i hide you under my skin
                                 like a war archive, -  a secret code,                    
is not hard at all, it comes naturally, like drawing, or
tyquando,
there is no dominance in the heartbeats market,
without rehearsing twice, they ripe like peaches,
waiting for the next wave to tear apart every cell,

*my love,
like an ingrown toenail , you are hiding under my skin, -
just because we use the same room,
                              hiding and escaping is not the same thing

Emily shmemily,
Emily Dickinson,
Recluse and poetess,
Rendered her rhyme

Idiosyncrously,
Much of her poetry
Reading most quizzically
Much of the time.

These days I’ve been looking to the past, to all the women before me. The revolutionaries whose words helped shape the way I see the world; the way I see nature; the way I see simple, ordinary pleasures of life become extraordinary.

These days I let my pen flow freely across the page. I look to all the women before me for guidance because I find myself afraid to speak my own truth. They teach me with words how to live presently, never looking back because there’s no room for mistakes to reside here.

These days we’re on a first name basis. With wide-eyed clarity, all the women before me allow a short glimpse of them as they once were: bright young things full of hope with a cigarette loosely balanced between faded red lips and hands that move deftly over a typewriter. The room is filled with cigarette smoke and incense. I can almost smell it now but the vision is gone with the wind.

These days I seek out: Zelda; Sylvia; Anne; Emily; Joan; Virginia. To all the women before me, I have found you. They’re no longer a black and white still photograph or a short film reel. In those moments, they stay forever young etched in time from decades ago.

These days I welcome you all in my waking dreams. To all the women before me, you are not lingering ghosts being passed by unseen. You are not remembered for how you left this earth but for how, after all this time, you still remain unchanging.

The Space—between two Seconds—
Is wider than the Sea—
Is smaller than an Atom—
Is all Eternity—

I slip into Forever
Between the tick and tock
Of ageless Time's forever unwinding
Chronoscopic Clock—

And there I see together—
In perfect Unity—
My Savior—ere and after—
His Birth and Calvary—

Because I could stop for Life—
She kindly stopped with me—
The carriage held not just ourselves
but all mortality.

We promptly drove; we knew of haste—
I didn't put away
my labour nor my leisure too
for Her civility.

We passed an industry where workers worked—
At midnight— in the room—
We passed the fields of gazing grain—
We passed a megamall—

Or rather— they passed us—
The cloud unhid a paintful ray—
For certain cotton made my clothes,
my plastics only pay—

We paused before a house that seemed
a miracle in the air—
Its use was scarcely visible:
A trick of tear and wear—

Since then— 'tis days and yet
feels longer than the aeon
we first surmised the turning sky
were toward Temporary.

Three poets
rot down a river bed
their body decomposing
except their head
still composing poetry
and recite being dead
where poems still flow
I’ve heard them read

one was caught
by the sun beam
flickering ripples of light

another fought
by a splashing bream
kicking up a fight

the third flowed down
the rapid stream
where water foams white

I, one day went fishing
and caught myself a fish
down the river swimming
quoting Tennyson
Dickinson and Finch
I set it free
because poetry is freeing
Not every line in the end
is a hook
three dead poets can testify
down by the brook

I want to ride upon those feathers
That cut through sightless, icy night
Or glisten in the sunbeams
And soar throughout the bright

I’d like to know just what she spoke of
When she heard it sings its tune
To hear the notes hang overhead
Ever present like the moon

I want to look within my soul
To see that same thing in its nest
That beautiful thing with feathers
Beneath my very chest

put me, lovingly, in a hearse, the way the dusk lays it shadows;
the night threatens to spill off my pores
trying to run from lonely places —
now, it bleeds all over me.
a sight of a mess.
a sight of horrors
and no napkins for wiping.
no napkins for grieving.
some just don't
make it out alive.

tell the daylight i cannot come.

put me, lovingly, in a hearse.
no, i am not made for burials —
it's for the ones left behind;
tell them all

i cannot come.

leave me, my sweet one, lying in this hearse,
the way the dusk leaves its shadows in the arms of the night.
sweet and fragile.
quiet and gone.
send me off, softly.
send me off, mourning.
send me off, for good.

tell the daylight i cannot come —

maybe i'll see her too, so soon.

— fray narte

"Hatred" is the thing with claws-

that slices through us all.

And leaves a wound without it healed-

then, captures for it's thrall.


Torn by it's embrace with pride.

It infects all that it leaves behind.

But love could be it's mend

that keeps our hearts enshrined.


I've seen it rip and tear lives-

and play with them like prey.

Yet, never, in experience

it suppresses love with it's pain.

** Based off an Emily Dickinson poem