• A POET IS

    A poet is a child who on seeing a blank page must fill it with dreams hears the song of the nightingale in the din of passing traffic comforts the lonely mother recalling the pain of a thousand births sees in each passing cloud the tears of a generation feels the heat of the sun…


  • CRYING

    There is  a tear in God’s eye, the blood of the children of Aleppo.


  • A SIMPLE QUESTION

    A woman walks up to me and asks, “can you juggle the salt and pepper shakers?” but I know what she really wants is for me to bind her wounds and drag the sun quickly from the horizon. I pick up two apples and a plum but the plum falls to the floor and rolls…


  • DREAM

    She took the flower, placed it gently, arranged just so, between the pages of the giant tome, and closed the book setting it carefully back on the shelf where it would remain until someone, seeing its leathered spine might pull it out, blow off the dust and open to that page, and look into her…


  • AND WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND

    She calls them around her bedside but they stand back fearful of the withered ghost hovering on the sheets, until one, eldest, touches her extended hand with a finger as if passed through a flame. I will be leaving soon she tells them, if not tomorrow then a day later and I will take the…


  • ORPHAN

    I was a foundling wandering from Guinness Stout to Ouzo and back, in search of identity. In Schul I would cry out to Him asking, “Who am I?” and He would answer, “you are, you are.” The balalaika of my mother’s grandfather sounded tinny, a cacophony lost in Oporto, Lisboa. On the streets of Vienna…


  • PROPRIETY OF MORNING

    There is a propriety of morning that appears denied to the rest of day, escaping Luna’s grasp the sun can sing in a voice deep in prayer and yet at play. The lives that quietly left in the night are balanced by the days measure of births but at dawn when the sun throws off…


  • SCENES FROM A MURDER TRIAL (A PLAY WITHOUT ACTORS): ACT II

    On December 14, 1992, a shooting occurred at Simon’s Rock College. At around 10:30 pm, Wayne Lo, a student at the school, shot and killed one student and one professor, and wounded three students and a security guard. His SKS rifle soon jammed and Lo later surrendered to authorities without further incident. XXI The court officer…


  • ARRIVAL

    The lake arrives each morning, just before she opens her eyes.  She’s tried to catch it, getting up earlier or later but it was just lapping the shore outside her window each time she first gazed at it.  Once she tried to stay up all night, and it clung to the shore despite its desire…


  • TRICKSTER

    “Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry.”  — Navajo Saying