Poems 2022-2025
What we say and what we mean
Whom do chords obey? Deep down, harmonic veil On lung’s floor. Deeper yet, fossils of the mind in the sands of feel; annotations, in the ink of limbic whispers smudged instructions brought by neuro-tides from the depths where world-making resides. Faint echoes of thought and pulse Shape a voice, a voice to words and they’re out stepping out in the well-lit night from a floor deeper down, made of air through which our knees make their way in the worlds ready-made in the worlds to disobey.
There’s s a hut of madness by the shore for those who must scream their whispers, and more A tiny palace at the centre of the swamp has a chamber of backless chairs at odds between the napkins, many knives, few forks Swimming now with tangled tongues we surface into heavy fog of a day in the worlds ready-made in the worlds to disobey.
As wide as the world
To the waiting rooms, they come with At bottoms of hills, they make them less steep They decorate the thresholds with LEDs And make a song out of friction of a life A soft sofa out of much needed uncomfortable zones They hold us together even though fragments are all there is In liminal tones of chirping between the rains In liminal tones of sand of a marsh My friends pick me up They give me clutches and shoulders Spicy soups and long hours Walks to nowhere paved with words Cups for grief and plates for joy They know wreckages and revolutions are not events That pockets are vital (if you are not a man) They tell me to say I have safely arrived Greet me when I’m back from cloud walk In the circus tent as wide as the world They stand close by For balance They swallow a dumpling and they know me wise and dumb They are afraid and brave and they do. I pick them up They wrap their bodies around And hold us. We go mad, we go serene, together, we go We speak The obvious, the impossible, and the blurry We remember to play no matter the trace we leave behind We know there is a war of a few madmen Ravaging across webs of gentle fibers From which nobody is safe and free Unless our friendships hold the world with enough love
To do’s
Have your wife hold bulletproof glass up high When you spare capitalism and shoot at the sun Take a first right to avoid traffic, second right to avoid self And keep going straight until the fat lady sings Deny magic, unless it’s work you do not see Magnify your heel to cancel who’s left Wallow in a pool of numbers added up. Swallow a to do list, and instead:
Dance on the quicksands and hum with a thunder So that we notice before a world goes under Stack the eggshells once the chicks fly So they can see from afar how tender they are Train madness and chaos as much as shoulder muscles and core An ancient storm’s echo is what to train for
Xauaxol
A storm came. Their roots were firm and reached wide but couldn’t hold back. The sea ate from the beach that day. Fallen bodies of the palm trees told me.
The roof collapsed, the nets broke and the birds stayed. Do they think this is irreversible?
The wooden chairs missing limbs Empty shaky chairs hosting decay Surely some change is irreversible
As the crabs crawl across the sand In a black and moonlit starry night Do they fear?
As the wind bends the long leaves shuffling their dance with arrivals of waves Does it notice the anomaly? A brand new flag of a violent form.
There is a woman combing the beach and she knows that one pair of hands is not enough to repair She lives in a tent between departures and arrivals, there to go, there to stay
Scattered shelves, scathed, not yet debris Will they sink in the sand? A fallen trunk springs to a new life From the middle. Coconuts, fetal trees, they’ve done this before
Tears, when we forget to be tender in time
To run out of tears, no such thing. I run into them. And they run for life They wash over me with a few stings In overwhelming waves of tremendous strife
The waves crash against my rib cage Before i know it, i grieve Each sob and tremor make me age make me soothed and loner. With reprieve?
I poke them shields but I too grew stiff In times when we need to be tender May these tears melt armour, no what ifs To love, may we never forget to be tender
In a world of rocks I shed Pele’s tears And I hold prince rupert’s by their tails And I dip both in the ocean of love Her waves will smooth their edges
Until they are strong and tender.
