On Travelling, 2025 Is what I’m doing different? I mean sure my jaw is clenched my knuckles have some bone but is what I’m doing different? Than the slack-jawed suckers signing up for tours or the silicone-stuffed ladies and their Turkish Transplant lords is it better that I’m poor? That I’m living in a school bag that all my screens are cracked Do the strippers think I’m cool because I won’t pay for a dance? Do the taxi guys respect me cause I don’t spare a second glance? Resisting monolithic, pushing back against the pack I don’t think I’m all that different when they cast a passing look we’re all just fucking leeches taking pictures for Facebook. I don’t speak the fucking language I don’t speak the fucking language I don’t speak a fucking lick I’m surrounded by these strangers and they don’t think I’m fucking slick. Is what I’m doing different? Why do I even care? Am I better than these losers, or worse, because I care?
Dead Bees Smell Bad, July 2025 I promise you this (Don’t make promises you can’t keep) The sun will rise, again I will be there, again. the Flowers will open the Bees will dance the Wolves will howl I will be there, again (Don’t make promises you can’t keep) The Bees will die. Their accumulated biomass decomposing in the fountain will reek like a Rat left in a sticky trap way too long and I will be there again (Don’t make promises you can’t keep!) The Sun will set the Clouds will cry the Moon will cast her face down and hide her beauty and mourn and turn in shame from the sorrows she sees she will gaze into the Sun and turn her back on me and her skin will be cleansed with fire and I will be there, again (DON’T make promises you can’t keep!) And slowly, she will forgive and turn back her face a sly smile will grow into an open mouthed grin and eyes will widen and the Drummer will find the rhythm and the Waves will reach their fingers climbing to and tumbling from the Sky who taught them and the eggs will hatch and the Larvae will writhe and the Flowers will open their shutters and the Bees will dance and the sun will rise, again and I will be there, again and I will keep my promise and I will be there, again.
Crazy times poem, written in the desert, February 2025 The old man walked out of the desert with a knife on his hip and jewels in his palms and warned of destruction. His voice echoed he warned a lesson would be repeated until it is learned. And he planted the seed and I fear Rube Goldberg’s bitter cosmic machine has already set its thousand teeth to grind and the future is already in motion. Are you my lesson, my love? Is there a thief inside the castle? Even now, as the horizon thickens and the tempest begins to swirl my thumb feels too heavy to answer the call my ears only long for silence, you see and no matter the music it is still noise. The dogs howl and scream distrustful of the gnarled forms of the cacti splayed against the starry backdrop. The morning slaps me and shines a flashlight in my face. The beetles have got to work early again. Their buzzing, saw inside my head cutting the strands of my top rope. Sleep has decided it only wants to wrestle, lately. I thought I had earned it? To Never be Sad Again now that I Have the New Thing™ but I have had to start wearing my biteplate again and I have had to start counting cigarettes again and the music won’t come, either. Why, now, have you chosen to leave me? Why, now, can my fingers not find their favourite nooks and crannies in the sonosphere? (or a better question, perhaps) Why are they no longer welcome? Why have you forsaken me? Have I fallen from favour? Have I fallen from grace? I can glue my hair back on (I kept it) but it won’t look the same.
Bones in the sand, January 2025 Evidence of you lies everywhere your scent on my sweater a strand of your hair still left on your pillow you stranded it there. I wish I could say you strung me along say you stranded me here put hate in this psalm, cause not so long ago, I hadn’t cried in so long and now I cry often I’m here and you’re gone. But I told you to leave I said you should go that a plant must show leaves to the sun, so she grows that in learning to live, you must run, you must fall but now I just wish I’d said nothing at all. Now I walk past the ladders and lives that we built the fire we laid the soil we tilled like bones in the sand the hours we killed I only feel empty because I was filled. My head only learned to feel heavy of late since I don’t have your lap to help carry its weight. And now I find cold in the cold of the dark though you’re not on my skin you’re still in my heart.
