Category: poetry

Recycling

You are not garbage
We trashed our relationship
But I’m not going to throw you away

We were grown in a vat of
Shitty culture soup
Instead of our Grandma’s kitchen
Our parents had reasons for that

Their need to run away was valid
Skillsets inadequate
to navigate the old and new worlds
simultaneously

Being untethered
Raised us untethered
Free to NOT make the mistakes of our ancestors
While not being free to discuss them
So we do not know what they are

Be gentle with yourself
If we stop lashing out
We lose the fear
Of being thrown away.

Leash

If you wanna attach to me
get your ass to therapy.
I get real, real quick and you might
find your reality
shifts
uncomfortably in ways you didn’t expect.

If you need me to constantly slow
down
shift gears
just so you can keep up?

Does it make you feel powerful to slow us down?

If you loved us,
you’d take us to the field and watch us run.
We’d go speeds and directions you never could.
You could feed us your observations,
being seen is a big part of love.

So if you don’t want to be a safe harbor in places
too dark or strange for you to go.
Leave us be,
We need room to grow.

Sit

I brought a fire extinguisher to the barbecue
to put out the brush fires in your life.
I wanted time for you to relax.

The fires are evidence you care,
that there are people in your life,
that life is, short and complicated.

Let me do some fighting,
spray some suppressant foam.
See if anything calms down,
if we can get time alone.

If we can we can,
if we can’t we can’t.

It’s worth it just to watch you sit down.
I’d work all night to hear
your contented sigh.

Pause

I remember fondly the time the world stood still.
When the Earth paused and we took
a collective frightened breath.
Left alone to cope with our thoughts,
catch up with our situation,
and let the big picture fall on us.
I remember the fear, and I wasn’t frightened.
The bigger picture bounced me on their knee
when I was learning my way around.
Not sure why everyone else was spared.
It was comfortable, that moment
when it felt like the whole world
visited me
where I live
for a change.

Stepping Out of Shadow

I tried not to write poetry to please you
I tried not to take what you’d say
Too much to heart

To know I could believe in my own vision
without catering to your gaze.
Do I even want what you want?
No less what you want for me?

Do I find beautiful what you find beautiful?
Why let you decide for me.

I write to free my voice,
Not to be someone you know.
Listen or don’t your decision.

My voice has its own timbre
My voice has its own tempo
Though it changes frequently
And never seems to settle.

It is mine.

Angel’s Attention

The angel awakes,
her wings slowly unfurl
stretching out impossibly wide,
luminescent clouds covering the entire sky,
each feather a world unto itself.

She whispers so softly
so as not to wake the dead and the not yet born.

When she recognizes you
the rest of the world falls away,
in the terror and glory of divine attention.
The heart panics and the soul sings
as everything you are resonates in her focus.

Peaceful and unbearable,
heavy the understanding beyond understanding
to be skeletal before the light.

Her gaze penetrates and permeates all,
no subterfuge nor refuge.
She smiles and the world stops
no breath, no thoughts,
her contentment peaceful in its absolution.

Evidence

Not what happened, but why it played out like it did.

Every fault in the glass
Reveals a tiny portion of the story
Not just the demise
Accidental or
Intentional

But of life before

The path of cracks
Not just determined by type of impact
But weaknesses of circumstances
The powerful stare of our broiling nearest star
The minute detritus of living nature
Weaponized by the force of the wind
Every impact
Not just the ones we notice
Not just the ones that crack

Even the transparent
Cannot evade the erosion of enduring this life.
Though the evidence may not appear
Until we break.

Pillars

The towers at the corners of the world
stand tall.
Despite our fears, efforts, and intentions to
change them.
Solid immeasurable, immovable.
Older than life itself.
They witness the comings and goings of ages.
Rise and fall of empires and ambitions of human works.
Erosion grinding it all to dust and ash.
They stand silent.
Through such mundane human things as war and peace.
They stand silent.
Through sufferings and joy.
Silent.
Anchored into the cosmos, existing outside of time,
of and beyond what can be known.
They will remain.