The sadness in me is leaking out,
it’s on my foe’s hand, my friends’ arm,
I cried and I cry,
once again, those tears did not slip away.


It’s harder to breathe but you know this time- you’ll stay,
but you don’t want to.
Holding your breath in for 4 - 7 - 8 they said,
I held it in for like a minute and my body fights it-
but my body didn’t fight the chemical on the top floor,
or actually, it’s perfectly normal.
I am just a plumber who blames the leaking of the tank,
when I am the one who broke the taps,
leaking all the sadness,
splashing the blue on everyone who comes close and closer,
Blue and bluer.


The colour blue I painted is me asking for help,
silent scream, so loud- into people’s eardrums.
But somehow those who came near always got betrayed,
because I am a waste of time, a renegade, a ******* thing that fades,
even though I listen to everything they said-
but the voices in my head sang in unison
‘you are no good, the least you can do is be a nice friend to those helping hand but you’re still a needy ***** who only knows how to take but never give back’.
and I replied ‘Yeah maybe that’s true, maybe that’s right’
That’s why I should have left.


Because the truth is that I am incredibly selfish and guilty.
I am trapped between choking to death with those toxins
or splashing it out to a loved one.
At the last moment- when I was suffocating to death;
I realized that I am gonna die- I desperately begged for someone to come near
I begged them to say, to stay, not to be away.
At the same time, the voices in my head are louder
Using my mouth as a speaker,
Mouthing all the words I don’t know whether I meant to say.
Deepen into the core, choking on loved ones.


Yet again, I look at myself in despair.
Yet again, I said the same old sorry as I meant it but it means nothing.
Yet again, I crossed all the lines, I broke all the rules.
Yet again, I am blue because I hurt my close one, my closet one, my lifeline.


But in the end, what hurts me the most
is the fact that I am just another one of the bad friends,
bad employee,
bad daughter,
and also
a waste of
human being.
My intention was to survive and be good but in the end,
my action was
baseless,
useless,
worthless even.


To those who were painted with my blue,
I am sorry-
I tried but I am too full of sorrow.
I never meant to hurt you but still,
I did.
Didn’t mean to dump the whole bucket,
but you’re still wet
But rest assured that those will soonly dry,
no stains,
cos’ I shouldn’t stay.


I am deciding whether I stay or I stray,
Whether I fight or flight,
Whether I pray or I prey,
Whether I ride or rhyme,
Whether I live or laugh or love.
Hahaha, that’s too cringe.

Because
in order to live,
I must hold it in,
I must stop leaking the blue,

Because
in order to laugh,
I either find joy in my life,
or just look back at this pathetic so-called content.

Because in order to love,
I must leave.
Leaving this town,
press stop on the *******,
no more leaking the blues,
and rid me for good.

Because in order to continue this ride,
I must get better.
But here I am
rhyming the **** out of my feelings,
spraying the water that’s way too cold, it’s not chilling.

And nowadays, I pray for all of you now
because the wishes wouldn’t work for me
no more - I am too far.
I am a prey who prays and preys.

Lastly,
I am tired of the battle.
Thinking every day for a life
where I don’t have to fight
but it seems easier for me to flight.
Flight from all the circus,
the madness,
the_I-don’t-know-how-to-define or just call it life.
Flight from all of you,
my loved ones,
mon amies,
my best thing to ever happen to me
but have to bare me with a black dog that whispers my biggest insecurity


My biggest fear right now is that-
the sadness in me,
the sadness that is me.
The one that is eating me inside,
will crawl out,
eating up people I love.
Just to remind me I exist for no good,
to assure me to flight and to die.

This time, it’ll be for good.
This time, the tears will slip away.
and so will I.

I look out at my hometown,
And what is it I see?
I see a stranger,
Bearded and haggard,
Staring back at me.

Oh, my hometown,
So filled with cherished memories,
What happened to your pastures and your fields,
Your farms and your special feel?
Where I explored so deep in my formative years,
Never able to uncover all of your secrets.

Your fields are now filled,
With cookie-cutter suburbs, million-dollar home-o-ramas, and strip malls,
Your farms a distant memory,
Your pastures destroyed and paved over,
Parking for the urban refugee.

You were a place of mystery,
A home for 8 generations before me,
But now you are nothing but a hollowed-out husk,
Gutted for profit and a name.

The ones that leave us first,
Their uneven ground we ever tread.
Stumbling after each of them,
Wading through their wake.
But God forbid we take their path,
And fall hard upon such wasted life.
Fumbling for their left behinds,
Drowning in the same mistakes.

