( via / via )

Tanka.

“Music finds its way where the rays of the sun cannot penetrate.” —Kierkegaard

Stairway to Heaven.

"pleonasm"

golden gleam of morning
aghast smoky crystal

time denied in nomquab
nimble-to-trip rhapsode

sovran symptom chalice
settlement frore Bering

funest Melba marlscrape
amounts to long hangman

scroll of real description
scrupulous dord sidewalk

pale green & its granting
where gruesome wounds bristle

upscale scarecrow Anschluss
only the crows finish

my chapbooks once chiseled
a chess move's toit tattled

Melba among monsters
even as a master

names scurry escapeward
skillful if but leafless

& wander still whaleroad
that wears crescent passing

dawn among the myst'ries
mustering breath-earthquake

long shadows of laughter
future allots inchworm

sit here till the circles
of Saturn chime term-cairn

learning little whispers
along the curved larvae

Tanka.

( me / via )

"You’ve likely benefited from horseshoe crabs if you received a Covid vaccine, for which they were harvested in astronomical numbers."

"Anschluss"

in the mist net gnarly
i know utter woodness
subfusc scintillation
aside from thin gunshots
still there's the stern grue jay
staring out of firebreaks

Crypsis.

"Who will be the first to carve a bit.ly link into a shell casing?" —@taylordotbiz.bsky.social

"Even the small army of intellectuals usually cloistered in the 'birdcage of the Muses,' as the Antigonid poet Timon of Phlius mockingly termed the library, has joined the crowd in Ptolemy’s pavilion."