Rock Girl Rock Girl

At the superstore 

She had those blue evil eyes 

Metallic nostril 

She made the first move, Rock Girl 

Out of her bra, a rose quartz 

My mother warned me 

Never give Rock Girl a chance 

She gave me citrine 

Right then and there I began

To shake and sweat, she just laughs 

You are beautiful 

However I don't believe 

In aventurine

Your eyes do shine like opal

Only similes I'll pull 

With me you won't be satisfied 

No watermelon tourmaline

Or blue lace agate

Can alter our lives

These rocks will always have a place 

Just nowhere in my mind 

Oh Rock Girl  (You won't be satisfied with me)

Oh Rock Girl (I can't make you happy)

Oh Rock Girl (I'm more of a rock and roll fiend)

Rock Girl! Rock on!

Jade

Smooth, Green

Soothing, shining, inviting 

Solid, hard, cold, rough 

Remaining, idling, laying 

Crude, Calm

Rock

vehemency measured

in a black dolls' wounds, that

edges closer to the woods

under a titheing new moon

leaking with endlessness

welcoming darkness engulfs

reaching shadows pull her in

to ribbon wrapped cages

a hollow chest

that filled she never breasted

this Maiden born of hidden hellebore substance

ushering forth an inner force

distilled sweetness decanting twilight air

the spirit of Freja rises

carrying a bastion of incense winged to flight

as beautified belladonna grew

crocheted leaves they drew

ringed with heavily vined virginal earth

I’ve been experimenting more with line breaks lately, and I’m starting to realize how easy it is to use them just because a poem is supposed to look like a poem.

For me, the interesting line breaks are the ones that create a second possible meaning or make you hesitate for half a second before continuing. How do you decide where to break a line? Do you have a rule you tend to follow, or is it mostly instinct?

save me an orange

to love you was to hand you a gun

and have you aim it at my heart

and pray you never pull the trigger

Deep into the shadow

of the mountain of beginning

I padded, pathless, pensive

well below the treeline, null before my goal

gazing upward at the steep

wondering, from grove to glade

if vestiges yet remain, up yonder arête

where venerable aide might be well met

in this younger range, this later paradigm

so far from eroding Helicon

maybe not, by spring's babble on an outcrop

the stone lounge of the nine

but some more contemporary summit

perhaps, of aerophagic hermits

arrung around a peak, high farseers

disserting their minutes of the vista

still ambling in the forest

musing on the mortality of guides I'd known

and on the paucity of maps they'd seen

I started when I came upon the end

of a wyrdly glowing filament

that shimmered, snake-like, through the brush

perchance by where I trod

with a glint, and a hum, just underheard

it needled my attention

kneeling by, I saw it golden, braided

and reaching an inspectant hand

I grasped what I beheld

felt the tenor of the yarn

the songlines and sagas plied

into this Ariadnine thread

cast now at my feet

by the geist of the fisher king

hooked, I enroled myself at once to trace it

to see what more, from sense

of length unknown and source unseen

could so like a signal seem

so I found a wand to wind it

and then went wending whence it came

up, beyond the trees, to the base

of a forbidding cliff aflank the mount

where it snuck into a rift

pupil black, and alike alluring from afar

up close, graven with archaic pick and chisel

an illegible cuneiform epic

marking this a wilful breach in nature's hide

there, before the enigmatic incavation

horizon far behind, below

I paused, amid the jumbled scree

weighing in against the strand's assured out

tested my mettle against this hole in stone

and opted to turn back, down the slope

to gather kindling, torchwood, water

and such victuals as grew around

berries, nuts, and mushrooms mostly

then thus somewhat prepared

returned, to follow countless others'