Tom Lefort - May 2023

i feel you in the dark
and i feel you in the candlelight.
i see you in the stars
and yet, i can never reach them.
you’re so close
yet so far
you dance all alone
outside the bar
by the place we first exchanged
eye contact
and i saw you in the embers of the street fires.
you gave me happiness
or even just a moment of contentment.
you gave me something tangible to feel
something genuine,
something actually real.
a figment of my imagination
you’ve become
in such short of time.
i miss the optimistic smile
that would
light up in your eyes
and i knew you felt the smoke arise
in my body
after the ravenous fire inside of me diminished.
i feel you as the curtain closes
as the locket i keep as a memorandum
shakes along with my morally stained hands.
i can’t keep a steady eye on the
realness of life.
it all fades into the blue
along with my rare smile.
i haven’t felt the wild wind pull my hair in
different directions.
are you even listening?
i haven’t seen the stars at night
only factory smoke in sight
and the dress you wore is ******
and so lonely.
i traverse through town
and always seem more bitter.
the ripped-up constitution of my
feeble institution
it just crumbles at my feet.
they can’t hear me when i breathe.
it’s as if the world is turning
into a frenzy
and i’m slowly
becoming more and more formidable.
they don’t want to knock upon my door
and they don’t want to fear me anymore.
yet i just want them to fear me more
than they ever have before.
i’m sick of finding solace in the ghost of you.
i’m sick of seeing my forcefulness multiply
into knives that stab
you from beneath your grave.
the dress you wore is ******
and so lonely.
can you teach me how to heal my wounds?
i already lost you,
i can’t lose myself.

Sitting with my father,
And a man I grew up regarding as an uncle,
Catching up and reminiscing of earlier days,
When they did something that made my heart break.

They both looked at an empty chair,
As if waiting for it to chime in,
A chair where a third man used to sit.

My father's smile grew slack,
The twinkle that was there snuffed out,
My uncle took a quick draw,
From both his cigarette and his beer,
Both sucker-punched by the old sting of grief,
Remembering their 3rd.

A mix of these two men,
The third use to be,
A man with an uproarious personality,
The kind of friend every man finds that he needs.

He was a kind soul,
A man to emulate,
Kindred to his fellows,
A rare quality you never see.

A confidant,
A sounding board,
A getaway driver,
A unique kind of breed.

They come to,
The moment shattered,
And they continue to speak.

i wish this was the last thing i would ever write for you. i just wanna move on, but i watched you walk across the dewy lawn and i felt empty inside. ghost town vibes. it hurts seeing you be the life of the party, the happy one, the “gets out of situations so easily cause she’s so pretty.” being friends with you was so amazing and i wish i didn’t take it for granite (granted apparently) back then.
cause now i’m the loser and ashamed that i didn’t say hi to you. now i ignore your every move as if i don’t even know who you are and nobody even knows that we knew each other or were, oh my gosh—friends. oh wait, forgot one word, or two. best friends forever. bffs. we drew in notebooks together, went to the book fair and found little friendship books and wrote in them. we were attached at the hip, so incredibly close. why did we lose that connection? you have so many **** friends and i have nothing against them, i just wish they would help bring back our friendship. and i am sick and tired (exhausted) of seeing you in the halls and looking the other way or up at the ceiling. i am embarrassed that it’s come to this. avoiding eye contact because i fear you hate me, cause God forbid, you send me a single message saying, “you know, i hate to admit it, but i miss you and i wanna start over.” but no. and perhaps i’m coming to full terms with that. i guess the contract is over and the summer sun has sunken into the fortress of the creepy night. i’m fine. it’s just- you had your car and i wished to ride in the front seat jamming out to music before school and having study halls together and making friends together and being friends forever. but it’s ok. i realized true friendship doesn’t exist. it’s all an in the moment thing. they’ll say they wanna be friends forever, but once you move from the ground to the sea, you’ll never wanna be dry again. and i get it. my lungs are drowning in the water, but i still don’t wanna climb out before it’s too late. i’m so sorry

That child,
seems to be reading to my old dog friend.

Can we teach a dog to read and see the significance
some men find in syllables unsaid?

In print,
Sibilant denture whistles, perk no ear
silent esses no ear can hear, un spoken esses essentially
signify nothing, simple noise.

But a good dog will respond to the slightest whistle, as if…
A sibyl said listen,
hear the wind enter the world once with
inspired expired whistling sound found in song

this way,
this is the way,

Say plain the sound of each sign.

Alpha Beta, Aleph Bet, Ayee Bee

See, these let words be saved as signals

Letters, let silent sounds hold meaning in

signs of sounds men can make,
Like
Ah. or baah, which certain ruminants make as well…

A man can say ah, and mean plain nothin'

and some dogs can too,
but when dogs say, ah, it's often

a yawn gone into a groan like a stretched out
awww as the back arches
backward and front paws stretch out.
Tail swishing slow sweeps
swirling dust mites in a shaft of morning light,

more wind than any butterfly wing or
humming bird wing could stir.

"Remember", his brown eyes say,
this posture always meant,
"let's do some fun,
go for a run,
follow a scent"

But then, another yawn
and a shake. a glance from those knowing eyes,

signifying, signing , if I am happy, he is, too.

A dog friend then punctuates, by curling down into
a black and white comma
with a bit of golden tail
covering the nose
twitiching ante

cipitating a chase that leads to this new place,
where new sounds can sound
insignificant,
dream time humms,
not worth the effort to hear,
since we are not going anywhere, today.

Ah, be, still.
Tomorrow is the myth.
My dog swears that's true.
Today, or never, and
never's fine. He Yawns.

old bayonet--
I wonder if one touched
my grandfather's body