"Oh Forager"
Step outside
take the poems down from the trees
leave the moss attached
don’t dust them clean
the grime is what’s
taken away by the readers
it gets
under their nails
and grows mushrooms
in the recesses of their souls.
_____________________________________
"Something’s Coming"
Puttering along the asphalt
hitting all the potholes
on purpose
hoping
craving
begging
for a reason to stop
but nothing can stop me
I’m unshakable
what a pity
that is.
_____________________________________
"Shrine"
I’ve always taken
all my little mistakes
to heart
and stored them away
dead centre in my mind
piling up
into a great mound: a shrine
where I can pray
to the human in me.
_____________________________________
"Duct"
Do all emotions
translate
into poetry?
If I sit here
angry and
sleep deprived
just
snapping lead
and
crushing paper
will my
blank page
of crumples and edges
be considered
poetry?
Maybe.
If within those
mountainous
ridges and peaks
rests some kind of solace
in their valleys
like a river
flowing
towards you
then maybe
just maybe
it can be considered
a poem.
_____________________________________
"My Lovely Demons"
I just woke up
I can already feel
the darkness swirling
inside me
it mixes with the
early sunlight
that pours in through my eyes
so orange, almost red
bloody
from cuts it's received
on the sharp horizon
it melds
with the darkness
and all the other
internal nicnacs
I harbour
and makes something
truly beautiful
inside me.
Leave it up to nature
to turn my darkness into wonder.
_____________________________________
"The Night I Created the Sun"
It just wouldn’t
rise.
The horizon
had been blank
for weeks.
I took it upon myself
to hunt it down
and though
it never was found
I discovered something
arguably
even better.
I discovered there is sunshine
in the sea battered rocks
and in the stump’s little fungus
and in a million different things
that I’d never noticed
because I was too busy
going blind
perched on the horizon
waiting for a day that never comes.
_____________________________________
“So Alone”
The click clack
of the keys
and the
shutter
are
mantras.
I hope
someone
hears
and
investigates.
But the more
I make
these little
noises
the more I think
they're building
walls
constructed
with
bricks of
sound.
They
fill the void
and
make me feel
less
alone.
Is that a
bandaid to a bullet hole?
Or
true medicine?
I don’t mind
their affect
being subdued
is nice
maybe
the product
of these noises - the poetry and pictures
are my
company
who’s to say
there’s anything
wrong
with that?
They understand me
better than
anyone
I know
and console me
in a way
no one else
could.
Underneath them
I suppose
is just
myself: the creator
maybe that’s what makes them
such a
comfort.
You are the best company
you’ll ever find.
_____________________________________
“Catch & Release”
Nothing more
to say.
Time to
get up
and fill
with more
life.
I’ll pour it back out again
later
which
gets me thinking…
is that
all I am?
A bucket
to
fill
and
empty?
I look around
at the
rainclouds
and
breathers
and
dirt…
that’s all
any of us are.
_____________________________________
"Crawler, Be Strange"
It doesn’t matter
any of it.
Waste the day.
Sing
on the busy sidewalk.
Tell the stranger
they have pretty eyes.
Who
the hell
cares?
We’re all slowly
becoming
soil.
The wise dirt
beneath us
has learned
this lesson
and laughs
at our seriousness.
_____________________________________
“A Written Page”
Bare your
stained teeth
and
scarred body
proudly.
You’ve lived a life.
You’re not going to be
a perfect
blank
page
and
thank god
for that.
_____________________________________
“Repent”
Screw yourself over.
Reunite with old sins.
Burn down
the house
in a blaze
of
ugly
glory.
I won’t worry
when I find you
face down
in the dirt
with
nothing
left
to your name
because
to live
a good life
simply means
to continuously
stand back up.
_____________________________________
“Stains”
Make peace
with all that you decide
every
broken bone
and
speeding ticket
and
wasted day.
Life can be hard enough
as it is: a filthy, soot covered hand-me-down
and it doesn’t need
another stain
in the shape of
your regret.
What it needs is
rips
and tears
and stains
from your
god awful decisions
and somebody
to love them.
_____________________________________
“The Sky Came Down to Meet Us”
The rain taps at my car
knock, knock, knock,
the sky wants in.
Outside, the baseball game comes to an abrupt end
the rain taps on their bodies
knock, knock, knock
the sky wants in.
What if
we were open to it?
What if
we didn’t run
when the grey clouds reached down to us?
We all lament
about feeling
so empty
and yet
we never
let the sky in.
Knock, knock, knock.
_____________________________________
“Freedom Song: Heaven and its Slums”
My sorrow rests on one fringing thread
that holds together my idea of Heaven.
With the voice of that thread snapping, god whispered:
Even Heaven has its slums.
_____________________________________
"Aorta"
I left my old heart on a beach in the middle of nowhere.
I dropped it in the sand, and it turned the sand black.
Charcoal lines stretched out like veins
as the parasite acquainted itself
with its new host.
What a blessing this earth is.
It can take our deepest burdens in stride
and make even them seem beautiful.
_____________________________________
"Higher Power"
I went
into the woods today
and climbed
a very tall cliff.
I arrived at the top
breathless and muddied
after a series of
not particularly graceful
grunts.
Up there
among the jagged and forbidding
blue rock
was a Lilly flower
no legs
not covered in mud
not making the strange dying-animal noises of a man who just climbed 300 feet of rock
all it did
to get there
was sit still
in the mud
and when the wind beckoned
it went.
_____________________________________
"Many Heads, Few Faces"
I've come across
many heads
but
few
faces.
Few
people
who are
real.
And
even fewer
who
stop long enough
to be more
than a
smudge
in my
memory.
And fewer still
of the ones who do stop
and speak
become
a face
that I can
make sense of
most
remain
blank.
So to the few faces
I can see
I want you to know
that I am very grateful for you
not for your
deeds
or
accomplishments
but for the mere fact
you exist.
_____________________________________
"Epiphany"
I switch off the lamp
night spills in through the window
the ceiling becomes a black corridor, stretching out into infinity.
I drift away within it
through a hidden passage in the walls
it takes me to the place of my origin
a million miles above earth
where my old stars still mingle
whispering secrets I’ll forget in the morning.
_____________________________________
“Heaven’s Gate”
I’d like to keep talking about
how to navigate
the mind
but
at a certain point
even wise words
become
just another excuse
to live
in your head
they are
a crutch
designed to
help you hobble out
of the asylum
but
if you
really
truly
want to leave
you have to
let them go
and trust
the emptiness.
_____________________________________
"You Spoke in Poems"
Words sink into the soil like rain
time recedes to an era before language
now, nothing has a name
everything is conveyed
in silence
my pencil is useless
let the lead crumble
the world is my poem.
