Poétique

Untangled

Devastation is a signal
Something meaningful happening —
Roses dormant now bloom
Being good without being necessary

Lightning crashes
Large green leaves rustle

I can choose myself
Something wants that to be true.
Nothing bad has to happen

Broken past life
Care does not become less expensive
When it is no longer carried by self

My mind has.
My body hasn’t learned this yet

That lag is the work
Dragging the log

Echo chamber
If I’m not doing it, it isn’t getting done
Echo chamber
If it isn’t getting done, I’m responsible
Echo chamber
If I’m responsible, I must step in

Scratching
Or I’m bad

Ring ring telephone
If I don’t do it, it won’t get done
Breathing under water

Can I trust that goodness still exists
If I’m not the one guaranteeing it

If I take care of things myself
I don’t have to rely on an unreliable world
Where is love meant to be
Tangled in your sheets

Not
Something bad might happen
— and it will be on me
If I don’t do it myself

Something good

Can I tolerate another person
Holding a fragile life
With standards that aren’t
Identical to mine

Can I tolerate being held
Without the wonder

How can we relate to fragility

Letting go includes
Discomfort in these domains

Body safely
Staying engaged
Stepping back
Removes the old safety net

Echo chamber

Exist but exit without correction
If the soil accepts the core
An earthen heart is
Beating love in
Open sky

Unspiraled

A place can be known
in theory
and still hold me
unknowingly

an unknowable life
we disagreed and
the voice of Jeff Buckley
entered the room

Why does vulnerability
feel dangerous
even when I value
its invisible armor

Wrapped inside my
own magnetic creativity
unspiraled from
borrowed promises

Doing for myself
morally risky
doing for others safer —
begging for harm

Internal permission
to exist
persists

A choice I made to protect
allowed me to pretend
that someone cared
when signs were showing
they didn’t anyway

removing the conditions
to pretend care is there

Protected
and still standing
without armor

ambiguous care
implied happiness
unchallenged hope

walking backwards
into my
untwisted future

Minimal

Psychological vulnerability
Ending a pattern
The decision stands
The feelings are hers.

My box is squared
Top open

“Yes it’s for the best
But she’s not happy.”

Gives me strength.

It can be right and still
Be uncomfortable
For someone else

The forest lives
And breathes with
Unwelcomed visitors

Incorrect outcomes
Still equal
Universal bliss

Broken consensus
Feelings exist; my boundary remains
Operating inside a system that
Enforces decay

An exit
Whether we agree or not

Ejection is brilliant
Luminous loss
Love found

Care as captivity
What is this
When a system scans for the crime
Restructuring
Reframed humanity
Is it a flaw?
But what if
No self indictment
Lands beneath our wings
Finding our way to the
Basement of our hearts
We can hear the actual
Sound of a sound
Quiet and unspoken
Truly sung
Unshy
Wake thee with
A resting of us
Nestled in the air
Of one another’s arms
I find us at the epitome
If a rock and guide
Long haired jovial
One who is enchanted
Feeds us and drapes
Us full keeping us
Safe and happy
Deserving of the
First tune
Sky hues devised
In our eyes

M’man

Losing my role
as a child
rather than
being seen as a witness

The moment the gift arrived
the rupture was already
in motion

Paranoia
accusation
drugs as threat

Safety mistaken
for danger

Jail
and cruelty

She collapses you into
a fixed, outdated role
one that serves
her nervous system

not reality

Living in
an absent present

You offer intimacy
she cannot metabolize

Shared meaning
versus shared threat

What is shared
what is not

Removing emotional static

He doesn’t call

Guarded texts
zipped lips

Hope for a better mother
he slips
into the sod

Guidé par la lumière
Du croissant

Heart Over Head

The common thread:
Invisible labor + deferred regard

Asymmetric adaptation
Before I gave my heart away
“Is this how I sound?”
We used to dance
Then —
Ask the clarifying questions
Your self interest is revealing itself
What time isn’t it?

I no longer need witnesses to my integrity
“Is this how my words land
When I’m not holding them?”
Many many boulders

Carrying weight is not what broke me
Carrying weight
While being disregarded did.
Period
When the full moon came
Clarity was acceptable
But only when it didn’t cost them
What it cost me
I heard my canary singing
It falls apart a lot with logical inconsistencies
Could his song hold me?
It was acceptable when
I absorbed their messiness,
but unacceptable when they do.

