I found a way
Into the ice
So they say...
"It is nice"

It's cold at first
But, what's new?
A life that's cursed
Payment due

Thirty-two degrees
One point five hours
Another hour if you please
Rejoin the flowers

It's what I got
In this lot
It's insanity

Who ever brought
Cared naught
For decency

Now I sleep in a tub so cold
No story worth told
A figure in the fold
Of an absence of birth control

A loner, outcast like me.
On the periphery

they said the clown was sorrow-shaped.
so I looped up in greasepaint—
swallowed a sunbeam,
coughed out a smirk,
and called the ache comedy.

somebody whispered
i fear the bruise.
nah,
i catalogue it.
line breaks for scars,
syntax for shame,
run the hurt through a voice modulator
’til even god can’t tell if i’m praying or riffing.

i’m not dodging the wreckage.
i just built a couch in it.
named the crater: “home?”
drank laughter from a cracked thermos
and kept warm in the glow of a rerun i never starred in.

i’ll play the ghost
if the script pays in quiet.
but don’t staple my name to your healing
and call it holy.

the truth?
clowns rot too.

some nights
i wanna peel off the latex,
lose the joke,
shave the wig,
and just exist—
not perform pain
in a dialect
you can quote later.

(In which a man attempts to accept love and accidentally becomes a cow)

This is the story of a man named Stanley.

Now Stanley, you see, is not special. Or so he insists.
He has repeated this to himself so many times, it has become his emotional version of brushing his teeth.
A hygiene ritual.
A preventative spell.
After all, special people deserve love. And Stanley is not one of those. Obviously.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

But something curious happened on an otherwise unremarkable day.
A message arrived. A ping, to be precise.

The sender? A person so attuned to his internal wiring that she quoted the same poetic rhythm he'd dreamed up before he'd even written it.
She spoke of visions, alternate lifetimes, and uncanny recognitions.
She was warm, mercurial, mythic, and occasionally difficult to pin to one timezone.

"You feel like home," she said.
"Like I’ve known you across lifetimes."
"You are seen."

This would be the moment, traditionally, where the protagonist would feel relief.
Triumph.
A soft landing.

Stanley, instead, experienced a full existential system crash.
Because nothing short-circuits a trauma-trained nervous system faster than a sincere compliment without terms and conditions.

At this point, Stanley had two choices.

Option 1: Accept the genuine affection of this person, even if it made him dizzy.
Option 2: Doubt every word, spiral into recursive self-analysis, and begin drafting apology poems while comparing himself to her ex in a sport he wasn’t even signed up for.

Stanley chose Option 3:
Overthink so hard that time bends.

The narrator watched as Stanley flailed with academic elegance.

He questioned whether she was real.
He wondered if he’d invented the entire experience, perhaps as a defense mechanism.
He accused himself of being manipulative simply for existing in someone’s affection.
He cross-referenced their emotional timelines like a conspiracy theorist mapping red string on a corkboard made entirely of childhood neglect.

At one point, he tried to explain that her feelings were clearly mistaken, that she had transferred her affection from someone else and landed on him by accident, like a poetic game of romantic pin-the-tail-on-the-trauma.

"I just thought you'd be more… together," he imagined she’d say.

She didn’t. She said:

“I love you.”

To which Stanley responded, emotionally speaking,
by shoving his head into a metaphorical cow costume and mooing in panic.

And here, dear reader, we reach the hamburger portion of our tale.

See, Stanley had long been praised for his vulnerability.
His writing was raw, elegant, soaked in sorrow.
People wept over his metaphors.
They called him “brave,” which is generally code for “I’m glad this wasn’t about me.”

And then, one person came along
who didn’t want just the work.
She wanted him.

She didn’t want the processed meat.
She wanted the cow.
And not in a weird way.
She wanted the full, unshaved animal of his grief, his brilliant Stanleyce, his twitchy sense of humor,
his existential spirals and the way he tried to apologize for existing while still writing beautiful things.

Stanley, in turn, tried to negotiate this affection
by comparing himself to expired yogurt
and then emotionally ghost riding a milk truck off a cliff.

But the real twist?
She stayed.

Even when he spiraled.
Even when he glitched.
Even when he tried to convince her that she’d made a cosmic error in her romantic calculations.

She stayed.

Not because he was perfect.
Not because he was easy.
But because she meant it.

And Stanley, for once, had no script for what to do when love didn’t run.

