The Conjunction Holds
(with a verb in the wings)

Not the leap,
but the plank between banks—
its grain remembering
both shores.

Not the shout,
but the breath that lets
two voices
share one lung.

I am and,
I am but,
I am although—
the quiet ligature
that keeps the torn cloth
from drifting apart.

The verb would run,
would strike,
would bloom—
but I stay,
a hinge in the weather,
turning both ways at once.

Here,
in the seam’s small country,
I keep the quarrel and the kiss
in the same sentence,
and call it
poem.





.

éclairs — bolts
sleek barrels
brimming with custard resolve
washers —
flat wafers of caramel snap
kissed round by a cutter’s rim
slid between chew and cream
to keep the whole from
unravelling





.

“Foment in the Firmament”


There is a stirring above the stillness,
a slow‑brewed unrest
braiding itself into the blue.

Cloud‑veins thicken,
their edges bruised with light,
and the air tastes of iron and distance.

Somewhere, a wind rehearses its entrance,
curling through the rafters of the sky,
its breath warm with the scent of rain not yet born.

Birds wheel lower,
their wings cutting arcs in the charged flush,
as if tracing the script of what is coming.

The sun, half‑veiled,
becomes a coin passed from palm to palm
in a game no one admits to playing.

And I stand beneath it all,
feeling the pulse of that high conspiracy —
the foment in the firmament —
gathering its syllables,
ready to speak in thunder.




.

Stay with Me

Your touch is arson in my bones
Melting steel, surrendering throne
Choose: my chaos or endless night
Either way, love
— you’re my excruciating light






.

We’ve watched the tide turn,
not with the grace of moon‑drawn water,
but in a churn of noise that drowns the shoreline.

Once, the air here was salt‑bright with exchange;
now it’s thick with echoes of the same refrain.

We keep to the edges,
guarding the memory of what it felt like
when a single, well‑placed word
could still command the room.





.

poems for money,
no kicks for free —
ink on the counter,
pulse on a fee.
y ‘want the spark?
then tip the key.
poetry’s no money-tree