Narrow Droplets

Contents

Collection 1

Mind

Narrow Droplets

Autobiography

A Man Knows

Out of Order

Then Again

Think

Primary

Game of Thrones

It’s His Mind

Viewer Ignorance Advised

Worthless Weasels

Egyptian Art

Daguerrotypes

My Father’s Profession

Body

Epithalamium Not

Machete

Exclusivity Found

Appetite

Detested Serafina

Chosen

Lakers, 1991

Epitaph for the Poor

Body Lost

I Belong to Me

Left Behind

Taste Test Tricks

Drugs on the Train

What You Wear Wears You

Face Paint

Heart

Phoenix

Static

Ring Back

Love’s Palindrome

Ashtray

Terza Rima for Let’s-Call-Him MM

Smash

Well-Being

Hope for Sale

At Our Old Diner

Shut Me Up

Fairytold

Love’s Assembly Line

How Can You Say Nothing

Worth

Soul

The Broken Rope

Burlesque Death

How to Use a Woman

Ill-Natured

Switched

The Eve of Christmas Eve’s Eve

Slowly Subtracted

An Answer

Hell Bent

Teacher

Wednesdays at Starbucks

Rebecca’s Wake

Emotional Vanishing

An Abuser’s Mantra

Three Steps Below Acromegaly Man

Collection 2

Mind

Detroit March

I’m Thirty-Five Now

Jerri’s House

The Artistry of Duchamp

Marysville, Kansas

Cinquains

The Culture of Excess

Oh, America

Well-Behaved

Paula

Arrogant, Ignorant

Words of a Mother

Tanka Dig

The Almighty Dollar

I

Body

Blindside

Swan

Against Me

Can’t Quit

Becoming

Girl Talk

Madness

The Cost of a Good Catch

Tanka Temple

New Orleans Disgrace

One Part Body

Mute

One of Five

Burgerization

Heart

Didactic, How to Stay in Love

Boyfriends

I Judge

My Two Heroic Men

Denver

It’s Better to Have Never Loved

Neglect

The Last Day

Eroded

Spill It

Matter Most

Pass By

Adventures on Strawberry Lane

Tanka JJ

Female Fluff

Soul

Widow

The Kid in Upper 4

Tanka Simply

So Sweet Sixteen

Senryu of My Soul

Seconds to Spare

Which

Cakewalkers

Let It All Go

An Idyll of My Lord

Diamante, Obedience

Adopting Damaged

Whatever

Damage Accumulated

Hold on to the Memories

Collection 3

Mind

That Building is a Farm Now

Reversed Etheree

Better

Je Pense, Je Demande

Confucian Wisdom

The Words of a Wolfe

Boundless Glory

Educator-Speak

Not Friends with Women

Failed Experiment

Short-Sighted

Another

Clean and Simple

After This

Lingual Romance

Body

Body Cover

Absolutely Everything

Acrostic, Kenosis

Untitled

Chasing After You

Tatiana

God Is

Acrostic, Propitiation

Pleasure

You Think

9:07

Satisfied

Mother Knows Best

Honest

Beautiful Shadows

Heart

Friday the 13th

April in Wahby Park

Everything

All Along

Last Wish

Erase

Conditional Love

Distance

Such Short Time

The One

Twenty Years of Learning to Let Go

Same, Different Day

Reflection

I Wrote Nothing

Please Remember

Soul

Blindside, Part II

Nowhere to Run

Now I Feel Free

All of Me to All of You

They’re Coming

Paul

800

We Have Not Long to Live

You Would Know

Everyday

Imprisoned

Nervous

Cassandra

Praise

Royal Mail Ship

Collection 4

Mind

Sold

I’ve Been

Doesn’t Match

Can’t Stop

Please Don’t Ask Me to Love You

Italian in Detroit

High School Anthem

Carrie

In Defense

Is There Anybody Out There?

The Writer Preceding All Writers

W.D.E.

