SPRING 2025
This Spring felt exactly the right size to me. Not too drawn out, but definitely not a blur. I recall a few of my friends saying to me in so many words: "We don't have spring here; it's already summer," to which I silently disagreed, maybe even judged them a bit for not appreciating Earth's shaking loose from Winter more. Usually sometime around May, the weather stays consistently warm enough that the general public just jumps straight to calling it "Summer"— which has always rubbed me the wrong way.
Anyway, the poems: still mostly heady wordplay, many of my usual isms for sure. "American Spirits", inspired loosely by a short story of the same name by Susan Sontag, perhaps being the most obtuse; "Some Body", inspired by Borges' story "Three Versions of Judas", the most interesting conceptually to me; "5:04:2025" , a prayer written after going into the studio to record more original music, is more or less my current working model of reality. My favorite poem from this season, however, is probably "5:26:2025". It's a little experimental and embarrassingly honest— which is the kind of poem I am always secretly hoping to write.
This summer, I want to take things slo-o-o-o-w. Believe it or not, I can feel myself slo-o-owly (but surely!) letting go of the need to always have something to say, prove; after twenty-four years and counting on this Earth, I am finally starting to understand the wisdom in simply enjoying how life unfolds, in the "farmer's luck".
My body and mind are changing in ways I couldn't have even conceived of a few years ago— and it's awesome. These days I'm continually humbled by the complexity of things, and by the profound simplicity, the peace that comes with just letting that complexity be. This prefrontal cortex development stuff is no joke, man! I wonder what will happen next!
Until then,
—St.
3:20:2025
The surrounding context
Makes it feel much less heroic somehow,
Colder tones strike it differently,
And it looks like an animal in a zoo:
Nothing outright, upright,
Just a tad uncomfortable,
The starkness of the wood
Surrounded by black
Wires, black
Cables, black
Curtains.
It sounds the same, though:
Even through the voicing static,
Through that 4th or 5th beer,
That tone rings, sighs,
Aches ever-clear,
And I dance the all the same.
3:21:2025
I beat the horizon
To the punch
Line, punch
In at about 6:09,
Just before the sun
Spills over towards the
“I'm doin’ just fine;
how are you?” ‘s—
And I know
Beyond night's sprawling
Shadow my waking dreams
Call Doubt—
That if I had to choose
It all again, I'd lose
My voice from shouting,
Sing my bluesy joys
To any new sun sprouting,
Take my next breath
On a hunch
And punch myself out
Just before God
Came to visit for lunch!
3:21:2025
Do you really want to be seen
As you are?
Because that is no longer a matter
Of acceptance, you know:
It is a matter
Of Matter, which has
No time for your
Humdrum narratives.
Some say love
Is a verb, but this fails
to capture the price of
Such a freedom—
And any freedom that can
Come at a cost
Must not be the paradox
You wish it could be.
Do you really want to be seen
As you are?
Because that is no more flattering
Than vomit;
there's a frustrating reason
Our organs all live
In the dark,
And they have no face
But the one that light
Spares them.
Some say love
Is the way that we
Take hours and share them,
But any change without
Must happen within you
In tandem, and there lie the three.
Do you really want to be seen
As you are?
Because this of course means
As you are
So are we,
And the terror
That knowing the scope
Which sightseeing
Incurs just might not
Be the worth that
I once hoped you were;
Some say love
Is the hope
That we scrape
From the surefireproof
That I tried to ignore
For as long as I could—
But the word proves itself
Right along with the score
That I never will see
Or be seen.
Bothering
3:23:2025
(It's a diorama of itself
The second you put thought to it—
So don't even bother!)
Petals of confetti,
Chirp-chatter,
Waves of wind through newborn leaves,
The pinkest tree you've ever seen
Made pinker by those silver blues
Who string the clouds along, the song
That old trees heed, still barren:
Another frost is coming.
But the young ones, green,
Sprout eagerly
For birds and bees to share in,
Therein setting the scene
Regardless of whatever “winter”
Is or means.
Their secret weapon, Ignorance,
Perfumes my early spirit
Long before my eyes and ears
Could ever hope
To even hear it;
A diorama of itself,
And much, to me, at least,
An honor.
Not-Sky
3:24:2025
The limbs so starkly Not-Sky
That you'd almost be tempted
To hate them, were it not
For the fact that whenever
You close your eyes, they
Become upside-down tendrils
Of lightning. And it always
Manages to surprise you, how they
Squeak and creak like old furniture
(And aren't trees in the knees
Just a type of old furniture?),
Swaying much more daringly
Than you'd ever imagine
Anything so tall would be;
They explore the air so blamelessly,
Want latticing sunlight,
They want what they are so much so
That God just can't resist letting them be,
They tell me
That I am this way, too: who I am
Is my Way, and they
Tell me to just get along with
The wanting and being
And the rest will fill in my gaps
Like white sky, and the want
That I carry to be my own way
More than answers the question of why,
And that when we verb-die,
We might finally see
All those negative images
Piling up from the eyes’
Other side.
3:26:2025
Oh, I get another one!
:
The words my brain,
During those brief moments
When I stop
Wringing it out so much,
Let it roll over on its side a bit,
Bump up against my skull,
Press its face against the glass,
Wave hello to the hands,
To the glands, to the sweat
And the tears and the strands
Of wild hair, to the dreams
And the schemes which have
No intent out there,
To the scaring, the scared,
To that beauty unimpaired,
To the scene which plays outward,
Inward, onward, about,
These are the words that my brain
Stammers out:
Oh, I get another one!
