All Poems

The following is a listing of all uploaded poems in alphabetical order by title:

• ALWAYS
  The poem “Always”, although tiny in stature, packs a large structural punch that interlocks two souls in a single space in time, and for all time. It is an expression of the remnants of a doomed romance trapped in time, yet timeless, holding only the distant memory, maintaining no presence, and having no hope for … Read more
• ANTHRACITE
  “Anthracite” is a Ghost Elegy with a strong Working Class tone. Written in 2025, it was initially developed to be a narrative for the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella, but its strong sense of period and place at the surface level rendered the work seemingly incongruent with the other elements. Though the avid reader … Read more
• APRIL DAWN
  “APRIL DAWN” is a lyrical free verse poem centered on renewal, intimacy, and emotional rebirth, carrying the tone of a quiet devotional or love lyric. This piece feels tender, hopeful, and restorative, with a gentle voice that speaks through reverence rather than anguish. The poem’s greatest strength is its musical softness, with repetition creating a … Read more
• BLACK CANDLE
  “BLACK CANDLE” is a dark, atmospheric lyric that blends gothic romanticism with moral and emotional decay, framed through a recurring ritual image of a burning candle. The tone is somber, intimate, and elegiac, while the voice feels reflective and haunted, as though recounting a doomed intimacy from a place of aftermath rather than immediacy. One … Read more
• BLUE VIOLETS BLOOM
  “Blue Violets Bloom” is a mysterious text assembled in 2025 as a snapshot in the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella. Very Gothic in tone, there exists within its layering an image of budding romance, an origin story of fate unfolding on a not-so-ironic foundation of doom. “Blue Violets Bloom” appears as part of the … Read more
• CHURCH TO ME
  “Church To Me” is a lyric poem with strong elements of spiritual skepticism and romantic devotion, blending confessional and secular hymn traditions. Its central theme is the replacement of institutional religion with a beloved person as the locus of transcendence, grace, and moral reckoning, without requiring faith in God, heaven, scripture, or organized worship. The … Read more
• DRAW DOWN THE MOON
  This poem is a lyric incantation, drawing on the traditions of chant, folk magic, and gothic verse. Its central theme is the summoning of forbidden or dangerous feminine power, blending erotic obsession with spiritual transgression. The voice speaks in imperative commands within a ceremonial circle. The tone is hushed, urgent, and reverent, building toward the … Read more
• EMPTY CHAIR
  Originally conceived of in 1995, “Empty Chair” is a reduced and revised version of an unreleased work called “Silhouette”. The poem serves the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella as a piece of the back story of the narration character, a great woe on one man’s failure to lift off and gain traction into adulthood. … Read more
• EVENING DESCENDS
  “EVENING DESCENDS” is a compressed contemporary lyric / minimalist narrative poem. It feels like a lyric miniature — almost a dream, parable, or fragment of a larger story. The work contains elements of gothic poetry, dream poetry, and romantic poetry with religious symbolism, a sense of parable/fable, and surrealism. It also has a strong song … Read more
• FOR ALL TIME
  Written in 2026, “For All Time” is, in its beauty and wonder, perhaps the most unsettling poem in the dark and dreary realm of the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella. It is the linchpin that holds past, present, and future together as one and it is the burst of dawn following a deeply foreboding … Read more
• FOR GOD AND FOR DEVIL
  “For God and For Devil” is a narrative poem with a dash of Americana noir and a hint of Gothic undertone. It is, perhaps, an inverse of Romantic poetry, but its conceptual base is the question of propriety in the face of wickedness expressed in something of a confessional spirit. As such, the work provokes … Read more
• FUNNY MAYBE
  “Funny Maybe” is a strong, thematically dense lyric poem that blends anti-romantic confession with folk-blues cadence. A reflective poem of a love lost, it maintains a sharp tension between trauma and divine order as principle factors in romance, where only wisdom prevails, but the source of wisdom is God, who many ignore or deny. Written … Read more
• GEE AND HAW
  “Gee and Haw” is an anthropomorphic piece, at once nostalgically pastoral, romantically idyllic, traditionally Americana, and socially working class. Inspired by the legendary Twenty-One Mule Teams of the borax mines in Death Valley, the poem draws deeper into the story, back east to where the mules were bred, and how sweet was the life and … Read more
• HELL AND EGYPT
  This poem is a lyric narrative within the gothic and confessional genres, with strong elements of ballad and theological complaint. Its central theme is the trafficking and abandonment of a woman, the subsequent shattering of her faith, and her defiant but self-destructive turn toward forbidden love. The poem also explores inherited trauma and the seemingly … Read more
• HELL AND EGYPT (REPRISE)