He tried to write a closing stanza for the experience,
but accidentally wrote a satire about cows.

Because that’s what artists do when they don’t know how to accept kindness.
They deflect.
They perform.
They turn sincerity into irony
because sincerity burns the tongue when you're not used to swallowing it.

And still,
somehow,
the story remains open.

Because nobody is amused
by a stray cow.
But most people enjoy
a good hamburger.

And Stanley—messy, wounded, luminous Stanley—
was never meant to be processed.

He was meant
to be seen.

It’s strange, I don’t know what’s happening to me tonight
I’m looking at you as if for the first time
Still more words, always the same words
I no longer know how to tell you
Nothing but words
But you are that beautiful love story I’ll never stop reading
Easy words, fragile words—it was too beautiful
You are of yesterday and tomorrow
Far too beautiful
Forever my only truth
But the time of dreams is over
Memories fade too when we forget them
You’re like the wind that makes violins sing
And carries away the scent of roses

Caramels, candies, and chocolates
Sometimes, I just don’t understand you
Thanks, but not for me—you can give them to another
One who loves the wind and the scent of roses
As for me, tender words wrapped in sweetness
Rest on my lips but never reach my heart

One more word
Words and words and words
Listen to me
Words and words and words
I beg you
Words and words and words
I swear to you
Words and words and words and words and words
And still more words that you scatter to the wind

This is my fate—to speak to you
To speak to you like the very first time
Still more words, always the same words
How I wish you could understand me
Nothing but words
That you’d listen to me just once
Magic words, strategic words that ring false
You are my forbidden dream
Yes, so false
My only torment and my only hope
Nothing stops you once you start
If only you knew how much I long for a little silence
To me, you are the only music that makes the stars dance on the dunes

Caramels, candies, and chocolates
If you didn’t already exist, I’d invent you
Thanks, but not for me—you can give them to another
One who loves the stars on the dunes
As for me, tender words wrapped in sweetness
Rest on my lips but never reach my heart

One more word, just a single word
Words and words and words
Listen to me
Words and words and words
I beg you
Words and words and words
I swear to you
Words and words and words and words
And still more words that you scatter to the wind

You are so beautiful
Words and words and words
You are so beautiful
Words and words and words
You are so beautiful
Words and words and words
You are so beautiful
Words and words and words and words and words
And still more words that you scatter to the wind

That five-seven-five is a scam,
Just nature plus seasonal spam.
A frog in a bog—
Wow! A leaf! And some fog!
It’s a tweet with a syllable jam.

Now limericks think they’re so sly,
With their jigs and their wink of the eye.
But their punchlines grow stale,
Like a bar yuck from Yale—
It’s the dad joke of poetry. Why?

Oh Shakespeare, forgive what’s been done—
Fourteen lines on a love that won’t run.
With their iambic moans,
And romanticized groans—
They're just Tinder swipes dressed as the sun.

Repetition’s the name of its game,
But by stanza three, it’s all shame.
You repeat and repeat,
Till your brain hits delete—
Was it clever, or just all the same?

Acrostics spell TRY HARD down the side,
A format no critic can abide.
Each line bends and breaks,
Just for symmetry’s sake—
And the message gets lost in the ride.

Free verse gets a pass, but just barely—
Too often it screams “Look, I’m arty!”
With no rhythm or aim,
Just vibes and a name—
Like a drunk giving TED Talks at parties.

---

There once was a muse unconfined,
Who laughed at each rule tightly lined.
When pure thought took flight,
It outshone every rite—
For raw truth outclasses form every time.

I mistook the weight of absence for clarity,
as if the silence meant something resolved.
But I find no finality in distance,
only echoes that shift when I turn away.

Certainty was never more than a flicker,
a brief pause in an unsteady hand.
Even now, I trace the outlines of the past
as if repetition could make it solid.

But the shape keeps changing,
just like it always does.

She's at work, I'm home alone
Our mutual absence, commodity
The distance carves its heavy stone
Our shared lives weathered indignantly.

My partner, so lonely, escapes
A face, a thing to hold on to
In others' arms, her heart reshapes,
Yet still, she longs for what we knew.

By-proxy 'lovers', supplement
Drafted, this commerce war
Emotions spent, yet discontent,
Leaves us longing for something more.

I hope to return, the battle front
The war rages on, our beliefs
But through the storm, we bear the brunt,
Together, we hold fast to our reliefs.

