It’s a Zanzibar Hyperbole!

she exclaimed 
through a mouthful of guacamole and chips.

I didn’t understand, nor did I ask.

She pointed toward the restroom,

where Marilyn smiled with impossible confidence,

eternally turning,

as if beauty could pause the world mid-sentence.

The mirror caught her twice—

realer in reflection than in art,

with soap and hygiene notices

framing glamour like a government-issued dream.

Heated by the

radiance of her face

brimming with mischief and enchantment, 
I could not love her more.

Rockland, Maine

Bardo dreams
sealed in plastic cocoons,
hovering above the frozen earth,
half-formed, neither here nor gone.

Their hulls stretch against shrink-wrap skin,

ghostly outlines of a season past,

suspended between water and sky,

adrift in winter’s forgotten light.

A scaffold of waiting,

a silence thick as frozen tides,

where memory curls like vapor,

lost between longing and return.

No wake, no passage,

only the wind’s slow hands

pressing whispers into plastic,

holding time in absent motion.

Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts

We walked through that tunnel again last night. 
Water up to our ankles, the smell of something old. 
Graffiti on the walls—names, dates, symbols we couldn't read. 
You said it felt like a dream you wouldn’t tell me.

The rope still hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly. 
I wondered who put it there, and why. 
Our reflections in the water looked back at us, distorted, 
like strangers we have become.

Beyond the tunnel, the street lights flickered. 
We stood there, listening to the distant hum. 
I wanted to say something, but the words— 
they just weren't there.

The distance between us stretched like the tunnel itself, 
longer than before, heavier than silence. 
We turned around and walked back, leaving the tunnel—
and what we once had—to its own darkness.

Peaks Island, Maine

Someone put him there—
high above the street, above the world,
arms on the rail, blank-faced,
like a priest who forgot his sermon.

The wind moves through the slats,
the paint peels, the wood sags,
but he stays, unbothered, unblinking,
a doctrine of waiting, of nothing at all.

Below, the world trudges on,
a dog barks, a car door slams,
the sea grinds away at the shore—
all of it passing, passing.

This is how belief lingers—
not in light, not in grace,
but in what refuses to leave,
in what stands, long after it should.

New Smyrna Beach, Florida

the posters scream LET’Z PARTY
but the sidewalk says fuck that.
she leans against the wall,
black crop top stamped FAKE,
chains swinging from her skirt,
boots laced high like battle armor.
studded choker tight around her throat,
a promise of restraint she dares to defy.

the photographer crouches,
camera shaking, hands too tight—
trying to catch her in the totality of his desires—
sharp, brilliant, untouchable.
the lens bends the moment,
shadows stretch over concrete,
but Fake doesn’t see him
not past the lens, not past the wanting.

what is fake if the moment is real?
what is real if the moment is lost?
she tilts her head, lips parted, an almost-smirk,
that flirts with invitation, but lands in indifference.
her eyes flickering past the lens, slipping through the frame,
leaving the photographer stranded in her self-regard.

he has already said too much
in the way he bows, head low, as if in prayer,
in the way she swallows his admiration.

and when Fake walks away—
because of course she will—
hips swinging, metal clinking,
her shadow stretching long in the heat,
she won’t turn back,
won’t see the camera lower,
won’t notice the photographer staring
at the empty space she leaves behind,
like a fool who thought
she ever could have been his.

Miami, Florida

Light spills from the mirrored dome,
cascading through a river of glass—
fish frozen mid-dance, corals aflame,
a swirling, weightless world
suspended between water and dream.

The incantation of the sea rises here,
woven in tendrils of sapphire and jade,
where a tangerine-striped fish, mouth agape,
hovers beside a cobalt bubble,
as if whispering the ocean’s oldest spell.

Beneath the coral’s outstretched fire,
the octopus curls in quiet knowing,
shifting between what is seen and unseen,
while the sea turtle drifts without hurry,
its shell a map of forgotten tides.

Above them, the manta ray glides,
dark wings spread like a whispered prayer,
turning as though it has forgotten
the difference between falling
and being held by the unseen.

And I stand beneath it all,
bathed in the shimmer of turquoise and gold,
listening for the hush of water,
the slow, steady thrum of the deep,
the spell of the sea unspooling into light.

Seascape (a one of the largest cruise ships in the Italian MSC fleet)

The truck rests,
a carcass of intention,
its frame dissolving into the ground
as snow recedes in slow apology.

Once, it was motion —
a vessel of thunder,
the promise of distance
held in the tension of gears.

Now, it inhabits stillness,
a geometry of decay,
the metal’s quiet erosion
a dialogue with time.

In its silent decay, there is a pride—
etched in every worn edge and dent.
A testament to labor well done,
with no regret shadowing a life of honest work.

Yet, in its ruin,
a persistence:
the shape of what was,
refusing to become less.

Peaks Island, Maine

Peaks Island, Maine

Oh No, Mr. Bill!

They dangle there,
Mr. Bill and his pink companion,
waiting to be chosen,
which is to say, waiting to be destroyed.

Cultural relic, TV clown, doomed icon,
built for suffering, sold for laughs,
still grinning like he doesn’t know
what always comes next.

Beside him, the pink beast,
a parody of menace,
its grin as empty
as the hands that will discard it.

Soon enough,
some grinning dog will take them,
shake them, shred them,
find the hidden squeaker
and silence it for good.

And that will be that.

New Smyrna Beach, Florida