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.

Conway’s game of life,
e^(iπ) + 1 is zero,
Just four base pairs in our DNA,
And still, we play the hero.

Twelve fermions, five bosons,
Compose our world and sky,
In every star and falling leaf,
In every brain that questions why.

I’d love to dive into the depths
Of quantum's mystic plan,
And watch the clockwork tick and hum,
To glimpse the beating heart of all.

Perhaps it’s all so simple,
Too simple to perceive,
A truth so bare and elegant,
Our minds refuse to believe.

I don't speak profit and greed.
I only speak wildness and stillness.
I speak a kind of human
Only few will understand.

If you speak dragon-fly,
If you act forest fae,
I want you in my crew
Of magic creatures!

I taught myself
A language of soul
And it feels so natural
To build upon its words.

Condensed and simplified,
I let it flow
Like forest's airy whisper,
like nature's warm embrace.

Come, speak with me
And be surprised
At your own soul's might.

You severed your roots,
and called it progress.
Then wondered why
your soul went starving.

The land that knew me better
Than any human ever did.
It whispered two and a half words:
"It's time!"

Rainy nights on nameless hills,
Golden gorse blossoms in the sun,
A silence loud enough
To echo through my bones.

Each step I took
Wrote a line of poetry.
Each hill I climbed
Etched a chapter in my soul.

And when I came back down,
Knowing who I am,
I carried more than stones.
I carried beginning.

Between my birches I do roam,
Across green plains and forests,
Between my little, secret spaces
That I call home.

I wish my tribe were here,
But it is scattered,
Around the globe,
And nowhere near.

The longing will not cease -
So this is for my tribe,
A bird's song of my home
Where my soul finds peace.

It's a perfect night
To talk to the moon
And wait for the wolves
To reply in your voice

It's a perfect night
To change your name
Into something
You always have been

It's a perfect night
To be reclaimed by the forest

Staring holes into the universe
Gazing far beyond our galaxy
Watching acid rain on Venus
Leaving half of my thoughts on distant planets

I've been walking on Triton
I've been circling black holes
And yet, the most beautiful words
Come to my mind when it's empty

Looking for home among distant stars
While Earth's own beauty left its mark
So I'll take my journal and tent
And write down the whispers of this planet
While still embracing its cosmic neighborhood

I will not write of daffodils,
Nor will I praise the rose.
Don't get me wrong - I see their beauty.
I just don't connect to their charm.

Sweet and tender they shine,
Picked, sold, gifted as a treat.
Beauty to look at, easy to get.
I do not want what I haven't got.

Instead, I'll write of sunshine,
Of untamable feral perfection,
Of things that bite
Should you try to claim them.

I'll write of striking composition,
Wilting within our gardened trip,
Yet blooming when undisturbed and wild,
Sharp-edged and stubbornly bright.

I'll write of what my soul needs most,
I'll write of gorse.

Dear Henry,

You never knew me,
But your work transcended
Far beyond Walden Pond.

Two centuries later,
I find your spirit in my words.
I hear the wind through your cabin walls.
I trust that a man in the woods speaks louder than a crowd.

Thank you for being the spark that lit my voice.
You wrote my soul before I was born,
You dared my mind to try.
I'm honored to keep your spirit alive.

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.

Step zero, the crack of light.
A flicker of doubt in my comfort zone.
For the first time I ask:
Why do I do what they do?

Step one, my wallet speaks.
Every coin, a quiet vote.
Hurt their vulnerable spot:
Profit.

Step two, the test begins.
When it’s cold. When it’s loud.
When the joke’s on me.
When they leave.

Step three, no preaching.
But I tell what I’ve lived.
What it feels like
To look into the world’s mirror
And not flinch.

Step four, I walk in.
With poems in my pockets.
Truth on soft-spoken pages.
They invited the poet,
but the rebel slipped in, too.

Step five, Infiltrate.
You paid the rebel,
You invited the dreamer.
Now start your own step zero.

Forgive me for the silence.
I drifted, lured by the chorus
Of shoulds and musts,
those hymns of the hollow-hearted.
They called it living.
But it led me far from life.

How strange it is,
to meet you again.
Like an old friend in forgotten woods.
The world was loud without you.
Empty, though full of noise.

Come, soul.
Let me see the places that hurt.
Let me sit beside your bruises.
I won't leave again.
Not this time.

There may have been other places
Where my heart fell in love.
But there is only one place
Where my heart, soul and mind connect.

Can only feel around the Lochs,
Can only think in endless glens,
Can only love sleeping on Munros.
Can only write when all connects.

My heart is broken,
My mind is craving,
My soul is crying
When I have to leave again.

Some day I will not leave,
I'll stay with the ones I love.
And when I die among the hills,
My ashes shall mingle with Caledonia.