I wonder what that's about!
3:28:2025
In between each word,
Sentence, breath,
Lies a funeral of deaths:
That sacrificial wheel,
The birth of life’s new deal.
It feels a bit like stealing, doesn't it?
I'm getting away
with something! (although
I'm not quite sure what.)
Even still, the atoms
Can't help but
To play with each other
Just a little while longer;
Their probability, apparently,
Spikes to infinity
Whenever my lungs reach for them.
Until then, I suppose they might dream
Up new compounds to be,
Dream up eyes
In their wanting to see,
Getting lost in their own alchemy,
Splitting costs with the
Deaths in between.
Leave a Message
3:29:2025
Your voice through the phone
Is ninety-two years old:
Jubilant, decorated as a soldier's,
Delicate as lace; you tell me
You can't hear me,
But you love me, you love me
And two years ago,
I knew I'd never see you again, cried
In that Cracker Barrel parking lot
More than any parking lot in the world
Has ever seen. Grief,
A Fate worse than death, it seems to me,
Clawing at me evergreen, carving me out
of your legacy's chain-linked legacy,
its impressions, directionless discretions
Closing in on my memories:
It's a glorious day! (On the trees)
I love you with all of my gizzard!
I tell the children, Grandma,
To sing from core,
From their center of gravity
And not from their gizzard;
I tell them about you
By living our vocabulary;
Your words could never be marked
By some obituary’s high-dried ink;
I will embody them as if
They weren't the dictionary’s to own,
Re-member as I and the sound
Waves goodbye to your feathery tone
To leave, well, enough—
Alone.
3:30:2025
Seeing: the act of
My own sight being
Repeated back to me,
Taking on new meanings
Vis a vis some impossibly
Foreign deviation from (or of)
Inflection, some interpolation of
Form; I hold no illusions of being
Immune to this spell we call symmetry,
That intoxicating dance of Dancing,
That drunken actuality. Actually,
What sobriety dubs as “faith”
Takes little interest in me. I
Succumb to it fully, else,
I'm awake so I might
Sooner dream. Oh,
These linear
Bodies, and the
Logics erected to
Contain them! What
Does a canvas intuit of
Its own bordering qualities,
Of its convex context, the abyss
Crossed from compound to color,
Pigment to picture, setting to symbol!
Any way, this lovesick recitation
Makes no hero out of me, only
Re-creates its self, if I am
Meant to take the word
Literally, willingly,
And, too much
Like me, all
The more
Nimble.
Matthew 18:20
(4:3:2025)
Nowadays, people look
At me strange, and I look
Right on back, blank
As a canvas, they blend
Into scenery with a brush
Of eyelid; I do not
Make my haste of their
Character, just let them
Prove, tease themselves out
Something foreground, eyes,
Sometimes, meeting my sight
In the middle,
not unlike Jesus
And how He rings clear
When two or more gather
To be in His name—
Otherwise, and most often,
They tend to retreat, take
Cover in (from?) themselves
Or whatever's close to it,
Render me “object”
And look somewhere else.
Lord, don't I know it,
It's hard to know Life
By the face!
Not as objecting object,
But unyielding subject—
And subject
To change!
4:4:2025
What was poetry supposed to be?
Supposed to be!
Only God would even
Dream up such a thing,
And here you are parroting it
Like you invented the wheel!
There is no new spin,
That's the deal—
But here, in
Side, out
Side, in
Line, out
Lines, we speak in
Poetry, poetry supposed itself
Onto me like bad dreams:
Not to say bad,
To say dream, sticky-sweet,
Some residue left upon me
That feels ever-in-complete,
Resolute, rest-of-me—
What was poetry supposed to be?
I enjoy this god and this day
In much the same way
Which is to say
Very, very, differently
From the one before,
And all the more
Lovely. I miss
The poetry part of poetry,
So here I am, and there is me!
Dinner
4:5:2025
Somewhere back there
You're twenty one
Picking apart every thought
Like a vulture
Dissecting yourself
Something dis-figured
And calling that “dinner”
Opening doors
And then peering inside
Just to scare yourself, really—
Just to revel in horror
Imagining what
Still lies irrevocably behind them
After you've sealed them back shut
(And how did you go about
Sealing them, anyway?
Was your rhetoric stronger
Than whatever your fears
Left behind?)
Following if/then’s
Confusing them for if/when’s
Then enduring that
Never-ending-con-sequence
‘Till you all but forgot
About how you are wrong
About everything
Just as much as you're right;
Somewhere, you're left there
To stare, frozen in disbelief
Staring at a monster
You can never quite reach
While I am somewhere over here
knowing only what I practice
And less of what I preach:
My monsters never get you in the end;
This never ends. They're only
Figures of speech.
4:6:2025
Green scrapes at me,
Picks my bones clean
Drags me along
For the ride like tin cans
On some “just married!” van,
And I do what I can—
Not all of it, good heavens,
But as much as God tenderly
demands,
And I don't have to imagine
Myself happy; I'm not too
Imaginative, these days
I'm more of a pacifist,
A pragmatist.
