Category: Poetry

i am a writer! i shout this
while they show me my blank
journals, my hand naked
of any calluses.
no really, i am!

it is all in my head
somewhere
very, very far.

i am afraid
i have so much to say

there are clouds in my mind
terrible, terrible storms
when they clear
i can show you
the flowers.

yes the ink lies there on
the pages, you will see.

i am afraid
i have so much to say
and no one will ever hear it.

my pen haunts me.
it is cold here.

but you must believe me
i am a writer

maybe i will never be
one of the greats
surely the canon will
never include my name

but i am a writer.
i promise you
i think
no, i know
no, i just am.

Morning comes
without my permission.
Light rests its head on the counter.
It has learned to not disturb me.

I rinse my mug.
Yesterday thins,
slips down the sink drain,
which holds our silence
without spilling.

The room remembers you
in small ways.
Your chair is angled slightly away,
the air still shaped like a pause.

Grief is a clean, smooth surface.
I don’t know what to set down.

Outside, a neighbor waters their plants
cautiously,
as if they’ve learned that
too much care can drown a thing.

I relearn the weight of my hands again,
and how they answer
to only me now.

Her voice was like a pearl:
smooth, rich texture, though bumpy
as she ran over her runs.
A rush of water over a rocky shore
even between the cracks.

A voice of flowing silk,
she rippled her notes,
her breath streaming
underneath, over,
and over, and over.
Rolling in beaded balls of vibrato
into the thread of song,
clicking together elegantly,
castanets in flamenco songs.

Her pearl glimmered across the rough stage,
a soft sight to the ears and eyes,
taking on many hues in the light:
aquamarine, peony pink, shimmering gray.
It colored the stage,
Making the awe-struck audience unable to look away.
As she finished, they began to roar,
but all she gave was a meek round of bows.
Her pearl—a humble gem,
only shown when she opened her mouth,
hidden to preserve the beauty inside.

Grief is a house with the lights left on,
rooms hum with names no one answers,
walls murmur like prayers gone wrong.
I walk these halls barefoot on broken hours,
treading over memories that still breathe
each step waking something that refuses to die.
Death is a shadow sewn beneath my skin,
it grows teeth where hope used to rest,
stitched to my spine, stretching longer with every goodbye.

A raven crowns the roof of my ribs,
black-winged and watching,
beak tapping like a clock I can’t silence,
its wings folded around every unsaid word,
its hunger split across what’s already gone.
It does not fly away.
It stays.

Like a sentinel on the ruined house of my chest,
counting the heartbeats,
teaching the ache how to speak in my voice,
watching over the rooms love once lived in.
Where laughter still hangs like dust in the light,
it still guards what remains:
the quiet furniture of memory,
the hollow doorways of your name.

The coolness sets in,
and sunlight turns fleeting.
The emissions of fall
stifle my growth,
keep me inside—
a relentless hibernation.

New chemicals
artificially alter my psyche.
I see no benefit on the horizon—
I continue anyway.

Are the palpitations
worth the outcome?

The wind whips unapologetically,
disrupting the peace.
The integrity of the trees is tested—
leaves not quite weak enough
to give up.

Do the birds appreciate
the extra push,
or do they dread
the loss of control?

Seeds and grain fall
to the forest floor,
their final moments scattered,
picked up beak by beak.

Has the groundhog
sensed the season’s change?

I have fed him,
but have not seen him.

Perhaps
he prepares
for his own hibernation.

It is a dream to receive everything I’ve wanted.
So, why do I return to this,
the feeling that it is a sin to be loved?
I stand between these parallel worlds:
one where trees are rooted,
the other where butterflies roam.
My spirit aches to cross the periphery,
where my heart can feel what cannot be seen.

Such is the predicament of a poet:
the desire to live among the gods.
Does such a place exist—
to speak a language few could understand?
To express image in sound and details—
folk tales manifested in truth.
Or do I abandon the chance at living a normal life—
starving on the loss of my future
while I daydream?

