Sadness is a chewable tablet
in the fall. The riptide
returns with a little less
water in the hourglass
than yesterday. There is a bottle
with your name on it, a plastic
orange, pills you don’t believe in
but I believe in you and your bare-
branch will. Every year it all ends
and each time,
leaves appear again.
(originally published in Chronogram, Spring 2025)
Look at this kingdom of garbage
trucks. A survey underneath
the 31st St. Bridge, where I spend
my horrible days collecting.
It is Friday night and there is
pressure to deliver. I told you
nothing we do here is important,
so take a deep breath. Smell
the compost of contemporary
capitalism. My blue brain
has ceased to need a function.
My winter is every man’s
desire for himself. It is waiting
for my back to give and bear
the weight of the waste:
the compacted nature of my life,
squandering, squandering,
squandering the ineffable.
(originally published in A God You Believed In - Pinhole Poetry, 2023)
When I part orange floral curtains
in obscured sunshine, my sadness grows
no more profound. Black hairs
prostrate on the half-wet tub a vestige
of an earlier me. My accordion heart,
my baying accordion heart is
drenched in absolution, the blanket
of suds that coat my state
of being. I wish I could tell
you that everything is okay,
but I look up to the faucet
and the pressure says nothing–
the world is a drowned white
noise soundscape I am trying
to listen through. You are out
there, somewhere. Eyes closed,
the chill haunts me when
the water turns off, as
steam becomes the memory
I breathe.
(originally published in AvantAppal(achia), Spring 2022)
cooped in a house this depressed era winter
summer you say I’m really your friend I believe
it now but before in the spring it was pinwheels
could’ve been poets seeking nothing but tea coffee
chocolates grand canyon space understating
worlds of difference your activism accurate
paintings hang over white walls laughter
your echo screams through town I have a bucket
of these memories splashing out on the short
walk to your place I can’t stop feeding monsters
you laugh at me onscreen onstage
our common ground is both of us leave as far
as we can go to stay an other
(originally published in Avatar Review, Summer 2021)
It is depressing to walk outside.
No one of no ones, my formlessness
would be dazzling, if you knew to
look, a vapor in the shape of memory.
I know the sensation of a crowd.
Faraway fear of missing out
in my own backyard– back
to that old mindset. Life of
lives– tenth iteration? I have
planted some sense of evolution.
Everyone’s growing gardens,
hunched over greens
of potted soils, warning
the world of rabbits. I
chase the idea I’ll never
be settled anywhere. Love
to be alone but don’t know
what to do with my hands
when I am. Nor could I be
a surgeon. Or a fisherman–
imagine me, who can’t swim,
casting a net into the lake.
A splash of water and I’m
wishing for a wishing well.
(originally published in Pomona Valley Review, Summer 2022)
When I am lonely,
it helps to not think
of the universe. I imagine
Earth buried in the darkest
cemetery, a headstone
with some space separating
it from the next.
I know there must be a
tenderness quotient
in the cosmos, a rose
on some crimson planet
blooming tall to wave
at me, its petals drifting
aimlessly through
a garden of light-
years. This distance
is more collective
than we know.
(originally published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Fall 2020)
can’t risk having you fall in
it’s the same blue blood buzzing everywhere
a spider’s on my face and all I see is dusk
and lavender cornfields
you would tell me if (I made your) birthday a ruin, right?
you’d come out of (your hole in) the ground,
help me navigate through pink-spiked weeds?
every step I take close bullfrog leaping into moss
to escape me I get it I don’t know if it’s my intention
misplaced or if my body’s just unable to execute
the further I walk from the house a little more it rains
moths displaced little insects winging away
each further step I take toward the lake
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Review, Fall 2021)
month close to death. not quite. i mean
lingering. sword in my throat sharpens.
no blood just ideas. look somehow
i’ll make it through & you will too.
sun a fluorescent hospital interior
bland & tasteless. every song out
of tune piano room. cold blanket
can’t hide the notes dark &
hovering outside the window
(originally published in OVERHEARD Lit, Winter 2022)
about at least the weather
the summer mosquitos
won’t stop eating me red
bumps along ridges
of skin dinner and sweat
from walking humid heart-
shaped streets I’m out
of shape burned steps
every dollar I waste’s
not spent on me but
oh how I’m saturated
(originally published in Agony Opera, Summer 2021)
“They’re not deviled eggs
because Lucifer was once an angel.”
-Anth
At the bar you order
a small white plate
of celestial eggs.
Holy mayonnaise
yellow topped
with chives.
They are gulped
except for the last,
which you offer me
through telepathy.
I am the egg.
When I stop throbbing
is when I live
so I hold it high
in our five spotlights.
The arena cheers.
I see many doors.
Five floors:
on the bottom, death,
but each row above
a plethora of possibilities.
In your car, you say
I am feeling unmoored,
my shoe half-out your door.
The renaissance is what we
make. It is brown paint
over everything, the oil
light– you ask, what is on
your mind? I don’t know
how much you know
but I felt the warmth
of the machine beside me
thrumming on the street.
You were on the phone,
I think. I glared– I think
the end is coming
faster than fresh ideas
or the universe’s
rate of expansion.
The fact you drove
saved me from running
through the dark city
in the center of my existence.
In the shadow room
inside my house,
I did not process
emotion. The throbbing
sprain in my foot.
It was that death
issued a rain check
when I smacked my head
in the basement bar
of the indie theater.
I was the movie
everyone watched.
I left everyone waiting
for me to emerge
from the sewer. I swear
I will not group up next time.
I want each synapse
comprehended. To succeed
would be the stretchy fabric
of my living. Nylon
for the brain. Procrastination
for the ascent. I say you need
not worry because I am not
worried. Depression is a shovel
deep in soil and I am buried
in my mind, thankful
to be given a second
heaping of kindness
when I never deserved the first.
Hard to learn you
when my body is uniformly
jagged and growing
hairs sharp like knives
eternally out of every inch.
I want to be soft
with you, but once
we eat, all mysticism
is lost to process.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)