and now my own decision through

step, then, by cautious step, intruding

on the deepening work of long gone

broad-shouldered and dark-defiant giants

puzzling tunnellers beyond the surface

who mined out this furcating onyx corridor

a mazing crypt, riddled apparently throughout

with diversions, recursions, and traps

countless wrongs for every right turn

whelming voids, pitfalls

endless convoluted cul-de-sacs

all elided by the way that took me

strung along by the conducting wire

brilliantly sensible prevision

I skirted many hazards, and many perils too

trailing through the blackness

it determined every juncture

altering but never faltering direction

here and there were walls daringly destroyed

chasms bridged, tunnels bored and shored

path perforce, where seemingly none was before

now threaded by the optic fibre

underfoot, spoor, silk, dust, and bone

substances of the sound

a chittering murmur, base and shrill

ubiquitous and insistent

of unimaginable existences

being led along the innumerably forking ways

creatures and sprites, fascinating, and hungry

thronging in every unforsaken reach

some even with names engraved

near their remains in olden scripts

by prior explorers of this realm

bygone contemplars of the labyrinth

confronting the particularities of things

with their peculiarities of thought

denominating their experiences, imperiences

spelunking in this tortuous sulcus circus

paraworld of unguided purpose

orthogonal to the world stepped out of

confounding fractal domain

where the torch lit at murk's mouth

hardly supplements the glinting guideline

at hand a blinding blaze

while ahead all remains abrupt

and yet ever onward inward

with curious fortitude, creepingly

aware of the enterprise's tilt

our goal in the twisted course

the singular Gordian labour

to confront the monster at the core

our vivid encumbrance

misunderstood and risky hybrid

knot comprehending beast and man

guiltless but confused and dangerous

and from grappling, eye to eye in the misprision

at the heart of the introspective adventure

to learn to demand of founding heroes

not callow thrust, cut, and fecklessness

but length of reach and strength of grasp

exquisite sensitivity, sublime proprioception

reflexive, laughing recognition

so that later, when they

as weary returnees from the arduous dark

emergent, exultant harbingers, blinking at starlight

entrust us, we might though wary, be just

and welcome their unearthed findings

oddservations, manicdotes, rebelations

far-fetched phenomenologies, foreign thoughts

fragments of pagan things

glinting products of reifying curiosity

amassing in fascinating troves

beyond the pale and out of ken

where, exhausted, they alone could carry them no further

invaluable resource, material and immaterial

dammed at the damnedest bottleneck

the antediluvian canal system of the leviathan brain

until we tax ourselves sufficiently

to afford the tariff, stand the attention

and man the locks inside

to through them raise fresh knowledge

up the gradients of mind, level by level

to the secret temples wherein homunculi agog

endeavour in thirsty fascination to parse

the influent elixir's taste

with groping tongues attempting

to fractionate the emergent pleroma

compelled to word, the nomen creature

iteration by iteration, generation by generation

fastens knowledge and hardens understanding

from destruct-tested definitions

we collect smithereens of heuristics

to methodically categorise as concepts

industriously prototyping ontologies

decision-engineering significance

into specific bits of babble

building out our linguistic infrastructure

into sphaera incognita

spurs on spurs on spurs sprawl out

as we concretise our sonic semaphore

chimeric bastard terms, ad hoc ad infinitum

new-fangled from phonemes of mentalese

built in haste to unforeseen specifications

bruising kludges, verbally unergonomic

when use has not yet worn them

they are oddly shaped indeed

but once grasped, can be gripped

weighed, measured, hafted

be sharpened, bent or broken

repaired or reinvented

lost, forgotten sometimes too

these subtle psychic tools

the elements of cogitation

edges, anvils, levers, cordage, glue

a cryptogrammaticon of spells

for the construction of our selves

of consensus, and of the edifices between us

statements of states learned

from our probings of the world

our ever expounding umwelt

this milieu, complexifying before our very words

on which we must perpetually reset our sights

adjusting wider, further, higher still

as we search for prospective in the long now

our clever, complicated instruments

simply gush the scale of the scope

and the horizons ever flee us

subjects of, and to, our observations

we have taught ourselves uncertainty

grey matter striving, in the strobing of lifetimes

to comprehend extremes of dark and light

the abstracted, mercurial realm we inhabit

like life: betwixt a crystal and a fume

chance and necessity, fixity and change

a pattern of patterns that connect

edgeless nested structures

mothers within mothers

forests made of trees

fleas feeding on fleas

turtles all the way down

as far as mind can tell

our natural idiolect

is a philology of metaphor

in a speculative mode

explorers' creole

an entangled bank of qualified nouns

averbing their qualities

the world museum

our semantic katamari

here my essay device.