Imagine this:
There are no words that lie
Behind closed eyes;
You were dead
Because didn't know
You were alive— not because
Death didn't make any
Sense. You are a part
Of what you want to know;
You are that green tree
Out the window.
You understand it
Because it sees you every weekend,
Recognizes your face with its hundreds
Of sprouting eyes;
And the mist
And the mud
And the mornings of past
All pretend that they're separate;
Grow fond in their playing
The part of our prize.
Is not, Is,
4:8:2025
To realize
Is not to take notice of something
Which exists in the world
Outside of you; it is,
Literally, to make real,
Real-ize:
it's the alchemy
In between your couch cushions,
Your spare
Change.
To re-arrange
Is, 1st and foremost,
An act of Love:
It is to say,
I want to see you
from every angle, every way
You could be, even
Hypothetically. It is the
Tender banality of infinity
For infinity’s sake.
To make a mistake
Is not to commit an error,
But to let Life
Show you the way.
It is, literally, to learn
That one's assessment,
His take, his model
For pre-diction, is amiss.
It is the bliss of ignorance
saying goodbye with a kiss.
To believe all of this
Is, 1st and foremost,
To fall over, under,
Over and under
Life’s spell— and, well,
Literally, figuratively,
For better and for worse
In any case, at any rate,
It doesn't get better
Than this!
Sway
4:9:2025
Those calls and becks
They possess me pull
My spirit this and that way sway
Me along to some music and
This is my praying
So that when joy finds
Someplace else to stay
All I can do is to pray.
I am only ever either caught
Praying or to pray.
To pray is much different
From praying mostly in that
When one is praying really praying
He forgets himself in the praying
He is the praying
And praying is the he
Praying is for he who prays
And then when to pray one is lead only astray
By runaway phrases and I wants
And slimy tired hazes
That are much too aware
Of the prayer of praying
For my liking.
Don't be like them those
Too busy to pray to be praying
Be
Praying and forget about prayer
Be laying and forget about layer
It will possess you again
Sooner or later
For my name isn't what
Comes out of your mouth it's
Something much much translator.
4:11:2025
You've got to be getting
Along with it or else something somewhere
Will do the work for you know
Better so act better than you
Did yesterday and anyway
I've got another thing coming
That I guess I should get to
So I'll be going
Getting
Going and getting along and
Righting that wrong I pretend
It's too late to ignore me I'm
Going through something or something
Is going through me and either
Way one of us is something
And the other one is through
And going is somewhere in the
Middle like it always manages to be
And remind me who is that manager?
In the middle you don't need to make sense
Because there is nothing to make
And no one to be this is no
World of Forms or whatever the Greeks
Made up of philosophy that stuff
Doesn't exist here; it's just you and me
And we
Should probably get going
While the getting’s good as gone.
Nine of Hearts
4:11:2025
Stacked up like the odds
But they aren't in my favor;
I simply listen to what the odds
Have to say, I meet them halfway—
And, here, miraculously,
They meet me:
Daringly,
Stupidly!
That's the only way to win this, I promise.
I am no magician—
I'm a magician! Honest!
You wouldn't believe me
If I told you,
Anyway, would you?
So that's the point?
You've heard the saying,
The one that non-magicians use:
You only ever get
What you choose— and
Against all odds
Or maybe for the sake of them,
In the wake of them
But only ever taking them
By the face
And never their values,
I see what they mean by
The meaning they show me—
And here,
miraculously,
are we!
4:12:2025
I think it's somewhere around
One hundred and fifty degrees,
That's when I like daylight best.
Something about its striking,
Those shadows slanted cubist
And bashful; the trees like it too,
I can tell: they smile more
Because they're so sure
That no one is looking
Or maybe they just don't care
Who sees. One hundred and sixty
Degrees is alright— but by then,
Something’s assuredly lost
In translation, refraction,
Delimitation; you know
It's one-five-zero when
Everything grabs you by the chin
And pulls your gaze in
To where light’s never been:
Where the light used to be
Just a moment before.
Insofar
4:13:2025
Freedom looks a whole lot like
Surrender from way down here,
Doesn't it?
Not a choice; it is
Quite literally the only way
There is to be.
Examine your architecture!
You'll find that your cells
All enlisted millennia ago;
They've been traveling a
Very long time, but luckily, they
Finally made it the day
You were born
When your blueprint
Finally, finally kissed the sweet air:
Your cries dared,
Just like you, to be free
Way down here,
Where such “freedom” exists
In the word,
In an idea that only Freedom itself
Could conceive!
Marry me to this, and only to this:
I am free insofar as I am
Beaten tender—
I am me
Insofar as I dare to surrender;
I am maya insomuch
As I am bliss!
4:15:2025
Is Fate of any use to me;
Am I of use to Fate?
Use-less questions; they don't
Bring me any closer to, put me
Any further from Her—
And She moves so fast; all I can do is
Know now my ABC
My way out of town skipping
Stones un-turned around the bending
Roads and eyes describe only
What they’re meant to see so where
Does that leave someone like me?
And who do these words take me
For? Years from here,
There’ll be a silhouette taking my shape,
And sore: I can only begin to just make
Her out, fake her out there somewhere,
Apparently, loving me
Enough to stick to that bluff, that
Thing she calls a plan, to her
Light’s messy outline
Come rain, shine, circumstance,
Come early or late and into,
Out of my name’s-greater-than design,
One more state poorly defined,
One more flame for the fan’s dance.
