I almost died a week from now.
A dandelion stuck in my throat.
Frostbite no matter the season.
There is a crash in time.
Exhausts itself.
Perpetual.
A scuffle with dying in all four corners of the room.
And more corners still.
The burden is fresh.
If I died in a time machine tonight.
I wouldn’t even get close to the blight.
I would evaporate like the kitchen sink.
Drain myself like an empty skating rink.
The burden never grew veins.
Choking on a stepping stone somehow.
Traces of what I thought a time machine was.
ant phenomenon
obsessive circle exhausts
their sad death spiral
With wars at every dawn,
Danger prowls—a hungry beast.
One must don their armor,
Or fall where life has ceased.
Yet armor weighs upon the fighter,
Restricts step, exhausts the might,
But shields the heart and guards the soul,
Sustaining life through the endless fight.
You who walk unarmored,
Must sell your all to gain your shield,
For battle comes—none shall be spared,
And empty hands will never yield.
The day of blood will soon arise,
When armor’s stock is spent and gone,
And none will lend their own,
For all must strive to survive the war.
O vast unbordered sea of fire and silence,
we lift our small blue voice to you.
From a turning stone wrapped in breath and cloud,
we send this trembling greeting.
You who scatter diamonds in endless night,
who spin the slow waltz of suns and shadows,
receive our wonder.
We are brief, yet burning with questions.
In your deep, we learned distance;
in your darkness, we invented light.
Our bones remember ancient stardust,
our thoughts chase the paths of comets.
We have named your storms,
charted your patient constellations,
and still you remain—
mysterious as the first dawn.
Accept our gratitude for the elements of our making:
iron for courage, carbon for dreaming,
time for becoming.
Accept our awe, which never exhausts.
If ever our signals brush your farthest shores,
let them say:
Here lives a fragile species
that looked upward and felt less alone.
O Cosmos, cradle of beginnings without end,
keep us humble, keep us curious.
From Earth, with restless hope,
we greet you.
Today, my mind is a playground of thoughts.
If one thought exhausts another,
maybe they would cease to exist—
but today, they multiply.
Today, my thoughts have become a burden.
In the chaos of my mind,
I search for new literature,
new words to anchor my restless soul.
I am a writer.
I don’t need food to nourish me,
nor shelter to shield me,
nor breath to survive.
All I need is a copy that never tires,
and a pen that dances on the page.
I am a writer.
I draw shapes from words,
pour ink like a river that never runs dry.
I write with curled fingers and a wet pen,
as if the very act of creation is my lifeblood.
When life feels colorless,
I splash color onto the canvas of each moment.
I walk with the weight of my thoughts,
each step an echo of the writer’s burden.
Today, my thoughts weigh heavy.
But in their pressure,
I continue to search for new literature,
for a voice that might quiet the storm.
Nothing can destroy you—
Unless you give it permission to.
The love you deserve will fight,
Will always be your side,
No matter how difficulties reside.
In your dark, when you're low or high,
Doubts will sink into your skin—
they'll love you, for no reason—
You won’t need to win.
Even when your luminosity exhausts in wide,
They'll reflect warmth and make you shine.
The love you deserve will love you,
Even when you believe you don’t deserve it.
The half cost of silence
is still overpriced
Each question unspoken
a chasm for vice
When blind to the moment
all vision exhausts
Each voice that is muted
— its own holocaust
(Dreamsleep: August, 2024)
congested roadways
smokey exhausts pollute air
all just for free food
They are jeans and sweats; they are what we
forget to wear when we are wearing them.
Patched-up seams are sewn.
Many have been scrubbed and dyed colorless,
some died of poverty on the shallow page,
They are comprehensible only in alterations.
Old words are open graves,
that still pump out sounds,
a few peddle rhymes, dangle pretty chimes
and there’s the damn pity.
It is not 'I' that exhausts the throat of an owl,
it is the new wine. It needs to be put way,
that the dark vine may shine once more.
