I’m only a poet;
There’s nothing I know but
How to say what’s been said
Without a thought in my head.
I’m only a poet;
I know how to show what
We’ve seen, paint lies instead
Of novel truths unread.
I’m only a poet:
Hear the cry from my hut
Of this man who has bled
Tears borrowed from the dead.

striving, searching

meaning everywhere to behold
in a world hardly days old

diving, lurching

in a drowning sea of possibility
each drip a different plea

defending, upending

small bottles of water
preparing for the great slaughter

sending, contending

“mine is best!” i cry
and why?

Let not our humble minds admit
That we are better than the rest;
Lest we ourselves our fates forfeit
To those who jeer and **** and jest.
Let not our thinking hearts believe
Love must belong to fools like them;
Such noble strains as hearts must grieve:
Second to none; none to condemn.
Let not our wills be resolute,
Never able to bend or change;
Pity the strength of duller brutes.
So trust in life’s sordid exchange:
Though we will fall and surely die,
We too, one day, shall live to sigh.

when all the rooms are dim,
when all the crowds have thinned,
when all the thoughts that brimmed
have been by shadows pinned
against pride’s swollen rim,

when a quiet song is playing
from a radio relaying
static voices always saying
that never were they portraying
a world of only hurraying,

amid soft singing and late voices
are we not held against our choices?
yet in this the poet rejoices:

his soul’s words are yet unspoken;
no two works share the same tokens
through history’s line unbroken.

in my house there’s a restroom
it has a toilet, a tub, a mirror, a sink
it has two perfectly fine lights
but I am enamored by how the light from my phone
bounces in then out of the sink

then that mirror, what a sight
whose hair is that, curled and untidy
whose brow is that, furrowed and staring
at what?
my head is cocked, I must be confused
and so I keep on staring

my gaze falls to the not dry sink
droplets of water arranged in a spiral
pointing towards the drain
they must’ve been placed there by
some maniacal artist
such a thirsty drain

though photons there bounce about
showing me myself
I think I’d rather
live a little? maybe I’ll just fade away
be swallowed by a drain, and sink
into void—this I’d rather

yet here I stay