The thin man in an ill-fitting, ragged black suit arrived silently by nightwith an entourage beyond sight. At high noon the next day, out on the edge of town, just beyond where First Street veers into Old Highway and disappears to places no one has ever been, the man and his Church of Truth’sTraveling Gospel…

Pre-dawn pink,eyelids like anvils,in Autumn. Featured Download: If you would like a resource to help you write poetry like “Insomnia,” CLICK HERE.

On Francisco Goya’s painting of the same name. He half-faced me, one square eye on the crowdOf mourners, one fastening me. He claimed,Pain is the elixir of eternity.So paint your features black, shriek out the soundOf widow wails who clave until fate claveAway, waft the rot of society,That smell of burning waste, lick the groundWhose…

On Francisco Goya’s painting of the same name. And, merit fate, the wine had overflownHolofernes’ wrath; Judith’s blade shoneAs, to the nurse, she confided her plan: I’ll slay this man by beheading him twiceIf you’ll watch the door. She leveled the knifeTo equal her own head, and entered: War,Who played your whore, might have stayed…

On Francisco Goya’s painting of the same name. Can you propose a more appropriateResponse for Ops when she illuminatesHer husband, elbow-deep, in between chews? The muted slurping your abuse made beforeWas punishment enough, she snarled. When goreRemains unknown, blackness paints barbaryMore wretched than reality. I thoughtTo see your sin could not be worse than whatMy…

Perfection placed in broken arms that dayYou came out screaming, wrinkled, pink, and breathedRelief, for you, miraculous new babeWere proof God watched, still cared something for me. Your garden chime echoed beyond the door,A Christening gift. “Watch over her heart,”It whispered. “She’s your little girl but more,She’s ours always, on loan, heaven’s fine art.” Today…

When green fields grow barren And life grows all too much I sit fixated on the sound Of the steel birds That grace the sky above. When flowers bloom And then grow dry Under the fiery sun That makes water run dry And lands grow barren  Do I see the happiness I had once in the pastSo long ago And now escapes my reachLike salt…

This morning I murdered a book, as I laid in bed with my dozing pitbull,watching her breath move the blanket,her paw twitching against the mattress and my legwhile sunlight submersed the room into existence. The plot had some sort of twist that I hadnot recently seen in film or book;or, at least,I don’t think so,for…

Yellow popcorn curls and June bugs, girls named June and May and April too. Southern summers smell of 1950’s funnel cakes and fast boys, faster cars and jars of strawberry jam. Brown skin kissed by boat dock bruises and cool evenings on porches older than plantations — haunted like them too. Drive-ins with Bobby and…

There seems to be more every daycoming and going through the old grey double doorsMob of Mason Bees buzzing without terminustwo to a room, fifty in total and they’re all flying solo Three bees, five nightcrawlers and two flat-nosed bats sleeping the wrong way upSingle misplaced souls in a realm owned by seven billion The…