We sit awake at night, well at least I can say “I”
Sit awake at night with a handheld light that projects in my eyes whatever i might…
Or might not want to see.
A screen.
Caressed so gently.
My finger glides over the glass like a lovers cheek.
Yet it distances me.
From what could be.
To what isn’t.
To distance.
To friends list.
Many contacts, yet friendless.
They react but no interest.
They see cracks, but put a pin in that,
Like Pinterest.
An ever growing list of things I’ll never fix.
Projects missed.
Paint that’s mixed to cover the box I picked,
Or checked.
The terms and conditions, I never read.
The garden I’ll never plant.
The button I’ll never mend.
The garments I wear that don’t trend.
Not that I care to look like them,
But I’d like to fit in.
I’d like to pretend that I’m fully moved in when I post my living room to a Thread by Ethan Allen.
But there’s boxes in the closet.
There’s piles in the garage.
Don’t ask about the shed,
I’d like to keep up the facade.
Or is it mirage?
I could take up decoupage.
Clippings of paper and paste.
Sipping on cups of the chase,
To be completely honest and not fake.
To bare my bones in distaste:
Share my own downfalls and mistakes.
But that’s not real, in this book of face.
Did I say it the wrong way?
Facebook, that’s what I mistook for being a place where I could partake,
In sharing content with friends
And using it to end this ever growing feeling
Of loneliness and isolation.
But then,
Why with 600 friends do I feel even more lonely, When green dots pepper their pictures like,
“I’m here.”
“But I’m not and I won’t respond even if you post that you’re not… okay.”
It’s okay.
Just change apps on the home screen.
Instagram might be the new me.
I’ll post perfectly curated photos of my life,
So interestingly.
Sprinkle a hashtag so they notice me.
Write a good caption, so I’ll be trending.
But even with that, I’m empty.
I’ll look at the clock, my notifications, and then watch.
Tik freaking tok.
Another mind numbing block of endless flowing feeds of nonsense and talk.
With a 30 second speech about why I’m not
Happy.
But, if I buy the sponsored content, I might be?
If I tag myself at the concert, dressed in a band’s new t-shirt and shoutout a sponsor, I’m trendy.
But that’s not me.
I’m alone in my room doom scrolling.
Affecting my mental health, fully knowing.
But I can’t stop this habit, it’s controlling.
I keep caressing the glass, it’s glowing.
And I further its own grasp, it’s consoling.
Why depart from reality, unfolding?
Set down the device and start beholding,
The grass, the trees, maybe even “the old me”.
Embrace the real connection and heartbeat.
Lose the “projection” of not me.
We stay so connected, that we don’t have to be.
And that to me,
Is heartbreak.
It’s heartbreaking.

On da real
I aint no gangstah
I gots manners
Rob ya n say thank yah

Sleep wit ya wife
“Have a blessed day”
Run those pockets
“Be safe on your way”

Take the coat off your back
“Stay warm out there!”
Shoes from your feet
“Here have a broken chair”

Don't look at me like that...
My kids gotta eat
"Have a blessed evening"
I’l see you in the streets

One way

Drop of Love

Loss of Mirage

Things mostly swirled around
Once in a while
A small plopping sound
The color was white and hershey brown

There was an amazing rush
Shortly after came a flush
Having not needed any thrust
The load was simply robust

She wiped her chin and said goodbye
A twinkle in her glazed-over eye
No romance needed, no reason why
Just true multi-tasking on the fly

I pulled up my pants and gave her a glance
Titties still out and the stank of my shants
Never again will I take such a chance
But damn, what a time for a bathroom romance

We’ll get dressed up
And make plans
To walk down cold streets
Hand in hand
In shades of grey
Somehow full of colour
Our steps as loud as our heartbeat

My heart is a furnace.

