Category Archives: Poetry
Guest in My Swamp
Reading Brian Doyle and it’s likeHe took a vacation in my head, with a canoe orKayak, paddling around the marsh collecting lilyPads and skunk cabbages, so prevalent in the dark spots,And weaving them into a poem that speaksExactly to me … Continue reading
Losing the Lease
A short rhymer. jrs The only home I’ve ever knownIs this body in which I’ve grown.Like any house, it sometimes needs repairAnd you can’t get parts just anywhere.It’s a miracle of gut and brain,Of bone and sinew that sadly wane.So … Continue reading
Looking Up
(for William Stafford) Your poems run the gamut;you have blessed us with musicof realization and understanding.Many of those poems were bornon your couch, lying on your back,looking up at your journal.Really? Their birth is asastonishing as their venerable lives.
The Way Forward
Anger finds my heart unreceptive to the pull of self indulgence; it is not the time for self righteous behavior and losing my way. My heart knows the way when my mind is distracted. I am who I am. I … Continue reading
Visceral Musing
Here Poemy, here girl, here boy, hweet, hwheet, wheet… c’mon—atta girl, atta boy, c’mon. Bronkbuster’s muse is a dominatrix— demanding, abusive, beautiful, alluring, cruel, and dripping wet—smelling of sea and sagebrush. Mine is on cat’s feet, shifting shapes and sometimes … Continue reading
Reading Admonition
Reading poems– a bronkbuster, a recovered drunk, a morning iconoclast; all tell me: write something with velocity, not half fast. (Paul Zarzyski: Gordon Stevens; Richard Hugo: Hugo House; William Stafford: American Academy of Poets)
A Poem Comes
My impatience robs me of my observance, but sharpens my pen. I slice my ego into quivering hunks of silvery fatback, sputtering in the skillet I heat with my heart. Shame fits me too well. I am only as good … Continue reading
Haiku: The Night Warms
Coffee sits swallowed at the top of my stomach; my brainstem is warm. (stock photo)