the body remembers what the mind wants to forget – beneath skin, between bones, you remain. the pain of you still pierces through dull memory, sharpened by the passage of time. you are gone and not gone. all that persists is the ache - the nameless want pulling, crushing, unyielding. #vss365

love is not written and ink does not carry love only promises love is not a lettered thing but a blank page to be filled #tanka #TankaThursday

Some poems of mine appearing at alliteration.net (Forgotten Ground Regained Winter '26) alliteration.net/poetry/defen... alliteration.net/poetry/allit... alliteration.net/poetry/engin...

"The vigilant must watch while Justice sleeps, and on some distant day when she awakes her sword will cleave through humankind’s mistakes – but only those that observation keeps." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/25/s... #poem #poetry

"The world is cold today, and bare; and nothing sings beneath the sun, and wind brings promises of snow. Throughout it all, the urge to run: to find some other place to go, and hope to find some comfort there." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/23/m... #poem #poetry

The weight of the world would seem enough to overburden the strongest bridge, and at this crossing-point we hear the creaking of supports and protests of the trestles; the beams all warp beneath the load, but remember in the grip of gravity even light must bend. Dawn alone may break. #vss365

"A mind is not a weapon, it is an ember in the night that craves the warmth of others; we sit and watch the shadows projected by our fading light, and celebrate the ash of gleaming." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/19/e... #poem #poetry

"the day before, we watched the world boil over and drip, and flare, and sputter uselessly and they were still alive, and yesterday we might have done a thing to keep them here, but not today." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/17/t... #poem #poetry

"I do not think that I shall miss the Earth, and of its denizens I’d keep but one: for you, I’d bear the misery of birth, and in your being concede that God has won. Regarding all the rest, I’m not so keen – but you give purpose to the whole machine." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/11/s... #sonnet #poem

when feeling you try to elicit, it's best to be very explicit; the unmissable truth is too subtle, forsooth, for plenty of folks who will miss it #limerick #vss365

it should be clear by now that life is a joke; the setup and delivery are immaculate, it's just that we are waiting for the punchline. someday, when it comes, we'll greet God in tears with laughter and when He asks what is so funny, we'll say "I guess you really would have had to be there." #vss365

steam rising from soup seeking equilibrium as do we all. *slurp* #haiku #DailyHaikuPrompt

a poem that came spilling out today.

the space between things an optical illusion through the lens of time #haiku #DailyHaikuPrompt

wandering slowly and in the midst of monsters through thick, blinding fog brushing against the unknown I met you, against all odds #tanka #TankaThursday

...Yet here, with heavy-handed irony, we’re made to mind the macro-lens. The world is waiting, witnessing, revolving, and here, we humans had our chance. We may not make a move in time to save our species; still the Earth shall turn, and time will tell who lasts... seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/07/a...

"Let all our expectations be forgot, and let us love in instants now and ever: and let each brief ephemeron of thought unite we two, and past attachments sever. Our history is of no consequence, for love exists within the present tense." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/04/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

All or nothing, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?

"From many, few; who in that winnowing may bear the lost when light, at last, arrives. On winter morns, no quiet songbirds sing, but silence cannot drown them in the spring." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/02/a... #poem #poetry #villanelle

Woke up this morning still thinking about a book of poetry I read last night and still feeling a bit shook by it. The mark of a good book, I guess.

the world, when it reaches us has been slathered in abstraction - look there, an object, a color, a thing. our brains shelter us from the grim nature of reality (which is chaos) and swaddle us in emotion: "This is separate from that: attend now to this, which is love, which is pain." #vss365

Happy new year.

this world exists in reference; nothing may be without someone to feel its touch, the substance of the yet unseen we speculate, project. And we exist in consciousness, in waking life and half-remembered dreams. where does it go when we are done? and in that sleep, what dreams may come? #vss365

灰となる この身と氷柱 春になる Hai to naru Kono mi to tsurara Haru ni naru It will turn into ash This flesh and the icicles Will turn into spring #Haiku #Poetry #俳句 #詩 #DailyHaikuPrompt : Icicles #Haikufeels : #ash

“The word must have been in the beginning a magic symbol, which the usury of Time wore out. The mission of the poet should be to restore to the word, at least in a partial way, its primitive and now secret force.” -- Jorge Luis Borges (tr. by Alastair Reid)

the thing about light is that no matter where you are or what you are doing it #travels at the same speed. What must our world look like to a speck of light? A thing indifferent to motion, a thread passing through the fabric of reality; unmoved by its grandeur, undaunted by its horror. #vss365

