It guards between unseen and understood,
shaped by pain and pleasure, holding
the instrument of artwood in one hand,
success and failure in another,
its significance is never shaped by
knowledge and fame, and
it never pours us rain, it needs
the sensitivity of an artist and
the hands of a craftsman to enter
it's unforeseeable beauty
it never comes too early and
it never comes too late, and if it comes,
it never comes to solve the puzzle,
it only blends the light and darkness,
it guards between unseen and understood,
receiving the elusive soothe, imagination
twisting its ordinary space midway.

Stella remembers when  
the Zeros flew thru her backyard
and she saw Pearl Harbor in flames,
blue bodies bouncing on the waves.

Afterward, welders melted
the steel of capsized destroyers
hoping to rescue any
upside down survivors.

Her Billy drafted six months before
would fly Wildcats in the Marshall Islands
and in the Coral Seas never losing a gunner.

At Midway he launched from the Enterprise,
into a fury of collapsing sea foam and mist
part of the 233 fighter planes of
the sleeping giant squadron
filed with a terrible resolve.

The Zero bullets ricocheted
around the open back cabin
and Billy heard the loud groan
and Mike fall asleep as he
flew  on through the fog
of exploding red mushrooms.

He returned safely home to Stella
wrapped in metals and the flag.
She knew from that day that
Zeros would darken her every sky.

In rock pools, tiny claws dual over colourful crowns
that were sent across the seas from the Gods.
The deadliest of gems sought for in crustacean kingdoms
like power.


Fish hide in bottles and swallow plastic shrimp,
while flotsam and jetsam decorate the shore;
toxic borders.


Albatross, guardian bird of the waters
we stopped looking up to you,
we stopped looking behind us to see if you were following
when we could fly higher, fly faster...
Jet power, metal wings, turbo engine.


Our good omens
Became measured.
Our superstitions
Became statistics.


I cry for all the canaries trapped in coal mines.
While we look for life on Mars
I feel dead on this ship,
but it's still floating, floating...

I am a person of almost and kind of.
I am a shadow of what I was
Hidden in the darkness of a past
Cast down by the light of the future.
This present of in-betweens
The liminal space in which I exist.
The here and there on the journey ahead.
I am the line between the points
The mystery before the solution
I am the median, the average, the midway
I am incomplete.
Pieces of a whole
unable to form the big picture.
This limbo of emotions
The neutral of positive and negative
Inactive, inert, insufficient.
This heart filled with grey
Longing to see through rose colored lenses
Paint my world with emotion.
Trade the silence for music.
To fit in the missing pieces.
But almost doesn’t offer solutions
And kind of doesn’t capture the horizon.

Midway- Surprise! We saw them
Coming from a mile away.
Japanese aircrafts and ships try and attack,
And they get their butts whooped!
And then we got the idea to island hop!

Hop to Iwo Jima- Slowly.... Slowly.... Don't scare it,
It's like a nest of bees!
And we got it! Two air bases captured
And one step closer to the mainland!
Japan may be fortified, but we
Have tons of muscle!

Hop to Okinawa- this one was a doozy...
The biggest amphibious battle of WWII,
And contained the most casualties! Pretty harsh.
Maybe you they shouldn't have attacked us in the firs place!
We only meant to invade and use the island as a
Springboard towards the mainland, but the
Battle took too long.
Just weeks after the fighting ended, Japan surrendered
And we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki!
We never got to invade...