The weight of all I’ve been carrying is crushing me
stones I’ve put on my own chest
mortared into place with the dross
of lies and failures and regret
pebbles in my shoes
sand in my lungs

Is my struggle my strength?

When I put those stones down
when I go barefoot and no longer wheeze
will I be strong enough to face what comes next?

Or will my no longer blockaded quarry heart wither in the light?

When a white flag is covered in blood,
it looks like a call to arms.

Maybe no one in your life rallies for you,
but do you rally for you?

So bleed on that white flag;
call yourself to arms.

I get sadder than my usual sad
I get nervous-er than my usual nervous
I tremble like… a sad nervous person

When I’m anxious, the poetry abandons me
Just like I want to abandon me
My feet stick but my head floats

U p & a w a y
See, there she goes, that girl
Her head always in the ****** clouds

We are waiting for Godot.

I am Godot, there is no Godot,
We are all Godot, Godot is each of the players,
Godot is the box of the stage,
Is the audience, the usher, the curtain.

Does Godot have a white beard?
Does Godot own sheep and goats, have a hayloft?
What are you going to ask Godot?
Oh, if the boys are his sons or changelings?

We are waiting for Godot.

anger grief resignation hopelessness dread
i choke on feelings stew
clumsy i lift the ladle
i shove another mouthful in
here hungry monster choke faster

I don't cover my laptop camera
Let them see this fishbowl life
At least someone could be seeing

Are you in there? Are you entertained?
Are you a ghost in the machine?
Maybe you're FBI or NSA?

Help, I've taken myself hostage
I need a negotiator  or a ******
Look just please look **** you look

They used to burn people like me alive, stone them, drown them, leave them for the bears.
But you don't need to worry.
I burned my flesh to ash long ago, buried those bones under a cairn with no marker, my lungs have been screaming since I was born and now the water is a relief; I am the bear, mauling itself.
Would anyone like a bearskin rug?
Here, I won't be needing this anymore.
Take it.
Take it.
Please

my entire life
has been one long unread red
suicide letter

If all the corks from all the bottles of wine I’ve drunk
were to fall into my lap I’d promptly be buried
and likely suffocate.

If in their crates all the bottles of wine I’ve drunk
were to appear clean and unbroken
I could build a house.

If corks and bottles and crates were not lost to me
floor mat sea glass bricolage
I could scrape the sky.

If we could compress
What we carry, page by page
For origami

Flaw, fear, hope, anger
Strung up as ten thousand crane
Kami no kami

Blood deckle edges
Papercut decoration
Fidget, crease, balance

Void telling highlight
Strong, vulnerable, reveal
Awe when you step back

See these cranes in flight
Spread across the vast expanse
The skies of yourselves

You, in the corner,
Pink shirt, emboldened mouth
Venerable, holy truths unveiled
Art, love, written upon
Pages of you, he
You write on me
I find you transcendental
Phosphorous breath limns October
Air wreathed to flame
By words in air
By ink on linen
Transformation, the long road
The distance of feet
The window bay between
You and I, enthroned
Your words, my ribs

Perhaps you think to yourself:

“If only I could leave
this world for another one,
where I haven’t made mistakes,
where I’m not so alone,
where he/she/they still might live…”

I too think such things.

But mind the gap, friend.
Would you leave everything behind?
What would you learn there?
What wouldn’t you learn there?
What if you can’t return?

Worse perhaps if you can.

You do not cut the heads off a hydra, lest they should split, and two strike in place of one, no, learn from Hercules.

You burn the body and salt the bones and tar the earth where it fell.

You hunt the monster as a hatchling, route it out with dogs like a boar from the thicket before it can mature.

And if those who are the evil, hiding behind less monstrous faces, have hidden the torches and salt, slain the bloodhounds?

If heroes have been outlawed, the knowledge of ******* the monsters written out of history, truth become legend and legend lost?

A new generation of heroes will rise, from the most humble seeds, germinating under Promethean fire, and rediscover the old ways.

A maid will take her hair and braid it, cut if off and make it tinder for a torch, gather from her tears their salt, offer the strength of her arms.

An armorer, crippled, will limp on, and craft spears to heckle the beast, and a shepherd will make of the sheepdog a war hound to protect the flock.

Do you hear the earth pushing up, the shears and the lamentations, the blacksmith anvil ring, the baying on the moors?

You will.

It's easy to take back words
That someone has yet to read
When you put them down on
Pixelated screens rather than on paper.

Paper keeps the marks, absorbs them
And no matter the eraser kisses
They remain, shadowed, a palimpsest, waiting
Betraying you if anyone really looks.  

The backspace button, though, my friend
Snuffs out incriminating words, murders them,
And I envy such simple magic,
Despairing it cannot delete my mind.

It fails me, the weight remaining
Ill balanced, to sprawl across vertebrae,
In the hollows of my collarbones,
Beneath my tongue, behind my teeth.

All the things I cannot say,
Not in my own gray matter,
Not allowed in voice or print,
That flèche gauche waits, ever hungry.

Every day is enough. Isn't it?

What cruelty it is
for a guardian angel
to be intangible chaperone.

How are they to
reach out and soothe
their wounded lonely charge?

No gentle guiding hand
on nape of neck,
wings to blanket embraces.

What good is a
soul meet soul communion
when I am hollow?

Ever since I was a child,
I have held near and dear
Fairy tales and whispers of More
Not often faithful belief but joy,
Wonder, lessons of morality mental pearls
That I might string, lively, worrybeads,
Which turn, fixed, Princess Periezade's grief,
No healing waters for transformed princes,
For the Magic has gone out.

It is no wonder that Pandora
In that box containing all plagues
Held too Hope, broken-winged, fragile, dull
Worst of all evils, to Nietzsche,
I understand him much better now,
It does truly prolong the torment,
The taunting cruelty that some tomorrow
May be better, but not tonight  
For the Magic has gone out.

The fresh-faced youth, dagger on hip,
is possessed of many secrets.

Spy, chameleon, a wolf in sheep’s clothing,
accustomed to the shadows,
indeed, he is not a ‘he’ at all,
but a woman in service to her dauphin.

The drape of her shirt and breeches
hint at her curves, her muscle,
the delicate arch of her feet
in her red court shoes
long and well suited to
slipping across foreign marble
to do what she must.

She has played the man-at-war,
the page boy and the cupbearer,
the mistress and the catamite,
in the bed of men and women both,
their pillow talk treason carried away
while she still bears their bruises and love bites.  

Servant of the state, the empire,
her lord and her god-
she is Madonna, Joan of Arc,
a thousand women unnamed,
her king’s blade, steel under velvet.

It is a rumble-of-steel sky day
Until a blue shot reminds me
The sun is always rising somewhere