(2025)

 The first thing too many people

Sacrifice on the altar of fear

To ward off cognitive dissonance 

Seems to be nuance—

There are other burnt offerings

Acrid on the breeze,

But this one turns friends to demons,

A simplicity that is doomed to failure.

I gather the tallow you left behind

Piecing together from cobbled bits 

A candle to light my way,

To lift the smallest darkness—

Hoping with every step

This forbidden light

Does not offend

So to render me also

To soap for your hands.

(2025) live to see these times

 My grandfather sat

Quietly smiling

As we scrambled by his feet

I, the strange child, asked

To watch the History channel

When the picture resolved 

Revealing a WWII boat

We both let them change it back—

Memories too dark to tell

The children at his knee. 

(He is dead now,

The tumor taking him

Before he had to see, anew,

These times.)

(2025) two poems

 If your bloodlust 

Is bigger

Than your empathy

Than your love

Than your hope for a better future;

If no actual strategy 

No experienced counsel

No wisdom

Can appease

The call for violence 

In your soul;

Then I think

Perhaps

You have chosen 

Self-destruction

Over change

———————

There’s a season

A place, a use, 

For each prong

Of the pitchfork—

To wield them

Improperly,

Swifter than wisdom, 

Is to self impale

And fall

Into the cowpatties

You were trying

To shovel away.

 I cry too often at romance novels

It isn’t joy crying,

That overwhelm of neurochemicals seeking

A resolve at how wonderful it is

To be seen

To be loved

Instead it is like with a lot of self harm

Staring at the things I Cannot have

Ineligible joys

Digging into my brain what I can touch 

Diminutive occasional “fine”

Until it weeps

A vast ocean between. 

When I am done sobbing

I numbly wipe my face

Drained

Blank

Dissociated from it enough 

To nod and turn the page. 

I want you. Shamelessly. 

I long to kneel at your feet

To inhale the smell of you

As I rest my side against your thigh

And watch the fire crackle and pop

As the breeze carries off the heat of the day. 

I desire the weight of your hand

Squeezing my phalanges together

Grinding the bones until I float

And they make my arms dance

Like eels in the water of your touch

Wild but to you compliant. 

I miss a time when you could

Touch me in stillness rather than fight 

When I could Lean against you

And not have our sense of how 

Time is so little urge us along

Into the inevitable before the peace. 

I wish I could touch you without

Our blood racing, without

Slipping under the waters of you

Before I have the chance to breathe you in

To feel the warmth of your skin 

To- if time only allowed for it!- doze

Fire warmed against your knee

Before kissing your hip in the dark of night. 

I'm fuckable now which is an
Accomplishment for
Someone who looks like me.

I'm fuckable now which is an
Ah-complishment for
Someone with brains like me.

Some how this accomplishment
Isn't as useful
As it once seemed.

I'm fuckable now but who cares?
Doesn't mean anyone wants
To spend any other time with me.

Wanting this much makes me hate myself. 

I fight against illogical desires and 

Aim to avoid getting my hopes up

And I had gotten pretty fucking good at it

And now you are back in my life

And thoughts of you make the blood

Rush to my flesh, 

Leave me dizzy and unable to think

Clearly, to see clearly,

To avoid arching my back and 

Whispering fuck 

Alone in my kitchen as I try to return

Myself to a homeostasis that I can work from

Breathe from without gasping. 

I've gotten so good at not getting my hopes up

Letting myself settle into my power

And seeping out into the attainable

To not look ahead and rush 

And now that hard won self control

Is puddled around me, 

Back pressed against hard reality

Trying to bring myself

Back to earth, level my breathing

Slow my blood and approach you

With my will intact. 

I have willed my spine into steel

And still had you before

So why is my back gone

Rounded without you from your thoughts?