Tag: poetry

Posted on

Like Rain

(Crocker Art Museum – Sacramento, CA –
October 2025)

I can’t live in your daydreams
there are still half-read books and half-drunk cups of coffee lingering on my shelves
unedited manuscripts begging for attention under piles of mail I promised I would open
research ideas that haven’t quite been fleshed out enough
I can’t subsist on praise and sacrifice alone
Need the warm sun, a cool breeze, and an ocean view to nourish my aching soul
I can’t live in your daydreams but I can be a featured player in your fantasies
Call on me when the well runs dry
I’ll be there to flood your fields

Posted on

35

(South Lake Tahoe, CA – June 2025)

older now
but no guarantees
of growing any wiser
less garrulous, much colder now
with no respite on the horizon

burn my love letters for warmth
those words were soft and hollow
basking nude in the sunlight
gin-soaked sweat flowing from my brow

the vultures feast on me like carrion
licking my bones, until the flesh is gone
yet each bite makes me feel alive
never thought I’d get to 35

Posted on

Blan/Lò

Église Saint-Merri, Paris, France – April 2023

Gadé mwen,
all decked out in white and gold like
I’m the second coming.
dripping venom instead of holy water.
wouldn’t mind the suburbs, if not
for the new age bros and vapid white feminists,
who have the gall to assume they’re part of the solution.

ki sa pwòblenm mwen?
thought you could talk down to me in perpetuity,
‘til I obliterated your ego with my doc marten boot.
we were never really friends, just friendly.
can’t feign austerity for your comfort any longer.
shower me in your hyperbolic platitudes,
wild, brash, dehumanizing for drawing boundaries – I’ll embrace it.
rather that than live sad, frigid, and fraught with fear.

Posted on

do you love me?

(Pacifica Esplanade Beach, CA – December 2023)

est-ce que tu m’aimes?

tongue dripping with silver,

kisses all over your body like Paris rain in the afternoon.

est-ce que tu m’aimes?

touch like the summer – wet, hot, unrelenting,

and enrapturing you all at once,

until every inch of you is soaked in sweat.

est-ce que je suis le diable?

peut-être, peut-être pas

est-ce que tu m’aimes, encore?

Posted on

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)

Posted on

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”