We are the things we so desperately desire be kept concealed:

the unsightly sensation of blood
painting our stained hands,

the sheer amount of hopelessness coursing inevitably
though the warren of our lifeless soul.

we are, what we are not.

I am just an image,
Like a flickering candle waiting to die
Like a glimpse of the sun on cloudy days
Like dead roses on my mother's grave
Like dried plants in the flower vase
Like the reflection in my lover's gaze.
I am just an image,
Like summer evenings spent on your porch
Like the first kiss that never happened
Like the scent of your perfume
Like the first time I saw you
Like one sided love and hopeless dreams
Like days that never end and nights that end too fast
Like thoughts that scare me
Like withered and dried sunflowers on my grave
Like my coffin's reflection in my mother's gaze
Like the life I wanted.
But at the end of the day
I am nothing at all.
I am just a  flickering candle waiting to die,
Just an image.
But all these memories that make
Me me are like fleeting winds
That pass away too quickly,
Sometimes too short for my liking.
Without all these moments, I am nothing
But just an image
In someone's eyes.

nineteen years,
238 months,
1,034 weeks,
7,238 days,
of my life.

i can compress my existence
into numbers.
lay them out like statistics.

tell people i am made of days, hours, minutes.

numbers.
they are easy.
finite.
simple.

but will i ever be able to translate my existence in words?

will i ever be able to speak such complexities?
or only count?

you take granted

of my existence a bit too much

in your rose-tinted eyes that

always look for the easy way out,

i am far too less, because i am always there,

like the air you breathe, never rare,

the rock that never changes, never bares.

you know i hate that part of you, i really do.

<>
it’s not even 6am, restless night, or wrestled night, ain’t much difference, see the **** geese on the water’s edge, I dutifully slip out of bed, awakening no one, dutifully slide in to my slip-on sneakers, grab the white umbrella next to the front door, dutifully, steadily, my first chore of the day, walk deliberately (and carefully) to make them get them get heck away, into the sound, and to cease polluting the grass where children may play…

standing at the waters edge, task finished, the sky commands examination, there is within the cumulus textured, multi-pastel, thick curdled pastiche cloud banks, overhanging the world as far as one can see, a substantive hole appearing in the sky revealing a blue heaven….what one believes, prefers should be, but what is, in fact,
not a…given and we are a but, partly cloudy day, a partly clouded observant person…

this reminds me that there are holes in all places, everywhere, in my disturbed sleep,  where I spend hours of triangulating in dreams, what I cannot pin down:

who I am, what I am, my purpose on earth, though I know where
I am, though not even, most critically, why I am…

is this a poem?

this thoughtful cursed query sits behind my eyes, frontally lobed, perpetually asking, judging me, these words, repetitiously heard,
one is not fooled,
it is a simple self-evaluation test, only an ask,
what are my justifications, ma raison d'être,
(reason for being) which is an amuse, for I discover

in French, ‘reason for being,’
is a feminine word,
(qui en Français,
c'est un mot féminin…)
and that makes me smile,
for I’m a woman-centric man

(I have no gender confusion,
this is not one of the holes
to which I refer)

perhaps it is, or, perhaps it is a rambunctious rambling of no worth, for no answers are obtained, given, deduced, and holes, skyward and inward are deep, none delimited by neither bottom or a top, just widening gaps and gapes in my existence…and answers are not
forthcoming…

<>

5:50am
Thursday July 18
Year Two Thousand and Twenty Four

A man sat on the bench next to me
We wedge ourselves in the armrest
with empty seats to our rights
A bottle of ***** in his hand,
A juicebox in mine

Our eyes tunnel onto the empty space
that envelopes this busy street
in possessed silence as though
we were sat in church pews,
facing the altar,
affixed in prayer.

Do pretend it is

normal, yes, very normal --


it ís, all of it.

‎    ‎        At
some        point,
             I
  felt           time
           just
                i
                c
                k
      ­          i
                n
                g

There is evidence

of what I had and did: signs --


of my existence.