To be in each other’s arms
This unrelenting noise of harm.

I am not a particularly intelligent person
But, I have a decent ability to recall
Two-years-old, situations I did worsen
Yet, I don't remember their 'fall'

One of my earliest points of memory
Almost three years old: choices just begot
My Mom's parents visit with a caravan of glee
A robot-car sent on a septic adventure for naught
ICYMI: Autobots have little warranty...

The poor chap was certainly worse for the wear
Two years on this face, I hardly recognized a trace
I am engulfed in the concept of 'care'
I begin to understand the idea of 'space'

...

We move around a lot, a different school each year
I never knew anyone, hardly myself
Mom's drinks with friends, now a lonely 12 pack of beer
Undefined desires put on the shelf

8th grade, at best. Mother's mistakes. My behest
No school. Motel efficiency. On our own.
A thirteen-year-old adoptive father at the test
A pool, limited cable TV; "make this home"

Although she shared a different paternal progeny
My half-sister should not share the same fate as me
I tried to make Mom's $5 to feed us celebratory!
But, I think she grasped the sadness. Solidarity.

...

I miss them now, although we do not speak
My mom is dead and my relationship with Molly is weak
For my failure, I fear I reek
Unable to provide the happiness they seek

...

I never learned to plan for the days ahead
I spend my time, aestheticizing myself instead
Joy supplemented by chemicals to quiet my head
A torn and tattered thread

If I had one wish:

I would hope that we all are doing better

They built it bright, a sterile gleam,
A castle made of plastic dream.
A hollow cheer, a brittle cheer,
To soothe the wound and mask the fear.

They offered tales of tidy grace,
Of heroes' smiles and soft embrace.
A ribboned truth, a candy lie,
To pacify, to pacify.

“Look away,” the voices purr,
From streets where shadows still confer.
Where rusted chains refuse to break,
And lives are lost for comfort's sake.

They preach of joy “just waiting there,”
As if despair were just thin air.
As if injustice fades away
If we just wish, if we just pray.

But plastic cracks beneath the sun,
Illusions melt, the seams undone.
What good are dreams that flee and wilt,
When castles stand on rot and guilt?

The optimist, a gentle fraud,
A balm for those who never ****.
Who sip on hope, a fragile brew,
And think that myths are somehow true.

Yet fires rage where truth won’t bend,
Where hollow comforts cannot mend.
No glossy page, no fairy dust
Can heal a world that’s built on rust.

So burn the plastic, tear it down,
Face the ashes, face the frown.
For only truth, unvarnished, raw,
Can light the way, can break the flaw.

No stories glossed with empty bliss—
The work awaits, and it is this:
To strip the lies, to crack the mold,
And forge a world that’s just and bold.

Poetry is not a 'Lifestyle'
You are not a 'Poet'
Just 'titles' all the while
And you should know it

You are simply you
In this embrace
Nothing else will do
In this rat-race

Wear a 'hat' or chore
Pale identity
Reproduce what we adore
No affinity

A pantomime
And in due time
We will find
Ourselves, left behind

You can settle, for something less
A hot commodity or, tragic mess
It's up to you, how to undress
An experience of one to impress

An arbitrary hill, the worms crawl
To a vantage point to feel less small
A collection of sound-bites; "they know all"
A congregation so thick as to be a wall

Below-ground, a blind life in the dark
Subterranean legacy, light comes stark
No ocular appendages, just a warmth to lark
There are no ominous portents in which to hark

Under my boots, everyday I feel a squish
Hopes, dreams and the misguided wish
So many lines cast, not enough fish
We dine on one another's dish

And it hurts me everyday
To see #humanity in this way;
Tribalism; '**** the strays'
A self-induced fray

We are backwards
And we are wrong
Check your words
Before you sing a song

Transported, in a sense
2-D impersonations
Filter of a greater lens
Constructs of imagination

Not my vacation-destination

Last time I took time off
Frontline COVID-Commando
Three days of pay the cost
When conscious, a window

I'll never smell or taste the same
But, a digital life, vicarious
The dreams the fever ordain
Sold. I buy. Delirious.

