If you could be quiet
hang your beliefs by the door
sit down beside this poem
that leans in
to whisper:
“right now at this very moment
even before I finish this sentence
someone is dying unjustly,
or hungry, or is not you—
privy to these squiggles
I form with my mouth,
because reading is as alien to them
as poverty is to you,
there is something terribly wrong
and absurd about this life.”


If you think about this too hard,
like I do…sometimes,
breathing becomes awkward.

For words full of crumbs,
from its seams.
Here is “grace”, full of lint
and “courage” and some thread
of “hint”
Here is “purpose”—
take the proffered “tender”
the bit that it fell with..

oh that is “breathe”

*take it.

ʘ ʘ

It is not a predatory glare
If I stare too long
If I peer beyond the orbs
you look out from
You see I wish to sea
this depth that is you
Knowing you are not this form
That sputters polite niceties
or spills venom echoed
from some second hand villain
you’ve read somewhere
from a book
from a song
from a movie
from these lands that contrived
your form, clay, mulch of evolution,
a scab, cast off skin,
wound of a pulsing stone.
This is NOT you,
just as these words are myself
more than this form shall ever contain me.
More than a giant pebble in a vast universe
cease to be itself without fire:
the sun.
More than a slim stalk of colors,
is not the fragrance:
a flower.
More than a flap of wings,
is not the flight:
a bird.

are hardly even there
and if they are
they mostly stare

If you give me a promise
however wrapped with earnest
and ribboned with bliss—
I shall think it’s sweet
but still insist,
*you keep it.

when you dream tonight
of doors
find the one
*marked by a secret
that cannot be read
but throbs
it is the very heart
of everything
awake
in
your sleep…
come in
find us.

If we were the kind
that does not abide battering
another
mind-heart-soul
into these futile rocks
of fate that lacks the faith
to fight back
and ward from its face
the blows of blatant truth
we should have recoiled
from such massacre
not walk into it
we should have said look:
this paradise of sweet
you offer will poison you as well
we should have pushed the plate away
from such mindless generous banquet
we should have recognized
what became of us
many mirrors ago
such love is a generous drowning
where even if only one chose to swim blind
still pulls the other
but such is not always the sight you hind—

my love today
I am going to be kind