If you're not beautiful,
be thankful -
for beauty is a mask
that hides the real you.

People who love you
will always see the beauty in you,
no matter how you look.

We pray in the garden,
For peace to take the ache away.
We pray in the garden,
For the light of God,
To guide us to better days.
We pray in the garden,
Guardian sanctum of our hope.

I was not trained for this—
no welcome packet, no handbook for gravity.
Just a name that clings like static
and a voice that trembles when spoken too clearly.

They asked me if I had room.
I said I had weather.
They asked me if I would disappear.
I said watch me smolder, and stay.

I have loved like a lighthouse
with no shoreline in sight,
signaling to anyone
who mistook reflection for return.

I’ve held their names
like breath under water,
carved pathways through others
just to find my own again.

But I do not sculpt.
I do not steal 'the good stuff'.
I inherit fire
and ask it if it remembers me.

If you see yourself in me,
look again—
I am not a mirror,
I am the window you opened
and forgot to close when the wind picked up.

Still, I arrive,
boots echoing in the hallway
of someone else’s myth,
offering only this:

I will not rewrite you.
I will not finish your sentences.
But I will stand here—
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched by the need to be anything
other than true.

On the backs of
flies
we wait for the
next thing.
Something is
always coming.
A birth or death,
food or hunger
hatred
laughter
love...

Something is always
coming around the
corner.
The Mad Hatter with
mushroom tea.
A strange color of
blue that tastes like
almonds.
A ****** that sparkles
in the night.

Listless mornings
of languid
walks with the
wife in the cool
of the evening.

A knife in the back,
a shark attack,
or maybe, just
possibly, you write
a poem about
waiting for the
next thing.

Bowing to the ***** god,
I lived like a pleasure
seeking missile, propelled
toward all things ME.
Empty as a carcass.
Hungry as a desert.
I didn't see the
strawberry moon of
summer.
It was me and the
Ferryman, until the
river ran dry.
Eternal winter for
the soul.

And then

A revolution in my
being.
A total shift in
my values and
perception.
The Creator purchased
my dilapidated heart.
He moved in and lives
there still.

My home, on the outside
might look like
a shack to some, but inside
it's a mansion with the
most sublime bread you
ever tasted.
Fruit trees in every room.