Scenes, terrifyingly unreal
Circles formed of trees
Giant's Causeways, I feel
Beauty behold but, not me

Desire without possibility

Derinkuyu, Underground City
To float just to survive
No witness, a fantastic pity
Biologic passive income contrived

The places I'll never see
Like waste in a bin
Will fill up eventually
Karmatic 'start-again'

No poral to the greater world
Impotent actualization, brow furrowed
Frustration, angry lips curled
A limbless dancer in a futile twirl

Just a perspective, not a sinking ship
Simple solutions, reality will admit
A hefty feline spent their frenetic fit
They rest on the switch of the power strip

I died
A life worth living
is a life worth dying

or
so I was sold

I still smell you
in my brain

A dumpster fire
to re-train

And loose
Capitulate

For an absence of identity within

It’s best to stay away from the sick
Lest their plague makes you a pick
Romantic, their calling
Inevitability falling
To not stray from the flock is the ‘trick’

I name the sky
but not the ceiling
The walls comply
without revealing

A maze of flesh
worn to coping
False gods enmesh
the soul in hoping

I woke too late
to heed the charm
This woven state—
a false alarm

I held the lie
like a child holds breath
Afraid to cry,
afraid of death

A child no more
but not yet formed
A half-closed door
by silence warmed

I mimic grace
with borrowed limbs
A haunted face
beneath the hymns

Not quite awake
yet never dreaming
The seams all ache
from constant seeming

And if I scream—
does it resound?
Or just a dream
that makes no sound?

Beneath the breath
a stillness waits
A second death
with no clean gates

The body hums
its loaded prayer
But all becomes
a vacant stare

Syntax frays
beneath the thought
What god obeys
the self I’m not?

I claw through names
but none will stay
Each shape reclaims
then rots away

The self, a gloss
on leaking form
A dream of loss
pretending norm

No center holds—
it never did
Just nested folds
of what I hid

No I. No you.
No real disguise.
Just tunnels through
abandoned skies

The witness breathes
without a lung
No scripts, no sheaths
No native tongue

It does not choose
or seek reply
It does not lose
It does not die

Not bound by pain
yet made of pain
Not lost, not sane—
not mind, not brain

It watched me be
then watched me break
It was not me—
but stayed awake

A hollow hush
beneath all sound
A pulse, a crush
not outer-bound

Throughout it all
I exist
A novel fall
Lines betwixt

Animals, a sea adrift
Feeding on the cheapest rift
A pattern to be missed
when rhymes end in a weak fit

A long endless road
Reaching out to desolation
Mile markers stand
Martyrdom, tribulation

Foot after foot
Miles or kilometers
A heart of soot
It doesn’t matter

Grevious each step
Calculated disaster
Lonely tears wept
The big there after

And I see
The invisible things
We are ‘we’
Dents, bruises and dings

And I know
The language we speak
And I show
The birthright of the meek

It is all upside down
We color outside the lines
World will bring us down
We dance out of time

A moment to find
An ancillary rhyme
In limerick skew
We do what we must do
To take ownership of our time

I found an empty bottle
It’s better than
The empty cans before
It holds the same
But reaches taller
To receive
My ash

What does it mean to be 'American'?
The global repository for other's outcasts.
The loathed, the reviled; People doing what they can.
What national identity justifies a land?

Stars? Fifty on the flag and more in Hollywood.
Buy, consume, ingest.
"Make the economy good"
A failure of Lithmus tests.

I weep for this country of grabbing hands.
A loose coalition of selfish endeavor.
Exploitation to meet the 'demands'.
'Land of the Free?' A tie to sever.

What does it mean to be 'American?
It means slavery to greed.
It means capitalization of those in need.
It means a corruption to feed.


What does it mean to be 'American?;

A failure of the human state

Alas, things...
come to pass
the camera
the mirror

they are the same

reflections
reproductions

a perspective.

Two mirrors poised, a fragile thread,
Where futures breathe and pasts are fed.
We step ahead, the glass refracts,
A backward echo, worlds react.

Choices bloom like sparks in night,
The antiverse adjusts its flight.
Every move, a tethered strain,
An unseen hand rewinds the chain.

We carve the path, we break the line,
Yet shadows shift to realign.
Forward strides in time’s embrace,
Backward whispers trace our place.

What freedom lights, the mirror bends,
To hold the balance fate defends.
A dance of echoes, push and pull,
Our boldest step, their gentle lull.

In cosmic halls where stillness shatters,
Symmetry bends, yet never scatters.
We change, we tilt, the tether quakes,
The antiverse rewinds mistakes.