Is Fate of any use to me;
Am I of use to Fate?
Apparently, god says to me,
‘Cause She can hardly wait!
4:16:2025
There starts and ends there and
It's the same way I all ways
Try to start, over
There, it isn't here, it tells me
But the only word my body knows
Is “yes” or maybe it's
“Here! Here!”
Like a schoolchild during morning attendance
I know, I know! Me, me, me!
Not the one of There’s doing,
Here and only Here is me;
She frees Free by
Existing before I can stop her,
That's her wicked twin, There,
Coddling before she even begins,
There, there,
It's okay, you can always
(Never all ways)
Try again someday.
There knows Someday, too,
That ugly pair:
Someday, There, the two
Share regrets for the things
That will never happen yet,
Calling out after Soon
Who is much much too busy
Vying for Here any way—
and if I'm lucky,
I remember to watch them all
Duke it out without me.
Holy Job
4:18:2025
You walk among
Future friends
And teachers.
It's a holy job
That most don't remember
Signing up for; that much
Is obvious. Who will
Be your valentine today?
Who will
You will
Into, out of
Being a mirror?
Not your mirror,
Mind-You:
Being!
A mirror!
The holiest job,
And the only 1-2!
4:18:2025
What attitude
Can I hold onto
If not for
My having of awe,
This impulse to worship!
I love this thing, hate it,
Hurl every emotion I have
At it— and all the while,
I'm only tossing, re-
Turning them back
To their rightful owner!
The secret is so:
All that comes my way
I secretly enjoy.
En-joy!
En-bolden, en-liven, en-joy!
Oh, what a world,
What a toy!
None can ever be taken from me!
It is already gone,
It was never mine to be!
That is like sun: setting, containing us, Free,
And this lies the winning in loss!
What attitude can I hold onto
If not for
A speckle of prayer, worship,
This stubbornly flicker of awe!
4:18:2025
This life,
One long pronouncing
Of my name. I leave it all
To anyone who ever heard it said;
They must know me better
Than I know myself because
My self is always beating me
To the punchline
And I am a pacifist
So I always end up
Taking on the beatings
And the punchings
Like some
Kind of masochist.
I'm not one anymore;
The answer is much more boring,
Unfortunately:
I like it all the same now.
I don't mess with logic games
Or “things” like shame now;
I just stick to the syllable I'm on
‘Till the sound changes sounds,
Dissipates, equalizes, spreads itself out
And it's all dead and gone
Save some pestering meaning
Which lingers on
As the night’s sticky blackness
Punctuates the dawn.
Swim!
4:20:2025
The voice shouts Swim!
So I just jump right in
Before thinking;
I do not stop to worry about
Whether or not I will drown,
If the water can hold me;
I know that she can, she's my
Oldest friend, seen me move
In away that I only can and do
Through her density.
Through her, I am free:
We release each other
In catching the other one here.
She waves her hellos and goodbyes
Infinitely, and I
Know to bob, to weave
Just as I've always done,
Hold my breath something
Brilliant and dumb
As she takes me under, standing
Waves cancel out
Until all becomes silent,
All is made calm.
My lungs confuse themselves
With stuff of dreams, almost
Inhale—something stops them—
It is that silence filling my moments
Like jelly, that craving for air
That Life puts in my belly—
And just as swiftly, I
Come up for that damn food-for-thought
Again, and the ritual starts anew
Thrown about in the din:
All but tolerating the air
Straining my swimmer’s ear
Just to hear for that voice
Calling urgently:
Swim!
Hot Potato
4:22:2025
An axiom lies
At the center of you,
Something so damn true
That there's no other
Explanation— you are
Because you have to be,
It must be so!
This is why your main channel
Between body and mind
Is in tracing the pattern,
our filters for change.
Mind says,
“This feels like that!”
And Body:
“No, that feels like this!”
And they both go on
Bickering (translating),
Carrying the weight of the other,
Playing hot potato—
Yet neither one can know
Some truth that isn't found
In the passing of One
Between the two.
An axiom lies
At the center of you—
So who is it
Telling the truth?
The Only Way
(Auto-complete poem)
4:22:2025
The only way you will be
The only person you can trust
The most in this life
Is yourself
It can never happen
To anyone else
I am the one
Who is the best person to ever be with;
I'm a big believer
that we should have to work
with the same people
who have the most
influence in our lives
As long as we have
the best of intentions
and most
Of our own best interests
we can do whatever
we need to do and
we can work together
As best as possible
To be the right person for us
and make the right decisions
and make sure we are able
and make sure
we're not going anywhere
without a fight
Everyhow
4:23:2025
How is it
That it is how it's been
And yet where we’re all at
Is so, so far from that?
How are we
Where we all ought to be
When the we that we've seen
Hasn't made it back yet?
How are you,
I mean,
How do you do,
I mean,
how is it
Really you you-ing out there
There-ing so unimpaired
While I'm here hearing, scared,
Sharing my two cents spared
On who’s spent
The most freetime caught,
Wrought, fearing,
Pantomiming timing
Instead of just I’m-ing:
Instead of just naming that
Pain ever-nearing!
If you don't, Pain
will no doubt choose
Some new name in its clearing—
It is how here is now—
Any how!
Volunteering!
Some Body
4:25:2025
Somebody had to be Judas,
Didn't they? That story
Fascinates me endlessly:
Wasn't he in on the joke?
