I thought I was your captive
Like being struck through the heart, like lightning, like time
That rises away
Past a roof
And slips across
A higher landscape,
A different neighborhood

A silence that exists only in small noises
The humming of birds, the beach, the buzzing of the sea
The luminescence of another world,
the beat of the heart,
dawn and evening;
falling silent snow.

If any of these sounds open
Do they become roads
Become flowers
Behind walls
That seize the original heart
through some alternate pathway, via some underground stream

Night opens
Like stars
And that
Which is like
The sky
Between you and me
Songs of April
Songs of May

Stones of age, sparkling in sun,
gleam at the light to hold.

A few dull—where nothings run,
Seams with trifles cold.

Pressure and pressure— more dull rocks won,
Nothing to shine in light.

They gleam their darkness to fade the sun,
Nothing to shine at sight.

With enough pressure,
And time just right.

A fissure,
A spark— sets light.

For in the weight of ignorance- of dull stones,
A spark, not wisdom, pulls blight.

Now,
For the sheer weight of consequence to mold-
The light, of dull rock— can first hold.

Shattered illusions.
Shattered hopes.
Shattered dreams.

A house with no structure
built from the remains of ruin.

A powerful soul
in a trembling body.

A house meant to fall.
A house that realized
it’s not a house at all -
just the memory of shelter
pretending to hold.

It asks,
"Then what am I?"

But no one answers.

And so,
what’s left
sinks into the soil,
quietly turning
back into earth.

a hot summer night.
the world was a kiln
and we were clay,
hardening, sweating,
baking in it.

I walked by his door
and saw him—
left wide open like an invitation.
he was sleeping.
my father.

curled up in the fetal position,
no blankets,
just underwear.
the room dark
except for the faint
glow his iphone
lighting the back of his head
like a halo with low battery.
his iPad in front of him,
casting a pale blue wash
across his gut.
he looked like he was
plugged in.
dreams streaming through
a USB cord.

he looked so tired.
vulnerable.
like a deadweight puppet
left on stage
after the curtain’s dropped.

like he wouldn’t survive
whatever was coming next.

like he was still
just a kid
from small-town North Dakota
who wanted to fall in love
and did
but that mother left
years ago—
quiet as a predator
cutting his strings on the way out.  

and now he doesn’t
know how to move
without someone
controlling him.

so he just lies there—
the man
after the werewolf’s gone,
sleeping off the transformation.

breathing hard
in the electric glow
of a humming digital womb.

I am not my own strength – nor am I my own words
I am not the sum of silver, or rich as the world,
Nor even close to a sliver of gold.

I am not my future – or any better than my own past
I am all of my mistakes made in the present,
And all of the things, hoping to come to pass
Nowhere near a love that endures without question –
Nor the calm; being a life of many, many scars.

I am the quiet battles, that tears praise my triumphs,
The stillness in inner storms, battling emotional riots –
Marvel of flesh, fragile code; built of miracle science
Living in society’s endless bias, where the little
You hope to give, is the hope that will be trampled
Beneath the heels of Giants.

A faith that’s ALWAYS under intense heat
And so many pressures; pressed and refined,
I emerge as a Beautiful Diamond.