Bring it on, September!
This time, I'm not afraid.
As summer leaves,
My mind changes color.

I'll take a mushroom feast
As summer's farewell gift.
My soul will settle
In autumn's golden hush.

And when winter comes,
I'll meet the cold with fire.
Attentive readers will recognize
The classic woodear-soup.

My writer's heart may ask
For Caledonia once again.
But for the first time
It might sing of winter, too.

When poetry replaces rhetoric,
When soulspeak bridges hearts,
When speech opens perception,
Paradise is near.

When vulnerability needs no armor,
When fear is no longer taught,
When reflection overtakes reflex,
Hope may bloom.

When meaning outshines marketing,
When we raise seekers,
When you don't yet get poetry but try,
You may help carry my fading dreams.

Sitting in my living room,
I want to go home.
Home, to where I belong.
To the oaks that give me shelter,
To the pines that know me well.

I can write this poem in minutes,
Share it with my close ones,
Pour my pain onto the page.
But I can’t be home right now.

Embracing sunlit valleys,
Walking on moss in enchanted forests,
Talking to the land that knows.
The simple life that costs so much.

Something inside me asked politely
to try some poetry, just for fun.
Now I know who asked.

Bypassing social expectations,
my inner critic,
and judgment's voice,
I speak my truth at last.

The beauty brought by your senses
might serve just as evolution planned.
Or perhaps your mind drifts into wonder-
evolution's greatest, unintended gift?

Are there birds
who celebrate their tetrachromacy?
Do you celebrate
the power of your mind?

Do our close kin in nature
ask these kinds of questions?
Our ancestors surely did.
How many humans do?

Poetry is a winner.
It unbounds yourself.
It frees the tears you suppressed.
It connects with yourself and soulmates.

When you lost your voice,
Poetry brings it back.
When you don't know who you are,
Poetry will tell you!

Poetry has the power
To beat the hell out of you.
To dig with endurance
Until you bleed truth.

But what it leaves behind
is cleaner than before.
It rips the rot from your soul
and calls it transformation.

Came running home to write this
As I forgot my journal!
Thou shalt not walk
When you cannot write!

What begins as laughter
may end as fire.
Each line I write
is a pact with myself.

Every thought a potential poem
Every poem another facet of myself
I never let y’all slip again
And find myself in deadness.

Summoning the most violent demons
Force them into most beautiful forms
Breaking their neck
By calling their name

Boiling down my pain
Into handsome melodies.
I killed my hellspawn
With an atheist’s prayer.