Category Archives: Poetry

The feeling that you’d die
without someone else
must be how polar bears feel
as the ice beneath their paws
cracks into smaller pieces
year by year—
insidious, but still alive
and they pad from glacier to glacier
until the edge yields too steep a drop.
Swim the rest,
don’t drown.
But if it’s someone else
who said they’d die without you,
the last flops of a fish on land
before it’s plopped back into the ocean
resurrected,
don’t you think it’s a bit too much
for my frame
to pull your weight–
surely you’d drown.
I’d rather drown.
I would drown,
let water close up above, solid,
until stars in my eyes blot out the sun
and there’s no air
no gulp of breath to release
a roar that’d shatter ice.

Bodies drained of fluid, the first step
towards “just light enough” to float.
Water retention is always first to go
even then we glide down to earth
rather than plummet,
fighting a losing battle of
weightlessness
against packed bodies
in queue ready to step forward.
It’s a long drop from a place overlooking the world–
linger once, breathe held, and you’re
falling
up into the sky
above the clouds even after death.

Stones fall, meteors toward earth
She pushes
They tumble
He is crushed.
Yet at the bottom of the chasm
homogenous dust
of ground,
stars, earth, and breath
never appeared so wholesome.

We sat watching
lightyears away
from the place
Where apples filled a basket in the corner of your eye
Where carpeted stairs hid crumbs and hair
from days we rushed out in the mornings
combing through that tangled mess,
racing downstairs.

Those rotten cores and keratin strands
biodegraded right to nothing,
all as one.

Sponges soak poison.
One might think they should rethink
their proposition with life.
Built too accepting,
could just kill someone.
Then again, this isn’t
a built-in suicide
but a murder.
So absorb all you want
wring out the majority,
keep the rest
diluted but lethal
guess it doesn’t matter
when soaking everything in.

A hand extended
Right up to the glass
Look!
Fog
Spread like a blurred spider web.
It’s not like I can help
Reacting to every breath
Even though far behind
they trek softly, barely existing
Behind this clear wall
Impenetrable
And as they whisper and reach
Tap tap tap
echoing through my sandbox of
four walls no door
Or three walls and an enormous glass window
Give me a concrete sandbox
And surely I’ll be safe.

There were three butterflies.
After growing bored of flying
flower to flower every day,
one asked
“What’s the purpose of life?”
The second,
who had begun to track flowers,
marking down each new species
in an colored, tabulated spreadsheet
said
“Stupid question. You should always strive towards some
actionable item
and waste less time thinking about those things.”
The third,
many years of life experience ahead,
also spent its time flying flower to flower
and had long filled up its free cloud storage space for spreadsheets
made a gesture to speak
in the way butterflies do–
but its ephemeral little life
ended up in ashes on a light bulb
of a lamp post outside.
Because flying flower to flower
really does get boring.

Pillows of flesh don’t come from just anywhere
not the whites, the beiges, the freckled–
these beasts, nurtured behind bars of perseverance
tender enough to eat.

Stroking one finger summons a maelstrom
One lingering glance a hail of needles.
This one devours, pierces
caresses, rocks slowly in tight arms.

This beast of flesh
strokes under the spell of soft skin.
Naiveté responds in turn.

What did you say?
I said
don’t whisper
else we can’t hear you
like the soft pitter patters
of rain against skin
smooth smooth skin
that absorbs the droplet of a sound.
I said
there’s corruption in the air
as lead dust chipped away from the wall
and we can’t hear anything.
Not the skin peeling,
not the stripped walls.

The terrorist wonders what a crumbling building
Has anything to do with their cause.
After all it is just
Concrete

Metal

Glass

Maybe some more, some less
Crashing to the ground spewing smoke
Lives.

Scream for me
They think so that a purpose might be defined
So that a purpose might be given
To live
To kill
To instigate
Action that might flicker into the future
Only to fade back into the past
Maybe.

The victim wonders what bombs have anything to do with terrorists
At least
When not wondering why them why not someone else
What possible vengeance could be wrought
Such that the thinly threaded life
Might be disguised with invincible rope once again
Metal

Glass

Pain

Of flesh
Of call
Of the unsettling awareness
Becomes a memory
The world settles fast to its own pace once again.