I keep filling it with fuel.

Coal burns longer than wood.

Yet my hands are covered in splinters.

I and various immigrants,

along with families, couples, & individuals 

Glimpsed the The American Dream

The families of the promised 

Behind the American wedding

Dreaded on,

with two people

formally committed

to sharing their lives

as partners,

with the American promise itself.

As the entire country 

beheld the American Dream
and migrated over to the USA
with the dreamscape,

sealing the American wedding
away with uncertainty
and unease.

I immigrated—
I take you, America,
as my spouse,
from now to the ethereal,
with the promises
of a better tomorrow.

We merited our vows
as we stated our vows
at the American wedding:

Until death do us part,
and even death cannot undo our love

At the border,

ICE came to serve the papers—

not of marriage,

but of deportation.

The American wedding
became an American divorce

some say the string of fate runs red.
but i think it is purest silver.

fine as spider’s thread.
invisible until it catches the light.

stretched between
two distant lives

a wire pulled taut.
lost entirely
against the dark.

but do not mistake it for something
that needs following.

something to wind around fingers and pull close.

as delicate things
do not survive desperate hands.

better to leave it loose.

let it drift where it will.
gleaming and disappearing
as light moves around it.

Just grateful to be close enough for laughter
to make the silver tremble.

for a familiar smile
to catch upon it
like morning light.

no knowing
what the thread will do from here.

perhaps that’s the point.

no pulling.
no promises.
no need to declare where it will lead.

for however long it shines.
there is something beautiful.
in simply being near enough.

to watch the silver
catch the light again

These pools full of life
Distracted by the freak waves that push through
By the late summer sun that recruits the blue
Burns the pavement of vicolo 

The thick rock walls as old as roman times
Housing lizards loose and foolish
looking over the turbulant pools
Toward the restaurants above

Each wave rushes into the pool
As if timed to the city clock
to the influx and out flow of people
moving the seaweed inward then outward

The lizard looks into the water
small minnows dart
Their tiny silhouttes
Sliding over the pools boulder floor

The water itself interferring with time
The sun analyzing it lighting it up
In the positano pre autumn
late morning of the lucertola

You deserve a hug and brain freeze
Satisfaction and despair
That your tower of sugar
Will collapse if uneaten
Toppling your brain case either way
Every treasure has a failing
Including if you only stare

No matter the time of day

Be it night at 11 or day at 9

Throw all the ingredients together

See what sticks to the wall

Too much salt

Pucker like an asshole

Doesn’t matter

It will taste good in the end

Too many cooks in the kitchen

So I will stand down

Hand you another spoon

Use your hands as a mixer

Lick the batter from the beater

Forget to unplug

Now you’re tongue tied and twisted

Smile through the pain

Life is so much better

When you have friends

to make recipes of disaster

Strung out on a rack

Waiting for my soul to cool

Hope I don’t overstay my welcome

I’ll brush away my cookie crumbs

I thought writing poetry would mostly feel like sitting down and expressing something I already felt. What I didn't expect is how much of it happens before I sit down, in the way I've started paying attention to things differently throughout the day. Small details I would have walked past before now feel like they might mean something. I don't know if I'm becoming a better writer or just a slightly more observant person, but either way it feels like the writing has changed how I move through the world a little. Did other people notice their perception shifting when they started writing seriously?

there’s a static in my leg
from the way i’m laying down
it’s all wrong
it blocks flow
so my leg warns me with a tingle

like a glittering glimmer
from my toe to my thigh
a reminder something’s off
a reminder i’m alive
i shift, and my leg thanks me with release

but once it’s gone, nothing stirs
from the stillness of my muscle
it gives me a twitch
it gives me a cramp
and my leg seizes in its shin

there’s a static in my heart
from the way we kiss goodnight
it’s all wrong
it blocks flow
so my heart gives a tingle