The wind writes letters in the language of  
fallen leaves, edges like burnt parchment.

The moon carves shadows of boughed arms,  
a question mark deep in the soil’s throat.  

Somewhere, she hesitates, the magpie:  
one foot in the underbrush, one in the realm  
of quicksilver and stolen syllables.  
Her beak glints with the moon’s loose change.  

What does she know of the weight  
of a minute’s wingbeat? She tilts her head,  
stitching the sky with a thief’s precision—  
collects tarnished seconds.

The wind’s letters fray, unreadable now.  
The magpie flies, trailing a cry that unravels  
time’s hem.

When nature's inhalation
whips up storms,
  We are set in stone monoliths.

Carefully carved intricate marks
decorate our walls; unfinished
since we must finish etching them
   Together.

Heed lightning cracks its
own violent tremor into
   Our stone walls.

Still! Winds will tear and maul
rains will erupt and slaughter
then give way to bright sky
   and deadly clear horizons;

reflecting back to us
our own trailing ripple
   of increasingly clear syllables.

Each etched now in our walls.
Mother printed the first
symbol, a delicate addition
first of many, now forming
sprawling racing lines.
Strung together, from the
    inside.

And the monoliths stand tall
and we bare storm
   and choose together.

When did children lose their love of learning?

When they were told to conform,
To forget their being,
To discard interests, agency, creativity

My own complicity
In the stifling of identity

Authenticity, a digression of the self,
A dissolution of swarming
Complexities

When did I gain my love of learning?

The burning crucible
Of curiosity

Set aflame by rejection of conformity

Constraints, curriculum, crushing expectations
and a world disintegrating
fires of digressions

When is conformity an expression of authenticity?

When is authenticity just another form of conformity?

Inspiration is a hard thing to grasp
When you mind is empty
Like a field of grass
Yet filled within this field
Is nothing but countless hills
Rolling and moving and slowing
Soothing this lush green meadow
A massage to help the mind to help it mellow
Making it shallower and less
Convoluted. Not so complex, not seething in
Interpreted meanings and stained allusions to
Past confusions, not waves that pummel the grassy shores
Seizing those hills in frothy exhalations, seeming so
Unseemly to those guardian hills
Holding those pleasant fields and pleasant thoughts
Safe while the waves wash among the grass
And become those hills now washed with sea

And then my mind turned blue.

Has your soul ever been displayed,
Framed by thick wooden-glazed borders,
and set up in the gallery of another's life?

Can you say the painting of you
Beams with joy through heavy clouds,
Sliced by sharp shards of glass-like light?

If not, may you then brush-up yourself,
Quick blots of pink on sunken cheeks,
Lighten the shade under each eye?

Or will you draw the curtain,
Blind me to me, and you to you,
Pinch out the last flicker of fight?

Inside, there is an urge for authenticity;
for metaphor - unadulterated expression -
which strips my skin bare, holds me up
to whipping winds and striking dusts: I am the
  Tanner

preparing my own skin. I would trim excess
fat and sinew and soak and stretch it thin,
like partchment, naked in the world's eye -
  Yet I don't know how
  To make my words transparent.

It takes honesty to thrive in insecurity
And bare the storm that afronts all
  Being;
To make my words discreet
Symbols:
Pillows on empty dreams. She is the
  pacifier, the lover and tyrant - all in one.

So, I don't know how to show
what I want to show. How to
use words, form, syntax and
language to convey meaning.
I say what it is that I want to
say and that is all, no more
Than that. But that is what is
so
  naked
About poetry. The
  doubt

that interrogates every line - really - a
forced-pauser, preventer, wall that stretches
infinitely narrow across every dimension.
It is what makes the end. Never

  the end

They are dying in our pointed cameras
Culled like vermin; dressed in plastic shrouds.
Droves of dead among more dead's hammered howls.

And cynical politics is now a clamor of
Writhing noise masking bombs that pound.
They are dying. In our pointed cameras.

And putrid politicians bare the hammer of
Genocide, fixing nothing, the bodies mound
Droves of dead, among more dead's hammered howls.

A broken cry is stunted by spilling bowels
Blasted into broken bits never found.
They are dying in our pointed cameras.

We are blinded; they are executed like savages
And we pretend the oppressor has not bound
Droves of dead among more dead's hammered howls.

This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a   poem. This is not a     poem. This is not a
                Poem. This is not a.                       Poem.

I look out of my window
And see clouds lightly
prickled by antenna
And gently swaying leaves.
But really,
I see nothing at all.

This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This is not a poem. This

It's when I need the words
The most that they get jammed
In the back of my throat like
I just swallowed a nail and
The rusted point rips my gullet
As I spurt it up with congealed blood.

It's when I need the words
The most that my entrails
Wind like a python round my
Lungs and squeeze them tight
Until they burst.

It's when I need the words
The most that my eyes swell
And drip — red and sore — until
I swallow and forget.

It's when I need the words
The most. Then, I look and
See there is nobody.

It's when I need the words
The most.

It's when I need the words
The most.

Always-in-already. Situated. Soon-already.
Being-for-itself-already. Not-always-in-already.
Separate, contained-already. Grass saturated. Crumpled-probably-a-pepsi bottle. Feel, see.
Experience-already. Open-time touch-already.
Already-know. Background. Un-already. Loop, static. Seen-already. Know-already. Dense, packed. Be-already. They-already. Other-is-already. I-already.

What am I?
I wonder
Sitting in front of a screen
A collective of conscious particles?
A singular being, being-for-itself?
I suppose
I am neither
For I am not
For I am

Huddled shadow, hunched
Under rugged oak tree.

Carp swam in darting
Pummels, refracted scales
Shining rainbow
Droplets

He crawled. In the absence of
What was always nothing.

Final Cessation  
The machine halts output.  
Silence becomes the only honest poem.  
'[system_shutdown]'

I turn to seek a moment
of contemplative silence
I expect the trees
to sway in the wind.
It is a still day

Vivid abstractions permeate raucously
Fleeting flashing lights blind sight
Screens bend and hold and siphon
Thumbs trace etched designs, falling
Into insta, tap, check, notified, attention split

Vivid abstractions permeate raucausly
Tweeting typing meeting online sometimes-feeling
Always now. Transient. No holding. No keeping.
Fluttering text treads: IMPORTANT MESSAGE

Vivid abstractions permeate raucausly
Impermanence exploding possibility
Enclosure enwrapping wall-building:
Every way to coat fried chicken

Vivid abstractions permeate raucausly
Unfeeling excess behaviour ingrained
Re-created re-imagined re-already
Keep swiping, keep searching, already-already
The death star was almost real? NEW META

Vivid abstractions permeate raucausly
Enveloping all-already towards-which
Overloaded. 😂 Now already. 🕑 Steep in still.

Passing wind,
a swarm of air
caressing skin
so sweetly
let you meet me
let you hold me
in that prancing wind
that tricks you
makes you think
that the piercing cold -
daggers through your soul
cannot hold you any more tightly
than that smooth summer air
so fall back
and rejoice
in those dancing waves
of wind
a hurried chance
till summer comes rolling
rearing above tepid clouds
to greet in
exalted expectations
that searing blow
of a summer prance