zinc words & images

  • The Return of Spring

    I bloom when I speak, When the rain beats the windows, When I recline in the sun.   I bloom, if you remember, When you ask, who is the artist- The one who teaches the future.   I bloom when I nap, Softly breathing, dreaming beneath A tartan print blanket.   I bloom at night,…

  • Ephemera

    Were I a song I suspect I’d be hidden, Folded into the spine Of a book. Never sung. Vaguely remembered By the writer and his wife Who hummed it briefly, Then went about getting Dinner ready. Found Too late, notes faded On the paper remains.   But, really, I’m not written yet.  

  • On rotation

    Things that keep me writing and thinking about writing this week. This song has been out for a while but I keep coming back to it. Less for the specific lyrics, though the writing is fantastic, and more for the way the rhythm reinforces the sadness of Bahamas’ voice. When the female chorus reaches that…

  • Simple Song

    keep me close, write my name along the inside of your finger. swear we’re the same, sentiments you wrap in paper.   leave the smoke, leave the style. capture now and return to yes. flee the room, use your guile, soft and spare, the reasons why.   make me warm. be last to leave when…

  • Physical impassibility

    What bones are these? Typing, hanging between gravity’s decisions. Metaphors hardly capture the way my capillaries dance, imprecisely reasoning whether one can see both sides of a coin. Philosophically, a coin only has one side, the side that is visible. My body and its cells, want the solution to be existence on all plains, though,…

  • Music-maker

    I can’t stop singing. Every name I’ve known, on a note, ringing. I smile, open my throat. Sounds, a glorious treaty between myself and my past. I catch the A# and pull it back, my first death and I make it last. How is it that my heart is my mouth? I know your breath…

  • Threaded Through the Air

    On my way home I saw a song or rather I felt a song and saw the man singing it. He was on a street corner bus stop, waiting, mouth open, leaning back for diaphragm’s sake. The sound traveled through my closed window and I turned to look and thought, yes, I feel that way,…

  • Dreaming of Sound

    Cacophony scrape, My sound and The sound of forgiveness. I once thought the sound of death, But know that blackness has a stillness Unreplicated. This is movement, Sheet metal across gravel Ready to awaken the God of heat As it strides the exterior wall of someone’s house. Sound deep in your teeth, Scrape The rest…

  • Musings on a Single Topic #3

    What is a gift? “Lover You Should’ve Come Over” and every single person that covers it. This body, as broken as it is. My magnolia tree and fresh bread and good butter. Mark Rothko. The intersection in front of Mother India, and the beautiful fragrance I can smell while stopped at the red light. The…

  • Filigree

    My heart wants a thing It cannot name. Spreading Among rose bushes and Pushing toward sandstone walls, In a way it is directionless, Yet knows where it goes. Beyond Desire, to be taught by the sky’s Pigment and nurtured by salt Scraped from the ocean’s body. I cannot envision the place it Will come to…