Category: Poetry

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Sorry for your loss.

Grief –
all consuming and endless,
like probing through pitch darkness for a light.
Grief sends you into mourning nearly every night,
and rouses you with kisses from pain soaked lips at dawn.

Grief, like hanging onto the last few hours of sun before your mother calls you in.
before you realize the world is full of hurt people, bumbling around trying to process.

Grief,
used to push it way down deep,
Tried to drown and bury it, along with any other facet of my personality that could be deemed weak.

Grief?
Now I’ve grown a little older and it flows out like a river,
Sadness, joy, and love, all wrapped up in the freedom it takes to allow myself to finally,
Grieve.

(Art by Lauren Halsey – Seattle Art Museum – April 2022)
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Je me suis trouvé

pas besoin de raconter l’histoire,
je sais précisément qui je suis et où j’ai commis une erreur.
feuilletant Dostoïevski, allongé au soleil,
fumeur au Young Dolph, l’herbe fraîchement coupée effleurant mes coudes nus.
descendant dégénéré, dissident et perdu de vue de Ramsès II, bien que très loin des villes scintillantes de l’Égypte antique.

pas besoin de rejouer vos souvenirs,
je sais exactement où je suis allé et où j’en suis,
aucune indiscrétion passée ne me fait honte, aucune menace de mal de la part d’un homme ne me met en échec,
aucune chaînes d’entreprise pas m’apprivoiser.
ma voix est forte et claire comme le bruit des vagues qui s’écrasent sur le rivage,
Je suis un enfant de l’été, élevé dans la nature.

Je me suis perdu une fois,
mais maintenant…

Continue reading “Je me suis trouvé”
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Pride is an Inferno

trace me,
follow the nicks and scars deep down to my roots.
tilled in poor soil with not nearly enough sunlight,
yet still I grew undeterred, unwavering.
branches outstretched far and wide like my mother arms,
there to either cradle or shade you (take your pick).
no tolerance left for inaction,
devoid of patience for justice.

trace me,
the same fire raging you see before you
has always burned hot beneath the surface,
always been a card carrying member of the “others” –
the weirdos/punks/queers/misfits.
call us what you will, but we’re leading the charge now.
buying homes and settling in your quaint little areas of town,
and that raging fire is never going out.

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Capitalism is Casual Cruelty

False promises wrapped in carefully crafted hashtags and campaign slogans (quelle surprise),
Bombs falling from the skies
like ashes off the end of a lit cigarette,
All the while we’re still busy
waltzing to the music in our heads.

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Redux.

bare bones in the sunlight,
fear was our chariot,
now we’re dripping in hope.
break it down brick by brick,
tears of joy streaming down your face like fresh squeezed juice in the summertime.
bury me 10 feet deep, so I can finally get a good night’s rest when it all ends.
the crowd can carry on and play numb,
but there’s no respite when the morning comes
and morning’s come.

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Imperium

Have you found your power yet?

Spent years searching for mine in the heart of some rebellion or another. A declaration, a fix, a lover.

Spent this summer marching through the streets, screaming for every black life snuffed out too soon.

Police, the Guard, and their guns couldn’t frighten us.

Slept for days until that unrelenting hunger, the flicker of the flame that once burned bright deep in the pit of my unconscious re-ignited itself.

Cleansed my mind, my body, my home with frankincense and scalding water.

Past indiscretions played out in loops like graduation tapes, but that sick, sad, nostalgia for times filled with high anxiety and melodrama is long dead and buried.

No need to be the loudest voice in the room, when the room quiets for you when you speak.

This mind, this body is my empire,
it’s crossed rivers and mountains and learned to transcend the inconsequential.

I see now that the wisdom earned through tragedies, both great and small losses of the past IS my power,

And this is my finest hour, there can be no doubt about that now.

Clad in my only armor,
blood, sweat, and courage.