I like to sit and watch myself go by, I chose the safety of the passing crowd and though sometimes I try to catch my eye, a nod, a smile, but nothing said out loud, no word of warning, hint of coming joy that otherwise might slip beneath the crush, something beneath the notice ofContinue reading “The Old Time-Traveller’s Song”
Category Archives: Poetry
When My Medical Records Went Public on Halloween
First the vampires came with their pups waving their ticket punchers and their straws and flittering around the room bat guano crazy from the sugar rush diabetes put in my blood. Then the zombie kids with their melon ballers and ice cream scoops for carving out just the brain truffles where all the concussions poundedContinue reading “When My Medical Records Went Public on Halloween”
How I Became a Teacher of Exobiology
We called her 3-C like her dad, who said that she was “three cats wise”; everybody thought she had nine lives while all the rest of us had less than one. She liked rough men and I was never much for tough & tumble even back at school, so what I saw in her sheContinue reading “How I Became a Teacher of Exobiology”
17 Questions the Judges at Nuremberg Forgot to Ask
1. Did a hair floating in the sink bring them up short, shaving? 2. Did horror well up from the clogged drain? 3. Did they fish out nests of the family’s hair, matted and drenched, without a hint of recognition? 4. Did they ever wake sobbing? 5. Did they strop razors to surgical sharpness withoutContinue reading “17 Questions the Judges at Nuremberg Forgot to Ask”
The Atom’s Lattice Could Such Beauty Yield
Like a miniature city made of glass, this crystal quartz extends transparent spires, rust colored at their base, shafts tinged with brass as if inside the matrix stone some fire raged out of sight and sent its telltale glow up the clear prisms of the shafts. This stone grew, layer by layer, flake by flake;Continue reading “The Atom’s Lattice Could Such Beauty Yield”
The Secret Thief
They said he was a wily man, with much of the snake in all he did, wherever he went for miles around whatever the people had, they hid. They hid their daughters and their wives, their gold and all their precious rings; they tried to hide their very lives, for he was good at findingContinue reading “The Secret Thief”
Why I Ride a Dirt Bike Still at Seventy
I used to be a genius by the count of Terman and Binet and Wechsler too, and everyone I met without a doubt agreed those standard measurements were true. My thoughts were fractal curves and Mandelbrots so intricate in shape and brilliant hue, vast crystal webs of ever branching thought, before I hit my head aContinue reading “Why I Ride a Dirt Bike Still at Seventy”
Seventy
It’s Tuesday and I’m doing Tuesday things; tomorrow, I’ll do Wednesday things in turn. My days are free from friction and from swings in my momentum, free of all concern. A wheel still spinning from a former push, uncoupled from all other wheels and cogs I suffer neither deadline nor the rush of faster spinningContinue reading “Seventy”
Declining Powers
I used to write these things like Post-it notes, offhanded, effortless, with perfect rhyme and subtle references to obscure quotes that link to lives lived out in other times when we wore other bodies, other names. when nothing of us was as now we seem and yet we loved each other just the same whileContinue reading “Declining Powers”
Post-concussion Syndrome a Year Later
It’s like I picked up the wrong head at the hat check window and suddenly I’m the medium who can’t see ghosts any more. I used to think in fractals, now it’s whole numbers, like everybody else. You’d think as compensation, my common sense would have increased but I’m computer dumb. Give me a setContinue reading “Post-concussion Syndrome a Year Later”
William John Watkins 