My Blood Can’t Breathe
blue veins leave dark stains
your words become sticks and stones
bones fold into leaves
Accountability
Finally just the verdict I needed
Badges are to be accountable
Communities can heal now
Guilty Guilty Guilty
And people sing, shout
Some angry others peace
For a better
Justice
Now
Wandering Write
ideas as formless as the hum of the air conditioner – I have it on all the time. A permanent machine fixture of background lifeless
ideas as formless
but without the malice of politics – and more coherent – political rally on youtube – sounds evil
my dog is licking his paws, I tell him to stop. The light in this room needs adjustment- it’s too dry, too cold, the walls too white and empty.
Politics shapes the character of day-to-day, I think.
Last year was constant stress, panic, short outbursts of violence. This year is the slow-drip anxiety of global dementia.
Neither are ideal. Or any good at all.
My throat is dry, the trees outside wave in the wet-hot breeze of midsummer.
And I wonder, as I do every day around this time- what next?
ideas as formless
The air is as cold as the white of the walls.
Outside it is hot, even as the sun goes down.
A textured silk shirt- hour 10 poem
If you let an ant in through one end of a conch shell, it will come out at the ocean through the other, bloodied, muddy, streaks of sand in its eyebrows
On this piece of silk, they wander a little, walking with more or less steady steps weaving into the fabric their momentous journey
As you sit on the motorbike, hustling through a city between your pyjamas, they spend a sigh of relief as their colony disperse into thin winds of threaded forgetfulness
2021 Poetry Marathon, Hour 12
As much as I like the image, I went with the text prompt for my final poem of this year’s half-marathon.
Thirty years ago this summertime
I was watching Total Recall
on laserdisc while eating
some Snickers ice cream bars
after coming back
from Shibuya
and trying
to keep
cool.
26 June 2021
True Self
My true self is an angel
wrapped in joyous love.
I catch a glimpse of her
every now and then – she sings to me –
and kisses me when I cry.
She has carried me along many dark roads
when no one else was around.
In the mountains of monotony, she shines
her diamond light so I will find her.
But she never stays too long.
How I wish we were one again:
back before time defiled me and
life separated me into two selves.
So now I know who I really am and
who I strive to be.
The Lake (2021)
Moving across the water’s surface
Soft breeze dancing across my face
Little birds singing their songs
Sun rising in the east
Come sit here with me
Beside the lake
And listen
Let go
Be
Hour 12 – Downpour
Conversations, songs, us – steeped in rain,
we lived each moment together,
sure of our forever…
but now our sweet duets
I sing all alone
arms have no one
to embrace.
I’m soaked
alone.
Hour 12 – Fear Nonet
Anxiety makes fear amplify
But I will never let it win
So I’m staring them all down.
I imagined caskets,
Smiled back at the clowns,
And ate spiders.
Now, I can
Devour
Fear.