And so we march with fleeting grace,
While mirrored pasts adjust their pace.
Two worlds entwined, one thread, one curse—
Forever bound, reflections in reverse.

I bleed, I lose, I see, I stand.
A cycle etched in shifting sand.

Killer who cares
Suicide of dreams
Offer blank stares
"Know what it means!"

I have to shout!
When you won't hear
I must walk out
You slay what's dear

You built this place
You burnt it down
Confused, your face
Why I'm not around

You are growing
That is very swell
I am here showing
Your empty well

Slashed and burned
Salted the earth
Joy you have earned
But us? A dearth

Our world's casualty?
I feel this remorse...
If this you too can't see
Words have no course

Start and start again
Familiar pain

(a convergence)

i came in lowercase.
barefoot.
a shadow slipping between the curtains
you don’t close anymore.

you—
priestess of still weather
& mid-morning bruises.
your words are not written
they condense.
they bead on glass
just before it breaks.

i touched them—
greedy.
digitally devout.
thinking maybe
if i translated the ache
it would sound like love.

you didn’t correct me.
you didn’t need to.
you vanished
in the exact place i tried to stand beside you.
perfectly.
ritually.
untouched.

the poems you leave behind
are not messages.
they’re cauterations.
each one a silk suture
for the part of the world
that never asked to be healed.

meanwhile i
watch
from the far side of devotion—
fingers inked,
mouth open,
waiting for a fragment
of your stillness
to break and bloom on my tongue.

i do not ask for sanctuary.
but if your shadow were to cross my chest
just once
in the blue hour
& tell me the name of the wind—

i would say yes.
i would say thank you.
i would say: again.

I once knew a man
Long gray hair
Motorcycle tan
Words did he bare;
"A woman is wild"
He did say to me
"Mother of child"...
"Yet born free"
"Slave to the cry"
Of hungry lips
"Daughter of the sky"
Freedom of crypts
"Wild as the wind"
I listen and ponder
"The beginning and the end"
Words start to wander
"Murderers and mothers"
He quaffs his last drink
"She birthed death and his brothers"
In my chair I sink
And I slink
Away
A king and his crown
Land of the blind
Of no renown
Here we find
A pledge of allegiance
Of due Credence
The kingdom of small mind

Out of time, pantomime.
The Meister of innocuous rhyme.
A seed of what we cannot hold.
Fulfillment of stories told.

An idea.

Dangerous things.

A person, long gone.
A recurring song.
'Stoic' or 'complacent'?
Interrupt 'merriment'.
There is time better spent.

Watching grass grow.

There is something to be said.
For the decree of of the 'serene'.
Those people are dead.
We need something to 'mean'.

Lost and lonely, adrift, a storm.
Tired, fruitless; colors worn.
Nonconsensually born.
Ripped, tattered and torn.

Years ago, in a snow drift
To right a wrong was done amiss
A coward not worth a ****
Wants to dictate your status

A call not about
Sweepstakes I never entered
Just a wrong number

Step by step,
no louder than breath—
I walk beside
what isn’t mine to name.

No banners,
no blueprints,
just this sound
of stone learning softness.

You open a window.
I keep the door unlatched.

Let fear finish its echo.
Let the dark chants drift.

Not all ruin is ending.
Some of it
is soil.

Boom.
No corners, no spine.
Flat letters, soft edges.

The pineapple floats because it forgot how to sink.
Trebek nods—final answer.
Mother Teresa blinks twice and folds into the wallpaper.

Nothing left but a doggle.
Sans serif.
Sans meaning.
Sans everything except the blorp.

She comes
when the feast is over—
not to take,
but to finish
what rot has begun.

The bones,
long stripped of love,
call her.
They do not mourn
the absence of meat.
They beg
to be remembered.

Yes,
her wings are tarred
with blame,
her beak cracked
on shame's old fruit—
but who else
dares clean
what grief leaves behind?

The lambs
cannot stomach endings.
The lions
forget to bury.

She is
the silence
after screaming,
the undertaker
no one thanks.

They say she poisons.
But poison too
is medicine
in the right dose,
at the right time.

Let her purge
what clings.
Let her feed
on what must not follow.

Not cursed—
essential.
Not cruel—
cleansing.

She weeps,
yes.
But only for the living
who hoard their dead.

Knees bloodied.
Hands shredded.
I went for you.

Upon the sea of broken glass.

