Poetry
assorted moments in time and collected emotions
November 2023
Keep walking
Or rather start walking
Then you'll find the bench that breathes, not the one that pounds your eyes into a teary squint
Breeze will guide, as will shade
Protecting from trees with overwhelmingly reflective gaze
What do we accomplish in stress versus in peace?
Both extremes seem to yield seemingly similarly structured productive outputs
Yet of different sources,
different spirits
What makes us designed to sit or sprint?
How do we flow in balance?
Or, alternatively,
In moments of flux,
What pushes us out of stall?
Water, even water isn’t always in flow
But that's how we know it is sick.
Inputs of newness, reminders of past
Subtly ignite capacity to remove the surprisingly thin cover
Is it really only the influence of another?
Variations of leaves or feathers come and go, but that one stubborn sea creature holds onto its ancient shell with stubbornness of the world's turn
Refusing to adapt, how did we miss what they learned?
November 2023
It can’t escape
It’s neither here nor there
So no place hears your mistakes, missteps, or half steps toward
Toward forward forgiving
Who can release first
And who are you to ask?
Sun beams
Cars honk
Bugs bite
But that’s all
And in between
We fight
And in between even the elders lose sight,
Lose capacity toward optimism
They love us all the same
yet we feel their relief
We will be here
At the same time we feel that vulnerability that unstable anxiety of witnessing the end approach
as it creeps and as it is felt in the chest
Not your head keep your head to the sun
keep your hands on the steering wheel and your heart with the family
Our heads too close to the sun,
a different meaning now
They say all old sayings are old for a reason,
stick around for a reason,
But the context changes.
Apply that here now and the result is more than just sweat on the brow.
Collaborative poems
Andie
July 2023
How fully finished growth spurts appear effortless yet enormous somehow accelerated
Propel belongings, drip attachments, leave metallic initials etched
Reverse punctuality beyond green perceptibility
Follow, don't hinge, MOVE!
Hushed youthful misremembered membranes latch encompassing trades
Space time rusted
Entangled sweeteners trusted with overwhelming importance
Messages floating even through filtered entrances
Coco
July 2023
Tinkering toying lighting fingering
Loosely connected fluidly surveyed
Blue cinder blocks
Candy choker
Slender dim ashes surprise highways that charge forward slightly gasping
Moments flitting behind streetlamps
Still remembering
Infectious giggling permeates hallowed necklines
Abby
February 2024
Grapefruit tangerine association
Dread the beginning when dreams flew upwards yet towards light
Sound appeared drenched sweatily in my ears
Beyond the flip and constant grime, rind, and rot
She opened subtly my luggage, appearing uncomfortably startled at molded citrus remains
I drew breath and declined.
Jimmy
February 2024
Boy swelled with the fuzzy image of heartfelt joy
Reminiscent of nostalgic memories, he thought profusely about how his dreams and expectations have miraculously come to a brief pause
The reality settled in beyond his current grasp of his paralleling ideals
Even though the weight compounded on top of fragile feelings,
hints toward freedom and release flowed and without remorse solitude
April 2023
How to capture fleeting moments of beauty that exist between me and myself that I still want to share with you, but couldn't conceivably.
The sun perfectly in my face through the window as the little trumpets on the tree face down and the bird seems to float between the branches while she sings without music into my ears.
The soft clicks of the wetness in her mouth opening and closing in between breaths.
I'm sitting here.
I can’t bring you in, but these are the moments I want to.
Perhaps I want you inside me, to have my perspective, my life.
I want you to be me, I want you to experience what it is to be me.
‘This too shall pass’ she sings, somehow without cliche, and it’s true as the sun starts to fade and my eyes start to gloss over from staring into it for too long.
Everything is pink and rainbow and glared.
I can't see anymore.
April 2023
Pain
Tape
Painting tape
Poppers
Mansion
Like big house
Naked like 2010 Youtube
Does that look big enough for us?
What are you writing why are you––
I have a lot of crazy dreams but they fly away when I wake up.
​
We look like we got married
But do you want to put underwear on before you go outside?
Christopher said he wanted to try to play like how a painter would,
to paint with the drumsticks so you would enjoy
Did you?
May 2023
Ikea mirror,
Forced subjection of self in reflection
Overlap of roses and discipline
Romance literature and leather complexion
Lorna Simpson,
Felted lithograph double exposed intention
Desire to blur
Desire to decipher
Being and having
Not everyone will know her
It's wonderful
Please knock
June 2022
Whisper
Whis
Wisper
Whisper here
Woman
Whisperer
Talk to them
Sing to them before
you exit before
Drench the water from your body
After the breaths and breaks
Soak your rings, let your fingers breathe so the blood flows through your nails to your thighs
Translucent bugs and business cards pushed out by the wind
And forced
And back and forth I go
For one day only one day ticket
Not a romantic gesture
But by your side I'll find
I cry not certain I'll return
But with me I’ll time you
Your time separated from the mind mine beyond the cap
Buzzing I want to live my life my own time buzzing
Beyond the stimulation
of your touch
from the distance it seems
A collection of journal entries
January 4th, 2022
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Could you turn my words into experiences, my ideas into words, into physical documentations of the things I experienced that I couldn’t put into words before?