A shell in a ghost
A soft inside meets its time to die. The cloak on its back, a mantle made of stone washes up on a beach, spat out by the sea. Combing the sand, fingers of a girl. Fingers that held a machine with a heart of stone, a heart of salt. Animal sees beauty, machine takes the beauty to the cloud. Made of stone. Digital rain pours down from the cloud. Made of code, made of sushi recipes. Sealife hunted. Haunted fingertips. These seashells are small, none fits the ears, and so the sea is unheard. Machines work silently too. Animals, sometimes. Do you have a heart of stone? Solid-arity, a tentacled attempt to breathe, on an interface of rock and flesh. To swim in a sea of lies, sea of bias, to sing for the medusa to come. An empty shell at her fingertips whispers. Do tell your mum that a rock has a soul. Courage flows and beats, does not sit in backbones. (Made of stone.) Non-linear, unlike AI. Between a rock and a hard place, the workers, in the middle. Further down, sclerotia sleeps softly, awaiting. Mine, he says. And he mines. And the girl with a seashell on her fingertips is being mined, like a precious stone. To float in the sea of lies, sea of bias, in a stolen net world-wide. Another girl, another finger, scratches stone in darkness. Another salty graveyard lies beneath her. There is ore, for those addicted to more. Lordosis in their spines, made of stone. Plug in: unlearn being gravel, mountain, beach. Learn to be a lonely split from a rock. A stone charging in the noon sun gives an error. There must be a stream. Another stone: in a slingshot, in a palm of a boy. Under nails, dirt. No innocence to save. The stones pulled out of the wall, starting an empire’s fall. Another boy, another spine: radicalized by pain, they say. A hard inside gives way
Oranges at winter solstice
Nobody’s a monster. In the pages of torture reports, between the lines look for fearful gods on a thorny throne In rape videos between the shots find a vulnerable boy denied, unplugged
To monster is to unlearn to be. At scale. To monster is to learn to detach and perform.
In suits, in uniforms, behind doors Monstering occurs as emerging scent Of rot. Produced en masse, scaffolding planks. Uprooted, cut. To monster is to submit to red tape. To monster is to declare that strawberries are no longer owned only by themselves.
The darkest hour is when you see thousands of children were not slaughtered by monsters. The darkest ink is one that underwrites delegation. To monster is to delegate.
Dressed in orange suit, paraded through the town, a most dangerous one Is the one who halts the clockwork. Almost as dangerous as a woman.
Abolish private property
Even in full sun We can open our eyes: glasses help. State violence is sacred For those with a baton and an axe of zeros and ones To the growl of a crumbling empire we chime in, and whistle, softly. Confusion births both: Lost ones and slow power of the sisters. Nobody owns none no one owns a body of anyone. We are those angels with dirt under nails and polish worn out who fill the glasses to the brim who listen to the chirping mornings and tumbling stones of the empire chime in to the love for life.
We blink. Another world passes by. A new day makes coffee and forgets. Just walk. On a sunny side today Even if your eyes hurt that way
How slow is time?
Boiling water for coffee in a kitchen I hear a roman salute getting buzzed in Stomping through front doors.
I rest to resist to rise to resist Watch in a window, a neighbour wipes hers She sits with her sadness on uncomfortable chairs They talk, we eavesdrop Until the sirens come Down in the street Early that morning.
The kettle hisses in the corner of silence Train tracks screech and toilets flush In his capsule it’s been a few days While i dive in roundabout cascades
There are several ends of the world Down there in the streets I take the stairs and we make the worlds end well, for a while Upstairs though, there is nothing I can do
All men
Look away, boy, don’t you cry Look straight on, learn to unsee Disconnect, boy, stand alone Chop it, slice it, parcel, cancel, Look away boy, don’t say a thing They are just like that, you are like this And it’s not your fault, boy Reap the benefits, boy, don’t you ask Who you step on, boy, wear your head high Don’t show you’re weak, boy Look straight on, learn to unfeel
Some men do as if the other was less And them gods, to brutalize. The screams of the other All men learn to unhear.
What is a madness?
A reign of madness rules it out Rules them out Rules us out. Cloaked in white Of sanity Calls itself chosen and the only one. Sorts us out As mad Cloaked in white Of erasure And of straight lines A reign of one Bans the self, selves: in flux, relational Proclaims a self: isolated, a-historic, impossible Accuses the dreamers of asking the impossible A reign of normalcy designs the exams Multiple choices As long as it’s a variant of one And when we dare to be mad It locks us up Rules us out. Cloaked in white Of hegemonic violence It wipes and trims the edges Of signs It keeps surfaces tense It prescribes a right dose Of a medicine unfit
Right to opacity / Don’t you shoot at clouds
as you stand on the safe side of the abyss you glance at a horizon, your eyes amiss
you name a shape and fill the voids so it’s no longer vague, it’s yours to control
sometimes, you just look aside rerouting around what you claim to not know
who would have thought they’re solid when you don’t cup them up?
