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Poetry, Ideas and Our Human Experience

Poems about death, dark love, and the vortex of the heart and mind

Here at Xenowave you'll find some of my poetry of dark love and death, as well as poems of struggle and hope, and my musings about literature, human emotion and reason, and the puzzles of life that have no final answers.

WARNING! On this site you will find NO post-modernist poetic babble, no pretension of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, no tasseography, no idolatry of scrambled thought.

My poetry deals with themes of love, death, obsession, alienation, hope, desire, and the struggles of life that are common to us all. You can use the index of poems to find the specific thematic category that interests you, or enter keywords in the search feature.

Poetry should always sail above personal aches and grumblings, with the poet's voice merely a conveyance. Anything less would be mere self-indulgence. While at some level all poems are personal in that they are born out of one's own private experience, poetry's task is to shine an intense light on the relationship binding us to the rest of the world. The poet is driven to turn the skin of humanity inside out, to expose us to ourselves and all our passions and fears, all our aspirations and failings. The poet is the surgeon of our conscience. The emotional experience that inspires a poet is encapsulated in a hologram of words, which each reader then uniquely brings alive.

Wherever my thoughts take me, whether to the windowless worlds behind the farthest stars or under the deepest oceans, they always bring me back to this:

—Below the surface of every human heart, no matter how honest, good or wise, lurks an undertow of contradiction, paradox, and lies.

Notwithstanding the pride we take in ourselves as rational beings, contradiction is an inextricable part of our human nature. Many of my poems are preoccupied with this aspect of our being. While for many, poems about death and dark love may hold a particularly strong attraction, consider this: every human action in which one direction or preference is chosen over another involves a bit of love and death, shaping who we are.

Living in the world is, and always will be, a great unfolding experiment in which the outcome is uncertain, and in which we try to find our place. Poetry is a way toward understanding ourselves and how we fit into the grand scheme of things. It is the purest path to our deepest emotions and the ideas shaped by them. Though I have no final answers to the large questions about our existence -- the mysteries of life and death -- my hope is that my flights of mind, in which reason and emotion often collide, will set in motion a resonant note.

On this site I also have an introductory lesson on how to create a pixel portrait painting. Take a look at my Kafka poster.

I welcome your thoughts, and invite you to visit the Xenowave Mind Exchange Forum to share your ideas with others about poetry, art, science, human emotion, and anything else related to our being in the world.


Or, if you have a question or thought, send me an e-mail here.

While my poems usually begin with an image or a dream fragment, or a vague emerging idea, they gradually evolve into a more coherent vision with successive drafts. Once written, the poem must ferment for several days before it takes its final form. Poetry is a wonderful way to get connected with one's inner creative being and experience the push and pull of our reasoning mind and our emotions. I feature a new poem on this site every three to four weeks. Articles on various topics related to poetry also appear regularly, so stop by often!