It isn’t easy to walk, gravity weighs.
The biosuits lock the mind
in a narrow space.

An interpretive blow is crucial:
Does being on the other side of the mirror
truly want it, or only think it does?

A thumb drives into the right temple.
The heart pumps hectoliters of warm liquid.
Colours, sounds, tensions in the eternal swirl.

Delay in processing—eighty milliseconds
it isn’t a flaw.
It takes that long for all the cogs to turn.

Everything I do now is already in the past.
Decisions made long ago spit me out
into this reality with some name.

I am the last, but not least,
in the collective dream and blink of time.

Minds sway like golden grain, ready to be cut.
I can stand up or lie on the ground.

I walk—
toward the next stumble,
the next wound, and maybe healing.

Insights glow like yellow lanterns,
giving me some light.

No justification, no understanding.
My self-awareness is not a cozy couch.

One day,
I will stop existing, and I accept that.
I’m just afraid to leave those who still love me.

A poem not yet written
Is like a genie incarcerated in its bottle,
Waiting for the gentle strokes
Of its poet’s liberating quill.

An image here, an alliteration there
Send emergent clouds of verbal magic
Floating into the aether,
Demanding to be crafted into
A tapestry of finest weave and hue.

It will be what it must
And not even the hope-filled poet
Can foretell its destiny.

But like all expectant parents,
Quaking in the throes of labor,
The poet hopes his or her newborn child
Will leave the world
An incrementally better place.

I was sitting at a table in a café when she walked in.

I said, “Hey, good-looking stranger— would you like a cup of coffee?”

We were laughing, drinking coffee—

when suddenly, she caressed me.

We were heading straight to the wedding—

then I woke up, needing coffee.

Her smile as bright as the sun,
the perfect girl i would never forget.
Went by the swing that we met,
went to our favourite coffee shop,
ended on the beach of our first honeymoon —
I wish this day would last forever.

She leans over and quietly whispers,
“It’s time to let go”
She walks towards the water,
slowly walking deeper.
Yet i sit there; staring there,
her figure getting smaller.
In the blink of an eye, she was gone —
It was too late to feel forlorn

Why didn’t i stop her?
25th August 2005
I miss her

When my oldest brother, Todd,
came back for my mom's funeral,
he had this light about him.
His face was a poem.
Sure, he was the oldest, and he
had a healthy-looking tan from the
hot New Mexico sun, working
outside with turquoise, silver,
and bear claws to make
jewelry for the tourists, but there
was more than that.

He was an artist, and all artists have
a fractured ease about things, but he
lit up.  Something from the inside
projected out.
He comforted everyone else, we leaned
on him.  His eyes oozed serenity.

A few calendars later, when I traveled
back for his funeral, I saw the same
look on a few of his friends' faces.
His wife told me after the service
that Todd had gotten sober years before.

Weighed down by rocks that were your words
I took me to the river, and tossed those pebbles far and wide,
then I found me a bridge that was burning
and danced to the other side,