Under skies where umbrage is stitched with thoughts, I ponder, on the days, like copper, reticence is bent when voices, hushed, rise and take their place,
with colors sharp as blades, of stories then that crashed against the wall of silence.
Muted. Muted. Muted for so long.
This voice, a titan, bones crumpled in fetal position and slid into a box has been gagged for so long. The body now unfurls, a sapling having been denied of its spring for too long.
And I’m waiting for the day when I can keep my head up, when I can speak up and say my peace, say my piece.
And I’m waiting for the day, no longer I, a sunflower with shoulders hunched, head bowed, lips crimped, wilting under the star I’ve always loved, basking in the warmth and letting the shadow fall behind me, am afraid of parading the reflection the mirror holds for me. When rights are not hoisted as hopeful words scrawled on cardboard for no eyes to see.
No longer hidden, walk with neither shackles or shame, unapologetic without otherness and doubt, to stand tall, shedding the cloak of unseen, burst into darkness like new born light for everyone to see.
Under the crushing weight of novelty, head stuffed inside a crown for the surd, Humanity watered down until it turns into a pulp of flesh, no more. No more, I say.
Pay me no nods, nor embrace, nor tokens, but vows that we would dine at a table and see the beauty of existence in your eyes, take comfort in your smile, and speak my mind as you freely could, when you get out of line. If you don’t know, feel free to unbuckle my shoes, fill them, take root in them, walk miles in them, get spat in them, get persecuted without a reason in them, take a number, stand in line, keep your mouth shut in them, go home in them, if there are holes, feel the burn of friction, weep, weep, weep and be laughed at, be told what you feel is not real in them. Maybe yearn for a word or two and let somebody, anybody know you are crumbling into them, like a cinderblock too weak to cradle fire any further in them?
Maybe only then, that in them, you’ll take my callused hand to sand yours, and we'll find the stars that guide us home to peace, and in that space, our voices intertwine, the beating of hearts are in synch, with heads held high.
Let me, in confidence, be worthy of the space I claim and of equal measure know what it’s like to live free and not keep waiting for the day.
Jan 23, 2025
Jan 23, 2025 at 11:52 PM UTC
A song can hold me together
when I’ve been torn apart,
when I’m at the verge
where jagged edges jut out
popping bloated bright
many a things of life.
Lost notes coming together
and stitching my seams
with threads of sound.
Music doesn’t ask for permission
—it breaks in, a trespasser
who knows all the rooms of my head,
who rewires the walls with chords
until they buzz and climb on air’s back.
On the top of their ethereal lungs,
they belt out polished groove
where reflection of my days are caught.
It’s there when I need it
—when silence has teeth,
When the world gnashes,
pressing its weight on my chest.
in the blackness of spirit,
when the lesser light pale
into insignificance,
when all of me is ground to atoms.
Like spring faeries, they uncap the lid, lift it, unleash the lilt cloistered in secret years, they ride gilt-edged fireflies, flitting and fluttering in the mist of colors. And like spring, life comes back to the earth.
I have heard harmonies
build bridges across days
that feel like sinking ships.
I’ve watched melodies
cut through the static
of my thoughts,
Clean and sharp as a blade
sliding through skin.
The bass is a heartbeat,
steady and human,
the strings—veins
unraveling their stories.
Syncopated at times,
as if an arrhythmia.
A song can hold me together,
there was one leaping out of nowhere,
lost in the night,
found its way in my ears,
then in my heart,
in my half-awaken state,
while I clung into sleep under an eye of dreamless rest,
it was light on its feet,
free of gravity.
When I feel lost,
I press play,
and I teleport here,
a night crawler
a room filled with
nothing but sound
and no judgment,
my acoustic soul gets to drink,
where my fears untangle themselves
like knots in a rope.
Music doesn’t lie.
It doesn’t care,
It’s not a ***** coyote
the petulant thief
mistaking mediocrity for simplicity,
Music forgives,
about what I’ve done
or who I’ve been.
It cradles me as I am:
raw and flammable,
A man with a match
clenched between his teeth.
In the slant of the highway,
I roll with tunes sanding
until the roads are even
and the bends straight
for this drifter with a match
clenched between his teeth,
the song pulls it from my mouth,
lights it,
and says,
burn, if you must—but listen.
It tells me I am brave
when I don’t believe it.
It tells me I am whole,
even when the pieces don’t fit.
But I’ve always been a puzzle,
a riddle to myself,
a mystery in a mystery
and a Jack-in-the-box.
When asked why I trust music
like a heathen
collapsing down drear gloom,
funereal mood,
sulked out.
