Three poems to be published in the September, 2026 issue of The Chiron Review Literary Journal
Desperados in Eden
You said I wanted a muse,
then declined the opportunity.
So I write this poem without you.
Then I asked you to climb a tree with me.
You still demurred, in a piqued and impish way.
No worries, I said, I am more snake than tree.
“Surrender your leaves!”, you said ahead of kindness.
You did not see my snakeskin shadow.
And as for apples? We both picked fruit up off our ground.
So I made leaves in one damn hurry
and handed them to you in buckets of rain.
You illuminated the mortgage and took the wheel again.
“Document your shadow, fess up to your creation!”
Oh I am a constant autumn, I confessed,
and you will run from the winter mess ahead, ahead.
A sly miracle then happened, and you burned the wet leaves
for our warmth. You said, “this happens to me all the time”,
and suddenly I saw we were naked. At last.
The Throttle in Your Hands
Wings are poetic, don’t you think?
Flight and air and a sustained survival
do appeal to all.
But here’s a story of my sinking.
You see, the plane of desire broke
the glass to cause the fire.
Since what was wanted was the dramatic end.
The rickety plane collected the trash
and alphabet and then turned off its engines.
The sky-written smoke soon became flames.
The book in the pocket blamed solar flares
(but I knew Prometheus was just looking for a hook up.)
A miracle, I say. The Sage of smoke held up the secret
lyric we all sing and pulled on the throttle. He navigated my neuroses
to a safe landing. The wings and plane still standing,
by standing still. Don’t you think
neurosis is a tired shame? Viennese couches
and ashtrays filled with butts.
But who am I to dispute the man
who saved me from my fatal descent -
given all the weather reports raging in my nutty heart.
I promise I’ll stutter vowels and consonants no longer.
Permit me voyage love, wherever patterns never land.
Emergencies, in friendly hands, are how our lives restart.
Antichrist on the Playa
From Midwest farms to crosstabs
on the weedy table of Love
he brings an urgent torrent of speech.
Each phoneme takes its place
inside me. Perhaps not as I intended.
After all, the sermon was his to mount.
Perhaps more than he pretended,
he planted the sweetest doubts.
Though his intentions were to scale,
a cult of desperation still grew.
I wonder if I can hold his size.
I wonder if desire has my vision blurred.
Blessed are the chronologists. Who knew?
The chakra I had expected to burn deferred
to the chakra that holds my feisty surrender.
Then the Fallen Angel butt-dialed the Antichrist.
So I am ready for what’s next.
I want this prize. To scoff at the off-brand Logos.
Post-evangelism clean up in the cemetery.
The Word’s own budding influencer
preaches outside St. Peter’s
to tell me to remember to say please.
But a rich man can’t go through the eye of the needle
unless he is on his knees.