harbinger

On soft wings

Nostalgic, like in old photos

It lives in the spaces where

Your teacher shops for groceries

Like humanity

In the fractures of the concrete

Who are we really,

On soft wings

At sundown 

The condors take to the sky.

Take the sky.

As if it was always yours

Bound to a legacy

In a strength of patience

Awaken to the willingness

And somehow there but, not

Awaiting the future with boredom

As the days come and pass

But time remains eternal

An endlessness of sunrises

Expanding into extinction

What will have mattered, is poetry

In the beauty of ephemera

Where the rain fell And the rivers ran

the soul danced as many and one

as a jungle of something greater

like the whispers that call you home

Nesting

From the vantage point of crampt little spaces

Chittering like starlings in a nest

An old cypress, swaying in the wind like some cheap apartment building

What sounds like a thousand little conversations bubbling up—

Through flimsy walls

From the rooms next door  

A gurgling, squeaky sound to pour upon the interactions of the laundromat

and off down the street

There is a confusion

In the recesses of myself

Hinged on the complexity and the needlessness

Of telepathically empty spaces that do nothing to feed the soul

As the possession of peculiar hunger lives familiar

Like a series of prefabricated homes

where I am expected to “Ooh” and “ahh” Over every piece of minutia

as if it is…

(what?)

an emptiness, that proliferates

made urgent with time.

As if it is buying into a bland story line.

To ease the ache of mediocrity

Unable to shake the grasp of what the world should be

In an upheaval of unanswerable questions

About the nature of what it is to belong.

Pearl

Charity cases

Absolving of the drama

Like two dimensional theaters,
a videogame of narrative without dialogue

That is played by merely walking though

As if getting and losing money are fundamental components of the game

Like rowing a tiny boat in turbulent seas

Waiting for the next hungry pair of hands
to turn us up like so many evaporated river stones

The desert calls to me
like an electrically charged air

In the falling snow,

She whispers the hatred

Of the trivial,

in subversions of excess.

As we refrain from tearing into their marrow.
patient for the next belligerent

For the next snowstorm,

For the next little stoat to scamper off with something stupid

the next broken human to limp into our lives and be in the fucking way.

the next shitty love poem to erode the discernment of quality

and yet, our wings are greater

oft upon greater endeavors

and still, it resolves as a kind of boredom

infecting the will to continue

like a rain of micro-anxieties as the snow begins to stick

the far-off suffering of others

comes to inhabit our souls as one of our own

occupying a place that is comfortable but unwanted

as if some shellfish

bearing minerals to past transgressions,

in some iteration of comfort

beyond the reality of ‘here’ and ‘now.’   

sonder

There is a sadness that lingers here

Like a subtle, anxious ghost

nuanced in the way that’s hard to place

going to work every day

 to ultimately end up in the same state at the end of every week.

As if committing to a series of renditions

As though every day is some dress rehearsal

That prepares for an act in some absurdist play.

The cold waits, like a persistent intruder

Pouring in through any orifice,

numbing in a way that has denied sensation

devoid of sentiment

as if to ruminate on that which we don’t have

unable to feel something that seems like it should have been

as if a phantom limb of undeveloped potential
erodes the soul with every missed opportunity 

it comes like a restlessness

the loudness of an empty place

that stays hands in an empathic weight

in a paralysis of observation

that captivates and debilitates in a singular gesture
effortlessly trespassing meaningless borders
to give a semblance of identity 
as if loneliness is a creeping fog 

that ebbs out the landscape of our desires.     

the swarm

They rob the hive

bit by bit

brood reducing under pressures on all sides

mites and jackets, mice and vandals

the state of nature exacting its course

a peculiar fervor the struggle of the daily
bleeds them out as units are lost, one by one

slipping awkwardly in the snow

The words with landlords ringing in my mind

Through the homeless camps, destitution flows like an endless river

the Debris of their lives scattered across the pavement  

their wretchedness proliferating in all directions
as desecration is common in this theater

ruminating, what brought me here-
he screams slurs to an indifferent city  
the scenes of their savagery play out 
& I am learning: they turn on one another in the cold 

When spring seems the furthest a bitter grip embraces their collective 

in an erosion of self that dissolves into a kind of piracy

Each out for their own

like a regent, that has forgotten her swarm
as a warrior, that has lost their kukri 
stolen, by allies one thought they had. 

have i become a drone to the some greater whole

As I refrain from shrieking in their face

Calling them a faggit, striking them down.

Bringing silence to the pettiness of their universe.
bringing agency to the reality 
i am the manufacture of this experience 

there is a gentle crunch of their failing carapace

& i am learning: There is a design to their demise
as they rush the openings to snatch at the brood 
there is a solution written into some circuit board,

that electrically pulses a blasting cap within the payload of a drone
that brings misfortune to profane royalty 
in the eyes of treachery everything is a combative flux

as the appearance of chaos masks something more cohesive
in greater things beyond selves   
within the myriad fragments 
i am learning

there is an art to the whole. 

Year of the Dragon

Sometimes I feel like the rain is my only friend.

It draws the warring beehives into a stalemate

Easing the fervor to a place where I can meet the day

when thinking how all the trees were stripped of their color in one night

How out-of-place everything feels

As a pantomime of something familiar

An awakening within the shards

Where my landscape has never forgotten the weapon of fire

Sometimes I feel so alone, like I am the furthest one from shore

The deepest in the woods, the most sensitive in the green

That I wonder if I will ever depart into something else.

I wonder if it will ever feel like home

Sometimes I feel like the soul of the desert; just barren and patient and shitty

Adrift on the dunes of my own vacant thoughts

Writhing from the pull of reality

Like some performance, that greets the world with lightness

And I feel it like a wind that never subsides

A restlessness, as if my body is a haunted house

As we speak on the ghosts of numbers, like we know them 

While the sands of our souls are blowing away without import  

inkling

In sobriety

I hear the call of kingdom on the wind

Beckoning me

in some sense the drawn, the pull

a restlessness that flays

against the spaces where I am home

there is an ache of memory

the will to power

as a flaming vortex rising across a ruined landscape

that i have seen in life, as the man burns and the masses cheer

in reign and regency, an ire awakens

as rising and setting suns framed only by light and darkness

somewhere blossoms peel open

hiding the struggle in the soil.

in resentment of the rough

a metamorphosis of reign and regency takes hold

in spaces beyond self as if blurring the twilight

the reality breaching upon barren futures

as the bitter tears of the desert

rise as a wellspring of anger

surfacing to the sound

electrically clenching down

hatred for the unnatural 

throes of righteous warfare await

arise to meet the day

an empire calls, the desert speaks your name

never forget; home lives within you.