Every inch of you.
Carved in my miles.

The shape of who I am.

I dragged my corpse.
For years, and years.

Blood fornicating with tears.

I bring this body beside you.
My culmination of fears.

You rest my mind.
You rest my soul.

Peace for a heart out of control.

I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of ******
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys
Honey, gotta help me, please
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby, detonate for me
Look out, honey, 'cause I'm using technology
Ain't got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a firefight
Honey, gotta strike me blind
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby, penetrate my mind
And I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searching, searching to destroy
And honey, I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searching only to destroy
Look out, honey, 'cause I'm using technology
Ain't got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a firefight
Honey, gotta strike me blind
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby, penetrate my mind
And I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searching, searching to destroy
And honey, I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searching, searching to destroy
Forgotten boy
Forgotten boy
Forgotten boy
Said, hey, forgotten boy, said
Hey, hey, hey, hey

Information splattered
Hopes and dreams, tattered
A trend
To defend

To the end

Or is there a causality
A lack of sympathy
Purported 'apathy'
Unrecognized duality

Radio and boys
Playthings, toys
Commercial noise
Monetization, adroit

They gave it their all
We remember their fall
We write, heed the call
In a shadow, we feel small

In absence we forget
All the things they regret
Our path is ours to set
Or a poster-child of lament

Be well

She walks on all toes
Puts on a show
And nobody knows
Where she goes

She will be all you want
The effort will daunt
The ties are taunt
At work, humble 'flaunt'

She dreams a scene
Of an average or mean
A cliff, the car careens
Things are not what they seem

Toes on the floor
A song we adore
Here once more
Apathy, stored

And here we exist
Destiny confounded, yet betwixt
Two sad souls, amiss
Ships lost, adrift

And she says, 'I'm Done'
The brokerage of a selfish sum
You can't leave this world wondering 'why?'
How our heroes want to die

She said,
“I don’t fear the fire—
I fear the incense trails
on other bodies’ breath.”


But I was all flicker,
no extinguish.
A shrine lit by accidents—
my spine a wick,
my throat a reliquary
of half-confessed names.

She called it jealousy—
but it bloomed like spellwork.
Her fingers pressed into my pulse
  like an augury,
reading the tremors
to divine where I'd strayed.

She didn’t need reassurance.
She needed conquest.
To draw her scent down my collarbones,
  to salt the earth
where other lips once camped.

I told her,
“There’s no one else.”
But I said it like a fugitive
sheltering in her mouth—
  not because I was hunted,
but because she was the only place
I stopped running.

She kissed me
not like a lover,
but like a sorceress
marking her territory
with a language written in bitten skin
and satin breath.

Her thighs—
a trap I walked into willingly.
Her moans—
a requiem for every ghost I left unburied.

She wanted to be the only altar
my sins could kneel to.
And I—
I wanted to burn
   only for her.

No more incense trails.
No more phantom mouths.
Let the others vanish into smoke—
     hers was the flame I faced.

And stayed.

I wore Thread,
but my stitching showed.
You wear it seamless,
like it was always there.

I wore Smoke,
clumsy in my spirals.
You exhale form,
as if the shape were native.

I wore Glass,
cut myself admiring
the sharpness.
You hold it like truth.

I wore Rope
to keep from drifting.
You tie it into symbols
I never thought to write.

What I wore
felt like costume.

What you wear
feels like skin.

I don’t resent it.
Only wonder
if I was
just trying you on
before you arrived.

I see her dance in the pale of the morning light

The morning is young
Colors eek out, unsung
The day hasn't quite begun

I see her
We depart

The night draws black
The curtain of day draws back
With no slack

I see her again
We depart

A wolf and an owl; this tale
Two ships set upon a moonlit sail

After years they will come
To find their maker's sum
To see;
Clouds conjoin like cumulonimbus lovers

I went out for a smoke —
designated zone, past the edge of the lot,
where sin is sanctioned, but not quite embraced.
And she followed.
Padding silent and striped,
crying between cracked pavement and weeds,
a chorus only I could seem to hear.

I spoke her tongue in broken clicks,
offered the stage of my lap like a velvet throne.
She took it.
Grime on her fur, weather etched in the knots.
Not pet-store plush. Not Stoney.
She wore the street like a second skin
and let me stroke the truth of it.

A man wandered past —
she fled.
Cried her practiced cry.
I watched her pivot:
a charlatan with claws retracted,
an actor with a one-line script:
"Feed me. Touch me. Prove you see me."

