Half-choked Blooms
I give my best to the morning
and the balance to the afternoon
in the half-choked blooms of the roses
and the thorny brambles of a dying quince.
Profile of a Poet
i used to worship in a church
but the air was stale and dead
i slunked away an outsider
not meek not powerful
an inheritor of nothing
then to the church graffiti
the living word tags back
and forth i merely stared
from my pew never joined
the conversation a xylene
apostate I watched a show on tv
criminal minds propaganda
the mountie always gets his man
the one in charge authority
they profiled a killer an outsider
so outside even the outsiders
rejected bland unto namelessness
he had a disorder that meant he
could register but not feel pain
some kind of symbolic coincidence
i wonder if i’m like that killer
there is no difference between acts
of poetry and violent crimes