I’ll pause,
let a silence fall
where words should be,
And instead let a rhythm
beat through the air.
A small offering.
Because some things
are answered best
by the sound
of their own making.
There is a gaping chasm in all of us.
One way or another,
we loaded our fractured hearts
with longing,
hoping for an escape,
we shot an embittered gaze
at words that danced on the pages,
swirled in the air on winged notes.
In the dark, I didn’t find myself alone,
I swept the pieces,
ugly, but a whole,
the way a song can hold me together.
Dec 17, 2024
Dec 17, 2024 at 1:23 AM UTC
some of the best recollections i curated is that of chaos.
i know you hate it, so i will make you remember.
how you lolled your tongue at the sight of garlic in your porridge when we’ve got nothing else to eat on a rainy day.
bowls of getting by squeezed out of tired pores, crated palms with puddles of a won day, same palms like coveted napkins on the lap of the rich wiping the long breath of hopelessness from your cheeks.
reed-thin body,
bones as if wafers,
yet we sprung forward.
not a care as we watched
the jowly cheeks of wanting
puff up.
how hand-me-down yesterdays were worn—a tradition tied around a last name like All Souls’ Day candles. they peer from behind the stars, thoughts of them sparkle, they are reminded of fights, they are reminded why they left in the first place, just in case boredom pays them a visit.
i’ve come to know, the most practical way to get a golden ticket to the land of happiness is to have it handy in my heart.
but you locked it up in a gilded cage and you chased a star not knowing it’s a sunset and it just kept dipping into peaks jutting out of nowhere, you had worn out your heels and you were left with nothing but midnight instead of holding on to your blanket and watch a new day spill out of the sky.
you were insane that way.
remember the shame how magic belts turned us red and purple and upright, and how we were the grinch who stole baby Jesus away from his nativity set and got caught and were taught grownups pick on kids who didn’t know better?
remember how mathematics predetermined our future as undisputed champs of failure courtesy of our clairvoyant aunts?
it mattered little—
inconsequential, so to speak.
we heaved our arms,
hoisted our dreams
onto our scrawny frames.
our bulging chests
were enough
for us to beat,
like bongos,
we fanned the flames
until they voices
throughout the milky way.
our mother
in her innocence believed
we were capable
of many a great things
between the better parts
of her mood swings.
we were mirrors more than we were humans portioned in parts bitter and beauty, we rummaged through every chance hoping we could unearth change, but we never did until it was too late.
yet, i always had your hand in mine. we dropped out of the line and strayed away from paths stamped with footprints of approval and wandered on roads no one can see but our hearts knew.
remember the day you let go so you could hold bottles thinking they were looking glasses, thinking they fermented clarity aged in oak barrels, and day after day you took a drop until you had an ocean dissolving you?
remember how i found real estate in the promises of a girl, how i grew a house there, but then, time mistook her for dorothy and blew her away like a tumble **** into the arms of another boy?
how i bawled out and how you had a ball at my expense, laughing at my silence at open mic night?
remember when we heard a drop of a needle the size of the moon hurtling down the earth when father sat up on his bed for the last time with his eyes open as if he saw an unseen door somewhere. somehow, we heard him skittering away while he left us a fertilizer for everyone to cry about?
remember how we forgot. we dreamt under the same roof before our feet carried us away.
into the mist went we,
threads began to fray,
we forgot.
i will make you remember,
before all that i am unravels.
Dec 2, 2024
Dec 2, 2024 at 6:48 PM UTC
Years’ worth in our days swirl in our thoughts of lovely hands clasped in ours with no resolve of ever letting go.
Though the fates and sanguine melancholy conspire to break the bonds nothing can keep this sight from being enthralled
shall he, happiness dancing waltz with the sea, ever forget?
The tempest-swept shore of unyielding grace remains true to the beacon, be it in the peaks or prairies; a promise,
no matter how trampled still blossoms without the acquiescence of seasons, be they winter or spring,
until the day a tombstone is offered and a coat rack for weariness to hang,
no smiles will eternally be wasted on a frown as is with fear will be on Pennywise the clown.
We are here, and we are now until we become yesterday, our hearts unbowed
And yet, long after light has left times eyes, and last fogging breath has been drawn,
the echoes resound, love, unyielding, seared into the skin of eternity.
Strands of flesh, a promise, binding lives that once strobed like starlight, the universe chants with shared joys, sorrows, and dreams.
For every stumble, every fracture, every tear that pelted our time, we rise, reforged in the fires of devotion’s heat.
