poetry – 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

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

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

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

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

Stories

Am I ready to tell
The end of my story
While I’m still so young
Proprioception
It never feels like
It’s my turn
I wanted everything
My grandparents had
That’s what made me
Feel like I made it
How else would I know
Now that I have
Squired all of those
Things I fulfilled
A purpose
All of them feel as
Achieved boxes
Equally ticked
Anything but
Fugacious
I knew everyone
Was going to die
I just never thought
That I would be left
Completely alone
After it happened
They say when you
Come into this
World you are alone
But it’s not true
What you are
Left with in this
World can leave you
Alone
Even with all the
Love shared
The journey wasn’t
Lonely but perhaps
The end of the path is

She taught me
How to be a gentleman
Where did I go wrong?

Borne

A spider grabbed hold
Of my thumb unexpectedly
As I reached into a bag today
Somewhere in the dark
I was gleaming
With what delicate
Reminders we have
To remember that we are
Truly not alone
Living with wanton
Emotions that somehow
Gift us with possibility
In the midst of lost
Friendships and
Anchors and seeds
That we plant in
People around us that
We love and in some
Way they lose sight of us
Our disappointments
Lingering to be loved
Investing all that we have
To grant and somehow
Left with the aching of
Comet like movements that
Don’t include us when
They leave and here
We stay as we wait
To fill the heart with a
Grace that wishes for
More than just in and out
Visits or almost important
Enough forgettable moments
Left without a trace of
What was thought to
Be a connection
Wavering wishing
Wanting for somewhere
That feels better
Than nothing borne
With a considerable
Forbearance