s a house sparrow in the branches of one of my bushes, but he’s not watching me either. I think there are... Continue Reading →

If I were the sky, I would wait for you to rise, to feel your soft and tender lips kissing my eyes. I am just the earth, and when you rise, I feel the pain, I turn to dust and cry. If I were a composer, I would write musical notes in a bouquet, and... Continue Reading →

Silence swells the night. I listen for my father’s voice and wait for streetlights to blink on and off, dead bulbs to blaze as I approach. The moon has spoken to me. This autumn—one death, two deaths, three, four. My memory balks, refusing to expose the numbers lining up, the ones I know, the ones... Continue Reading →

Men and women gather again In the midst of their frenzy Incessantly chasing the ghost That once they looked at with envy They wake up intermittently as if in a delirium Running bare like wild horses at dusk A desolate wind blows like a first lust Until they settle at the edge of deliverance Photographs... Continue Reading →