27 June 2025

I'm leaving this telltale heart

under the floorboards 

for you to find one day

when all your obligations 

have been set aside 

and time has been loosed.

I know it probably won't be you 

but maybe the ghost of you

or a ghost who likes to look

for things that wait.

Drifting through the world 

with a cup of coffee and a book

and a claw hammer

which will come in useful 

when you notice that thumping 

coming from beneath your ghost feet.

And when the dust has settled 

and you unwrap the paper

with your splintered hands

I trust this flawed but willing heart

will explain everything 

in the way that buried things do

or at least give you some idea

of how hard I hoped.

Haiku

Born of stars, we spend

our lives scrambling to get 

back there, the hard way

16 May 2025

This is one of those times

when I know it's just a dream 

but I've got Toto in my arms

and ruby slippers on my feet

and I don't want to leave 

I don't want to sit on the edge

of my sepia bed

looking at my sepia shoes

trying to remember what was said

but it evaporates instead 

And I am left softly

and you were there 

and you were there

and you were there

It sounds ok in the daylight 

but it's crushing by lamplight

There is no alone

that goes so hard

as two in the morning 

even though it's an undercard 

And I am left softly

and you were there 

and you were there

and you were there

13 May 2025

That dream I'd been hoping for since the wreckage

finally washed ashore

but the moment I woke up

it started to recede, the way dreams do

and even though I can't remember 

where we were or what we said

I kept the feel of it

In a few hundred years

when my bones lie broken open in the ground 

no stone will remember 

That dream will have seeped

out of the breaks

and wherever we are 

whatever we say

we'll be the feel of it

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.