  This poem, the continuation and stark follow-up to the longer “Hell and Egypt”, is likewise a lyric narrative within the gothic and confessional genres, having strong elements of ballad and theological complaint. Its central theme is the trafficking and abandonment of a child by a mother who herself had been sent off as a baby. … Read more
• HUCKLEBERRY
  “HUCKLEBERRY” feels like a blues/folk ballad disguised as a comic monologue. This poem is most immediately performative: you can almost hear a singer delivering it with a grin that gradually becomes less funny. Its central character keeps announcing what he will become, while the woman responds with doubt. The result is simultaneously funny, pathetic, defiant, … Read more
• JUKE
  The ambitious six-part narrative “Juke” is a poetic take on the legendary folk tales of the Mississippi Delta Bluesmen. Here, the universal tale of a meeting with the Devil at the crossroads is bungled ironically enough by the sin and vice of an aspiring musician. “JUKE” i. i left the delta on a trainfor chicago … Read more
• LIPSMACK
  “LIPSMACK” is a compact neo-gothic character sketch that blends noir romance, modern decay, and fairy-tale distortion into a sharply stylized portrait of seduction and self-destruction. The tone is cynical, alluring, and darkly playful, while the voice carries the cadence of a modern folk ballad crossed with spoken-word incantation. One of the poem’s strongest qualities is … Read more
• MISGIVEN
  “Misgiven” is classified generally as Dark Gothic and Romance poetry, a mythic love curse and gothic duet. Two damned figures are locked in a sulfurous circle. The strength is the compression, how for example, “one misgiven kiss” dooms them both. The imagery is fierce, original, and unapologetically baroque. The poem suggests a mythic dimension to … Read more
• MOONLIGHT DROPS
  “MOONLIGHT DROPS” is a brief gothic lyric that functions almost like an incantation, relying on concentrated imagery and sonic texture rather than narrative development. The tone is sensual, mysterious, and foreboding, while the voice feels ritualistic and dreamlike, as though reciting fragments of occult symbolism from memory or trance. The poem’s greatest strength lies in … Read more
• NIGHTSTALKER
  “NIGHTSTALKER” is a dark mythic narrative poem that fuses gothic horror, apocalyptic prophecy, and folk-ballad cadence into the portrait of an almost supernatural avenger. The tone is relentless, severe, and judgmental, driven by a voice that feels both biblical and cinematic, as though recounting the legend of an unstoppable hunter sent to punish corruption and … Read more
• NONETHELESS
  “NONETHELESS” is a contemporary satirical lyric and philosophical song-poem that contains interesting irreverence and wordplay. It is formally organized, having a strong song/ballad architecture. Its central concern explores the contradiction between hope and disappointment, faith and hypocrisy, generosity and deprivation, appearance and reality. The poem repeatedly asks us to consider things that appear to promise … Read more
• NOT FOR THIS LIGHT
  A Dark Gothic and inversely Romantic poem, “Not For This Light” was initially created as a significantly longer piece in 1995. It has been reduced to its present state in 2025 as a snapshot for the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella. “Not For This Light” is present in the “First Shards of Broken Glass” … Read more
• NOTHING AT ALL
  An example of Lyric Poetry, “Nothing At All” is a self-talk done in blues form. The words are taking the wisdom of a friend and instilling them as one’s own mantra of a new anti-discipline: letting oneself go. It is part of the narration character’s backstory in the “An Empty Cup of Doom” novella and … Read more
• ONE TWENTY-FIVE
  “ONE TWENTY-FIVE” is a dark carnival poem that blends grotesque Americana, gothic folklore, and satirical character study into the form of a twisted sideshow pitch. The tone is playful on the surface but deeply cynical underneath, with a voice that mimics the cadence of a carnival barker inviting the audience into a spectacle of human … Read more
• PULSAR
  “PULSAR” is a surreal romantic-gothic narrative poem that combines heartbreak, mysticism, and modern Americana into a haunting meditation on desire, deception, and intuition. The tone shifts between dreamy infatuation and creeping dread, while the voice remains intensely cinematic and emotionally charged, moving through the scene like a slow-burning fever dream. One of the poem’s greatest … Read more
• REVERENDMOTHERFORKLIFT
  “ReverendMotherForklift” reads as a contemporary experimental poem that combines surrealism, religious grotesque, confessional poetry, and dark/gothic imagery. Its form and diction are deliberately fractured, producing something closer to a fever dream, incantation, or liturgical curse than a conventional narrative poem. The poem appears to dramatize the wrestling of religion, inheritance, guilt, motherhood, abandonment, and spiritual … Read more
• RUST AND THISTLE
  “Rust and Thistle” was written in 2026 as part of the back story of the narration character in the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella. It is a Dark Gothic work wrought with ghostly tones and woeful elegy, developed most ironically out of roadside decay. It is a snapshot given in the “Third Shards of … Read more