who would have heard them speak in many tongues when you don’t ask them to confirm
do you see their feet enmeshed to ankles? do you dare to close your eyes and feel?
their personhood is not yours to sign their peoplehood is not yours to stamp
their dignity is not made in your gaze your expansions are yours to deflate
could you shatter that glass, please and spill the ice cubes on the road
lick your mucus, if you have to then stray. leave them to thrive
or if you will, stay. With your palm not your pen, your lens, your guns
close your eyes and hear them bloom for they’re solid when you don’t shoot at clouds
This is not a poem of despair
It is not the wind’s fault to carry dust It is not the sea’s fault to entrap its lore If sea could stop those ships with rust It would not be guilty any less or more
It is not your fault and you are not to blame For seeing the spark in air ignite the flame Responsibility is yours if you take it.
They said power is seeing fragility in all In naming, sorting, walls, and shareholder’s halls You have the power to make the toxic castle fall So step out in the wind and gather, standing tall
What if
sipping sands go unheard on the other side of glass and skin voices of the throatless fade out to points of no return
I fail to notice. Until it is too late or worse, perhaps, I tap the hollow walls of soporific chambers, I tap
I hear him run away. He takes us His somniferous fairies die from a virus
I’m late for class and stage and late in life auditoriums empty, curtains ajar, whispers move them slightly
I lost a glove in the train, again and there’s a glove now laying idle on some floor, twitching with her ghost hand.
I fear them making me watch them harm her and no witches come to aid
a wire unseen snaps. The mast tumbles down. Somebody overboard and a mufled scream sends bubbles through the cruel foamy waves
a wire spectacular tears us apart, to the hum of electrons a ghoulish dance to the barely audible buzz
a tree falls in silence. in another song a million stumps look up at their missing limbs, at bird-homes gone
a house of embers and embraces topped by a house of cards a chimney-like fake furnace they cannot climb
I fear that the salty graveyard will receive yet many more that stories of our worlds are veiled and too far removed
that virtual virtue stays chopped up and flat, chopped up in flats that the haunters make nests from hunters’ traps
that we let fear reign and on fear we are fed that people stay to dream and ghosts get out of bed
but people forgot how to dream and what they see is a rewound gif and their ghosts did not forget that they used to have a voice
Overheard this morning in the mycorrhizal network
Here is some nitrogen for you, little one and here is some phosporous too, little one. They will nurture you. Carbon is fine where it is. I wonder, oh little one, does Shell ever dream of carbon? Does Exxon ever dream of asyphyxiation? Does Chevron ever dream of starvation? I guess not. Dreams of dismembered, ravaged, broken bodies belong to those who are awake those barred from the Dream and those who dream of other. A dream of carbon, would it be black? Would it be sweet? Here is an idea for you, little one Talk to them. Tell them they belong Tell them of carbon. A border
This barbed wire spawns reglangles of air This polyester thread entraps the sea For all those in motion, for those who dare Whether they take an old route or they flee
The threads and the wires cut into flesh Sinister space in between deludes minds It is a negative space of a mesh It swallows and suffocates whom it finds
Silently, far away, and out of sight This mesh dismembers, forgets, and denies Bodies in past, present, and future flights The oneness of us all under the skies
Tear it down, blast it, rip the threads apart Let the air and water flow on this chart
Before we blew up a pipeline
We did not plausibly deny nor look aside We did not swim in debilitating quilt Did not dismiss kindness nor let it stride On her own, while other bodies are killed
We took four glasses and we made them full Emptied them slowly and greeted the bot We went to a castle and kissed the fool A princess gave us his suicide note
We found the wall coated in ivy leaves Broken already, its gates cracking with rust We made love to each other, touched and pleased Did not get lost for longer than we must
We did not linger nor rush as we marched To the black gold awaiting to be parched
Miss the Letter L
Lacrimonious became acrimonious Leather turned to ether Leverage dropped down to average A lantern made a turn A fleet reduced to feet A plea rolled away as a pea Sleep started to seep A flight picked up a fight Alchemist grew into a chemist A bleak bird nodded her beak A slave you could not save Love lost all sense when reduced to ove. A day
Neatly chopped, a parcel, a fit Freshly splashed in the morning's sink Unaware of what preceded it Of being a bead in the string
Not that it does not know But it feels free to start over, sometimes When not trapped in bygone threads In residues that taste like moods
A day is like a sentence Of a story
Creation
On the first day of the revolution We hold each other as feathers in palms. We trace toxins, spit some out, and hold each other, gentle and tight
On the second day of the revolution We line them up, the misery-makers, bystanders and profiteers. And we say off with their heads
On the third day of the revolution We say let there be light. We kindle the fire and watch the flames dance. Future is no longer a mere extension of now
On the fourth day of the revolution We scratch the black earth. We remember and mourn
On the fifth day of the revolution We do much unglamorous work. This is the most important of all
On the sixth day of the revolution We loiter, we wander, we daydream, we sense, we rest while it rains
On the seventh day of the revolution We do the legwork, again
How to align an image
I tried to center the imported image and the image defied. It slid to the sides on whim or law unknown. I asked the right questions after asking the left ones and I got answers that took me to the center of the wrong shape.
