is gone; no shiny coin
or sacred fawn or star
to set our compass on.

Be reckless with your words to me;
incite, provoke, use words as lips
and teeth and hands and silk restraints.
Press them deep into my skin –
leave marks, leave late, and come again.

What hunger drives us out and back
and walking, walking, free of men,
unquenched enough to taste the lack
that set us going out and back again?

From Riverside you turn on Spring
to stalk a night that will not end,
leaf-hurt, gray grieving thing
in darkness spent -- out and back again.

Alone, a million miles from dawn,
small wonder guiltless ghosts pretend
that hunger guides all exiles gone
out and back -- out and back, my friend.

Say you want a cat. A dog's too easy,
would wag when wag is inappropriate,
and slobber on the guests. You'll take the cat,
so different and strange, it drives you crazy,

its shiftlessness, its ins-and-outs, its chi.
You call. It does not come. Is this a pet,
this Dharma ***? You say you can't accept
its vacant gaze, its scorn, who yearned to be

at home with feral grace, with all you're not.
But you're a Body safely locked from Mind,
that Problem no Mind solves. This point's defined
for you by ****, who's not the pet you thought

but Otherness, one owned by God, or none.
Cat sleeps for hours, wants out. A job well done.

she is organza and rough, nubbly raw silk
that tears your fingers
and bleeds you purple, sweet.


civilizations rise and fall
in the curve of her mouth.

There is a deeper run of color
More raw scarlet and burgundy hues
  splayed
Eying pitiless
 edgewise mouth spangled with tobbacco
Hindsight plays into the corner
barred tooth
wounded & scrabbling at the wood
Without purchase
Come now
Look at you
So pitiful and gorgeous

Against my will, I’ve acquired this skill.
I’ve mastered the art of fault-picking,
I excel at depreciating.

Still, urgently seeking something diminishing,
Secretly yearning -
To combat flaws I’m dissecting.

For some sort of force to pull me?
Up to standards I don’t fulfil,
Down from aching self-worth, still.

And just like my dad,
I mask my sad.

Mutually we intellectualise our wounds,
Seemingly, we’re bound.

School is a building, not the only place for learning
Trips happened every month when I taught
Museums, Outdoor events, anything to capture an imagination
Many parents did not take their children anywhere
According to the kids
As much as I could, we did something about it
The library was not visited by many
With permission, they visited once a week
They got library cards
Parents complained, not returning books, not paying fees
Never anytime
So when we visited weekly
Books were returned
A young librarian asked if she could work with my students
Not only was this weekly, but some students were her interns after school
Some went home to a lonely home, or hung out wherever that was
The Key was to meet a member of the community; they never would have
Hopefully, I opened more than a door
The key

Tuning in
Tuning out
Not out of interest but for health and heart
The emotional girl and poet needs to care about herself more
When you are very caring and loving
Sometimes you get lost along the way
Useless to loved ones and friends
So learning balance and even keel
Second and thitd best is a not good idea
Focus changed
Quieter and listening
Debbie and Donny Downers stay away please
Just have no time for you and those like you
Your process does not compute
Listen carefully extraordinary people like the poets
Here

I was twelve when the world collapsed—
not loud. No explosion.
Just a silence so thick
it wrapped around my lungs
and stayed there.

They said, “He’s gone.”
Like it was a story ending.
But I was still in the room—
staring at him,
staring at death
in a body I still wanted to hug.

His chest didn’t rise.
His hands were cold.
The room was too bright,
and I couldn’t find my own breath.

My knees hit the floor.
Hard.
I didn’t even feel it.

Since then,
my body became a graveyard.
I carry him in every joint.
I carry him in every bruise
I gave myself in the dark
just to scream without noise.

Some nights,
my chest locks like his did.
Some nights,
I press my fingernails into my skin
just to feel anything other than this ache.

Pain became prayer.
Blood became language.
And the flashbacks—
they’re not just in my mind.
They live in my spine,
my throat,
my hands that shake
when I walk past a hospital,
or see an old man sleep.

I still see him.
In that bed.
Eyes closed,
like he was pretending.
But he wasn’t pretending.
He left.
And took the light with him.

Grandma found me once,
curled in the bathroom,
wrapped around a razor
like it was a lifeline.
She didn’t flinch.
She just sat,
and let the silence breathe.

Then, through her cracked voice, she said:
“When my grandfather died,
the world stopped making sense.
He raised me. He loved me.
And when they buried him,
they buried the only place I ever felt like I mattered.”

“You think this is new?” she whispered.
“Pain’s been passed down
like an heirloom none of us asked for.”

I didn’t speak.
Just shook,
and bled quietly
into the towel I didn’t mean to grab.

Because I know too much now.
I know what grief tastes like—
metallic and sharp.
I know what trauma feels like—
tight skin, locked jaw,
a pulse that races for no reason.

I know how silence can scream.
I know how mirrors can lie.
I know what it’s like
to want to leave
just to stop reliving.

Colors don’t sing anymore.
They hum like warning signs.
But the blue…
The blue still bleeds.
It stains everything he touched.
And I can’t wash it off.

So I whisper at night:
Please.
Stay a little longer.
Let me fall asleep
without the sound of a flatline
echoing in my skull.

Let me be twelve again—
before my arms became maps of pain.
Before I forgot what warmth felt like
that didn’t come from bandages.

I wish I could see the world through those eyes—
the ones that looked at him and saw forever.
But forever lied.
And now I know too much.

Still…
the blue hasn’t faded.
It bleeds,
but it hasn’t gone.

And I wish.
I still wish.