Mid-Junior Year

Associated with Youth

For Me to Find Out and For You to Do

Body

One Day

Silence

Alexandrine for Alexander

Round Two

Pushes to Make Me Fall

Nobody

Milk

Red Lace One

Boston

Mr. Knight

Come with Me

About Last Night

Whispers Away My Dreams

Off-Off-Broadway

It’s Just Body Age

Heart

Famous Moon King

I’ll Live Until We Say Goodbye

Internal Marks

He Said

Grow

63099

Definition ‘94

David

Hold On, It’s Almost Over

Purr, Love

Not What You Wanted to Hear, I Know

In the Meantime

Recipe of Forgiveness

The Genesis of Us

Guesses

Soul

Emotional Dumpster Diving

Downtown Detroit Days

I Need You to Let Go

Give Me All of Your Heart

Ballade

Are You Ready

Fear of the Unknown

Remembering a Friend

Believe

I’m Not Asking for a Reason

So Close

The Deep Hidden Pain

Writing is My Soul

We Lost Ourselves

Conclusion

Collection 1

Collection 1

Mind

Narrow Droplets

These writings

Are only slivers of who I

am.

That’s what narrow droplets

means.

Don’t get the bright idea

That you know me now.

Autobiography

I am not from around here,

I am not all there either.

I am a manufactured intellectual,

I am stupidly optimistic.

I am overtly immoral,

I was once the Sunday-school Christian.

I am not a shallow critic,

I am brutally blunt.

I am like a bloody-toothed shark,

I am a misunderstood beast.

I am not a nurturer to children,

I am not my father’s daughter.

I am brave enough to remain on a sinking ship,

I was once a timid schoolgirl.

I am as helpless as an ant on the sidewalk.

I am stronger than my family’s weakest link.

Overall,

I am a powerless woman, though

I was once a prophetic princess.

And this is my

Pitiful autobiography.

Gain

Rest on

Your success

Feast upon

Dumb regrets.

Easy to

Fake comfort

Self-pacify

Speak, redundant.

Lying to

Thyself, no pain.

Never to

Profit gain.

A Man Knows

A man

knows so little

of how

To please a woman.

Yet,

a woman

knows so little

Of how to please herself.

Out of Order

Facial

Recognizing

Software.

Angel

Agonizing

Somewhere.

Bright

Beckoning

Candle flame.

Fright

Reckoning

End-game.

Force

Harboring

Possession.

Source

Honoring

Aggression.

Crack

Lathering

Escort.

Smack

Blathering

Retort.

First

Fastening

Latter.

Burst

Scattering

Shatter.

Doubt

Scoffering

Border.

Out

Offering

Order.

Then Again

Regality,

Rivality.

Sexuality,

Rascality.

Illegality,

Informality.

Abnormality,

Bestiality.

Then again…

Indisposition,

Perquisition,

Presupposition.

Composition,

Contradiction.

Rhetorician,

Juxtaposition.

Then again…

Suffocative,

Speculative.

Meditative,

Ministrative.

Deliberative,

Eradicative.

Commiserative,

Recriminative.

And then,

Again.

Think

I think like the water

Directionless, faltering across the sea.

I believe like the wind

Swinging, fluctuating, vacant or vigorous.

A ship dispatched across the desert

Going nowhere, seeking nothing.

Something like the snake, coiled and semi-buried

Ready to emerge but no prey in sight.

I might feel like the mournful

Draped across the grave, from

Crucifix to casket. The basket of

Lilies, the bells of the cathedral,

A wedding for the anticipative

Bride as she cold-shoulders the passing corpse.

From death to life, I think it’s the same thing.

A ring, a box. A marriage-bed, a tomb. We are all

Doomed to the same fate nevertheless.

From the sun’s rays across your groom’s face

To the place where the widow grieves.

I think like the water, scattered and aimless,

No better than the patient snake in the desert,

We’ve all been starved, deceived.

Primary

Elevate

Ignorance

By declaring opinion fact.

Excuse

Viciousness

By confusing bluntness and tact.

Profess

Progress

By bending rules to great lengths.

Applaud

Bystanders

By considering blinders a strength.

Betray

Civility

By assuming the obvious solution.

Encourage

Government

By voting the individual over the Union.

Game of Thrones

Game of thrones

King of kings

Manipulative professors

Greedy veeps and deans.