Can you really even
Call it a betrayal
When all roads
Lead to resurrection?
I believe that
Judas and Jesus
Are merely two sides
Of the same spinning coin,
The narrative demands
That all is holy.
Not just the Catholics'
Sacred Mother Mary;
We all gave birth to that boy—
To that body, this choice
To pit sinless against
All our sin;
There is no sanctioned outcome
Where both sides land, win.
Somebody had to be Judas
And Moses
And Abraham
And Lazarus;
Someone must embody
That terrible voice;
What does it really matter
Who is who is who?
Anyone could've been
Judas or Jesus—
Why not you?
4:26:2025
Have you ever met
The same morning light
Twice— or are you, too,
Always amazed by,
At odds with
this air we all breathe?
I consider myself,
lucky—
Or maybe luck
Has heard an earful from me;
Here we are: happy,
Airing ourselves out
Of yesterday, finding
Some new way to say
Good morning,
Meeting the light
Day by day,
At odds, amazed
As the light ever-is:
Yet!
Leela
4:27:2025
Potency, that
Mechanization of silence,
That seed ever-scratching
For sunlight, that
Need never matching
Its hindsight, that
Magical weaponized
Alchemized sacrifice:
The Leela of cells
Pretending to split
Ways, the same ways we
Split hairs and seconds
And costs and up
Just to call it
“Tough luck” as if
You didn't used to beg
Your parents
To let you keep playing
For just five more minutes.
Can you even sit with your
Self for that long?
Have you all but forgotten
The curve of that song?
Potency: the look of
A melody
standing at attention,
Daring, begging you
Just five more minutes!
Playing with silence,
Stringing and singing
Those noises along.
4:28:2025
Each new moment
You are alive
Is your coveted prize!
This current of air,
Wrapping around you
Then leaving you there,
Adrift in a sea
Full of stuff you can breathe—
What majesty!
If you struggle to believe,
Don't worry!
Look up!
What is there to believe?
You are here!
Trust that need!
Leave the seeing
To your eyes—
You are living:
own that prize!
5:1:2025
You don't have to
Make words of every shape.
Sometimes, I promise,
You are allowed
To just let them hang there,
Crystalline in the sky,
Amorphous, blobbish—
You don't even have to
Carry them that far
If you aren't feeling
Up for it; opaquely,
They carry themselves:
The water will loosen
Regardless;
You can only name
what you are outside of—
So don't name it;
Please, think better than to
Name it. Don't think—
Better! Nor drink—
For rain only becomes wetter!
You don't have to make words
Of every shape, sense of
Every scape, no matter
How their chalky forms might hum:
I promise you; it is enough
To tell the truth
(Nothing,
but the truth)
And run.
American Spirits
All these architectures, taken for granted: the jagged symmetry of bricks— can you ascertain the poles from the trees, or make ants with the least of these? I'd like to tell a story, beginning “Somehow”: the circus is coming; the elephants will see you now! It's not so easy, you know, always divining some spectacle, never eyeing the show, sightlines from all angles exacting your intimate engineering, that marrowing mortar which keeps you a-floating, aloof and alone. But you are no house turned against your own self anymore than the grass is afraid of new homes— tents, like trees, sometimes, collapse striped & humble, grumble about from that sky to this ground, or from town to chaffed town, marching about in protest on their never ending quest for new picnics to crash, whittling, brash, building and blowing up smoke
before breaking down ash.
5:4:2025
There is a way
To make “overjoyed” literal;
To have so damn much of it
That you have to pray
For God to take some of it away.
I cannot tell you how
One arrives at this layer—
But I’m willing and I'm able
To recite that sweet prayer:
God, give me just enough love
To make me scared.
Take me up, down, around—
But don't you leave me anywhere.
Let me lose my self enough
To shed the old me from the new—
But make it not so much a loss
That I have none to return to.
Fill me up, up, up, up
Right to the tippy-top brim—
But not so much I drown,
Just enough for me to swim.
Take my muscles, voice and body,
Use them up until they're sore—
Just don't overplay your hand,
Oh God,
And I'll come back for more!
5:4:2025
Here goes nothing to do but follow through and rabbits like to speak without attention to me me me there's no place like home is where the heart is beating me to the punchline up class here's your next prompt riddle me this is the way it has to be has always been a pleasure to have in class school me me me this is it I can see my house from here goes nothing!
Pretending
5:5:2025
You don't have to tend to
Anything before it happens,
Whether you tend to pre-
tend, to keep up with some
Trend of appearances
You perceive to be eminent—
Or not.
How ever you believe
It to be, you are wrong
On your own, Life is long
In all the sad ways;
You pre-tend to your wounds
While time licks them away.
If I May,
Back in April, March
Seemed far away—
Up next, June
With some new games to play
And a habit to prove it.
Joy, too, can't be cornered;
You either have it
Or lose it.
Don't pre-tend to that
Back-and-forth toy
All livelong,
Have the courage
To actually choose it.
5:7:2025
Poor words,
That I may never use them
The way that they
want to be used!
All these years
Of wringing them out,
Singing and stringing them out;
Even technologies can't help
But betray themselves
From Time to time!
The word of the day:
Rhyme—
That is, the mutation
Of meaning from first
To second prime, from
The origin’s law
To the scene of the crime,
From and to
To and from
Never heeding the signs.
