will my hands ever forget the habit of clawing my own wounds for warmth? i lay my vulnerably human skin on sun-dried poems written to breathe, breathe, breathe in — breathe through january's oppressive cold.


i breathe out a mouthful of asphyxiated flowers

Without so much as a burst of white light, without so much as a beclouded face, lingering — I want to go quietly now, like sawdust in a country road — like seafoam under a gray sunset.

My mind insists on leaving.

i am half of a sun-dried breath short of being sane. i sigh and my body bathes in a mouthful of bleeding, blue december — i can feel its colder, longer days stretching inside me.

i wish january comes here soon — in fresh, comforting, yellow warmth.

out there wafts jupiter's quiet grief as it loses its moons — does mine ever compare?

i toss my sighs into the thinnest air, like a brief lesson on how easy it is to vanish. how doable. how hard.

I’m stuck between a letter and a word
pushing towards the end of a line
in many a meaning, I’ve shamefully erred  
to make sense of a sentence and a rhyme
all this effort consumes me
It bleeds my heart to think
my soul is weighing heavy
till poetry pours out of me like ink
many a thought often slay me
I rewrite to find release
I’m lost, till you find me
crying out, “read me…please”

In this place poets care, share, and like
Encouraging each other along.
Lifting hearts up from deep trenches
of Ignorance, ill traditions, misconceptions and lies.
Drawing back curtains, just enough
to quench the masses ceastless wondering,
"There must be something more?!"

Your creative holy work has a great purpose!
Escorting the hopeful aspiriant to the place
Where the shadow dawns into explosive light!
Gently nudging, englightening cognizence of new awareness
As pieces of puzzlement merge into a glorious whole!

Dear Poets, you matter
Nevermore, doubt your place!!!
You are among the Inspiritors of the Earth!

i.
i carve the sadness out of my ribs like well-soaked marrows;
they fall off like a drunken secret —
a poem within a poem within a night-long quietude

that i disturb
like a child's stomping feet among the prairie dusk.

ii.
i carve a poem,
whole and out of my tightened throat
like a reverse magic trick,
but my hands break in casual irony.
i carve a word out of my tongue
but all it does is bleed.

iii.
i carve a feeling out of a callus but
my paper-skin is left too long under a lavender storm
to still write letters like these.

iv.
the sky cries to a drunken oblivion
as i unwrite this poem in indifference.
i let myself go, like that

dead houseplant drooping in corner of my room

and cheerless, quiescent sheets
watch to pass time.

like fallen flowers, i am
weary under the subtle noise of a rushing, babbling brook;
a death, quietly scenic
as i go back to dust.
i left my body rotting in a prairie paradise,
here it decays to gray
under the bruised indigo sky.

a ghost writes her poem in silence, in small, made-up synapses,
and the wind sweeps it away.

Here we are as unclaimed lights fall into the room. Here we are with better names, old letters peeling after the other. Here we are, now made of changing lights and indigo dreams. In the very last month and for the first time, I claim the body of an Egyptian lad and you are the sun god, washing over me like a brand new day. For the first time, December doesn’t feel like choking on poppy blossoms. For the first time, December is freeing as scattered pastel lights.

For the first time, my love, December rests on my skin — and it doesn’t hurt.