• SEEMS SO MUCH
  “SEEMS SO MUCH” is a melancholic, spiritually searching free verse poem that blends confessional vulnerability with understated hope. The tone moves between self-loathing, loneliness, and quiet yearning for grace, while the voice feels deeply human and unguarded, speaking with plainspoken sincerity rather than theatrical flourish. One of the poem’s strongest qualities is its use of … Read more
• SILVER SPADE
  “SILVER SPADE” is a brief but highly atmospheric gothic invocation that reads like a ritual chant or fragment of forbidden scripture. The tone is reverent, ominous, and ceremonial, while the voice adopts the cadence of an incantation, using repetition and command to create hypnotic intensity. One of the poem’s greatest strengths is its economy: with … Read more
• SKY COME DOWN
  “SKY COME DOWN” is a minimalist apocalyptic lament that blends elements of modern free verse with the repetitive incantatory structure of a dirge or ritual chant. The tone is despairing, exhausted, and almost nihilistic, while the voice feels isolated and pleading, as though the speaker is calling into an indifferent void for annihilation, transcendence, or … Read more
• SMOKE AND DOOM
  “SMOKE AND DOOM” is a richly atmospheric noir-gothic narrative poem that blends occult romance, dive-bar Americana, and supernatural suspense into a cinematic tale of betrayal and reckoning. The tone is smoky, seductive, and increasingly ominous, while the voice carries the swaggering cadence of a late-night folk ballad told by someone half-drunk and fully haunted. One … Read more
• STRATUM
  “STRATUM” is best categorized as a gothic narrative poem blending dark fantasy, supernatural horror, and military gothic within a modernized ballad structure. Its strongest achievement is the sustained atmosphere of mythic dread, created through vivid, cinematic imagery and tightly controlled tonal consistency. The poem evokes the cadence of an old oral legend while presenting a … Read more
• TEARDROPS TWO
  “TEARDROPS TWO” is best categorized as a lyrical contemporary poem blending romantic elegy, dream pop surrealism, and refrain-based confessional verse with strong musical and song-like qualities. Its language is simple yet emotionally charged, creating an atmosphere that feels intimate, wistful, and electrically surreal at once. The alternating dedications establish a mirrored structure that reinforces themes … Read more
• THE MOONLIGHT CRIES
  “The Moonlight Cries” is a lyric narrative blending confessional poetry with ballad-like repetition and elegiac tone. Its central theme is the burden of bearing another’s trauma and painful secrets. The voice is a first-person listener and confidant, someone to whom the moonlight has “sworn” her secrets. The speaker oscillates between tender witness, helpless chronicler, and … Read more
• THERE
  “THERE” is a brief piece of confessional free verse that leans into psychological and existential poetry, using sparse language to convey emotional isolation and fractured identity. The tone is bleak, intimate, and quietly despairing, while the voice feels vulnerable yet emotionally restrained, as though the speaker can only approach their pain indirectly through metaphor. The … Read more
• THUNDERSTRUCKEN
  “THUNDERSTRUCKEN” is a raw, emotionally charged confessional poem that blends self-deprecating humor, romantic collapse, and storm imagery into a voice-driven modern lament. The tone shifts fluidly between frantic regret, bitterness, vulnerability, and aching loneliness, creating the sense of a speaker unraveling in real time after a failed emotional confession or fractured relationship. One of the … Read more
• TIME AND TIME AGAIN
  This poem is a lyric poem, with strong elements of confessional and gothic poetry. Its central theme is the cyclical nature of suffering and redemption—specifically, the journey from suicidal despair and imprisonment toward spiritual rescue through love. The voice is a first-person speaker, who oscillates between raw anguish and hard-won salvation. Structurally, the poem uses … Read more
• TOME
  “TOME” is a gothic horror narrative poem steeped in occult imagery and oral-storytelling tradition, evoking the atmosphere of dark folklore and campfire legend. The tone is ominous, foreboding, and theatrical, driven by a prophetic voice that sounds both warning and witness, as though recounting an ancient evil newly awakened. Structurally, the poem succeeds through its … Read more
• TWENTIETH & SIXTH
  The mystical and darkly spiritual work called “Twentieth & Sixth” is something of a ghost story, a snapshot in the back story of the antagonist character in the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella. The poem is an Urban Gothic type with a note of Melancholic Lyrical that conveys the haunting memory of a particular … Read more
• XANDRA
  “Xandra” is a quiet, lyrical, romantic, and deliberately repetitive work. It reads almost like a song lyric, and its repetition gives it the feeling of a memory being replayed. The poem depicts a woman lying in bed during a January morning, moving from sleep and dreaming into wakefulness and remembrance. The speaker then reveals that … Read more