You read out of respect
For the rules,
Into, respecting something
Close to them.
5:7:2025
This one isn't for you,
It's for my father in
An alternate universe
And for the wind carrying
Some faraway tune
That will get to me soon;
It's for me, seventeen,
Awkward, scrawny,
Barely peering over that
Hatred she thought was
The default, scrambling
Into, out of lunch table politics,
Stumbling onto that piano
Bench in her cold, cold
Room after school, frozen fingers
But the rest was warm
As opiates,
What music had always
Revealed, concealed anyway:
This isn't for you,
My hands,
the chords themselves would say—
Use only demands to be used.
Literally, they play what feels
Good while they dance me around,
Some profane side-effect.
In that alternate universe,
Somehow, they shake
The man's hand— and
There's no vivisect—
Just a faint residue.
For Jacqueline
5:10:2025
I’m a chronological liar,
So let's start at the beginning:
I'm clairvoyant.
Meaning exactly what I said
And as I said it, no more, no less—
No strings or things or rhetoric
To beat or break or bet.
I can see the future—
In fact,
It is quite literally
The only thing I can see—
But that's neither here nor there,
And not of much interest to me.
What really excites me is this:
Well, this, quite literally, but also
This:
I know exactly what's going to happen
Before it well happens—
As a matter of fact,
Lying chronologically, of course,
We all do.
But oh, don't make me
Be the one to say it, please, really—
It's far too pasé to say “die”
these days. No, personally, I
Would much, much rather lie
Right here and right now,
Any way, any how—
next to you!
Lottery
5:14:2025
I keep remembering it in waves
(Miraculous that I could even forget!):
God, whatever you want to call it,
It isn't through with me yet!
You know the feeling—
When something wordy grips you
And you finally understand some
Way which life has changed—
but not really?
I'm a million dollars richer!
What exactly did that change?
You are still right here forever,
Elaborating just out of range!
Who else could set your sights like that;
What else can will your mights like that!
You are the only constant here;
That variation varies
Should be no surprise to you,
Of little consequence!
What's going on is evident;
You don't need proof of precedence!
Your body, feeble, kind, and finely-tuned,
Well knows exactly what to do:
it, well, Feels you,
re-members it, out there,
And gladly shares its findings
As the shadows line the cave:
Miraculously forgetting just as quickly
And in waves!
Or, Else
5:15:2025
Why else would you do it?
It's the love of the game,
The craft of theme
And variations!
I take this breath from the air
And it gives me itself back,
Changes, glory, changes!
And my eyes have blind spots
As my skin has sun spots
But I can only connect the dots
After I know better
And never before—
But by what magic that scale
Finally tips over I can never ever be
Sure! Why else would you do it?
How come? What for?
Did you forget that
Even gravity is a metaphor?
Or do you in seriousness believe
That the Heavens themselves
Speak the very same logic
As you and me?
There's your philosophy, silly!
“Or” is a function of time,
A matter of it—
A messy half-baked approximation
That serves us well
To, with love, just get through it.
There is only one way after all,
And that's to it!
Why, why else would you do it?
Gracie
5:16:2025
Smiling, as idiots often do,
I all but beg you
To tell me I'm worthless.
That binary beating
I've taken all my life:
You ego-maniac aphrodisiac!
What kind of king are you?
What kind of punishment
Have you been giving into?
Well, to name a few:
The one that
Slight-of-hands this two;
The either/or labyrinth;
That damned neural network
I could've sworn I'd just
Uprooted with the last
New point-of view;
The fact that facts
Can't seem to get enough of me—
And then there's one like you,
With a tone of voice which
Reeks of duh,
Of course you're someone who
Deserves themselves from
Worthless— you're the
Idiot worth smiling to!
Pre-positions
5:19:2025
Speak
to, through,
of, above,
on and beyond
me, oh God:
You, like with any
Command, are
my understood subject,
My holiest subtext;
I am that
Object of early devotion,
Containing my self, barely,
Squarely to fruition, fairly
In my own opposition,
Some thing of a notion,
Nothing but decision:
“Let there be light”,
Translated, of course,
Can really only mean one thing:
“Let there be eyes
Such that I might be seen;
Let there be prepositions
Such that sentences might mean;
Let there be me
So there's someone to be;
Let there be chains
So that all can be free!”
Maizie
5:19:2025
Twirling around with her eyes closed,
She dares me to be
Kind. Didn't I
once used to dance
just like that?
When's the last time
I really let my self
Get carried away by that kind
Of spin? When did that end;
Where do I begin?
It feels silly
To blame a child for, well,
Anything:
She sings, I sing;
She screams jump!
And I laugh back how high?
And the rulers that tether
Most grownups down to the ground
Suddenly no longer apply,
But we're both much too busy
To notice, ask why—
For a moment, one moment,
We cheat death,
She and I,
Just by daring to live, to die,
To try!
5:21:2025
When I must think of what I know,
Something happens to it—
Morphs into some
Disappointing beast,
Some new strange wiggling of the air,
And I don't know it anymore,
It gets lost on me out there.
When I must know of what I think,
Something phases into me—
And I don't like the sight is sees;
It teases, pleases someone else,
Some kind of quote-un-quote called “self”,
And I can't think it anymore,
Or else, I'll doom her to the shelf.