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Do you think you would know what they sounded like
Do you think I will recognize my words when you give them back
Do you think we speak the same language in sound?
​
Would you be able to help me pull apart my own words,
help me understand myself by rephrasing my words,
making them become sounds
Is cheating to borrow the way you speak?
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Would you like it enough that you’d ask me to sing
Would you like it enough that you’d ask me to come see it
to come hear it
to come feel it
If I sent you a story would you turn it into a song?
Would you know that I’m trying to do what I said I would do
And if you did would you be upset?
Would it help you with your own story
I guess you didn’t ask for my help
Or any help that is.
I don’t want to distract you
I can’t help but distract you.
Where are you?
I can’t hear you and somehow that makes it hard to hear myself.
​
I’m scrolling
I’m missing something
I can see my body I can feel it
But it’s never felt so limp.
It’s never felt so fleshy.
It’s never felt less like mine.
I’m uncomfortable in my skin for the first time
Not because I don’t love it but because it’s unfamiliar to me.
I’m not using it like I used to,
like I am used to.
It feels like that part of me is falling away and
I’m trying to catch it, stretch and find it,
But I’m scared when I find it and look up,
I’m only going to find that scratchiness.
After all this time of back and forth you still answer me,
reciprocate to me.
I’m scared one day I’ll have taken it too far.
I don’t think I could
I think I have you.
I’m scared to be wrong.
January 16th, 2022
Time passed like words coming back from a song you haven’t sung in so long but are familiar
And when you become aware of the time you’re reminded of what else you’re missing out on
I cried
​
Torn, overwhelmed by how much I wanted to be where I was
I never expected to be so emotional about where I was
I just knew I wanted to be there
I also knew I wanted to leave.
It’s always been like that with you
Too much to leave not enough to stay
​
The first time you were silent.
You couldn’t reveal yourself to me.
I made you nervous so you lost your voice
The second time you knew I was special and so you tested me
Saw how much of the full you I was going to be okay with,
you knew I wouldn’t be okay with it
My chest tightened, you stretched
I told you to leave I tried to tell you
But you wouldn’t
It was different
You were somehow still listening to me
Or differently, listening differently
And so I was honest
And from that point forward I always will be.
September 16th, 2022
Time and time again I think about how the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me is say
I can write in their book.
Evidence of care through observation of habits.
He regularly wanted to provide for others,
didn’t feel a possession of his belongings.
And while he loved to share things with anyone,
this permission felt special.
Intentionally permanent.
​
Although I am admiring this quality now, I do hope he feels protective of the book I am referencing.
My care squeezed into as many margins as existed.
​
He does have a tendency to lose things,
perhaps this leads to his ability to share easily.
He must have gotten used to things coming and going.
April 24th, 2023
Even after the first morning I started writing down the things he said to me,
just like I used to with you.
There were a few things he said I didn’t write because I already have
The same things you said to me
I really couldn’t believe how similar,
just the same
​
When I told him he said it was endearing
He knew how much I loved you,
but he didn’t understand
I still loved you.
​
It felt so much like our start
He wasn’t able to be there for me fully,
just like you weren't
I couldn’t believe I was stuck again.
I tried to get out and I couldn’t
I denied it and denied it and denied it
just like I did with you
I told him that second time that I didn’t want him,
just like I did with you
Because I knew just the same that we would.
I just don’t know when to tell you.
July 29th, 2022
What can I call you?
Out of the few things I know for sure lately,
which of course is nothing, but I can convince myself otherwise, this unnecessary stalling to avoid vulnerable transparency, but I do know
You’ll always be my partner.
This title you’re stuck with forever.
That’s how the past works, it’s stuck now, back there, for sure.
That’s how language works.
But what with today?
There must be something between something that explains that we aren’t in love anymore but we do still love each other and also simultaneously that it would only take allowing ourselves permission to be in love again for the title that is stuck in the past to exist in the present, presently.
But your presence is what lacks and the distance blackened through glass is a reminder of the inescapable fact which first decided this nameless path.
So what can I call you?
On the phone?
Eventually.
An opportunity to seek a semblance of you physically
Pretending to oppose the only thing I can’t control,
my emotions begin pulsating
We are just friends who have phone sex.