Love is no fleeting gale but the tide that shapes continents, despite the world’s cruel dissonance, harmony prevails.
And when the final curtain falls on this fleeting stage, let it be known we did not merely survive but thrived, kindled.
Nov 24, 2024
Nov 24, 2024 at 3:12 PM UTC
Scream! Scream! Scream! The cardinal rule of silence. Scream! The next cardinal rule of silence.
On words aching for a voice, a generous gaze be fixed. Lend a ray of light and shine on shadowed corners where thoughts have cowered. Forsake me not in unsacred matrimony of stagnation and decay, lest, I be not I. For voice not be voice which breaks when it disguise unmasks. Such is life.
Into the fabled lands of golden chance, my car rode my soul, glittered rot and creaking joints, not I, but my ferry for this diaspora unbidden, for one, but one quest—snatch tomorrow from its tree and fill the pockets of whose vines to the roots with whom I share.
For it gives them so much pleasure, to measure worth with what gift is on a hand, failing to see its callused back. Faces neither painted with hardened sweat and spit, nor eyes crafted with sight. Their comfort a measuring stick of whatever weaves the blood. It thickens with the sun and diluted in the cold, worse still, vapid in trying times.
Pictures are nothing like my reality, for no hope feel I, no shores see I in this sea indifferent to drifters, no reasons have I to follow behind the whims of my feet. In solitude, in its warmth, I bathe, than nestle in the wintry arms of feigned togetherness. Such a dear friend loneliness is, when it holds out its hand and speak with profane eloquence.
Until you set your fear free, then walk away you cannot. Until you walk away, then find who you are you cannot. Until you find who you are, then grasp freedom you cannot.
So note to self—be not afraid. So with all mustered fire; let go. Let go. Let go of fear. Be done with people who see you as Wells Fargo. Let go. Let go. Let go of thankless gratitude.
My compassion will not bend their will anymore than they can bend their own, for theirs is absolute.
Today, I’m an outcast cast away to distant shores by my need and my compassion for my blood so now I must reflect on how much of myself remains. I’ve grown arcane. How much of myself I have given to the twilight and what of me remains.
Yet, I’m torn between love that I’m nothing without and love no more and live.
Nov 9, 2024
Nov 9, 2024 at 11:43 PM UTC
The dirt still knows you and me as it squirms under our toes, and the old bells up the steeple of the forgotten chapels resting behind the hills sing tarnished songs of friends we loved and lost.
Ancient rivers, our hide away, under our confidante, the shifting sky, our secrets lingering there still with faithful boulders that cushioned us.
We were arms that cradled each other while we set to walk on a wire stretching from our innocence to our dreams against the gusting wind and blowing doubt.
At times we made it and saw storms retreat and run for cover, and other times we smile bruised and wounded grateful for the lessons we have learned.
Down by the river, where the world is hushed, and shadows draw sharp breaths and bite down hard on us with their gaze, you'll find me nailed to time awaiting your return before the dusk descends, I pray.
Make haste, find your way back to the place we’ve seen eternity, and where tomorrow talks to us. Our refuge where promises hang their eyes on us and spread their arms wide. There, we are orphans with no yesterdays. There where our hearts cut through tears. With our hands out we could
dream without end.
If you don’t find us there, friends lost in me, if yours knees still could, feel the wind, it’s still dappled with memories.
Nov 8, 2024
Nov 8, 2024 at 12:14 AM UTC
When I had my sight on you,
it was as good a currency
I spent on my first dance.
There was an element of reluctance,
my feet glued to the floor,
my body, a deflated balloon
chasing after its soul.
You were more than a plant
draped in petals and perfumed with seasons of romance,
you were a garden of light,
enticing weary butterflies
of this world.
So when I pawned enough courage
to pluck your name out of those ripe lips,
I locked it away
so I could relish rolling my tongue
and tapping my teeth
and watching my spirit twirl to its syllables
saying it as if I were singing.
Driven by madness,
Bewitched with confusion,
Feverish with longing
Come after the quaint question,
“Am I beautiful?”
Or
“Does this dress suit me?”
Or
“How do I look?”
—am I ever worthy to answer such divine a question?
Not that there is a scarcity of vocabulary encased in dictionaries and thesaurus,
but perhaps the definition undermines the word.
For if I could,
if permitted to be brazen
and to be bold
to cross the border
defining our reality,
your beauty
has invented every beautiful thing
known to me.
Every poem,
on paper penned,
on spoken stage, uttered
on music, winged;
Every song on battlefield charged,
until the mind is intoxicated,
into ears poured
—beautiful is not worthy an adjective to sit or stand before your name.