When I do anything but pray,
Something calls my bluff right away—
Answers all too eagerly
Without a go-ahead from me,
Some hourly reckoning occurs,
And I won’t fake it anymore,
I only filter what recurs.
5:22:2025
Porch light left on, and it's still spring—
Yes, spring: the one that grows until
The longest day; summer, you know,
Is actually the beginning of the end,
The part where it's all downhill from
There; the chill up here
Remembers me in a way that summer’s
Heat never can.
It's a part of me strewn about atoms
Hundreds of miles away, a different
Breeze makes the trees here sway;
I know this is night by that many a day
Somewhere else, but the fields fit
Squarely inside of my breaths
In and out, in and out,
In and out of phase two, three, four,
Five— there was some me
Who was alive; every now
And then, we eclipse again
As old friends; she tells me sincerely
I hope that you leave the porch light on
For me,
And I answer by being:
All of this is for you;
Everything.
It's still
Spring.
5:23:2025
The only way to win this game
Is to have fun while you're losing it.
Can you hold onto those words for me,
Keep them close to your chest
As the version of me
You believe into being?
She loves you
Almost as much
As I do—
Play again, stranger thing;
What does it matter
Who's choosing it?
See the tie through.
Rain Soon
5:23:2025
The leaves are belly-up.
It can't erase the sunshine
But I've been wrong before.
Here, there's no such thing
As being wrong.
Here, being
Is the adjective
And the noun, the
Note-by-note and the song;
The verbing verbs the word
And is
simply, has no time
For stuff like wrong
Or that.
Except the leaves are
Belly-up, at
Once, one
Wrong, one right
Now, for a matter
Of facts, of the futures
Now lacks,
And the belly-up leaves
Surely whisper
Rain Soon as they
Talk of Sun Now,
so I guess now will do.
Tri-angulate
5:24:2025
My lazy eye is always
So sure that it's onto something;
I have to really tug it along,
Up, over, here-there.
It sees some broken liturgy
Without me, scripts and chants—
But the humidity soaks me up
Just right, and my lazy eye rolls
Back its opinions on overcast light
While my lungs breathe me out
Of options / knife fights.
I might, I might, I might!
One quick dodge to the right,
And I'm left straight a-head,
Not a story to blame,
Just some giveaway, dead.
One eye scanning the neverending
Crime-seen, the other one
panning for gold, to report back
I mean— I mean— I mean—
One day, these words will run
Right out of you,
find some new host to preen.
There's no point without points,
just some new joint to clean.
5:25:2025
Shoots and ladders,
Slings and arrows,
It's just us
against the river.
This is easy:
All we do is move,
And let ourselves be moved.
I’ll never be too pure, too
Sure, yet I believe
In wandering truth,
In shifting valleys,
Piquing darkness
For the images they prove;
I believe in stakes, in aching
For the sake of
Aching soothed—
And wouldn't you?
Most of the time,
The river carries me, debris
Not aimlessly—
Just out of reach
With lessons taught for
Better, worse
Than what they aim
To teach or do.
Practice the preacher’s attributes
Before you dare to sing his blues—
Then slings and ladders
Are just matters
Of one arrow
Paying dues.
5:26:2025
Two preppy looking girls somewhere around my age, maybe younger. Technically not even to me; it might as well have been gossip: the looking over, laughing periodically. Blonde, white, a bit more expressive in their appearance than most rich people dare to be. Had I been a skosh more insecure, they probably would have intimidated me.
A middle aged man. Again, he and his husband practically gossiped to each other first before plucking up the courage. He waited until he was halfway out of the restaurant, and I could tell by his word choice that he clearly had some kind of experience in the music world. It wouldn't surprise me if he were a choir teacher. He said it so fast, I had to ask you what he said. Apparently, he can hear much more clearly than he can speak: “I said, you have a lovely alto voice.” His inflection was interesting, mostly self-serving. I nodded as sendoff.
A middle aged woman. She mentioned my harmonies and octave switching specifically, turned to her husband to complain, admire how nobody my age even knows this song. One of those long-haired subtle hippies.
An older woman, some cool name like Junie or Enette. Waited patiently for me to make her latte, vague curiosity by the windowsill until a voice like motherly feathers said that she could listen to me sing all day (my personal favorite).
Two, maybe three others. I remember them less because their compliments were more unexpected, spontaneously casual. Accompanying each, a polite bow, maybe a hand to the heart. As earnest an “I appreciate that; thank you” as I can muster.
Dozens of pairs of eyes, expressionless, watching. They'd never say anything; they're always the first to look away when I catch them staring. For the life of me, I can't tell what they're thinking; I suspect the feeling is mutual. They might as well be staring through those glass walls at the zoo.
“Cappuccino for Liz!”
5:29:2025
I know exactly what I mean
When I speak; it's just not in
The words. I am not just saying
Anything; I am not your plaything
And no, I’m not kidding.
The story isn't in the words,
Either; it's not even in
How you feel about them.
It's actually much more
Obvious, which is why I can
Count on the fact that it'll go
Right over your head
By going right through it.
Don't swallow your precious
food-for-thought every time, man.
You’re allowed to just chew it
Like gum; have some
Fun for once; and wasn't that
The big idea any way?
I say then you say
But that doesn't change the pace,
Only grace can do that.
Only pain can explain
Why the words say me back:
They contain me as I contain them
And regardless of what you make this
All out to be, I make use of
The tool, and the words do,
As advertised, an excellent averaging,
That is to say I know exactly
What I mean when I speak.
