We ran
From something
Unseen. We were
Two, a man and a woman  

River flowed red
He is steel. And her tears
Bullets. We are
Bayonets and gun barrels  

The earth flourished
With steel, straight statues
Of trees and undergrowth
A perennial memorial  

Buried, we were
Under the earth
Meant to last forever
Meant to simply be  

Red silence
Enveloped the world
My brothers...
Glided between the trees  

Creatures joined
Those of all kinds, prowl
Across the land
Around their brothers  

The earth split
We are the valleys. Gashes
Along the veins of the earth
Runs red like streams and fountains  

Wounds dried and flaking
Freely beasts roamed
Lands demarcated
Trampled, trodden  

We are echoes
Within the canyons. We stalk
Like spirits, like steel
Behind fervor, behind craze  

They lost
Time was forgotten
Time was reclaimed
Remade  

We do not know time
We do not sow
We do not reap
We do not see
We do not hear  

The world is never silent
But the underground is  

How would you feel
If you knew that
The world was hollow
Held up by rifles...

I bought a rabbit from a feed store
He was raised for meat
But I brought him home
And raised him for me
Not to eat but to keep

Part of me thinks that's just as cruel
Poor unwanted, little thing
Just happy to live in my house
He doesn't have the ability to see
How unnatural our friendship is

I didn't save him
But I didn't eat him
So he just exists without purpose
Kind of like me
I think I was also raised for meat

The clock exhales a trembling breath,
its pulse a shiver in the spine of time.
I wait,
unmoored in the ebb of minutes,
where silence holds the marrow of the night
and shadows braid themselves with longing.

The moon hangs, not as a goddess,
but as a seamstress,
stitching the veil of night with frayed intentions.
Each star—a pinprick in the fabric,
leaking a light too distant to warm.

I have heard the hymn of the ivy,
creeping on stone,
its whisper a litany of slow conquests,
its green, a defiance of winter’s gray.
And I wonder—
who will sing for me when my roots no longer hold?

Beneath my skin, rivers stall.
What was once a tempest
is now the measured drip
of something no longer daring to spill.
There is a violence in stillness,
in the way silence sharpens itself against my thoughts.

But let me tell you—
in the shadow of this unraveling,
I have made my peace
with the slow decay of mirrors,
with the fracturing of names.
The sparrow need not call itself a sparrow
to fly.

And when the end comes—
(oh, it is coming)
it will not be the roar of oceans folding into themselves,
nor the shattering of celestial harps.
It will be the sound
of a match extinguished in water,
the faint hiss
of something small,
forgotten,
forever.

Black dreams

Never scared me.

Kubin's mystical dreams mean nothing.

Obsidian woman,
She born of tempered glass,
And fine ash of great ejection.
What? I ask brought this upon you?
For you are as a blade
Yet are fragile as glass.
You boast a sun-kissed face as ash
And a kind forbearance as God.
A beauty, I declare,
A favored dark jewel
Yet this stone I will never hold.
Instead, you carved yourself a name
Jewel of safí̱neia,
Who hones my cornerstone.

She peeled her oranges today,
actually for years,
but this isn’t about oranges.

She holds things together,
piece by piece, peel by peel,
grown used to her hands
and the strength they reveal,
but this isn’t about oranges.

It feels strange when another
reaches out, offers to peel,
to see past the layers,
the parts that are real,
but this isn’t about oranges.

She learns self-reliance,
but maybe it’s true,
that letting someone help
doesn’t make her less, but new,
and again, this isn’t about oranges.

So here’s to the balance,
to peeling her own,
yet knowing it’s okay
not to do it alone.

