I’ve been kicking around the idea to gather my poetry every once and a while all into the same place and (re)publish it here on the blog which makes it an easy reference. Many of the poems you’ll see here today are published over on Instagram, but I like the idea of gathering a large batch of my work. One day, I’ll release a poetry book for you. Not today, though. Not quite yet.

The following poems are collected from published work in the last year, as well as some unpublished. You can find most them in full over on my Instagram page if you’d like to read more!

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cold calls – 22.12.31

There are few things that reach the soul quite like cold coffee, in an empty office.

The first touch upon your lips like ambrosia in the winter,

snowfall and sugared cream

To know that in this world you are part of something,

something big and bigger than you, or me, 

It is a cloudy morning in the middle of July and I have just arrived, to brew my breakfast

If it were ten degrees warmer, you tell yourself, or if I had one more day of PTO

then life could begin, my vacation

A late evening with my wife on a couch we’ve not had the means to shampoo

since before we owned it

I start and end my day the same way, with a groggy yawn at my bedside.

Without concern for what might come when I leave my bedroom

a dawning moment so surreal

Picture perfect, softly jumping into my jeans.

I am becoming something big, and bigger than me.

It is a snowy morning at the end of June and I have so, so much to do.

Spending an evening waiting of coffee machines, and printers and calls and meetings

yearning for a moment of time to be myself

To fill my hours with meaning, I bide my time

staring at a thousand screens.

There are few things that reach the soul quite like a cold call, in a busy office

Striking me where I believed I was meant to be

in the part the always yearned for more

To be complete with three decades behind me, instead

I watch my coffee steaming.

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any matter – 23.1.9

It is not the matter within the downpour

Or the way in which the laughing clouds do taunt

Be they breaking a wrist

the death of a dog

losing my job

loving myself

staying alive

or anything, under the sun, that haunts me

I am made of greater things, so then

Regardless of the day, the damage or the downpour

I have but only one way to go — Forward.

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re-angry – 23.1.11

Have you ever been so angry you’ve burst into a haze of butterflies?

Scattered this way and that, splitting apart to land on different parts of the house

In the kitchen where the dishes aren’t done,

filled with mold from last Monday’s meal.

In the den where your couch is a kingdom

littered with hair and harrowing smells.

In the bedroom with socks and old shingles

from a fortress you’d forgone when it fell

In the office beside boxes their contents mingled

Do you think it was always this way?

Have you ever been so angry you’ve laid on the ground like a sloth?

Bundled tight in a blanket made of dog hair and dust bunnies, it’s home.

Not in a way that reminds you explicitly of joy

or sorrow.

It would be easier to lie back in bed, but your bed you’ll get to

tomorrow.

While you sleep, you dream – and when you dream

You aren’t demanded to do a thing.

There are no meetings to meet, no hours to fill.

no dishes to clean or 

doors to answer.

It is peace, when you are angry.

Peace like you’ve never had before.

Have you ever been so angry you’ve stood in the down pouring rain?

Adamant you might never get to see it again?

Screaming with strained throat and gasping for air.

The water runs over you like you were never,

really

there.

In the midst of a dream you’ve dreamed a million times

The water boils to blood into steam into vines that are

hardly

growing.

In the wake of a trip to the grocery store

with too many people and

too many things.

Too many mouths

to feed.

And you scream.

Have you ever been so angry

sentences fail.

breaking apart as you breathe, against the will of your heart.

If you scream, it comes back to earth and you become,

once more a butterfly.

a sloth

a lion.

And you think you can sing, but more often than not it feels like you’re dying.

Have you been so angry, you became a mountain?

beneath the burden of making some sense

or gaining it. –

Surrounded by worms, pushing forever and

suddenly.

When you thought you’d wake the world.

It awoke

within you.

And you find yourself somewhere new,

unlike butterflies and

unlike sloths. but

Familiar to you all the same.

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untitled – 2023, January

It is on the tip of my tongue at all times

Dancing against the part of my mind that refuses

To remember what

it was like alone, afraid, with soft edges and filled with vapor

Barely more than a cloud in my youth

a storm brewing inside of me with every bated breath.

I do not think I could know better if I tried

What it takes to move through summer unburdened

Without the memory

it is like carrying an armful of books and papers I didn’t write

But am expected to know the content of

a lesson never learned in decades on this rock, ashamed.

We are single celled organisms and the planet is a spinning host,

Threatening to pulls us from its skin and toss us into the dark fridge beyond

But it will not

just as I will not

Succumb to the things I’ve never understood

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untitled – 2023, February

This mead tastes like every part of me is changing

In between one whole thing and another

The bones inside are shaking with the weight

Of something about a heart still undiscovered

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untitled – 2023, February

Every spring I put my things in boxes

Meant to make it cleaner I want to organize

All the mean things I’ve ever said about myself

or anyone else

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in regard – 23.2.14

There are simply not enough hours in a day

To accomplish that which the day requires

In regard to the way you have:

brought flowers from ashes

grown passion from placid

made sweet the sickly

And churned life within me

Even in stillness I have not the seconds

To recount the myriad of sentiments

In regard to the way I am:

diluted in my weakness

engrossed in my theatrics

obsessed about my shame

And barely worthy of your name

Yet we grow like vines upon a post

To grasp upon what matters most

In regard to the way we are:

crashing waves and sandy shores

burning lighthouses and broken ships

creeping moss and blooming orchids

And two halves of something whole

but whole enough our own

to make life a beautiful

harvest of dreams to reap

the seeds of love we’ve sown.

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Thanks for stopping by to have a look at my poetry, you can find more over on my Instagram in between catalog posts like this one.

March is almost halfway through, and I’ll be cooking up more poetry and more fiction every day until my birthday! You don’t want to miss it.

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Thank you for participating once more in the Lifeis+ celebration. I’ve got a lot to celebrate this time around so you’ll be hearing from me often. If you’d like to read more, you can check out me current fiction project Sisters of Westwinter & The Heart, Felt Series below!

If you’d like to support what I’m doing here, you can click either of the links below to be taken to ways you can help you (if you feel so inclined!)

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