I’m told that I’m a dream produced
by time and space and DNA, that’s organized in such a way
that chemistry and physics are enough to make it dream,
so let’s accept that really there’s no ghost in the machine.

But still it seems that I exist, and isn’t it amazing dreams
can interact with other dreams,
do calculus and higher math,
gaze at the stars, make art, make love,
investigate it all and find
we’re just another accident of chemistry and space and time.

The mason works the living stone
to shape it for its slotted place.
Pale flakes of rock fly as he hones
it to a rough-hewn sandstone face.

With chisel and mallet in granite hands
and flinty grey eyes to plumb the line,
the rock gives way in grains of sand.
He chips and flicks one blow at a time.

His fingers trace each pit and dell
that he’d worked in with his iron tools,
while nostrils fill with chalky smell —
light dust clouds through his workshop move.

As one by one his blocks are laid
by his apprentice at his side
to fill the role for which they’re made:
they’ll be joined in one more arch of pride.

More arches form as months move past
then building up to many a year:
They mark the time of a life well cast,
his mason’s mark left on each stone sheer.

Each arch arises, pointing high
to the master mason of us all,
who carves and fits in his workshop sky —
by shaping, marking us in his wall.

Then piece by piece, the church takes shape
while grains of sand from worked stones fall;
The mason, now old, his final finial makes
as falling sand an hourglass recalls.

And here I stand in centuries hence
to spot the mason’s mark he left behind,
his arches pointing upwards whence
the mason built his final shrine.

there is still time
to remember myself,
the happiest hours, the blooming trees.
there is still time to be someone.
there is still time to share my heart.
there is still time to remember who i was
before the isolation like a vine,
tied me up and kept me stranded.
there is no more of a reason to keep distress in my bed,
the villain disguised as an ally.
there is still time to believe and believe
as if the world never left me naked
and spiteful.
there is still time to give myself chances.
there is still time left to live even amidst the pressure.
there is still time to forgive,
there is still time to believe in myself
of all things.

We sat on the stairs and watched it all,
Our own personal illegal space.
Slow, mellow strums, our hearts beat
Silently, curbing words we’ll never say.

Our cameras stared and captured it all,
The stage from the same ledge, same lens,
You left first because I couldn't speak your tense.

But I can't be speaking.
I saw the signs—the cracks in her facade, the vacant stares, the trembling hands. I noticed, but I said nothing.
Was it fear? Ignorance? Or the hope someone else would step in?
She fought alone, and for a moment, she won. But the weight came crashing back.
Caught in the Nick of time. Or maybe too late.
Now we ask why, though we know the answer. We didn’t ask the right questions. And I’m left wondering if I’ll ever speak when it matters most.

a couple of glasses of wine,
taylor on the tv,
"imgonnagetyouback"
the words felt like prophecy;
so i texted you.

we wandered the half-sleeping town till sunrise,
its streets humming with secrets,
its shadows hiding what shouldn’t be seen.
we talked,
we laughed,
we kissed until words were unnecessary.

your hands, your lips, your fingers
they mapped me like forbidden territory,
they claimed me,
traced every inch of who I am,
left me marked,
burning with the memory of you.

i was there
when you made me your own,
when you carved your name into my skin.
this is the season of illicit affairs,
where love is borrowed,
and guilt blooms like a bruise on a skin.

did you slip back into her arms
as if nothing happened,
is she a fragile thing you couldn’t bear to break?
did you carry me with you,
a ghost only you could feel?

People ask how scientists know it’s truly fall,
And people tell them about the Fall equinox.
That we know it’s Fall when the sun dips below the horizon,
On both halves of the globe.
That the coming of fall is when the people in the southern side of the earth,
Have spring.

That is how science knows it’s fall,
But how do we know the date, the hour?
I could tell you when fall is here,
But it won't be down to the minute.
I know fall has come when the winds turn cold,
And the leaves of the oak trees are bleeding.
When the streets are empty of the children playing,
When I sit on a fallen birch log on the beach,
Staring at the water, but I’m shivering in a flannel,
And the water is frozen over.
When i come home and the tea kettle is going,
But all the summer lemon tea is put away.
Little changes in these things, they will lead me astray.

The coming of fall.

That’s how I know the fall is coming,
Not by watching the hours of my days.
Not based on when the sun rises in Iran,
But by the feel of the winds,
But by the blood of the leaves.
And by the tears that have fallen,
On these empty streets.

The Fall Of Twenty-Twenty Four.

Time
The present carries you along, the past
Unwinds behind, time’s arrow
Keeps the future up ahead.  
That’s how it’s always been, but now
The present slips away, leaves the future in the past,
  and disappears.
You’d follow but the present’s gone, moved on,
Left you behind,
In a future that’s already out of date,
But still enough to knock you down.

Change
Things change without you—
What seemed stable disappears,
Your horizon shrinks to nothing,
The future surrounds you,
And everything is stranger than you imagined.

Keeping up
You hesitate along the way,
Say that’s enough to this and that
But keep up with the rest,
Until you say to what remains
This far but no farther
This much but no more.
            
Memory        
When asked—
You find your reasons are in the past,
With gaps and pages missing,      
And certainties uncertain,
Planets in motion, pulled loose from their stars,
Leave you in silence.