As for all the yet unwritten words,
they are hung around a hooting neck,
until bone or bough breaks.
The part-Persian kitty weaves through the puzzle debris
checking out ornate cups
of Grogg. Curious of
these human companions sitting at her table,
daring to move the “chess” pieces
in various shapes. She could use them for better
than time-waste, could nibble
like a tea biscuit.
She’ll not let down her defenses. They must think
she is an ordinary house cat.
She won’t even “meow,” lest they
reach out to attack her fur with long stroke rubs.
But that kid! She can’t escape
the one who puts her to chase
as if she is the mouse, fallen into his trap.
Still, she gets her exercise
hopping over “hot coals,”
again that mystic maze puzzle,
through the legs
of the giant chairs,
“leaping-lizards” downstairs,
on the run, not
on the prowl
til she exhausts the kid.
The kid is her undoing.
Now he is two-fisting a ball,
in the air. She dare
not stare. He will
begin his bull-run again.
Kitty hides in the shadows, but darn,
she hears the pitter-patter of food into her bowl
and she’s thirsty, too.
Seasons bring ... the nights, Machiavelli's
Corvus corax or ravens, hints, rallies
birds of good and evil, biblically,
and birds of a feather, ominously,
fed Elijah; 1 Kings 17: ... good,
left Noah; Genesis 8: ... bad, withstood
words by De La Mare, Pollard, and purely ...,
Poe. Riposte's preface specter writes, surely ...,
"Unblackeneds spot the murder from peaks cross.
Fowl scratched a stilted appendaged, exhausts
for ends, internal haunts recuse it from
rituals such ... be marred guilt and succumb
in absentia accused of their acts.
Black king seeks a pawn, the hour ... ink affects."
It comes from the sky, white, powdery gifts,
upsets may, but gets us vibrating,
we call in from work, get cover for shifts,
no way we are not participating.
The lots are plowed roughly, but well enough,
we see the white streak of trails on the hill,
blast through the snow, there is never too much,
use rock skis so the good ones don’t get killed.
A run that’s boring exhausts us today,
sweating in the air that makes water freeze,
the soft, springy stuff on which we now play
lets us bound joyously through silent trees;
when it doesn’t come, the snow we must make,
but that’s hamburger, the real stuff is steak!
Turrets are turning,
behind the tanks
exhausts are farting death clouds,
barrels, like angry dicks,
are hot, erect and spurting,
buildings erupt, climaxing
on TV screens.
On both sides of these yonder hill
where the redline bleeds,
blank-eyed children,
play their video games,
while trying to overhear
a merciful God at His prayers.
They crawl in a line
along the esplanade
between beachfront mansions
and the bay's indifference,
windows down, elbows out,
hands tapping on doors in time
to the doof doof base
pulverizing air and eardrums
inside their metal sanctums
of pure testosterone.
Throbbing engines ease them
along the street, slow
and deliberate as if to give
pedestrians time to admire
and take in such potency.
An occasional pump
on the pedal sends a roar
rasping out of twin exhausts
and stutters a squeal
of tyres announcing to the locals
and all gathered, the "boys"
are here.
Marooned in another era,
they seem oblivious
to the derision flung at them
as they pass, misinterpreting
a smirk for an approving smile,
the shake of a head a gesture
of wonder rather than a judgment
on how silly they look.
Their egos blaze like the sun
reflected in polished chrome.
When satisfied
they've given onlookers their fill
of metallic ****, they hang a left,
plant their foot
and in a wake of tyre smoke
and deafening noise, rocket off
back to their own private planet,
time frozen somewhere
in the exhaust filled clouds
on the far side of their minds.
It's useful to have a short attention
span, since it allows us to pause thought flow
in the gap where exhausts its suggestion,
wherein lingering in the afterglow,
in the void of emptiness, heart's mellow.
To dwell in this gap is an art that's learnt,
after we have been time and again burnt
by raging fires we had created
and although we wish our past stupor weren't,
all’s well now; we're no longer sedated.
15-January-2023
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