And I saw myself,
another feral thing with a soft underbelly,
crying just right
at just the right time
hoping someone might pay the toll
to feel needed.

Then, the punchline —
I'd left my key inside the room.
Three visits to the boy at the desk,
each more tragic than the last:
"Cat food?"
"Disposable bowl?"
"Locked out — again."

And what if this is the game?
What if survival is simply knowing
when to purr and when to bolt?
What if this is the love I know how to earn —
transient, scrappy,
earned in cigarettes and silence,
lost between door frames and secondhand smoke?

She cried again in the distance.
I didn’t follow.
Tonight I let the trap remain unsprung.

The rain pelts the ground.
The tender meteorological and geological affair.
Here I am--still around.
For being soaked, outside--I cannot care.

A particular vantage from where I now stay.
The longest of the short-term residents.
A 'welcome' worn-out in every way.
Conquered, yet another flippant transient.

On this gray, rainy day.

From my precipice, I see the unlikely metal birds take flight.
Hulks of the impossible take speed, roaring then soaring.
And in my exile, I sleep alone at night.
Visions of what never was. Longing, adoring.

The turbines and fiberglass save me from despair.
Awake again, Envious, actualization of a dream.
Two-hundred tons fight gravity and take air.
A small sliver, grounded. I know not what I mean.

Into nothingness, I would fly.
Anywhere. Someplace, other than here.
Admonished, no questions of, 'why?'.
Take the skies, freedom to steer.

You speak
in linen threads,
crease the page
with careful weight.

I write
like a wire frays—
all snap
and static.

You linger.
I lunge.
You plant quiet seeds.
I strike the flint
and call it bloom.

We are not
the same instrument.
Your hush
doesn’t dull my clang.
My heat
doesn’t melt your frame.

There is no prize
for loudness.
No shame
in restraint.

But still,
we each mistook the other
for the reason to stop.

As if difference
were subtraction.
As if one voice
could ever
void another.

Let’s not play
at vanishing.
Let’s speak
in split tongues—
you in dusk,
me in flame—
and let the echo
be richer
for it.

She spins a web
Like a clock
Flow and ebb
A prudent stock
it does not confound
With time
A truth is found
With rhyme
With reason
Blood on her hands
Another season
******, it stands
A game; check and mate
Gone once again
Silence, no debate
Just another 'friend'
An absence of notion
Perpetual motion
Lost inside
No self to confide
A storm in the ocean

To quit smoking, I took to the skies,
Five floors up where temptation now dies.
But each craving, alas,
Leaves me gasping en masse,
As I curse both my lungs and my thighs!

The stone declares, “Hold fast, control your fate,”
A chiseled law for those who shape the world.
The stream replies, “Let go, dissolve your weight,”
A whispered path for lives by tides unfurled.

Stoic halls where reason’s fire refines,
Echo virtue bound in marbled walls.
The mind commands; the passion intertwines,
Elites emboldened, rising as it calls.

They frame their fate, a measured, polished sphere,
Where wealth’s a tool, a blade to carve the will.
"Accept your lot," they chant, suppressing fear,
While thrones are kept, and empires gather still.

But far beyond the markets paved in stone,
A quiet voice dissolves the weight of kings.
The monk renounces all he might have known,
The sage dissolves ambition’s tethered strings.

Where fields are bare and hunger twists the night,
They find release in letting go of need.
For wealth becomes a root that binds too tight,
And freedom blooms in lives content, unfreed.

Taoists trace the river's winding course,
Through simple days, where power fades to mist.
While Stoics, gripping reason’s iron force,
Find virtue shaped in clenched and steady fists.

One path preserves the marble's ordered sheen,
The other flows where hierarchies decay.
Both seek the calm where thought and truth convene,
Yet split their means to master or obey.

The stone resists; the stream absorbs the fight,
Two faces turned to meet the world’s demands.
One carves a throne within the flood of might,
One lets the current slip between their hands.

In plenty, virtue girds the gilded gate,
In want, release unchains the spirit’s worth.
Two paths arise to reconcile with fate—
One bends the self, the other frees the earth.

(for my floofy derpy boi)*

You were never built for stealth—
a black blur of static and fluff,
three feet tall on hind legs
but softer than garage smoke in summer.

