release your story
there's no one here
the brain's a frantic enemy
or maybe I don't know

it must be about time now
that's the only thing it could mean
when my words start to feel
this rough around the edges
heavy with mud

take me to the stream
point me to my anger

I'm clear quartz

wash me clean

and show me to the light

signal lost
static
let's send out
cyclone alerts
the light house says
I must go home
back to
seabed
no more duty
for me

now we're all ocean
no sailors
no wayfinding
no compasses
all ocean

all these puny feelings
are so misleading
but i follow them
they lead me
someplace familiar
an old creek
the sound of silence,
crickets
and the singing lady
no ravens in the sky
still trees, eerie
the only things alive
in this landscape
are my ghosts plunging
into sea

tornadoes invite me
and i walk right in
nothing's been kinder to me

send to my home a killer
knocking on my door
with a letter and a knife
upfront
he will fall in love
and hide his knife
and give me the world

send to my home a lost man
roaming the woods
knocking on my tulip door
the fragrance is a trap
he prepares to fall in love
his eyes full of secrets
the most dangerous
of men

I need to feel your presence
find a way somehow
through a flame
or a hole
or a spirit
somehow

give me a sign
I'm fuming
this scream refuses
to leave my throat
my eyes turn pale
with your absence

I circumambulate
your sacred fire
but the demons desecrate it

swallow the sky
in a fury only you can summon

clear the grounds

I'll be born again
like a breakthrough

I've stopped trying now
I've stopped flapping my arms and legs
frantically
and suddenly, I stop drowning

suddenly, I'm a leaf
being carried afloat to the shore

and why do you write?

i'll go first
i sometimes forget my name
it's one of those days
(every other day)

if you tell me I can't make it as a writer
that I must quit "trying"
I'll go into my burrow
and write about it in my little book

i write to live correctly

you're only alone
when you club yourself with the
employees
the tgif-ers
the rule abiders
the girls groupchat from college

you're only abnormal
when you compare yourself to the
smalltalkers
the engineers
the doctors
the selfie people

you had this wrong the whole time

the miscreants
the artists
lone visionaries who pay
for their brilliant ideas in tears
before bed each night
one more day gone by
undiscovered

this is
the secret majority
making no noise

the arthropods of the world
running the talent show
after the curtains draw close

go.