That’s what you’re here to hold
That’s why you made it into the egg
That betrays you with cold intolerant
Phrases like « you’re a freak »
When the cape becomes mandatory
I become invisible

Stop negotiating with shadows
I can be someone alone

I am no longer willing to sacrifice
My well-being to preserve
Your autonomy —
Especially when that sacrifice is invisible
Unacknowledged, and expected —-

My nervous system is not
Commercial property

But they made decisions that affected you
And they did not care how it affected
Your world

Suspension
Suspended
Suspend me

Darkness
Water
Islands

If I don’t protect myself here, no one else will.

Self reckoning

You don’t need to disown
That part of you that expects
Love to meet you

It takes time to trust a system that doesn’t require you to bleed to function…

They didn’t object when
Self-interest flowed one way…
…they objected when it stopped flowing

toward them.

Even when I named my feelings
Directly, they continued to
Prioritize their wants —
And expected me to adapt

Adopt
Adopt me

I am not safe here if I keep waiting to be considered.

Anticipatory self-abandonment.
Chronic vigilance
First light
I am no longer required to disappear to keep others comfortable
Unzipped
The internal contract has changed
Deregulation
is internally regulated

When hurt
Understands systems and process
When hurt
Doesn’t require approval to proceed
When hurt
Doesn’t respond to intimidation

Rejecting your threat response
Is delicious
My ground is open
My stance is strong
My tongue untied
It takes time to trust a system
That doesn’t require you to bleed to function

Mohā

Lift up the nidus and watch
As the murk and the sod
Of a hungering love sinks
With warm wet feet standing
Without consensual witness
A coherent interiority
Drawing floral like patterns
Underneath the skin as
Tattoos might appear
On our insides the stories
That we tell ourselves
Novels in umbras
Shadows of illusory nights
Fabricated love and
Appreciated empathy
I imagined in the shape
Of a friendship I was
Holding up like a tower
Reduced to bricks that
Felt capable somehow
Of building something
Still in the fibers of
Protection and forlorn
Security cleaning house
Like a favorite food
Or crucible magic
Forgotten streams of
Resonating hope and
Mitigated energetic boundaries
Once calms the calm
Beauty rests in a tale
That reads more powerfully
On the other side
Once it’s lived

Bon Vent

Good riddance
You needed someone
Not necessarily me
But I was there to
Hold you up in
Your time of need
Sometimes a gift
Can feel like
A nightmare
I kept thinking
I would show you
When you are here
But who was I kidding
No one was coming
But the birds are here
And the philosopher
Teaches me how to feed
Them all insects
Not just seed
As one burying
Itself makes a nest
Into my thumb
I can feel the pain
Even when I am asleep
And the eyes of the birds
Are content in a state of
Hypnotic bliss as they
Float dreamily by
Almost like a cartoon
Unreal yet undeniable
Color doesn’t have to
Prove its identity
It is what we see
He was really
Too put together
For anyone to
Worry about to see
When he needed it

Weighted

Heavy love
It’s coming for you
Not just sex
A lot of romance too
Heavy love
Dark corners
Painted rooms
Rugs on hardwood floors
Spread out on the
Ground with you
Heavy love
It’s starting
On the way to you
Haven’t met you
But I know the truth
That when I get there
We will find the view
Sitting looking at the sea
With you is the beginning
Heavy love on
It’s way to you
So many weeks
Will turn into days
And when we get there
Reflection
To give you space but
Also hold your heart
If you have no one
To love you
It’s difficult to learn
To love yourself

Interstice

He thinks about
Doing the same things
That housed the happy
Necessary something
Black windows with
Cracks of light
Risking getting cut
Coming through
Swollen face
Months of this
To look forward to
Like a baby finding
His voice his terrace
His hands a meaning
To be here in this
Space that feels
Foreign on earth
Lying in the interstice
An ultimate betrayal
Loss of a best friend
And your eyes
Destroyed in
Their exterior appearance
There it is acceptance
Lost language
Hidden meaning
Broken symbolism
Looking at hisself
For the same case
With damaged assumptions
Of being okay there is
Maybe a little
Maybe more
Tomorrow knows less
Than he thinks