You are to me,
what blues is to King and Clapton,
what a ring is to Sméagol,
what the truth is to Neo,
what sea is to a fish,
perhaps a hiding place
perhaps it is a galaxy of their own,
though in the end,
bare nakedly, you are the meaning.
“Are you beautiful?”
Yes, beyond what my eyes could touch.
Nov 6, 2024
Nov 6, 2024 at 9:41 PM UTC
The birth of the universe started here.
Here at the palm of your hands, when my atoms sat across yours.
Though there is a speculation that the sensation we feel is purely imagined, it adds weight to our existence.
Though, that might be due to gravity too.
But, yes the whole thing unfolded here. Where the swan began their dance, and the sun tangoed with the darkness, and the senseless chaos erupting inside a car like a chin to unexpected southpaw.
This is where sulking cherubs gaze at midnight ceiling hoping that a pair of groggy eyes will rise in their horizon and swoop them up. They chuckled found their universe in your palms. They were manufactured like chocolate is manufactured—devilishly sweet.
Here too, were first steps, first nights when glass hearts were shattered, and mended back in place with a pat a shoulder and rub in the back.
But this is where the big bang happened, where the big dipper was a four leaf clover. We got by.
The sun has always sat in our hands. Rising and setting there, until our lands have shriveled.
Here, where arthritis pills were by-products of dreams colliding with reality.
Here where eighteen meant taking a shot and starting their own solar system.
When the clock is being peevish, it does so with a thump. Hunger is heard from the bang on the glass, Hungry for moments.
Glad our universe started the way it did. Past the line, and beyond it, we don’t know, perhaps the point of no return, but here where it all began love will always endure.
Nov 3, 2024
Nov 3, 2024 at 12:26 AM UTC
Here I am,
a tangle of roots
buried deep
and reaching down
deeper,
looking for a sign of life.
But no,
I sprawl and
twist around,
widdershins,
round and round
the battering thump
breaking the walls
under my flesh.
My waking hours
remember,
thick with the weight
of words left unsaid,
an iron on my tongue.
Unmoved.
Unperturbed.
Stagnant and decaying,
until I’m a stranger
to my own voice.
A crow lost in a cornfield
lulled by a scarecrow’s
siren song.
Like a crow,
plumes as dark
as a saint ‘s hope
wandering in the arms of limbo.
Wings bruised
for hammering obstinate bars,
voice hoarse for singing the blues
over dissonant chords.
Over and over again.
“Like a broken record,” they say.
Singing the same old song.
I have been.
Songs like plastic bags
of cans that digs into a tender
palm until the blood supply is cut.
What does the sky
Feel like on my wings
The stretch of endless blue
Soft wind threading through my feathers?
Tell me, the feeling has long escaped me.
Emptiness ringing in my ear
in the space between
where song once lived
Time has a way
Of erasing memories,
Of erasing wounds
and hardening them into scars,
of stepping into clear water
and muddying it.
Now the air is stale,
silence dense,
solitude burning red,
my bones rubbing against
my soul,
Leaving blisters and scuffs.
These heavy eyes,
the sky’s allure has faded from their gaze.
they have learned to shrink
into this smallness.
no horizon here
only walls,
and the dust taste of dullness
is vapid.
How I miss
how the sun makes
the salt on my skin rise,
or how the rain can seep
into my thoughts until
it colors it sad.
Now, there’s just fields of
milky grayness, playing labyrinth
until I reach the end,
only to be devoured again.
And sadness is too mundane a word,
at most it’s an espresso
that keeps you awake,
A defibrillator,
that jolt that makes eternity
an agony.
I am but a riddle I cannot solve
Oct 22, 2024
Oct 22, 2024 at 9:40 AM UTC
Cedar wood house
aching with arthritis
still standing atop a hill,
at me, she blew a kiss,
dreaming I could feel,
and as made my way
down the horizon
where the flowering
dogwood-covered
peaks rose
to this valley,
where whiskey flows,
old mountain ranges
have always been
November’s ghost.
I’m on this road
thinking it will lead me home,
but all along,
I was wrong,
my home lives with me
in my bones.
Faces I knew by heart,
in time faded until forever gone,
I’m left here singing their song
with their names etched
on winter stones.
This road has grown weary
leading me to golden places
that weren’t even there;
all the while it was I
chasing castles in the air,
and I was foolish enough
to care about running after
a mirage anywhere,
all along,
by my side, the happiness
that I dared myself to find,
has always been with her.
Oct 20, 2024
Oct 20, 2024 at 2:07 AM UTC