I stepped out yesterday,
with no money for food,
no money for rent.
Only a T-shirt, jeans, and shoes,
that's enough, I told myself.
In my bag, my laptop,
my copies, my pen.
I am writing two things now,
one book, Always Go Up,
and one novel about my life.
I have nothing in my hands,
but I have a dream in England,
to become a PhD doctor.
I don't know how I will pay,
I don't know how I will eat,
but I know I will make my dream come true.
The Gathites had heard about
King David by word of mouth
Then in song and dance
King Achish’s servants
Sang of Saul and David’s downing thousands
It was fear that King David bled
He acted the fool instead
Insane and inane he did pretend
And King Achish said
“Do I lack madmen?”
The radio towers died at noon, the screens went blank and cold,
And static ceased to whisper of the empires bought and sold.
Down in the deep concrete redoubts, where millions gasped for air,
The ordinary citizens were stripped of their despair.
But in its place came something vast, a terrible, clean weight—
The absolute, unyielding hush that settled at the gate.
For thirty days no leader spoke, no siren pierced the dark,
The automated generators left a silent spark.
Men stared into their calloused hands, unable to recall
The frantic noise that used to drive their backs against the wall.
The silence was a physical thing, a pressure in the ear,
That forced the crowded bunker-rooms to face their oldest fear.
Yet by the third long, wordless week, the madness turned to rest,
As heartbeat matched to heartbeat in the quiet of the chest.
They learned to read the shifts of light, the breathing of the crowd,
And found a stranger, softer tongue where nothing was allowed.
Before the silver wood reached down to claim the planet's lease,
The bunker citizens survived the suffocating peace.
Blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah
blah.
Blah
blah blah
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah.
Some days the weight isn't heavy or loud,
just a fog that settles behind the eyes,
a persistent, low-hanging winter cloud
that blurs the shape of the morning skies.
We ask ourselves why we are tired or slow,
as if healing moves in a straight, clear line,
forgetting the seed buried under the snow
is working in secret before its design.
It takes courage to rest when the world demands speed,
to sit with the storm till the thunder subsides,
to listen with patience to what the heart needs,
instead of the pressure that daily decides.
You do not need to be cured by tonight,
nor prove that you’re whole to be worthy of space;
just stay in the room, let yourself see the light,
and meet your own spirit with unconditional grace.
They circled my desk
I drew flowers on my page
The bell rang; I stayed
.
Hello, Ego.
In this contest, I am to disrobe you.
Is that OK? Thanks.
What do I see?
What I expected to see—
Continued Universal Human Cluelessness.
It hides beneath the raiment of all egos.
Here is the Philosophy of Broader Survival.
It elevates your mind above cluelessness
and takes the pressure off of you.
You’re welcome.
Dappled pointless drizzled thoughts,
zephyr voices, shadow moods:
you’ve tried all kinds of games to play—
where your glance-born sunlight fits,
where your whispered meadows lay,
when the seasons autograph
your worn-out practiced smiles…
I have but eleven remaining lines
to wax poetic over you:
to sate your clueless need to shine
while posing on a cloudy ‘morn;
that blooms when basking in the dark;
that you will eventually leave behind
when I straighten-out your wayward mind
with a future mode of deeper thoughts
sitting in your lap today,
just beneath your clever lips…
I’ll then see you, disrobed, in a diorama
In a museum’s Wing of Cluelessness.
.
The black cat traversed the alley
when the pavement kept the rain.
The houses gave no answer.
No one looked out from the windows.
It walked across
the broken concrete.
It stood near the wall of bricks
until the rain
tapped the metal above its head.
It passed those corners
as before.
It let out one low cry.
The alley heard it alone.
The storm stayed over the alley.
The alley then grew silent.
Daylight came over the roofs.
The old bricks kept their place
but no shadow crossed them.
I would walk when the snow is quiet,
when the trees stand still
and the ground is untouched.
I would not fear the cold.
Winter has taught me
that even empty places
can hold life.
I would walk past the places
that sheltered me before,
step into the snow,
and follow the trail only I could see.
My scars and my steps already tell the story.
The wild already knows.
I have survived every season
that tried to make me disappear.
My knuckles are raw from the cold subway pole,
and the guy next to me smells like damp wool and cheap coffee.
He’s staring at a cracked phone screen,
his thumb scrolling past headlines, dinners, divorces.
We don’t talk.
Nobody talks here.
But under his heavy black winter coat,
somewhere behind his lint-covered tie,
a small fist of muscle is slamming against his ribs.
Thump.
It’s a clumsy, desperate noise,
like an old radiator knocking in a basement.
It keeps time against the black tunnel outside the window,
a persistent thudding negotiation with the dark
that just asks for enough time to get to Tuesday.
We walk around pretending we own the sidewalk,
worrying about the rent, the teeth that need fixing,
the text message left on "read."
Every wet breath is a lease renewal
signed in the dark without our permission.
I look at the girl across from me,
her eyeliner smudged from a long shift.
Her chest rises.
The cold world looks the other way,
indifferent,
and lets her have another minute to figure it out.
It’s not a grand design.
It's just a truce.
A messy, fragile truce,
kept alive by a pound of red meat
stubbornly refusing to stop hitting the wall.
"Coo Coo!"
I Begged The Question...
Mourning Dove:
Survival Of The Fittest?
Clumsy... Survival Of
The FATTEST!
Yes.
Survival Of The Full.
-Gray Squirrel
07-08-2026
To the nameless you inside me,
Are you doing well?
My cells spoke to me:
“For fifty years, I have protected you
And cared for you, so why—”
Why do you only now send your greetings to me?
“Do you want to die?”
“Yes.”
My cells spoke to me:
Your expression is far too violent.
If you die,
Are you telling me to die too?
Huh? You wicked man!
Do you have any idea
How I raised you?
“I’m sorry.”
Right, but there is one thing
I want to ask of you.
Please, even if it’s just one meal a day,
Eat something with some nutrition.
It is so hard for me.
Please, stop being full only in your dreams,
And take care of the other you
In reality.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can keep that promise.”
“It’s okay, because at least you’ve awakened a little,
My heart feels a bit lighter now.
Good night! O, the other me of mine!”
Some say anger and pain are cousins
Always traveling as one.
I’ve felt them both in my days,
Intertwined, solidified,
Almost premeditated,
Enjoying their journey.
But I prefer laughter with my pain.
True partners in survival
A touch of humor in the sorrow
Tempering, if even a shade twisted,
And each glad day
Can carry its drop of pain.
This poem originally appeared in Academy of the Heart and Mind Literary Magazine, 2026, all rights reserved
Old wounds have a way of knocking
when the house grows still at night,
appearing like familiar shadows
just beyond the reach of light.
They arrive in borrowed voices,
in memories dressed as truth,
wearing faces I once trusted
from the broken years of youth.
They whisper,
Perhaps you never healed at all.
Perhaps the scar is just a seam
waiting for the smallest pull
to split apart at every dream.
And for a moment,
I believe them.
I feel the ache beneath my skin.
I hear the echo of old battles
calling me to fight again.
But wounds are not the same as doorways.
Not every pain must let us through.
A scar remembers where we've traveled;
it does not tell us what to do.
So, I sit quietly beside it,
like an old friend passing by.
I do not run.
I do not follow.
I do not ask the reason why.
I simply let it have its moment,
the grief, the fear, the ancient ache.
Then watch it fade like distant thunder
across a sky it cannot take.
For healing was not being untouched.
It was learning, day by day,
that old wounds may still come knocking,
but I no longer have to stay.
SURVIVAL FITNESS
Where there is vision,
Enlightening shows the way;
And love survives all:-
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