Because, in the end,
this isn’t just about oranges.

rotten food in the fridge
left in a little too long
the maggots are consuming
it from the inside out

the clock seems to tick slowly
an illusion of time
slowly going quickly
and soon i’m out of luck

the days pass by
as i lay in the fridge
quickly going moldy
day by day

When I had my sight on you,
it was as good a currency
I spent on my first dance.  
There was an element of reluctance,
my feet glued to the floor,
my body, a deflated balloon
chasing after its soul.
You were more than a plant
draped in petals and perfumed with seasons of romance,
you were a garden of light,
enticing weary butterflies
of this world.
So when I pawned enough courage
to pluck your name out of those ripe lips,
I locked it away
so I could relish rolling my tongue
and tapping my teeth
and watching my spirit twirl to its syllables
saying it as if I were singing.
Driven by madness,

Bewitched with confusion,
Feverish with longing
Come after the quaint question,
“Am I beautiful?”
Or
“Does this dress suit me?”
Or
“How do I look?”
—am I ever worthy to answer such divine a question?

Not that there is a scarcity of vocabulary encased in dictionaries and thesaurus,
but perhaps the definition undermines the word.
For if I could,
if permitted to be brazen
and to be bold
to cross the border
defining our reality,
your beauty
has invented every beautiful thing
known to me.

Every poem,
on paper penned,
on spoken stage, uttered
on music, winged;
Every song on battlefield charged,
until the mind is intoxicated,
into ears poured
—beautiful is not worthy an adjective to sit or stand before your name.

You are to me,
what blues is to King and Clapton,
what a ring is to Sméagol,
what the truth is to Neo,
what sea is to a fish,
perhaps a hiding place
perhaps it is a galaxy of their own,
though in the end,
bare nakedly, you are the meaning.

“Are you beautiful?”
Yes, beyond what my eyes could touch.

We are all like wildflowers. We fall to the ground as seeds, some are swept away without a chance, while others begin to germinate and sprout after some time in utter darkness, enveloped with earth for what must feel like an eternity.

We begin to form ourselves into the ideal shape under ideal conditions, and even under conditions which would more than likely do us in, by the grace of the universe and process itself.

We gather up sunlight as the manifestation of motivation and courage, and we begin to satiate our spirits with unspoken gratitude, which spills over into joy and laughter, which we commit to our subconscious memory, and we let it build us up into stronger, more beautiful versions of our truest selves.

But this inertia and energy only lasts so long, until we are buffeted by the harsh winds of unfortunate events and circumstances, until we require rejuvenation from the universe and from the very depths of our subconscious once again. There is a waiting period for this to occur, which I would call depression. When we feel like it’s not worth the effort, when we feel like giving up or not pushing ourselves to our limits, or even when we feel like just not so much as enjoying the passing moment, we must gain strength from outside of ourselves at times when we feel we do not have what it takes to keep pushing.

The beauty and magnificence of life is ultimately contagious, and when we realize that bad times breed good times, we realize that good times ultimately spill over into inevitable bad times. The Yin and Yang is a good example of this. “As above, so below, as within, so without.”-The Emerald Tablets.

When we reach our peak, our flowering stage in life, we are so beautiful and full of radiance, and everyone around us thinks so too. That’s what I mean when I say the beauty and magnificence of life are ultimately contagious, but the same can be said for negativity, doubt, hatred, self loathing, fear, pessimism, and the false idea that life is only to be enjoyed by the rich, and that there’s no hope for the average individual. These thought patterns will hold you hostage, they will break you down, and they will make you virtually unable to process any sort of joy regarding this incredible experience we call life.

The only way to break the cycle of negative thoughts, is to take a step back and practice gratitude and awe for the absolutely insane process of our evolution, and our growth as a species, our growth as wildflowers, who are strewn about the countryside basking in the sunlight, swaying in the breeze like our very emotional states often do. We are a thing of untold majesty, the true personification of all that is, and when we finally say goodbye to our oldest and closest friend, Gaia herself, the planet, the life cycle, our temporary blip in the history of mankind, we can we can hear her laughing, giggling like a young girl at the antics of a playful kitten, telling us that this life had not gone to waste, and that our memories and energy will live on, and that all of us, no matter how seemingly insignificant, have made an indescribably positive impact on the world around us, and that the world was made infinitely better because we were here. We, the wildflowers, are here to give people joy, and to see the beauty in us, and ultimately all around us.