"You are as sunlight, in the dawn arisen, who makes refulgent day from night’s cold prison." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/28/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

there once was a clown who would #struggle to catch tennis balls that he'd juggle; he added a pack of small dogs to his act: since he couldn't catch 'em, a pug'll. #vss365 #limerick

"I walked along the shore and gazed to sea, and wondered whence I’d come and where I’d go; my love walked close, and watched the waves with me..." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/26/a... #poem #poetry #villanelle #FormalPoetry

regarding true love, the same criteria must apply to all truths: those things which exist, always, regardless of convenience #tanka #TankaThursday (true)

the root of " #survive " is "living-over" and when I think about it I have survived a good many things; they have affected me, yes, they have torn me apart the way ice tears potholes from asphalt, but I have lived over them and laid fresh layers of life over every crack, no matter how wide. #vss365

He could #shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't make a difference. The system is working as intended; power drives power, capital capital. Blacked-out or not, no testament will stop the machine we've put in place. In the grand experiment, the null hypothesis remains un-rejected. #vss365

We walk on light, entangled up in knots and leave it matted underneath our minds, and manifest a world from formless foam; and like a photon passing through a blind, our paths diverge before we find our home. We are not one, except within our thoughts. #poem #poetry #hexet

There once was a Roman design for a great god of prosperous time; we made him a planet, his worshippers canned it - no wonder the guy's saturnine. #vss365 #limerick

"No, now my mind is dust, and all its fruit has rotted on the vine, except for one: my love for you, now rendered resolute as branches of a tree absorbing sun. In death I have forsaken all endeavor; except for you, whose light shall bloom forever." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/21/s... #poetry #sonnet

My pet peeve's when #gratitude 's expected with attitude: the demand makes a gift an expression of grift. A gift freely given should surely be shriven of showers of praise; it's certain malaise to demand an obeisance when furnishing presents, it's frankly outrageous so try to be gracious. #vss365

speck in a snowstorm, the signal in the white noise swallowed by static #haiku

The day that you passed through my open door I foundered under waves of jamais vu, was left dumbstruck, adrift, without a clue. You left me wanting, begging, needing more. You were an ache that I could not #recall; now I remember, and regret it all. #vss365

our bodies tether us to the past – here, a scar attests to a time death scraped past me; the record of a mistake. a gray hair holds within it all the lessons I’ve learned and my weakness is carried by gently-failing organs, and here, in a heart which still races is the #memory of you. #vss365

There once was a parish confessor who had a sagacious #successor - when his mentor lamented a nudist unrepented he suggested that he should redress her. #vss365 #limerick

A #burden carried will become a source of strength with time, with effort even the heaviest load can make the world seem lighter #TankaThursday #tanka

Let bigots say that God forbade it since they've forgot that God has made it. If you and I are so #illicit then God Himself must be complicit; and here on Earth, where we remain we'll love, and live, and so refrain: we who are bound to flesh and bone are subject to one law alone. #vss365

"...There’s something going around, this sickness that reduces men to apes – to animals – to machines – deafened to the sound of human screams, and blinded to the sight of suffering." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/10/p... #poem #poetry

it would be easier if I could lay the blame on you, if I had been #bewitched by you - ensorcelled, hexed - it would be easier if you'd done anything at all, if you'd become the enemy I wish that you could be. it would be easier to stop loving you if you had ever asked me to. #vss365

If it's any #consolation we saw it too the way the world had come apart and how it went cuckoo If it's any consolation most of us knew that someone had to do something but knew not what to do If it's any consolation some of us tried but in the end, too many people died. #vss365

#soliloquy 's a lost art, these days the scenes go by too fast for poor protags to have coherent thoughts; we want our drama, and we want it now. If the superhero stopped to wax poetic we'd walk out of the theater, and that's fine, but you have to admit we've lost something haven't we? #vss365

#magenta is not a color; it's a place between red and blue filled in by your brain when it doesn't quite understand what it's seeing. And you, like the aurora, danced in magenta light - without a wavelength, without my brain understanding - until you were in an instant gone. #vss365

matitudinal, crepuscular, #vespertine we decorate the passage of time with syllables we never use recognizing the ornate inimitability of hours and passing them by with simple numerals as if we knew that if we called them by their name we would be forced to recognize their passage #vss365

"The value of the thing is yet unknown, except that it should not be drowned amid the present moment’s din, that sculpted words may somehow stand when edifice becomes no more than stone." seanpatrick.phd/2025/12/03/t... #poem #poetry

The world! How strange and beautiful its shape, that thing which lives without and never wanes; and over which that canvas has been draped, experience, which we hold in our brains. It hangs like fabric over all we’ve known, but empty air by one swift pull is shown. seanpatrick.phd/2025/11/30/s...