balled up

If I lie on my side 
and fold into myself
again, and again, and again
kneading my need 
into the solace between 
my knees and chin 
perhaps, I can bring out
what knaws at me within 
and face the day anew

stasis

Living is what I do When I’m not thinking of you I’m often in stasis these days The sun warms my shoulders Into feeling less old than My bark-like skin declares I spend my days exposed Like light can appease thirst And bring life to dried dirt But it won’t And I’m left fiddling With […]

stasis

untold

Have you or have I
rewritten the story?
I recall like yesterday
How I recoiled
How he called you out
How you insisted, then persisted and convinced, yourself
How I went along,
against all my instincts
because I wanted to destroy something that night
Because the one that should have stepped in, hadn’t
Because I should have asked him to
Because he shouldn’t have had to Because I shouldn’t have had to ask
Mostly, because all that came since was born of your love and my spite
Oh, what a story it would make

not enough

I’ve run circles around shadows
Raised two people from a grain
Crossed oceans and added,
collected and borrowed,
Begged and bent to be let in
yet fled at every chance
I’ve climbed mountains in my mind
and tumbled down numbed
by blatant lies meant to exalt
and suppress all uprising

Nothing has touched me
like colours and smiles
hiding in the corner
of a mouth or an eye
or the blush of a cheek
or the belly of a cloud

I woke with a poem
swirling in my head
The words to be said aloud
were plain and measured
without rhyme
but with cause
and reason enough

The clause underscored
the glaring metaphor
But by lips’ touch to cup
thoughts leaked to the ground
And I ached for the stars
in the vacuum above

small measures

It has been a while, measured
in breaths, in, out, like tick
and talk about the weather
Time marked and dismissed
with the taking of pills
and meals and chilled tea
I haven’t thought of you
in days, maybe weeks
Thyme cures all, they say
Rambles and brambles
would etch patterns
more entrancing than
the creases of these sheets
imprinted on my skin
Artists, like prisoners,
make much of so little,
dying to be remembered

recovery

Stay sharp, stay strong
stand
keep walking, keep walking

tall face out

keep walking, keep looking, straight ahead
keep typing, keep flinching,
inching towards a better place
towards comfort talking

In here, all is silence
No one talks, they look
out windows, they look
past floors, they look
to their next step
All is invested
in that next step

save

And I want to save
that poem
and that other one
Fold it into my
pastry cortex here, now,
to find it whenever
I gnaw mindless this way
to remember
that time,
that is
now, when
I was laid out splayed
head ringing with spring breeze
ease leaking thoughts
of fucking awe at all that is
and words’ power to
sow/seed/warp/tear/lift/free
I want to hit SAVE, UPLOAD and
NOTIFY, should I slipslink back
into my place
in the stifling ought display
to await my shelving
SAVE it all to record and remember I was fucking here, I saw
it all, I heard the birds singing
literally for fuck’s sake
for which we do all, after all
Until we are free of fucks,
free to fuck without
sake or stake
n.d. it’s the music and the light
and the vacuum induced murmurs
buzzing secrets to raise me
in a thousand flutters of a heart
from prostrate to panicked
disbelief in reprieve or
something for nothing
Good luck is riding loss
to its end with full lungs

without a word

Some know,
though they stay quiet
They meet your eyes
steadily, knowing you know,
they would change it
if they could
let the comfort slip off
and stand flayed and flawed
as they see you,
past the layers of nuance
you worked a lifetime
to layer into a thick bark
now peeling away
under their gaze
leaving you breadth
to forgive and
breathe again

waking

5:35 a.m. and mortality
rattles my dreams
to shake me from slumber
and dump me in the clamour
of consciousness considering
probabilities of you waking
to another day

Across the way we ponder
ifs and mays to outfit
ourselves against judgement
Would that you would see me,
and I you, we could spare
the world our gifts
wrought to hit the right spot,
weld the right cage,
forge our thoughts, and fix
this rift in perpective

considerations

I tire of strategies and ways
to cope with oncoming days
relentlessly repenting my weakfisted displays
of resistence
Should I walk you through
the maze of forays I’ve made
to breach your frame of reference and make you see me
Or should I don those gifted feathers and the walk
that make me talk in ways
that appease and rename me

South, North, West, East,
Worst, Best, Most, Least

these things matter
to you it seems

And just like that
I’m calculating freedom
Considering extractions
and subtractions
against the cost of inaction
And alone glows like a full moon
This ill-fitting life
spreads a feast before me
While I, measuring my worth inversely to your silence,
starve for the stars above