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Is it all that we wanted?
This longing.
I'd rather be dead than hungry.
I'd rather be destitute than fed.
The river bed is dry and I'm weary,
It takes a man years to float
Where the water's
Few and far between.
Like touching a wild animal.
Arroyo in my desert where the love should be.
I bathe in sand and loss
And hawks flying through.
Nothing to own
Or some wanting to prosper.
Only the Sun burning-
Hungry and wailing
To get to you.
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This poem is so striking and pulls on my heart strings in a violent way I haven’t felt in most other writing, especially the excerpts below
I want to live longer.
I want to love you longer, say it again,
I want to love you longer
& sing that song
again. & get pummeled by the sea
& come up breathing & hot sun
& those walks & those kids
& hard laugh, clap your hands.
I am not ready to die yet.
& when I go or you go,
let me see you again somewhere,
or you see me.
Isn’t that you, old friend, my love?
you might say, while swimming in some ocean
to the small fish at your ankle.
Or, Weren’t you my sister once?
I might say to the sad, brown dog who follows me down
the street. Or to the small boy
or old woman or horse eye
or to the tree. I know I knew I know you, too.
Feb 13, 2025
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Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.
Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon
& you’ll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not
a lifeboat. Here’s the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.
Jul 1, 2024
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there is something figuratively beautiful about the things we know and don’t know, the sublime and mundane
and when you visit the beach, do you ever think about if the animals who live in the embrace of the depths remember the beauty of the ocean?
where the salt envelops every single one of us,
accepting us as kin
letting her wind tousle our raw, visceral edges
and pepper them with her sea-foamed kisses
which tell me that it’s okay to pretend
and okay to tell the ocean all of myself
the ocean reaches out to me, hands cloaked in the sharp coolness of water and something else- something i don’t understand
as I poke around in a tide pool, like a vendor at a bustling market, observing the wares that the ocean has to offer
and i turn around and ask her, do the barnacles see themselves? do anemones understand their own beauty, fragile and ephemeral?
i don’t think they do.
but the ocean doesn’t have any words for me, instead shutting my mouth with a shhhh
as her sandy dress rustles down the shore, laced with white foam and gossamer trails of ripples
and wordlessly, tells me to look
and i do.
until the sun hurriedly retreats from the wispy radiance of the moon, enrobed in puffy clouds
and it's just the three of us.
the moon tugs at the ocean’s hand, dancing to their own secret rhythm,
letting me see them in their love.
personally, i think it’s beautiful \\ and i wish i had something like it
and the ocean laughs. nothing jeering or ridiculing, simply an acknowledgement that i understand.
everything around me falls,
like petals cast off from a chrysanthemum.
and then, we were wordless
like the ocean had never spoken in the first place.
i want to descend into the depths of the ocean one day,
to be hugged once more and never again.
not because i am tired of being alive,
but frankly within me exists too much zeal to live.
uncontrollable surges of wow i am alive in flesh, blood through my veins, and thoughts in my head
become more addictive than any form of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin
and better than any gateway into a better life
or a better existence, transcending normality
and the moment it’s just me in my head, without the viscous energy of being alive
suddenly drains me like a leaking bucket,
decrepit and dry.
i want to burn like a torch, setting my world alight into embers,
into flames,
into an inferno.
Sunrise:: being alight || with a halo of only thoughts and dreams || and the divinity of something new
2d ago
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The night air is crisp, not cold.
Every street is like a highway at 5 am in the late Summer
And kids are screaming drunk on the periphery.
I'd be a bastard if I didn't say it makes me feel like God.
Late night urgent care, the river bank, atm machines.
My store front eyes are wide shut-
Like a solitaire flush-
Like a raging storm-
Waiting at the bus station at 5 am,
I am an electric lightpost and a schedule board.
And my bed is too warm.
Jan 10, 2025
Jan 10, 2025