Posts for June 12, 2025 (page 4)

For over five years I have been a self-made man,
and by that I mean I do not exist beyond
the ink blot, the white expanse of documents.

But I’ll pretend. Yes, I’ll buckle down my teeth
for a month. I’ll clean up my disgraces, be palatable
for the audience of unblinking digital strangers. 

I write to stay human, grounded and considerable.
Sieve through my skull’s interior, communicate 
something. Maybe nothing. Make art, automatic.

There is not much passion, just the habit of gutting
myself for the blank screen. Mostly this is ritual. 
The grand plans died, there is no intention to be discovered. 

There’s just that strange ulterior motive: my death
one day renders a vault of verse, untouched, a near holy
encapsulation of a life written out, dissected, preserved.

the act of visiting the places you know or once knew or are new; sometimes all at once.

You drive or fly to find these places in the physical realm,
all the while, flitting figments of past and present visit you from the daydreams of now and yesteryear, or the nightmarish manifest of storms sailed through and yet to be faced.

You traverse until, wearily, you arrive and take in the now and the new and the once known;
that they and it and everything in between have aged and cracked as scratched porcelain formed decades ago, yet still hold the shape of who and what they are at their core.

You stay and discuss the currents of life, the constant ebbs and flows of being.
And reminiscent instances drip into conversation like watercolor on the canvas of living.
Shades reflecting the entire spectrum of your image, how they’ve shaped you and continue to.

You go, the journey home longer than the journey there, as it all collides:
the body aching to rest, the mind racing and mixing with present and past and imaginary hopes and fears, the soul feeling spread thin by what it loves of home and what it misses as it leaves.

To sojourn: temporarily exist in the moment of past, present, future, and fictitious machinations of who we were and are and will and dream.

war don’t mean nothing
war don’t mean nothing to men like you
war is everything to boys like me
men like you don’t know how to shoot
boys like me are forced to
men like you can enjoy a steak dinner
boys like me are lucky to eat
men like you don’t know how to kill
boys like me are forced to
men like you sleep softly every night
boys like me stay awake from the nightmares 
men like you have never had to smell a corpse
boys like me will never forget the stench
men like you have never had a friend die
boys like me have ran out of fingers to count on
all I ask
and all I beg
of any government or president or prime minister or dictator or whoever
is to please reconsider 
before you go to war with another man like you
because I don’t wanna kill
another boy like me

I want to know the words
written on her thigh
but I don’t want her to quote them.
I want to trace their looping letters
with faintest fingertip.
I want to hear what makes her laugh
because that photo is so lovely.
I want to soak within her sillage;
the impression she must leave on a room.

But this potential match
is as close as we will likely ever get
for the first line of her bio
says everything she needs to say.
Swipe left if you voted Trump!!

The year is 2022 and I’ve learned to just
not even give it a try
defending decisions made in 2016,
agonizing as they were.
It doesn’t matter what my reasoning was.
It doesn’t matter how much I’ve grown since then,
doesn’t matter how much the world has changed since then
because I shouldn’t have to hide myself anymore.
I did what I thought was best
and I won’t back down from that
even if I’m ultimately proven wrong.

But if I’m upfront with this, I’m unmatched.
If it comes out later,
then was I ever really honest with her?
Or to myself?

Maybe if we were to instead meet in person 
I’d stand a little more of a fighting chance
with us getting to know each other a little more,
discovering ways we are not so dissimilar–
not that they’d override political incompatibility
if that’s what we eventually discover.
This way, I’d at least feel
not quite so lonely and
written off by society,
like a book judged by its cover.

But that is a coin left spinning on the table.
On one side, beauty shines in uncompromised persons.
On the other lies the travesties
of unchallenged perspectives
and unchanged trajectories.

To talk to someone who will listen.

A deconstruction and refurbishing
of problematic ideas.

A safe space to figure out
when I’m in the wrong.

Ways to talk myself off the edge.

Kind words for my relationship 
so I don’t turn over a good thing.

Kind words for myself
when I can’t find any.

More paths to bring myself
into the light.

Ways to confidence when I’m feeling anything but. 

Each spring, as I plant a garden,
I put out birdseed, too,
hoping to coax in a few songbirds.
I’m rarely disappointed.
There will be robins,
cardinals and finches,
and noisy little chickadees,
maybe red winged blackbirds,
but always cooing doves.
Occasionally I’ll hear a bobwhite
calling from the shadows.
But, unless I get a visual,
any of these could be those
shy, talented mockingbirds 
testing their vocal chords and
expanding their repertoire.
But each one of these birds
likes to eat the bugs
that want to eat the food
which I am wanting
to grow in my garden.

                What black woman says these words in 1969? What white men
hate?
                What crazy ambition?  What a fight for change?
                    What a loud voice?  What real
talk?
                 Read her powerful speeches, but those recorded
                           Are transformative; therefore, yes 
valid today;
                   Not to the deaf ear, but, the more progressive,
                             Speak to the audience that listens
                    Young people, on the streets, please do not 
leave
                     Your voice, below buildings be loud not
soft;
                      Brave Protestor, don’t give up, march on,
                The battle has just begun, do not 
retreat;
                                She Unbought, Unbossed and
Unforgettable!
                            Forever shall we be in her
debt!
                            Your red, white and blue dress
                                worn on the congressional floor
proudly;
                            Your Bajan crop over headpiece
                                   worn to celebrate two finger
piece signs
                               The crowd finds you acceptable
making people
think

I wrote my first serious poem junior year of high school,
my fingers slipping across a sea of silver, striking keys 
to isolate words from the ocean of the English language. 

A few years later, the edge of my laptop screen cracked, 
and the silver keyboard sunk to the depths below my bed. 

But now, another few years later, the replacement has become 
as unresponsive and unmoving as the arctic, causing the silver
to float up from its lost void and break the surface of water. 

Even if the argentate is a liminal necessity, at least for 
this short while, this forgotten entity is reclaimed: my
wayward start is meeting my current successes and vices. 

Indeed, this piece of me is not gone but resides within—
I am only disappointed it took a loss to remind me of 
this love, of this moonlit but never blackened journey.