It’s a white page with unaligned code. It changes every time it gets touched but does not shift to the centre from the outskirts.
I got closer and it eloped searching the axis to spin around. I sat on the pavement in hope of recknoning. Maybe it would emerge? I stepped out so it could hone in.
I waited for it to become A center of a whiplash An unalienable home in a non-place behind the imparted image.
I asked it to align itself. To get help. But of course it could not as it was a black and white, an image, rigid, and flat.
Until the page got transformed: exported as pdf
Salad
The withered ones, whose time is out or rather, time for them to sustain: to compost. To meet a dawn of sprouting from a soil ancient and new through decay bathed in fresh rains a leaf unfolds, smoothens, wrinkles, is
too late today. Too early tomorrow yet never put on hold as the arrow buzzes and spirals we chop a moment.
You hold a bowl. A thunder sounds a sign that the seed awakens to and it finds a way
Abolish the military
It was a Tuesday and they were three and a half percent they came to the gate behind which arms were made
Now you may mistake it for prostethic arms but I mean the weapons, a fuel of harms
They threw a bottle with hallucinations trapped and dreams to the ones inside. And it worked, it seems
An exodus flew and gathered swing People with tears on snooze came into the spring
One step at a time. On sidewalks, some swerved Some danced and some limped, unnerved
There was a girl in black dress who bled without shame There was a slender drummer with a broom aflame
She swept the dust from corners of stairs and read the letter alound: a legacy of theirs
Dust we inherit, all. Wrapped in a sheet after The End, we come out and we meet
Stories
It begins with an altered mind. Odd, as if mind is otherwise a pool It begins with through-holes, drains, porous walls. Three chicken appear, four, but one is soon lost They are unruly, wild, they make a spectacular mess and with piercing sounds they join a call. It begins with altered minds, many drinks There were words in the middle and a rupture filtered through followed by repair. There is no beginning.
The narrator took a leave and a few noticed that the Reaper never left the room
The people tried to squeeze moisture out of moss to drink the mist and frost
while the Reaper poisoned the rivers undergroud with words and entertaining arid stories
Spring
Downstairs, where it’s damp and dark and calm the orange light seeps in bent quintuply so: five times. It rings of the past, of other lives: paralel so far, they now intersect within bodies, within hearts.
As if heart was a place, soundproof and calm. The other day it was: when the orange was yet unpeeled when the ring was not yet lost when unaware of asyncronous time.
We’re running out of time for shying away from what’s at heart, nesting around poles that ring true. Around delusions that calm would on her own put an orange on the table and birth an-other life.
We will never fully understand each other even when we coincide in time but if we learn to read the orange signposts by the doors of chambers of the heart we might make love with both passion and calm if we just listen for the ring amidst the clamor
The weakest rings of chains were underwater unseen until it was too late to change them for another. At the bottom, yes it’s calm but hard to breathe. Time gets trapped under belly. In the heart, time expands. Mind forgets to drink and we piss orange.
