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The war against the night is waged
with double sided swords
and scrap iron shields fashioned
from pitch black iron maidens
wound self inflicters
breaking my own skin
drawing my own blood
with each futile movement
for the night is eternal
its time is assured
a thousand slashes swung
and a hundred blocked shots
could never keep it away
but human flesh knows expiration
greatly hastened by neglection
and the art of selfish sacrifice
so I walk barefoot on broken bottles
like lily pads to cross a current
with the water turned to whiskey
bloody red soles stinging
dried pink lips cracking
as I run my tongue around
my chapped mouth and taste metal
as I look and move around
the world I’ve made and feel shame
and confusion because I’m lost
battered, broken, nameless
in the barren rolling vastness
of my very own domain

sometimes i lie
awake but still in bed
and let all that I’ve seen
dance inside my head

eyes shut tightly
but I see all of them
people plucked from memories
here I call on them

here I ask things
left unsaid in the past
words never fully formed
messages unsent

“Was it worth it?”
I ask the one woman
sat spreading tarot cards
her face just like mine

“Was it my fault?”
I ask the young boy
the one I’m bonded with
the one left behind

“Why’d you do it?”
I ask the old lady
lying asleep in bed
a dog at each foot

“What did I do?”
I ask the pretty girl
dancing at the party
to her favorite songs

these images
ephemeral vignettes
projected on eyelids
so I can’t forget

eyes still shut tight
my tired consciousness drifts
off, back into slumber
bringing dreams with it

in my dreamland
a parallel present
sits frozen in stasis
waiting just for me

one where I’m not
perpetually pleading
for fictitious answers
from familiar phantoms

the velocity of love
is an unknown variable
only visible
in the rear view

the reflection of
a former reality
rendered obsolete
by its creators

a life deconstructed
to carve out a path
and pave out a road
in its empty wake

the road is a bridge
from a one horse town
to a glittering city of
nascent relationships

days of being lost
so many dial ups
so much sunken cost
the warrior in his house
among the coconuts
his hotness the blossoming lotus
his friendship with the mosquitoes
his life a nuance in experience
conceptualise a mountain on a palm
conceptualise a dust mote on the sun
the rain eternal is what it is
the rain is what it becomes
less disdain in the eyes of the captor
less disdain becomes favour over time
less disdain with the hotness of fever
blessed but not for less to arrive
the culprit is out there and yet
there's still time
to sing about nothing on the sand
in the gloomy outlines of a cell
an amoeba sitting on the dunes
breaking waves... sullen

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.

Live in the question.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

waiting...can you write me a poem

I agreed with Kanye’s Nazi rhetoric
Just to feel excited again
I started beefs when I’ve already deaded them
Just to feel excited again
This is the soup of our modern existence
I’ve added so much Tapatio that I don’t even know what the original soup was
It feels like my own friends want to sell me smoke the way that Snoop does
And I’ll crawl into a TikTok and die some day
Excited to be part of the end
While secretly praying for reincarnation

Down by the salley gardens
my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens
with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy,
as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish,
with her would not agree.

In a field by the river
my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder
she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish,
and now am full of tears.