Poem – Poétique

Love Sans Armor

Also malevolent imagery
Although it feels like a
Life is ending that lures
Rather than attacks
A wilderness of adventure
Before me with a hollowed mouth
Paired with inviting eyes
Creating a very breathtaking
Psychological absence

I asked before bed.
Where are my angels?
How could you?!
Abandon me forsake me.
Leave me to the grave
Of my sleeping chambers
Push me into this
Out of this
What is your whim
Should you not wish to carry me?
Unprotected from targeted arrows
Flashlights in the night
To leave me hanging
In sadness with wounds for months
It’s ephemeral but shadowed hard
By my past a history to tell
A legacy built now
Reclaimed by the ashes
Of an end that is coming
So you drop it.

Exhausted and pleased
Simultaneously
Laughing and crying
Mostly sobbing then wrecked
From unintended consequences
Just for trading places

Poor nugacity
Flagrantly you then
Stopped protecting people
From themselves and
Hurt yourself again
In the end

Are we dying
From love?

Dial Tone

What was written
In her own writing
He tried to hide from her
Precious but also
Dangerous

Real power
Doesn’t require you to suffer

We confuse weight
With power because
Weight once bought us safety —
Until it started
Costing us identity

Too expensive—-

The good you don’t want
Sometimes we get

Decline the exchange.
Hanging up the receiver
To that fate

Your silence will not
Pull me forward
Your silence will not
Tempt me

We are not trapped
Existing whether anyone
Shows up or not

Erase Him

Eraser

She tried to erase him
Make him invisible

You want to make him feel
Like nothing

An address to annihilate him
Disqualifying

She framed him as dangerous
Destroying his beauty

Unethically
She cooed—

Your boundaries no longer count
Your importance can be overridden
Your role can be challenged

Hard hitter
— it wasn’t disagreement

Given his history of care
This was a profound violation.

Accused of theft without evidence
Weaponizing family protection language
An escalation to relational severance

Full speed ahead she—
Inserts
Overrides roles she was
never assigned

You don’t matter
Erase him

Only we matter

Erase Him

Her discomfort
Is an attempt to smother him
He refuses deprivation
She imposes depravation

She didn’t want control
It was removal she was after
Vanishment
Banishment

His lungs are full
Deep breaths
Quiet meaning
Simmering underneath
Invalidate me

A great escape
She cannot take
As he is standing
He claims another breath

Her darkness gleans
A gathering of erasers
That cannot admonish
Or delete
His legibility

Rendering

Uncertainty didn’t disappear before
passion— it was
positioned outside of you.

Looking for it—
Somewhere here inside of me

Not because you held power,
but because you built
an illusion that buffered you
from seeing where power
actually wasn’t.

Authority stabilizes uncertainty.
The bedroom becomes safety—
Sheets, a place where wanting
doesn’t have to fracture.

Don’t judge me for choosing hope.

I wouldn’t invite you
if I didn’t trust you
to be close,
to stay close.

Méfiance
ne m’a jamais appartenu.

I want your passion—
not to take it,
but to hold it
with my hands opened,
slowly enough to stay.

J’ai tellement à donner.

Witness

Finally living
In expanded freedom
But still orienting
Self as if freedom
Requires justification

A witness
Or permission.

I don’t want someone to fix me.
I want someone to
See me in motion and say
yes, that’s real.

Witness to the self
Deeper stratums
Interpretive power
I cannot be rewritten

My soul is settled

Passion without pacing
Love burns without responsibility
All hollows resound
Labor without reciprocity scorches

Somatic sauce

And now you feel it
Like I feel it

And now you feel it
Like I felt it

When you didn’t care
Or didn’t know how to

And we don’t have to
Maybe you see me now
Perhaps in motion or
Alone

But not invisibly
It’s all yours

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

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

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