Play it slow-
not for romance,
but because the strings are blistered,
and every note splits the sky
with fire.

Stroll through the panic,
it’s routine:
duct tape on the windows,
radio on low,
a list of missing birds
tacked to the wall
like fallen saints.

You said you'd carry me,
but the world’s gone grey,
and the olive tree’s
just smoke now.

There’s no audience left.
Just wind
and its thousand-watt warning.

Still, your spine curves to the rhythm
like a fever dream from Babylon,
hips like warning sirens,
ankles sunk in ash.

I want to understand
what we ruined,
but only at a pace I can stand,
only with eyes closed.

There was a time
we dressed like lovers.
Now it’s mylar blankets
and filtered masks.

We knew the promise;
we broke it anyway,
above it,
beneath it,
inside it.

Someone keeps whispering
about children,
as if hope still blooms
in poisoned soil.

Play it slow,
with bare hands if you must.
But don’t pretend this isn’t a requiem.
Don’t dress it up in velvet or vows.
Just let the music float
and burn,
like everything else.

Two squirrels chasing each other on a large oak tree
Another trying to decide how to eat a large walnut and almond
Still Another watching my every move while laying in a big tree branch up high
Cloudy skies with a tiny drizzle of rain
Awaiting thunderstorms but nice company walking home up tbe hill

I'm just a poet,
wouldn't you know it
I lace my lines, then boldly throw it.
I spill my ink where silence grows,
twisting truth in rhythmic prose.

I flip the script, I drop the beat,
with crooked rhyme and dancing feet.
I stitch my pain in stitched-up verse,
a soft-spit spell, a velvet curse.

I break the meter, bend the frame,
then tag my thoughts with fire and flame.
I glide through grit and velvet air,
my voice a scar, my breath a flare.

I speak in echoes, glitch and glow it.
I'm just a poet;
Wouldn't you know it?
A wild-mouth priest of streets and skies,
who walks on words and never lies.