touka-kouka - Hello Poetry

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ UP I HAVE BEEN something like a string on a shoe. When I take life of the innocent kind I can always feel it rush back into me like UP liquid in anti-gravity And it makes me innocent, too I have this fear of floating - - I wear heavy shoes. I HAVE BEEN worried about going too-far-out. Worried about the color blue. I HAVE HEI HAVE HEARI HAVI I HAVE HEARD about being star- stuff I don't want to be something th - at merely bumps against you What am I so worried for I UP am tied for either no reason or some reason Which both mean some-thin g. Nod and say you know what I mean It's another form of touch to me. UP I NEED NOT WORRY ABOU UP worry about UP when I am so stuck here I cannot even do something like imagine. Imagine it imagining. I HAVE BEEN I HAVE BEEN I HAVE BEEN in four different planes. Imagining The one where you cannot tie something around another thing . DO I GRIEVE THIS? The one where God is (I think.) HOW CAN I KNOW IT? The one where we are. What was the other ONE I CA n't remember. This was a story about my mother. The kinds of words I put on a page walking circles around them in the first plane. Still only scraping against the surface of something. It hurts IT ITCHES. and by the end I've told nothing.

0

Nov 22, 2025

Nov 22, 2025 at 11:34 PM UTC

Investigations of a Dog

50

I saw a woodlouse walking along the floor of the laundry room. I said hello. He said nothing back. I thought of how cruel people are to such things, small things - bugs and everything that crawls beneath the natural line of sight. I thought, I could never be one of those people, now that I know, and I don't want to know those people, now that I know. I was looking into the light so lost in thoughts of all the good I ought to do that I stepped right on him. He tried to curl up before he died but couldn't anymore.

0

Nov 21, 2025

Nov 21, 2025 at 10:32 PM UTC

woodlouse III

I saw a woodlouse walking along the floor of the laundry room. I said hello. He said nothing back. I thought of how cruel people are to such things, small things - bugs and everything that crawls beneath the natural line of sight. I thought, I could never be one of those people, now that I know, and I don't want to know those people, now that I know. I was looking into the light so lost in thoughts of all the good I ought to do that I stepped right on him. He tried to curl up before he died but couldn't anymore.

16

I am decorating. Renovating. I slide my lone box over a few centimeters to the right, all the snakes pile out, all the crocodiles cry in the new light, all the bugs call me mother or something of the like. There is a draw string that I never pull. There is an empty corner and another and another and oh, well too many to count And a memory of my father gesturing in silhouette something I can’t make out, but he looks like a womb, and he looks like my husband and I have to clean this room. I use my little fingers to trace the paths of echoes long silenced just to taste a familiar kind of quiet because it makes more sense than this gnawing, idle knowing come upon me as I age, I must clean this room But I return with dust. There must have been, I think Something brilliant here, once. My lone little box, housing my lone little feather Underneath my lone little light with its drawstring untouched, because it flickers as it likes All the crawling things beneath This paltry foil to my utter desolation The snakes, the bugs, all plaintiff I don’t do things I don’t put things places, I don’t make the room full I just wander away. But I am decorating. Renovating. I slide my lone box over a few centimeters to the right, all the snakes pile out, all the crocodiles cry in the new light, all the bugs call me fat.

0

Jul 12, 2025

Jul 12, 2025 at 7:29 PM UTC

Interior

I am decorating. Renovating. I slide my lone box over a few centimeters to the right, all the snakes pile out, all the crocodiles cry in the new light, all the bugs call me mother or something of the like. There is a draw string that I never pull. There is an empty corner and another and another and oh, well too many to count And a memory of my father gesturing in silhouette something I can’t make out, but he looks like a womb, and he looks like my husband and I have to clean this room. I use my little fingers to trace the paths of echoes long silenced just to taste a familiar kind of quiet because it makes more sense than this gnawing, idle knowing come upon me as I age, I must clean this room But I return with dust. There must have been, I think Something brilliant here, once. My lone little box, housing my lone little feather Underneath my lone little light with its drawstring untouched, because it flickers as it likes All the crawling things beneath This paltry foil to my utter desolation The snakes, the bugs, all plaintiff I don’t do things I don’t put things places, I don’t make the room full I just wander away. But I am decorating. Renovating. I slide my lone box over a few centimeters to the right, all the snakes pile out, all the crocodiles cry in the new light, all the bugs call me fat.

