Early work
My early poems are marked by themes which run through all my works: collaboration with artists across disciplines, dreams, animals, personal mythologies, and the symbolic realm.
I’m drawn to incorporating poetry into other mediums—not only because the audience for strictly poetry is quite niche, but more so because I enjoy working with other people and blending different art forms. It’s always interesting to see how someone else experiences your creation. It becomes a relational way of understanding oneself through others, which is much of human existence, really.
My poetry generally tends toward taut, succinct musical compositions, dense with image and layers of meaning - like it a meme. I often aim for the most complexity in the simplest expression, or as Terrence McKenna described it, “the smallest unit of an idea.”
Collected poems
from 2007 – 2017
A Soldier in the
Army of Rose-Eaters
always in the company
of the army
you married me
because I came to you
unmade
in lieu of a ring
I gave you
a tiny black box
tied with pink
silk ribbon
the gift of my voice
I told you
all my tattoos are subdermal
I am a soldier in the army
of rose eaters
I am trapped in the body
of a dinosaur
free me
only because I asked
did you make my mouth
a basket for flowers
so people would not fear me
but then I could never say your name…
skipping along with my head in your hands
pulling flowers from my mouth
you sang
the army of rose-eaters
is marching
follow me
————————————
Tiger Dream
she wonders why she was abandoned
to the deadly chimeras
she expires
the Bengal Tiger with the tail
of a Burmese Python
the Harpy Eagle with the head
of a faceless woman
lying
in the stupor of the Predator
trails of smoke and weather
billow in her breath
they coalesce
somewhere
in the vapor of the tortured forms
is the answer
but she cannot find it
she fills her pipe and lights a match
she breathes the monsters into clouds
she licks her lips and savors ash
the taste of violence she inspires
————————————
The Life of the Lost and Found
hooded and awkward she wondered
about this feeling
of being full
of possessions
of schools and halls and frosted classroom windows
and the gills of lockers
and eyes of locks
where they huddle close together
waiting for the bird of hands
to articulate their secret numbers
————————————
Epiphany
there is a softness around the scream
of the open beak
in Sonoran night, two eyes appear
maize-colored
in their Saguaro mask
the needled arms are praised to the needle stars
the spirit flies from the quiver of the hollow body
life is sometimes over before death is seen
the cities of the desert are formed
of wavering heat
————————————
The 13 Paper Princesses
The thirteen paper princesses
Are trying to find their way
To the Land of Very Near
That is far, far away
Holding hands they dance like kites
In the wind above the forest cities
And the castles of snow and ice
How can it be
that the way to the land
Of Very Near
Is so far, far away?
The youngest girl who was very tired
Asked them all and cried
The princesses looked out for one another
and they all looked up to the oldest now
How could she tell them
that she didn’t know the answer?
That the way home
was closed forever now
“I know that you’re all tired,” she said
“but we can’t stop searching.
make sure you hold your sister’s hand
and we’ll pull each other through somehow.”
And so they traveled through the night
Their paper bodies crinkling in the wind
And when they passed an open window
the sleeping children tossed and dreamed
of a thousand paper birds
Roosting in bare winter trees
Their many paper wings
like strange gray leaves
And all the princesses and princes
drifted blindly in a forest
full of open doors
Creaking like swaying trees