nothing stays clean not the sky not the mind still morning comes like a drunk who’s learned to whisper

I watch the light fall across the unwashed dishes it doesn’t care that’s its kindness I raise my glass to the indifferent day to beauty that never once asked for witnesses #poetry

the world keeps on cats stretch in alley trash dances in wind Merwin would find meaning Bukowski would find a beer I stand between them holding the moment like a cracked cup #poetry

The Pressure of My Pen #poetry

most of what I know comes from things I broke by mistake glass hearts plans silence each one teaching how not to hold #poetry

I don’t need more I need less that matters one good friend a door that opens a reason to sleep a reason to wake

I don’t pray I just nod at the sun coming up the pigeons hustling crumbs and call that enough religion for one day

I talk to the rain like it owes me something it doesn’t it just keeps falling no judgment no receipt just the clean indifference I wish I could learn

I’d say I’ve changed but really I’ve just worn down to the truth that was waiting underneath

I thought survival meant staying alive turns out it’s learning to laugh when nothing’s funny

I’m giving up searching for the right words they’ve been out drinking with the wrong ones and come home without remorse

if I ever disappear don’t look for a message look for a trail of coffee cups half-finished poems and a single shoe pointing home

if there’s a god he’s quiet the kind who leaves notes on napkins or speaks only when we’ve stopped talking

I don’t trust endings they always come back in disguise a sunrise a hangover a door left ajar

this morning a traffic cone bloomed in front of my house in the middle of the street bright, absurd, alive

The Small God how strange, to feel forgiven in a world that burns yet forgiveness lives in the smallest gestures a fist unclenched a word unsaid a gaze that lingers but does not wound no altar needed only breath and the courage to keep going #poetry

For Whoever Finds This if anyone finds this know that silence came last and it was beautiful we returned everything in time our bones our words our small astonishments please let the whales keep singing they were always closer to God #poetry

Perihelion we draw close only to burn brighter for a moment not for the warmth but to know we were capable of it every life leans toward the sun and every light has its shadow all that we are is always returning the heat the motion the brief astonishment of form #poetry

Before the World Decides the sky today is undecided half grief, half mercy I walk through the morning as if it were my own each step a quiet vote for staying each silence a kind of prayer without a god to hear it #poetry

The Perfection of Leaving #poetry

push notification a jay taps the windowpane: hey, wake up in there #haiku

haptic feedback your hand finds my heart beat a single click yes #haiku

404 at dusk the path lost beyond tall grass one firefly blinks #haiku

captcha at noon pick every square with crosswalks cicadas clicking #haiku

appomattox at dawn boots dark with dew the same heron from yesterday lifts once years move past this bend not lost just carried thinner beyond our reach we stop at the willow trace the old scar and I think we’ve kept some of what was given not all enough to know we are still being shaped #poetry

on the hilltop wind threads the grass we stand and breathe names of our gods spoken plain then let go sun slips behind a cloud faces soften we keep our place down the slope stones press our soles with a steady cool later we share water from the same bottle and pass the quiet between us #poetry

Solar Prayer I watched the light move through the room wall chair table floor like a slow confession needing no listener all it wanted was to touch everything once then go I knelt without meaning to #poetry

Perseids I remember when we laid in the short grass counting brief iron lines no wishes only witness the sky did what it always does when we stop asking it to answer one long flare crossed the bowl and cut my certainty in two I did not mend it I let the dark teach me how to keep looking #poetry

Offering I left a heel of bread on the fence post a crow came down and made the exchange honest feathers flashed once the field returned to wind I learned a modest rule give without credit take without debt move on #poetry

The Hill at Dusk I climbed for the view but found the wind instead it said nothing new only what I’d refused to hear that beauty doesn’t wait for our attention it’s always there even when we are not #poetry

Before the Apology I wrote your name on a small scrap of paper and did not fold it outside wind shuffled the leaves indecisive I thought forgiveness was a door something one of us had to open it isn’t It’s the air between us finally clearing after the storm has gone #poetry

cat logic you stand at the room’s threshold considering both worlds then choose the third option the one where you arrive in my lap as if it were already yours this is how a lesson begins

Caprese on the cutting board tomato moons open their red and whisper faintly “basilico”

life is an instrument played once footsteps cross the yard in different orders each step a brief speech that the soil keeps and so the earth learns who we were to be brief is not a failing it is the very urgent courtesy of life that gives each thing its moment and then gives it again #poetry

Morse Code for Trumpet Quintets #poetry

I’m taking a break for a few days… experiencing a bout of writer’s block.

when one door closes another opens that’s why there are so many raccoons in your house

To the Moon, in Absence #poetry

a final shimmer- not ending, not beginning- just this, and not this #haiku #poetry

blue over gold folded and refolded like a letter carried through winter the paper thins yet does not tear between siren and sparrow a nation unbroken a steady flame beneath the weight of history #poetry #ukraine

today I carry a small storm under the tongue it tastes like poetry not yet written rain falls only inside my thoughts outside clear sky cursor blinking #poetry

the dark passes through me like blood through glass each pulse quieter than the one before I carry the silence as if it were language & almost remember what it said maybe it told me where I left myself in the wreckage of yesterday maybe it whispered that forgiveness is forgetting in a softer voice

insomnia’s cathedral thoughts ring like bells in the skull’s small nave each toll a reminder that silence was never empty waking feels the same only brighter #poetry

future tense somewhere you exist a few seconds ahead of me living the version I almost reach when we meet it won’t be reunion just the echo of time correcting itself #poetry

revision of self I keep rewriting the version of me that could stay each draft closer to erasure in the end only the outline remains and even it begins to hum with departure #poetry

the slow undoing what you forget doesn’t disappear it sinks- layer by layer through the silt of being until it becomes the ground you walk on #poetry

absence theory the data says you were online twelve minutes ago I wait for proof that time still exists between typing and not typing the reflection loads slowly on the screen- my face blurred by bad reception i reach to fix it and watch myself pixelate into air #poetry

sleep of rivers beneath the bridges water dreams of sky each current folds through itself like thought becoming flesh in the distance a train passes once- the sound a horizon changing shape #poetry

before morning finds us your face in sleep is a constellation slowly rearranging itself I trace its faint pattern with the patience of night knowing soon the light will claim it and we’ll both forget what we almost became #poetry

the night’s last word the stars dim but do not fade they wait behind the light each shadow bows once to what endures and the dark carries us gently into another beginning good night 🌙