5:30:2025
Take Magnolia and Beetle:
Alive in each other,
Through the other,
Sparring as friends often do,
Ancient as thieves,
Recurrently new.
It always made sense, didn't it?
That jagged shiny blackness
And her pretty petaled backdrop,
Night as she gives way
To that sweet softness
of the morning.
Once upon a time, Magnolia dreamed
Such a beautiful dream, it made
Everything come true— and
Beetle wanted in on the action, too,
So drawn was she to that majesty.
So Beetle saw to it
That she invented herself
Out of Magnolia’s necessity,
And the two have been
On again off again
For as far as the mind can see.
Take Magnolia and Beetle,
Give them a world to exist in;
Everything else serves
As filler incessantly,
A mere pipe-dream for Beetle,
Magnolia’s Necessity.
5:31:2025
I don't know;
I sing
And if I'm lucky,
I forget
I'm even singing.
Not unlike the sun’s
Sine-wave from
day-to-day:
It cannot keep
The joy it's bringing;
It only lights the way.
We two both pray,
The Sun and me,
The sign, the wave,
Our melody—
And if we're lucky,
We fore-get
we're even praying,
Sing ourselves a song
That in and of itself
Is worth the trouble playing,
Take our precious night a way
And give ourselves to day
Today, another means
Of daying.
Pride
6:1:2025
Back when another’s posture
Was enough to strike fear
Into my stomach, I really wasn't
All that aware of my own.
At any given moment, my limbs
Were practically akimbo—
My thoughts, fucking words,
Numbed my skin up
In an almost paradoxical way.
Now, I know where I am
Like the back of my hand;
I feel which parts of me
Are sunned, shunned,
Strained, pained,
Over and under explained—
My thoughts, fucking words,
Can't touch me anymore;
And neither can you.
And neither can yours.
Weathering
6:5:2025
Weather it— trace
Your place in space, fall
Under, over that oscillating
Spell; it wishes you well.
Weather it— tell
Your stories: gone, well; call
A spade anything else, that interactive
Tone; don't leave enough alone.
Weather it— own
All your fortunes’ worries; stall
By giving up, taking down, coming around
To those unassuming turns,
The next phrase, phase,
What it is
and what it earns.
Weather it— learn.
6:6:2025
She is a child:
Impossibly young,
Impressively hopeful, given
The circumstances, getting
Lost and found and free
Inside of her little
Afterschool trances,
Much too afraid to dance yet—
That would come much, much
Later, a good seven years
Past the brick wall she swore
She was hurdling towards;
Now I take her out dancing,
Tell her stories of romance
And loss, of freedom
And changing and chancing,
What all of it costs
And what all of it’s for.
All she wanted, truly,
Lying, truthing beyond
What her sweet little mind
Could imagine to be,
Was to one day end up
Being someone like me:
Young impossibly,
Hopeful impressively,
Given the circumstances,
Living to see.
6:7:2025
Out past old Dewey Robbins,
In the third or fourth grove,
There's an orange tree
With blossoms only meant
For my nose.
Somewhere by Crowe Springs,
Night clings coldly
To the trees; mountains
Loom like some big beast,
And it's waiting there for me.
Back there down on Greenbrier,
There's a girl who's half my age
High on dread
And low on faith
And praying for me in a rage.
Way out in the gridlines,
In those hundreds north by west,
There’s a tiny German town
Whose tower might just know me best.
6:9:2025
Jesus, cross-
Referenced, reverenced,
Had the body of a man
But the spirit of a woman:
people like that
Always end up dead
‘Cause a spirit at odds
With its container always
Ends up a troublesome one.
Scars are living, by the way—
They're not one-and-done;
if you're not careful enough
About who you are,
You're liable to become one:
Over-identified, over-cor-rectified,
Cross-contaminated by
Others' referendum.
About Itself
6:11:2025
It can't help but tell
about itself;
That’s all there is to do.
From the mirror in the water
To the light the trees let through.
It can't help but tell
About itself;
That's all there is to say.
From the vict’ry of the morning
To the waning of the day.
It can't help but tell
About itself;
That's all the telling’s for.
From the birds’ sweet chitter chatter
To the horrors of the war.
It can't help but tell
About itself;
That's all the help you need.
From the wisely weathered tree trunk
To the power of its seed.
It can't help but tell
About itself;
So listen while you can:
From the majesty of nature
To the ignorance of man!
6:14:2025
Every single morning,
Like a very old friend,
I cough up a new batch
Of yesterday’s pearls
And I try to be useful
To magic again.
6:16:2025
You've carried her
Far enough,
Don't you think?
Strained your way into,
Out of confusions
Old and new,
Waxing and waning
as faiths often do.
She's still you, just a you
Who’s afraid of the
Counterpoints, afraid
Of rejection, acceptance,
Dissonant like any two
Truths rubbed up against
Each other: true,
Just not too true for me—
Or maybe true through
Some other point of view
I'll never have, never had—
I carried her with me,
This raggedy Anne,
Watched her get beat up
And fed up and bruised;
I cried each time she cried,
All our blues came in two’s.
Then one day, I decided
(Decision gave proof)
To abandon that truth,
Thank that doll for her time,
Be my own living proof
And abandon that mime,
Call her out of that bluff—
You have carried her far,
Far enough!