There are strands of orange hair on the floor to be put together anew. No rings on our fingers and deep wounds in our hearts. No other way of treading across but letting become in time ones who step out of that cellar, yet calm
In the hour of heartening the other we take a ring from the fire, glistening orange and say: this time, we love with both passion and calm
POEMS OF GRIEF
Birds of summer
Sharp pain moved in my lower back: On internal oblique I’ve grown an eye and now I see the pathways of why. Leaving the heart open and cracked
I gladly grieve a former shape as it shifts I look sideways to witness More of sharp pain making wings While I transmute I see what I missed
I summon dragons, thunderbirds, and doves To teach me to transform and fly Now that I see the pathways of why To show me what to do with this love
Two stones made a spark and fire Nobody taught us to build a protective ring Nobody told us what to do when it stings I summon a fenix and we rewire
Grieving, still
We took the thorny way instead of looking for a map We got close but couldn’t bridge the gap
Where the path forked you had a knife And I, bottomless spoons of love turned grief
I tried wise little things to do to live But days stretch to tears. I sought zinc to give
Instead of steal. There was none. Your absence follows me around
I let you go every day and you come back in every shape
You said “use that embrace” As a timeless channel, out of physical space
I cannot. My body craves your touch And to grow together. I just miss you so much
I understand you much better every day But there is one thing where I still fail:
Why do you think you already tried When all you have is love and a knife?
Why do you think you can ever be safe When you never stay long enough to see that a lion is not after your soul nor flesh?
Why do you give up sailing to a safe port Instead of fixing the leaky old ship?
Summer solstice blues
Over the year’s longest day I stretched interrupted cables To rewire a body no longer able I cut the endings that frayed
But a chord got lost in dark to reconnect. I seek a pulse: Voltage is far off the mark And a bolt frozen: the negative one
Another line broke off stranded Another wire was made into a hook Impatient, futile, too warped to reach In a place where I cannot look
They say “or” names something real They say time will soften the way I feel While I still believe another world underway I simply wanted the current to stay
And give us a chance to shave corrosion off But touched wrong, your short circuit closed It burned you, than me, and it burned the fuse I found new ones but once you left, they have no use
Now I do have working navigation lights But I go nowhere at all these nights Now I do understand much more But the wire cannot reach, too short
Grieving
There will be no stitches in this wound tomorrow. No sea may hold my sorrow.
Ties unwound. Salt finds a way, corrodes. Down they go, recurrent salty streams.
Cannot breathe. I follow those drowned dreams: No shore will do.
They tell us love is stronger than fear. Yours is not, I despair to hear.
I lay my brow on the seabed pillow, next to a crab, and tell them: My love is a muscle
wrapped around broken strands Of tendons, ever tender
angled wrong for your old insecurities. You don’t believe that you can.
Every morning I try to take the horse to the water and the horse never drinks.
And so the muscle opens up, the flesh exposed, and a life ends.
Worlds unfurl and begin from the middle, again.
I sleep at the anchor and wake up to new days, one at a time.
I speak to fish and put my ear underwater with a slight hope of understanding
I lost an anchor. I lost a world Willing to sail through storms despite fear
Willing to learn to not be a thunder to each other.
You don’t believe that we can learn to make a world within the world
You say you felt unsafe: don’t you see you were about to become a butterfly?
Abandon
There’s a castle hanging in the air I can see it through my window
And a sturdy bridge, I cannot see it But I know it’s there, North-east
Coocoo clock: dormant for months this time, out it goes Coocoo sings, perching on a blade, then withdraws
Rewrites the past, cancels the future Reads his will, dash of something new
I missed a bus, he caught a cold I wait at the exit, he vanishes in a crowd
We could learn to swim, unlearn to roar But the coocoo comes again and we are seen no more
Another clock: slow and soft regular ticks Hold my my grief, my joy, my pain
There are hundred castles and two hundred tents Three hundred roads to nowhere worth taking
There is a desert of rubble where homes were To rebuild is a longest shot, i’d say, if words of warring would not be off And I want to rebuild, despite it all and because if it
I’d take the debris of mistakes and toxic dust I’d pile them on the bridge of bricks I’d bake them until they turn into clay And then I’d make a home: not a castle, not a tent, not a house. No walls, and no clocks.
I’d plant another cherry tree and sit on a roof picking them red Nobody would tell me I am too much When I dance next to them they’d know That it is also ok not to dance In a home of music with no clocks That there’s no need to rip a floor when you spill glue on it There are ways to wipe it In a home where clocks need tending to.
