I save humans
                in my collection
book of memories
                history of affection

I pick them out
                like fancy chocolates, carefully
I like the weird ones
                who will hop into my book, shyly

the humans I collect
                true one of a kind-collectibles
been found and loved before
                but not on pages quite so delectable

Small dogs on tube trains and
Cats with mashed noses
Wild flow'rs in pavements and
Wind scattered roses

Half-fallen French plaits and
Scuffs to inspect
Scruffy and fluffy, these
Things I collect

Neon marshmallows and
Old crumbs re-toasted
Personal messages
WhatsApp group posted

Unthought-through questions that
I can deflect
Curious, spurious
Things I collect

Daft ice cream flavours and
Not-quite-set jelly
Duvets on sick days with
Sofa and telly

Out-of-place objects and
Tales I project
Happy and scrappy, these
Things I collect

Rock collecting
Bug inspecting
Dance and music
Voice inflecting

In our wide space
Carve out your place
Let your heart sing
Do your own thing

Mountain running
Backyard sunning
Choose what you love
Make it stunning

In our wide space
Carve out your place
Let your heart sing
Do your own thing

Hatchet throwing
Garden growing
Keep on thriving
Never slowing

In our wide space
Carve out your place
Let your heart sing
Do your own thing

I think I tire of my brain
Thoughts keep racing around
From wondering I cannot refrain
I try to chain them to the ground

Will love you no matter what
It makes no sense
Each time you expertly cut
A hole through my thickest defense

The way you played me
A fiddle
Was too dumb to figure it out
I'll never understand your riddle
Only hypothesize what you think about

Looked at me
Those enigmatic eyes
The rest of the world faded away
Too bad 'hero' was a disguise
Off at the end of the day

The way lips smiled as wide as the moon
I would approach your side
Opened up my walls for you
In return emotions continued to hide

Stare sautered into my memory
A nostalgic chill I can't shake
Begged and cried a tragic plea
I still drown in endless blue ache

Hope
Home
So far from my sight
I give up finding my way back
Cannot navigate without light
I spin circles around a track

In soul lie pieces of my trust
Promises we tread upon
They'll rest forever
Collecting dust
To you I'm already gone

I enjoy collecting evidence of God
rush of a feeling that it’s all going to happen soon
I’d be a liar if I didn’t fess up
your eyes helped show how soon
love the old songs, like em, don’t belong to none
not afraid, are you? implore on
for everything, expect expanses wide as nothing
just as it has always been, drift with this smoke ribbon
into the dream called now is all

I collect sea shells listening to
the voices within, telling me
what I need to think....

But I'm fractured like every
one I listen too...

Hearing a sea of voice drowning
in the vocalization of self..
I listen in cracked shells listening
for the drowning voice of myself.

Your hands spell trouble--paradoxically,
in red bruises that swell and blue
veins that reach outward
past the skin,
searching for something fragile but intangible--like the song
of a rare bird or the color that a peach turns
one moment before ripeness--to cup in your hands
and then preserve
in the wooden box bolted down
underneath your bed--if only
you could figure out how to open it.

The box locks and unlocks
spontaneously
and you were never given a key.

Sometimes you hang from your bed
upside-down
and try to tease the box open with your eyes,
praying to the absent stars that your brain will fall
through to the top of your skull
and click open the lock with its flipped-over thoughts.

You wink at the lock and it winks back,
but does not reveal its contents
and only flirts with the idea of openness.

After a while you swing yourself upright and lie with open hands
until your palms’ little collection of colors and sounds floats toward the ceiling
in an exhale so quiet, it borders on silence.

And you close your eyes,
allowing the darkness to empty your mind
of its divine fullness.