Derivative of Ross Gay, or Mary Oliver, November 2024 Why should I hide? For the blue of the sky is not discreet nor is the song of the birds nor the thunder of the water-fall. The songs of life ring true all around and the sun lets every one show his colour proudly. Why should I walk softly while the hooves of the bison thunder across the plains? Why should I not yell and laugh and sing while the bumble-bee’s wings trumpet forth their triumph against our clumsy understanding of aerodynamics? I am born with a song in my chest fire in my veins and a light in my eyes that nothing has yet extinguished. So I will follow suit and bellow forth my cries of victory stating my place in the order and way of all things.
written in the parking lot of the oregon dunes, october 2024 My mother’s warning rings in my memory reminding me not to eat strange berries “See? It’s fine!” You say, and casually pop a plump one into your mouth. I trust you. I trust you. I trust. I love you. I want you to love me. I pop one into my mouth, trying to also appear casual. My teeth puncture the berry’s tender skin. The blue berry is a blueberry after all. You smile big, your mouth stained purple, and bring another to your lips with mock pomp and ceremony. I love you. I love you. I love you. I want to live here forever. You select another berry from among the vivid leaves and toss it to me. It hovers impossibly for a second. My jaws snap shut around it. It explodes in my mouth. I laugh, and you laugh louder, telling me how my tongue is purple. I love you. I love you. I love you. You want to try. Your mouth open wide, I lob a big berry to you. It hits your tooth. You want to try again, and again. “It’s harder than it looks!” You protest. It isn’t. I love you. I love you. I love you. I would throw you a million berries, if you let me. I would pick the mountain clean. You catch one. Your eyes are on fire. I promise you delete the videos of you missing them, snapping your jaw at nothing. I’m lying. You know it. I have never deleted a picture of you. I would fill hard-drives, I would bog down the cloud until it rains identical pictures of you with a dumb hair-do. I love you. I love you. I love you.
written while sitting on the ground beside an orange vendor, in india, march 2024 I learned to love a woman who loved oranges, so sweet and whenever she would eat one she’d give a half to me my lover was a poet, though she could have got by as a muse and in her favourite poems an orange she would use for she once received a blessing from an old-time friend, you see may you always share your orange even if it’s not with me so she learned to love an orange and she learned to love me too and if your friend has an orange I pray they share a half with you
written at my kitchen table in Sri Lanka, march 2024 a soft name in my mouth with the taste of a prayer commands reverence I am warned it must be whispered for to cry it would evoke the miracles of Gideon to siege walls within my own territory. Catastrophic, with the cadence of a hurricane tearing roof-tiles from an ancient lid flooding the corners of my eyes, winds who seem to gust only in the ventricles of my own wide-open heart a holy violence such that the delicate moths and butterflies have migrated to my stomach a hex, a fever which seems to only burn in my cheeks and the tips of my ears nothing to be done by a modern medicine man. Sequestered here with the ocean, old friend gently caressing my soul a feeling of home of sweet dreams of sixteen of setting off on a grand adventure of running to and running from eyes mind heart and soul wide as the first time I was born
written at christmas time, in my family's home, 2023 And now I can taste it, in her mouth that poison she shrank to love rot seeps from her pores once sweet like honeydew, honey you sweet no more Fuck it’s getting on my skin. I’m frightened as she pulls me in wordless siren’s song, been far too long I pay my penance again. My God, my reward, my eternal reward sweet death for a short second our souls intertwined cell walls mish-mashed, crock-pot, warm bath, too-hot, red skin, wrinkled fingers, conditioned curls your scent still lingers through the smoke-screen a memory, see I once loved a girl
written in my notes app, date deleted, summer of 2023 my love spreads thin threadbare across all four corners of the bed you hold me in wrapped around all my favourite hearts we all lift it high into the air I can see the warm sunlight filtering through the well-worn patches we tuck it under our bums and make a big tent we tell the same jokes until the air sneaks out far too fast I’ll straighten the corners and carefully lay out the smiles of my friends the tears of my mother orange slices, smooth stones, polaroids, grandparent’s homes tie it around a thick stick and place it, rough over my shoulder it scratches a little bit but I’ll never let go