86

You found it meandering I walked it alone. You said the Phoenix rises I am stuck in the stone. A common bird — With two wings, now Tinged That same old color of the rock burnt out of absence of nothing — of silence.

0

Jul 12, 2025

Jul 12, 2025 at 7:27 PM UTC

Vulcan II

You found it meandering I walked it alone. You said the Phoenix rises I am stuck in the stone. A common bird — With two wings, now Tinged That same old color of the rock burnt out of absence of nothing — of silence.

13

he said, “man is a wicked thing” she said “and there's not one womb to blame." but I was Eve in a poppy seed. I grew to be the thing you hate

0

Mar 29, 2024

Mar 29, 2024 at 4:00 PM UTC

pro re nata

he said, “man is a wicked thing” she said “and there's not one womb to blame." but I was Eve in a poppy seed. I grew to be the thing you hate

9

I notice it It is slight In meaning and in size A momentary interruption A mere flicker in the tenement of steel A brief flaw in the consummate white this thing they call fire unfed, licking on all sides I wouldn't touch it even if I were close enough but for a moment, there a faint bit of scarlet outlined in ochre bright, and brilliant and about to die a momentary interruption a spasm in the cold, undeviating line of time

0

Jan 30, 2024

Jan 30, 2024 at 12:40 AM UTC

5999

I notice it It is slight In meaning and in size A momentary interruption A mere flicker in the tenement of steel A brief flaw in the consummate white this thing they call fire unfed, licking on all sides I wouldn't touch it even if I were close enough but for a moment, there a faint bit of scarlet outlined in ochre bright, and brilliant and about to die a momentary interruption a spasm in the cold, undeviating line of time

21

It was winter I sat there waiting for you when I knew I shouldn’t be in the passenger seat of that blue and silver volkswagen the grey of the dashboard stretching out into the pale dusk of the road the scene was monochrome not flat, not nondescript simple the clouds just before snow the grass just before ice the time for color to drain away and come back fuller in spring it seemed just right I knew it shouldn’t I wake and remark the cold in my bundled clothes the cheerlessness of winter every shade of grey bleeding into one another looking beyond that dashboard from inside your empty car I wonder why it seems so beautiful I think that it was my winter clothes and your car and the pre-snow a scene that held your memory a scene that could still hope for who you’d be a scene that you weren’t in a scene that was all me gloved and hatted in the fabrics of Corinthians 13 believing, waiting I wonder why it seems so beautiful I think that it was me

0

Sep 25, 2023

Sep 25, 2023 at 5:59 PM UTC

woman II: drift

It was winter I sat there waiting for you when I knew I shouldn’t be in the passenger seat of that blue and silver volkswagen the grey of the dashboard stretching out into the pale dusk of the road the scene was monochrome not flat, not nondescript simple the clouds just before snow the grass just before ice the time for color to drain away and come back fuller in spring it seemed just right I knew it shouldn’t I wake and remark the cold in my bundled clothes the cheerlessness of winter every shade of grey bleeding into one another looking beyond that dashboard from inside your empty car I wonder why it seems so beautiful I think that it was my winter clothes and your car and the pre-snow a scene that held your memory a scene that could still hope for who you’d be a scene that you weren’t in a scene that was all me gloved and hatted in the fabrics of Corinthians 13 believing, waiting I wonder why it seems so beautiful I think that it was me

