The stacked stones tumbled from their rock, bold wavy red rays widening as they run from a pale red sun across the sky, over choppy water

Disruption of Creation

I didn’t understand the world, when I was a younger man. The world to me was like an absurd clown show of animation that played out before my eyes and, as I grew older, asked of me to participate in return. But, how can you participate when you don’t know the words?

My early poetry reflected confusion, concern, and philosophical discord. When I began taking my older work and forming this collection, I chose to change as little as possible. Both A Soft Creation and Disruption of Creation consist of 30 poems and 30 Reflections, which are thoughts in prose form about what each poem means to me. The Reflections will appear in the published collections.

For Disruption of Creation, using poems I had written before, I was shy of 30 pieces, so I created new pieces attempting to echo my voice back then with confusions that still sit with me today, as I witness the world as an adult.

Clouded Reflections

A faint dashed face above still water, a cloud drifting across the reflection below

clouded reflections

lurk beneath

surface detail,

familiar thoughts

I have never had

leave me feeling that

something is lost,

while seeking

the familiarity

of things I have

never known.

Deep Bottle

A figure inside a tall bottle leaning against the glass toward the viewer, a few letters fading out of its neck

what hides

in a deep bottle

except a soul

whose very longing

is self-expression

but without the words

that were stolen

long before

their absence

was barely felt

except in the

deep bottle

used to find

the very thing

that was

already spent

Night Space

A chain of links running off into the dark toward a small light, one link red

the nighttime froze

like the acrid smell

of sulfur, sprinkled onto

my unsettled mind.

blue shadows of

rich smoke move

through my nostrils as

I take my waking breath.

again, another moment,

the same as many moments

of nights’ prior to this

night’s beckoning stare.

images of many mankinds

laugh on shadowed ceilings

and danced like clowns

with their shifty, funny feet.

they reached down

into me with their culture

and I vomit red culture

back into our faces.

oh, we laugh next to

cloudy recognitions of health

and are pursued to change

histories of dynamic events,

but if time is a chain

of cause-and-effect,

can we circle back and affect

that which has already occurred

or can we only push

against monolithic moments,

void in darkness, listening

for the next one to fall?

it is a brilliant sense,

these astroplanes of life,

surrounding even the walls

that lie just beyond me.

spirits will always exist,

defined within the bounds

of the shelters they seek

from the worlds they cannot find.

and this endless universe

is just vast enough

to contain many an oasis

for the next weary traveler.

Speed

The earth pulled apart, split from the top down but not yet open, red oozing from the split, two figures facing each other across it

rich blood lurches

through economies of scale

as she screams and cries

‘cause of the way we’ve defined her.

blessed children, naïve souls

play in designated zones

their pure thought erased

by the waste we create.

is prophecy really moments

that have yet to occur

or is history shaped simply

because man has been there?

insight, it seems, little

more than a well-put

question whose answer

can never be told.

knowledge, as measured by speed

in all its dimensions,

we go only fast enough to feel

time as a plight.

friction pulls against

the seams of this flying torture,

its ever-increasing speed peels

kinfolk to friends

and our refinements

bring us closer to either a

critical state of mass or an

Eminent sense of self.

They Pour Blood

Red pouring onto a small city skyline and running down its buildings

there are ruffles

under the bed

there is blood

my hands touch

but they don’t touch

until I wake

to their hands

pouring blood

across the

cityscape I built

when I thought

everything

was just fine.

Inclusion

A ring of figures with one gap, and one figure standing just outside the ring

regardless

the name

I don’t feel

happy when

rendering

myself apart

from communion,

when I

only wanted

to embrace

what I

understood

to mean

inclusion.