I remember that night we first met In the ways you moved and spoke and saw me, i knew that it was going to be you
Your love held me, lifted me above the wind And when you are down on the hot roof, your shadow stabs me unawares, I wait for you at the exit of that castle, on that bridge on a new road
Did you know that squirrels forget Where they hide nuts, eight out of ten? Did you think of trees who grow thus? Maybe the squirrels do not forget?
A pattern is not destiny
We are not the pebbles that hurt our toes when we failed to watch where we step
We are not the toes that hurt Nor a lazy and distracted mind’s eye
We are not bound by fate Nor prisoners of fears
Together, we can overcome the fog Put the fog lights on
We are not so very special nor immune to cheesy traps
I am not your enemy You are not mine
We are flawed and capable Glorious experiments carrying bags
We have been held And lived among spikes
Shaped by a million waves meeting the shore Before we are round, before there are toes
We are not the storm that stole our sleep Not the thunder nor the still seas
And as we stand on this rock How about we turn our palms up?
We are not lettres on a page nor words Our covers, hard and soft Can be opened nonetheless
We can lick each other’s wounds And spell words with too many meanings
We are not our myriad misunderstandings Nor the certainty about our love
We are rarely wrong and rarely right Two mammals muttering paradoxes
Love is enough in fact When love cares
A void
Sweat dripping from a rough dream On eyebrows who knew no anxiety so far And they say this is not it, either A longing cut open and gaping wide
Your absence rings so loud today My skin is screaming, tries to transpire you Your absence I hear in every sound A longing cut open and gaping wide
Even in tranquility there is no relief As a massive empty chamber presses From above. Among the leaves, creeping grief Shattered shards, overcast are my glasses
Checked myself in voluntarily in a prison in paradise. Counting days until release As if closer to the wall I’ll be free again As if wherever I go I won’t carry a void
Dear lover
Do go gentle into that terrifying night, You must go barefoot and do not stray; Resolve I wish for you, for demons you must fight. Very few head there alone, no friends in sight, You refuse their flanks, to my dismay. Do go gentle into that terrifying night. If I had a map, marking every trough and height I’d offer it to you, as you go your way; Resolve I wish for you, for demons you must fight. You reject maps and lamps that might shine bright On your own you go and you insist to pay. Do go gentle into that terrifying night. From afar I glimpse unfolding of your plight Helpless to help you, be that as it may Resolve I wish for you, for demons you must fight. I hope you find courage and strength, you might Find them, I beg you, as I quiety pray. Do go gentle into that terrifying night. Resolve I wish for you, for demons you must fight
Growing Pains
Needles rain on my skin. They were invited to enact a million deaths to the old cells and I tell the body, we will endure.
Tears of grief roll slowly and longsome with memories of what could have been
Tears of joy roll quicker, as spring does though I might never teach you how to dive in plastic fibres
I look forward to mistakes we’ve made to remember new ones in summers that end too soon
All honey is stolen. Not everything that’s sweet is honey, honey. Nor is all pain needless.
I’ll put no numbers on pains. Removing hairs. A heir to messy pains, I hear the buzz muted down
How do you choose your needles? How do you know which pain is needless?
Despair
I vowed: never despair. Don’t give up hope Do notice horrors and wonders alike Keep walking on that long and winding slope Never a cynic, take tall view, tree-like For better worlds are possible and here. But I see now that even strongest love is helpless under heavy feet of fear There cannot be repair on behalf of. I vowed: that I dance, even when I grieve But my knee no longer can. I stay in Too scared to stay with me, again, you leave. How do we transform the world from a din? If only I could hand you courage, dear I vow to stay hopeful even if not near
Happy birthday
I swallowed the buquet of ballons you gave me and they lifted me up, high, that day. Then, they sunk at the bottom of my stomach: a void of dense humid air.
It stretched. I stretched. My muscles flexed, slightly inflamed. Sometimes I knew not to rush and sometimes I did not. Time streched slowly, from one moment to the next. The void dropped its droplets, I gave out the seeds. I met your shadows, my shadows, their shirts, their cloaks.
I am getting born, borne on the rip and a stack of folds. I am multitudes: simultaneously, buds and flowers and fruits I am where I’m going, I am what I do. I am getting born, all of us.
Today is not your birthday. Tomorrow, also not. Moons away, I will be there, I will not forget