Category: Poems

To write in verse is to compress
The infinite into a line.
It’s toothpaste back into the tube,
Against entropy’s spear of time.

It takes but a moment
For souls to shrapnel
In Selotaped families
With yellow-taped crimes
So commonly committed
In pain of wounded pride
Against the shared dignity
Of, together, being alive.

Even on a Christmas,
You’d rather not get
This midnight present.

I may not see her dip her feet
Again in waves of salty sea.
And so I pause and really watch
Her solitary ecstacy.

I hug her when she turns to me
And somehow she can tell I’m here
As I have not been here before.
She tells me, “Thank you for this year.”

She’s fifteen weeks plus day or two–
Already old enough for flips
On to her tum to celebrate
With toothless grins on shiny lips.

She hasn’t figured out the crawl,
But if she spots a beanie knit,
She flips and flips into a roll
To reach it, bite it, drool on it.

I wonder what audacity
Propels me daily to begin.
Begin again despite the odds.
Begin again despite defeat.
A year ago, it took me weeks
To make myself begin again.
Perhaps, it’s all I’ve done this year.
Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin.
Perhaps, it’s Sisyphus who laughs
The loudest at the end of day.

There must be something strawmen do
Beyond their Christ Redeemer act
That makes them so employable
In gardens, dojos, arguments.
Sometimes they scare,
Sometimes they spar,
Sometimes they die for men in power
But still beyond these acts esteemed,
They do something that makes them seem
So aspirational to us,
Who choose to let our silence speak.

He takes the meekness of my words
For weakness of my mind and soul.
Perhaps I shouldn’t offer him
A peak into my whole.

Perhaps he only wants to see
A stoic strength and silent toil.
As if his blood is cold as slush,
As if it doesn’t boil.

As if he’s never felt despair
Engorging on his muddy guts.
As if he’s never drowned himself
Amidst the ifs and buts.

He thinks I write to lead, inspire?
I write my truth – my good, my bad.
Some days, I have the strength of soles.
Some days, I wish I had.

So, who is he to sigh at me?
To shake his head a little bit?
I’ll ripple up his very being
With just a ball of spit.

I’m tempted at this zombie hour
To steal a line from Yeats or Blake,
For I have walked without a theme
For quite some hours in cold, awake.

But then I hesitate, resist.
Perhaps, tonight is not a night
Where someone’s line excites a thought
I can explore, extend, and write.

Perhaps, tonight is only this:
A fool in poet’s clothing prowls,
Renouncing all the warmths of love,
To have a reason for his howls.

I sit in lotus pose to peel
Awareness, trying to reveal
The stillness of my mental lake,
But all I see’s a frothy wake
Behind my pinball consciousness.

I notice I am hooked to play,
To paddle focus back its way
So it can bounce around a screen
And give me shots of dopamine,
Rewarding all my haziness.

I give up, get up, sigh and peer
Into the dusty vista here
That’s misty on the winter morns
And noisy with the traffic horns
Announcing all our cluelessness.

A pinch of envy to my butts
Is what I need to straighten up,
To jet, to flush, to pull my pants,
Instead of simply dreaming on.

A punch of envy to my guts
Is what I need to settle down,
To dump the toxic shit I hold,
Instead of simply hustling on.