"Hey, God, why has my life been such a disaster?"

"Are you judging it by your failures or your achievements?"

Not two decades yet,  
since the sun spat me into its glare,  
and already my head betrays me—  
six black locks, once fierce,  
gone,  
gone gray,  
gray as ash,  
gray as a lie,  
gray as the sigh  
of a self I can’t defy.

Serene are the stars
that lights the past
Timeless, a love
held close to the heart

no one’s eyes made me write—
my life did.
the things I’ve endured,
the family I never had,
the trauma I carry
turned me into a poet.

it forced the ink
out of my veins—
red, yet black,
like the blood
still coursing
through me.

I bleed onto paper
without a knife,
just wounds that never heal,
just pain that never
learns to stop.

it drains me dry—
and yet I stand,
barely.

begging to be taken,
begging to vanish,
to disappear
from a world
I was never meant
to be born in.

I sat,
spliff lit like a tiny sun in my hand,
and looked up.

To the stars,
to the void,
to the hush that hums behind silence.

And I asked —

In all of this,
this chaos and order,
this pain and pulse…

Am I not all that?

Wasn’t I born of stars?
A flicker from the great ignition,
dressed in skin,
asking questions fire once whispered to stone?

I’m not watching the universe —
I’m remembering it.
Living it.
I am it.

And you —
you reading this —
you are too.

I watch the reflections of colors
Reflected in your twinkling eyes
Your arms loose around her waist,
confident, not afraid to lose her.
We used to dance around each other
A flurry of worries and many sorrys
Too scared to upset one another
Or step on toes that had already been hurt before
The heat hasn’t left my heart
It sparks when you look my way
The warmth between my legs
is what I wish the most would go away
But here in this moment
There is no stoking the fire between you and I
I’m content just watching head tilted high
A couple humans watching the sky come alive.

threw it aside
thinking of course
a poem is never

as good as
it might have been,
though    ..

Shut up. I need you to shut up.

The lake is grinning. You can hear the lake
and its schemes, the umbra behind
all that mesmerizing blue.

Blue is color dead to itself. Blue is the cataract
called sky. Blue pretends while the infinite
animal runs naked running
its fingers round
the swell
of stars
that sweat
like oysters.
Ah.

You can’t drown in that blue. Now shush.
I hear the lake undress.

A mind  like a cathedral built out of ruins. Quiet, haunted, beautiful.
He's still walking its halls, lighting candles, naming ghosts.

He isn't healed. But he's aware. And in that awareness, there's a strange kind of peace.