Night sweats and fatigue
ankles on strike for lighter loads
unidentifiable mushrooms and bizarre
underwater plants growing on your back
you envision a microscopic farmer
atop his itsy-bitsy combine
chugging along the fleshy arroyos of your back
harvesting those disgusting growths
and taking them to a minuscule market
where viruses and bacteria buy them
eat them
and die
You try to remember the last time
you slept through the night or rose
in the morning without pain
Age spots blot the smooth and unblemished skin
where your forehead used to reside
your joints have opted for early
rigor mortis Parts of you sound like a rusty hinge
when you walk while a malevolent gnome
plays marbles in your back
Your ideas are wrapped in mothballs
what you had thought were cutting edge
concepts have become intellectual lint lodged
in the tweed pockets of contemporary academia
What a surprise to discover that you
never step into the same life twice
won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His chapbook, All the Songs Sung (Angel Flight Press), and his fourth poetry collection, The Broad Grin of Eternity (WordTech Editions), arrived in 2021. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Chiron Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, and elsewhere.