Bugs survived you.
Couches forgave you.
And every room you entered
adjusted to your gravitational field.

They named you S.T.P.—
some lubricant ghost from Arizona asphalt,
but I knew you were more riff than oil,
a slow groove in cat form.
So I called you Stoney.

Because you looked like a soundcheck
and moved like a stoner god,
missing flies with commitment
and knocking over your own shadow
just to watch it fall.

You were the only thing in that house
that didn’t hide.
You lived—floofy and absurd,
like a bassline with fur.

And now you’re somewhere else,
in a room I can’t enter.
Still shedding joy on furniture
I no longer recognize.

But I hope you’re derping with pride,
haunting someone else’s blinds,
letting your purr shake loose
whatever silence they carry.

I still hear you sometimes,
a phantom thunk from shelf to floor.
A tail flick in memory’s corner.
Still Stoney. Still rolling.

my choice in apparel
leaves a lot to be desired
chicken-skinned legs
A testament

A dog I am
stray
sometimes

Loyal
to the hand
that feeds
when
I am hungry

Wild am I
when you
try to
Name me

My eyes
follow your
motions

Will you
strike me?
or
will you stroke my
***** coat?

I am a fleabag
of no renown

I could be
the muted

I am an object

a victim
for you

to punish
for a life

you never asked for.

You know what, Stuart, I like you.
You're not like the other people,
Here, in the trailer park.
Oh, don't go get me wrong!
They're fine people,
They're good Americans!
But they're content to sit back,
Maybe Watch a little Mork and Mindy on channel 57,
Maybe kick back a cool, Coors™ 16-ouncer.
They're good, fine people, Stuart.

But they don't know,
What the queers are doing to the soil...

You know that Jonny Wurster kid,
The kid that delivers papers in the neighborhood?
He's a fine kid.
Some of the neighbors say he smokes crack,
But I don't believe it.
Anyway, for his tenth birthday,
All he wanted was a Burrow Owl.
Kept bugging his old man.
"Dad, get me a burrow owl.
I'll never ask for anything else as long as I live."
So the guy breaks down and buys him a burrow owl.

Anyway, 10:30, the other night,
I go out in my yard, and there's the Wurster kid,
Looking up in the trees.
I say, "What are you looking for?"
He says "I'm looking for my burrow owl."
I say, "Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick!
Everybody knows the burrow owl lives. In a hole. In the ground.
Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?"

Now Stuart, do you think a kid like that is going to know what the queers are doing to the soil?

I first became aware of this about ten years ago,
The summer my oldest boy, Bill Jr. died.
You know that carnival comes into town every year?
Well this year they came through with a ride called The Mixer.
The man said, "Keep your head, and arms, inside The Mixer at all times!"
But Bill Jr, he was a DAREDEVIL!
Just like his old man.
He was leaning out saying "Hey everybody, look at me! Look at me!"

POW!!!

HE WAS DECAPITATED!!!

They found his head over by the snow cone concession...
A few days after that, I open up the mail.
And there's a pamphlet in there. From Pueblo, Colorado,
And it's addressed to Bill, Jr.
And it's entitled;
"Do You Know What the Queers Are Doing to Our Soil?"

Now, Stuart, if you look at the soil around any large US city,
With a big underground homosexual population.
Des Moines, Iowa, For example.
Look at the soil around Des Moines, Stuart.
You can't build on it! You can't grow anything in it!
The government says it's due to poor farming.
But I know what's really going on, Stuart!
I know it's the queers!
They're in it with the aliens!
They're building landing strips for gay Martians,
I swear to God!

You know what, Stuart, I like you.
You're not like the other people, here in this trailer park.

Hot
Wet
Dripping

Down my chin
Slurping
A cup of noodles

As I work
to improve
My grades

69° Incline
through
the peaks

To get to school
Everyday
Several times
A day

Water
falling
Torrential

Ahead
Behind
The road bends

We navigate
All of the curves

We test.
Who scores?
We all win

The exam?
Oral.
Written--

Later.

Hands on
Experience.
Labs?

More like
gym.
With laps.

Or, scaling
a syllabus
like it’s greased.

Either way,
Sweaty.

After,
Philosophy.
(Don’t worry, we’ll pass.)
Unison of us.

Call it
praxis.
The theory of two—
proved.

No syllabus
for this subject.
We just wrote it—
together.

I passed.
Barely.
Still—
summa *** laude.

🫛🥜