09 May 2025

 As your head aches with loss and regret

as your beauty melts and washes away

as your arms grow tired from carrying the broken parts 

as your braces become unlaced

Remember that everyone who adored you

still does and will

That your hands will always be warmed

and the hair gently swept from your brow

The thought of you being enough

to sustain a million lifetimes

in defiance of fear and the gnashing of teeth

And in that endsome night hour

may your collarbone be marked with a lipstick kiss

so the faithless will just wave you through

11 April 2025

Winter was made 

to hold a space 

between autumn and spring 

to buffer the pain 

and take the blame 

 

But winter, it turns out, 

muffles the quiet 

and the little death of time 

with his own heart, buried 

gale-force fragility in white, falling 

over everything 

And while there still appears 

an invitation to the spring formal 

in his mailbox every year 

he stopped attending long ago 

finally understanding it was only 

an artifact of a polite society 

which had also been stranded 

holding a space

7 September 2022

This is the time for sleep.

In this moment, you see an opportunity for a respite, however fleeting, from the pain and the fear. You see a chance to abandon your defenses and slide out from under the weight of your confusion. The moment speaks to you softly, invitingly, and you cross the threshold.

But tomorrow, the clarity eludes you. You find you are still thinking about whether the saints were ever good people and what really happened to Amelia Earhart and if it means anything that we are made of stars and will return to them. And now there are more questions and fewer answers.

The rope slips the pulley and something innocent tips into the well. The swirling fear picks up your scent. Instinctively, you seek comfort in convenience and familiarity. The only way back is to cauterize the nerve endings you ripped from their fortifications. It will be painful but you will do it for the promise of illusion and protection and quiet. The remembering will pass and the forgetting will claw its way back to your embrace.

This is the time for sleep.

28 July 2022

Things that are broken, staying 

broken. 

Things that are fixed, waiting 

to break again.

Time always trying to stay 

but going 

always trying to rewrite 

itself, someone, anything but 

it just keeps happening. 

Things that are lost, finding 

the terrible truth. 

Things that are winged, flailing 

on this salted earth.

Eternity, wounded 

mortally coiled 

within a universe of 

beautiful shards.

16 January 2015

Last night
when the carousel was all lights and music
the horses were wild and just about
to break free
your sensibilities were stretched
and what was wanted seemed the same as what was needed
for once.
This morning
when everything has snapped back
the horses are made of wood
and it's not just that the words are different
but the sound of the words
the sound of no words
is not the same
and you don't know if it will hurt less
to chase it
or ignore it
or bury it with full military honors
so that when they hand you the folded up triangle flag
you can stand there blinking back tears for a few moments
and no one will think it's unusual.

12 December 2014

You got tricked
because it was safe
and in the back, something shiny.
You reached as far as you could
folding your wings
to climb part way in
to get that little bit more.
That's when you heard the door being closed
and you managed to thrust one hand
back in time
to lose three fingernails
before the spindle rammed through the wheels
and everything went dark.

I didn't know if I could
forget the numbers
- or those little red eyes
so I defaced the dial
with a screwdriver
so everyone would be safe.

But I got lonely
and looking at those three fingernails on the floor
just gave me a pain in the stomach.
After dark, voices
Wisps of air on my face from their wings
around and around me
and I wondered if you were safe.

Halved with regret
I keep spinning that battered dial
left right left
listening for the notches to line up
listening for a sign of life
waiting to feel safe again.

7 October 2014

The road - dark and wet
the sparklers fizzing out
before they ever really had a chance
to make it the way
it should have been.
Long past the sound of boot heels on asphalt
you rested your aching head
but the road didn't notice
or curl its fingers around your brow
the way you were hoping.

Just do one thing -
just keep going.

Clouds draped over the moon's cage
for the night
disbanded stars
glinting in the road
showing you the way
it still could be
the way you were hoping
when you smashed the glass
that said EMERGENCY.

Every step now takes a year
and you are certain there are only seconds left
and the road
just does the one thing.