Wall street bankers

Of county dollars

Education’s the game

Of wealthy scholars.

Screw the citizens

Makes perfect sense

Ivy-Leaguers

Buy top defense.

Pay us with

The peasants’ stash

Millage vows multiply

The uneducated’s cash.

It’s His Mind

You refuse to trust

That I don’t want him.

‘You’re enticed by him,

You find him attractive,’

You question me repeatedly.

‘No…I don’t

It’s his mind that I want.’

He’s wealthy, respected

By peers, superiors,

The most common of men.

‘You want his money,

You like him because everyone else does.’

Eye-rolling, I record and repeat,

‘No, it’s his mind

That I want.’

You like him yourself,

That’s the funny irony. So

How can you pretend like

My point is unfathomable?

‘Of course,’ you sarcastically mumble, discovering

He can also act, host,

Humor an audience of millions.

You ‘revere him too,’ then tell me

‘You can’t be so naïve, Cassandra,

Falling for this aww-shucks shit.’

But, that’s it, you don’t get it.

I couldn’t care less about his athleticism, fame

Money, prestige, admiration, hall

Of fame destiny, stage presence

Boyish demeanor.

His work ethic does something

For me, no question.

But it’s his mind

That I lust after, venerate, want.

Countless hours of preparation

Sleepless days in a row, considering every angle

Of opponents, contracts, play options.

Two seconds on the clock

He spots a weakness, adjusts the offensive, changes the call

Such a mind is more tempting

Than sex appeal, popularity, fortune

And fame.

Viewer Ignorance Advised

This 16-and-pregnant, teen mom

Obsessed culture. Knocking up a child

Is televised in our society that abhors books.

Learning is for snobs or nerds apparently

Children’s time should be spent exploring

Each other’s bodies, they’re surely able

To care for a newborn or, at minimum

Popping it out and passing it to grandmom

She can raise two generations between two jobs, why not?

Pregnant after a month of quickies

That scholarship, burn it up. Girls

Don’t need education, when there’s leg-spreading, attention-getting

From a music channel and executives aiming to

Educate by glorifying sixty seconds of faked intimacy

Between a teen Nebraskan and her two-timing, skateboarder

‘Boyfriend.’

Worthless Weasels

Listen lazy

Worthless weasels

Contributors of nothing

Vapid deadbeats

Has-been flunkies

Paycheck thieves

Off by three

Personal errands

Chatting with parents

Daughters, friends

Today’s meeting

To tell me

Do less, we look

Worthless in comparison

‘But you are,’

I remind

So go find an identity,

Worthless weasel,

Instead of despising me.

Egyptian Art

Sun god in circle of eternity,

Tentperet disk of floral rays.

Another at the tomb of Amarna.

It’s the old man, with the ram’s head.

Sun rising above the flat mountain,

Abydos fetish on curved base.

Scene at the tomb of Menna.

It’s the hieroglyph divided into twin peaks.

Sun enters daily the pylons of temples,

Niuserre sanctuary, gated with the jubilee court.

Underworld sarcophagus of Seti I of Thebes.

It’s the guardians of the illicit twelve-hours.

Sun barque on epitaphic papyrus,

Mandjet and Mesektet, dawn and evening ports.

Depictions of the celestial sea and sky goddess.

It’s the deity with the head of a scarab beetle.

Daguerrotypes

Photographic process

Direct positive

Silvered copper

Sheffield plate

‘Magic mirror’

Angled necessary

Fragile surface

Slow Chevaliers

Petzval improved

Iodine sensitized

Unyielding poses

New medium

Contempo collectible

Daguerre-Niépce

Camera obscura

Lingering exposure

Lavender lamination

Alloy manifestation

Sharp facsimile.

My Father’s Profession

My father’s profession

Was what he did to earn money.

Not what he did for ‘a living,’

Because he lived either way, broke or wealthy.

His profession was not him sharing, unveiling, the bitter truth.

The ‘acknowledge, confess your sins, my child’ glory statements.

How he earned money, now that’s a profession.

The gambler.

Not in some cool silver-haired, pre-surgery Kenny Rogers