To receive, with empty hands,
I walk this solid ground.
Remind me again why I shall not grieve this life:
one that is fleeting, temporal,
where logic prevails over madness.
Sing to me myths that illustrate human tears.
Exhume these ruins shrouded under plastic and greens,
a material world threatened by its own finitude,
its antithesis—the lovers who reside beyond Eden
make pleasure last for eternity.

Twin flame, undead, I summon your name,
spelled with lavender and jimsonweed.
No more contemplating fictions between
romance and reason, but breathing words—
plaguing me with your unearthly presence.
Seduce me with stories that bleed,
slipping through arteries, wrapped in telepathy,
as I wander back to the vampires.

to be like a modern Joan of Arc, but I
just spent €500 at the Aran Sweater
Market. You can identify me at sea by
fisherman’s ropes, diamond island-
tilled fields, trellised stone walls
aplenty, zig zagging marriage lines,
and Irish moss knit—fertile seaweed—
as nature, unchaste. I’m armored with
patterns of past lovers and new
investments in wool that will last a
lifetime. My old self, untarnished,
steel-clad, wore the burnished gorget,
crimped edges warding abroad the
errant lips and teeth of strangers, I
articulated clinking joints of gauntlets
to claw away heart-piercers, and I
fastened leather straps of pauldrons’
peaked plates to shoulder black magic
bolts. Now, hexes hit me dead-on, no
armor to martyr-maid me, just wool,
and the knowledge of a salmon burn.
We were never meant
to see our reflection in steel. From
our canvas currach, we gaze as
Narcissus in the raging ocean and
sort out the self from the noise. The
cuirass I own is outgrowing me. A
gambeson could fit, but wool
sweaters are more my speed. These
days, I want my heart exposed.

The ocean is roaring, the waves crash and rise,
The seagulls are calling, they dive through the skies.
From cliffs high and silent, I peer down below,
Where a dog runs on sand, with the tide in its flow.

She leaps through the foam, as the waters retreat,
Her paws in the spray, where the sea and earth meet.
The wind pulled her forward, her joy in the chase,
She danced in the moment, her movements pure grace.

The waves chant their song and the gulls cry aloud,
While I stand on the cliffs, like a ghost in the crowd.
She chases the shoreline, where sky touches sea,
As I hold to the memory of what used to be.

For Goose

I hold the weight of her world
in my hand. A wide-eyed mind
where dragons dance with
rainbows and unicorns glide
through storms––where a glimmer
of greatness glistens in a world
that wills her to fail.

May Sisyphus pause as she ascends––
stumbles, rises, stumbles again
unyielding.
Let Icarus weep as wax wings carry
her beyond the horizon.

She sees me as a pillar––marble-cut,
strong, sure––my shoulders a place
upon which she rests her faith.
She does not see my quiet
ruin. The fall from grace written in
scars that hum hymns
of survival; tragedies that would
humble the greatest of heroes––
twelve feats failed, a frayed string of Fate.

She cannot know––must never
know––that the beating of her
little heart is the only thing
keeping mine.

Gild me a day, spun
and spooled with
dappled sunlight.

Bring me a wind that echoes
the morning birds softly sung song.

Spill your honey coated tongue
into the sweetened air
for a leaf will tumble fruitfully
onto the rain soaked dirt
where my lazy lilies sway aimlessly
and reach for your nimble fingers.

Listen to the ancient hum of the river,
tremble in its forgiving wake,
carve your name in the stone
as the mountain rises.
A god gazes north as
morning light breaks,
light spilling like poured milk,
the earth opens its upturned mouth
and drinks first.

Here nature takes you exactly as you are–
raw,
bare,
and alive.

Nothing rushes,
nothing begs or breaks.
I, who look up from the green tree
start to climb,
branches scraping the sky,
riches and gold,
or soil and petals,
one of the vast treasures of the world.