40

there’s never any woman who is more unfortunate to be a woman than the woman who is near you now, I’ve got no idea of beauty but when you said “I love your femininity,” I can coalesce what you meant “woman,” "woman," “woman” soft, accessible, permissible the earthly mans ego-stroking shower-fantasy of what it means to be “A Proverbs 31 woman” a beauty, meaning something to reflect you endlessly a mirror with a nice rack a way to hear yourself talk again and again and again and again stripped bare for you mouthing it all back “you’re beautiful,” it sounds so very, very, very ugly when I know just what you mean how dare you make “woman” sound like something like that I’ve got no idea of beauty still reconciling femininity my womanhood still reconciling me but I’ll never fit your narrative or engage with your empty analects of what it means to be because you don’t know how to and you certainly don’t know beauty

0

Sep 25, 2023

Sep 25, 2023 at 5:59 PM UTC

woman

there’s never any woman who is more unfortunate to be a woman than the woman who is near you now, I’ve got no idea of beauty but when you said “I love your femininity,” I can coalesce what you meant “woman,” "woman," “woman” soft, accessible, permissible the earthly mans ego-stroking shower-fantasy of what it means to be “A Proverbs 31 woman” a beauty, meaning something to reflect you endlessly a mirror with a nice rack a way to hear yourself talk again and again and again and again stripped bare for you mouthing it all back “you’re beautiful,” it sounds so very, very, very ugly when I know just what you mean how dare you make “woman” sound like something like that I’ve got no idea of beauty still reconciling femininity my womanhood still reconciling me but I’ll never fit your narrative or engage with your empty analects of what it means to be because you don’t know how to and you certainly don’t know beauty

39

I am fixed to the walls of this house so tightly joined to it, this bed through sinew and bone thread, thread, thread another plait into me the night, the breed she is with that ****** needle and thread, thread, thread knows I can’t stand within it the vignette the solitude the white coats, the men of the word those in the mire of the clay all prescribing the same thing a hit of perseverance “Oh, okay,” “oh, okay,” “oh, okay.” I lick, lap at the slow drip so tightly fixed to where I always have been don’t come in, don’t go out “I’m sorry,” in the pooling of spit one hand in the ***** reaching into the pit the ********* night I don’t say in vain “Okay,” “Okay,” “Okay,” she waits loosens my thread slips those little tethers so much good slack I run take my hit of perseverance I burn burn, burn, burn right up in the fire of day she waits for the ash the sun rises and sets on the same thing, always always always always they don’t understand those free feet, walking the narrows I watch them all go no wince, no limp no thread, no spit the way that it seems, from my portion of shadow, “Oh, okay,” so easy ‎

0

Dec 19, 2022

Dec 19, 2022 at 5:04 AM UTC

“Oh... Okay.”

I am fixed to the walls of this house so tightly joined to it, this bed through sinew and bone thread, thread, thread another plait into me the night, the breed she is with that ****** needle and thread, thread, thread knows I can’t stand within it the vignette the solitude the white coats, the men of the word those in the mire of the clay all prescribing the same thing a hit of perseverance “Oh, okay,” “oh, okay,” “oh, okay.” I lick, lap at the slow drip so tightly fixed to where I always have been don’t come in, don’t go out “I’m sorry,” in the pooling of spit one hand in the ***** reaching into the pit the ********* night I don’t say in vain “Okay,” “Okay,” “Okay,” she waits loosens my thread slips those little tethers so much good slack I run take my hit of perseverance I burn burn, burn, burn right up in the fire of day she waits for the ash the sun rises and sets on the same thing, always always always always they don’t understand those free feet, walking the narrows I watch them all go no wince, no limp no thread, no spit the way that it seems, from my portion of shadow, “Oh, okay,” so easy ‎

60

edelweiss grows valiantly, over the crags the sharp, jagged pikes of a summit so a wall of stone keeps me beneath her like her necklace I drape the pendant resting lowly on her ***** I’ll never climb I wonder what is on the other side I wonder what she looks like

0

Dec 16, 2022

Dec 16, 2022 at 7:06 PM UTC

cliffhanger’s flower

edelweiss grows valiantly, over the crags the sharp, jagged pikes of a summit so a wall of stone keeps me beneath her like her necklace I drape the pendant resting lowly on her ***** I’ll never climb I wonder what is on the other side I wonder what she looks like

13