saying unstated

date: 01/31/2026

to look in the mirror and see

to think thoughts of my own

to not be distracted

why, am I distracted


Thoughts a lie and

distraction and I know

all there is

nothing to truly avoid

confrontation itself losing meaning

to say what is already known is useless to me


heaving chest and breathing in my tears

enough


to make thoughts matter requires palms to hold them

a life lived

every time

each time I go to sleep


hole widening ever loosening tightening impossible and

I miss suffocating

catharsis denied

acceptance irrelevant


only sleep and gnashing teeth and lapping

at the barriers

body’s cage

teasing the murmuring

never uttering the unspoken sound

Lingering

date: 01/26/2026

Through bristled pines glowed the last full moon of the year

on a twisting drive, car swiveling through an unusually wide median after a pause there was a mural; a hawk and steaming train car, juxtaposed to the very tracks outside it that guided the subject

serving as a doorway

wishing me goodbye, my strength latent

and to survive


linger and you won’t,

the trees shuddered in warning.

still they do so

toward my temptation

those pine branches cupped the illuminated guide like a present


Moonlight cascades, illuminating its created pathways

given endlessly and without question


A couple moon cycles before the pine embrace, in what would more comfortably be described as a dream, omitted by the guiding light

the red robed figure stood

real

behind an affluent structure shrouded by the surrounding wood


I, not nearly having reached the way home,

and the elusive threat, never had tread along those moon pathways,

a robed figure existed in contemporary times.

incongruent with the greenery

Both, though, eating those who saw too much


The moonlight gleamed

glowing trough the canopy

upon the dirt trails toward the way home

I question, still if I should let myself give,

be tempted to join this sorrow

unwilling or not.


And a few more moons ago before this,

in this place again, the urge beckoned


before me there is a tunnel

faces unseen but felt all consuming

I am still there.


The human experience of needing to be seen

and thus to be felt

it is still there.

in them, and every ghost

living being not but a step removed from

your spirit manifest

the desire so strong and pain all too lingering

creating force as pertinent as a life.

Theirs having had pulled me into ecstasy and bliss

forgetting I have force within me of my own

the togetherness, and what it means to feel at all


compounding temptation.

the Earth knows

that not everyone can be accounted for at all times

lingering, I won’t be.


Blurred faces, and whispers all too clear of different eras past preserved

persistent as ever,

they say that it is every time it has ever been,

being now.

The temptation remains

exists

to linger

All Time a Chilling Second

date: 12/02/2025

Cold sweat

chill runs down my spine ghost of everything blows through me

Sharp pointed fingernail poking my spine through

nail through the vertebra


I feel

His feeling making me encounter itself

what’s coming I know what’s coming


Purpose null and without intention just

to do


its creeping body chilling over

freezing over now

hot sobs gone to the fogging breath now

cave backdrop now


In a reality running ever inescapable

variation

variety ragged and running


He’s always right behind me

I never turn around


They’re all behind me

I never turn around


Claw clamoring in my back

spinal fluid threatening to spill


Don’t turn around

Dread As It Has Come to Be

date: 11/14/2025

Dread


Lifting.


Dread in the face of warm glowing yellow

orange cascade, blinding

when a birdsong is typically welcome its

now made irregular

spiraling dizzying rotating clear blue

above below

ever hastening

ever faster

impending faster

warming


iced now

cold

Slamming the cadaver down coming down faster and

the birds sing faster knowing

traffic doing nothing to muffle a songs’ pitch


Chest flush cadaver

to the floor

made into mat

The carrion birdsong comes

now

darkening


Spinning.

The air still blowing and sky above

still spinning

Yet Another Fly Trial

date: 10/24/2025

Flies swarm seemingly fresh fruit as if in preparation

for the spoil

Sensing impending movement

before

the human eye or nose


They wait

unchewing

without salivation or whims

of impulse

waiting for the shift to occur


The fly who acts too early bears

nothing

but more waiting


Returning then,

too late

nothing left but the memory

of the smell


Not scent itself

at all lingering


no satisfaction nor reprieve


Without the sensation of something to even long or

hunger for

and even starvation lacks


Absence.

Over.


Experimentation endless and senseless

In this tiny jar

insect heads tinkering against glass in a disregarded

tune

creating a song so meaningless

falling silent upon the ears around


Bounding and flying in circles with little camaraderie

other than the absence that is continual

and the memories of surviving in spite of

when place mattered

when place existed other than this.

Anthropocene Rejects

date: 08/29/2025

In reading; research papers, experiments, models of behavior – scholarly voices that reiterate a unanimous fact. That being, intelligence. The conclusions, though never stated boldly, say; yes.


We aren’t the only ones.

Who feel

sing

Grieve. Speak. Cry. Scream.

Who lie in wait in the face of many of our own having been gone. Daily patterns divulging, disjointed with loss. All we have ever known disappeared, all while the bottoms of our feet remain. Endlessly. Pacing.


—


Alongside my mother and sister, I found an abandoned zoo in the mountains. Vultures lined the obligatory road, staring at our car, being the only one. Tall, eating nothing, though sensing instincts that call to hunger. Nobody was at the front desk, or gate when we had entered. No one stood on the cobbled cutesy path meant for directing a patron line. We barely questioned if we should enter, for some reason. The road led us that way, so we should go. That’s what people like my mom would conclude so I followed.

Many of the animals there were still, frozen in time, time that moved but would never conclude unless they fell down. Stares seen as vacant by many shot through my chest with their ennui. One, a small pouched animal holding young, stared at us behind a mere roped tied to a post. The first thing she had seen, and only for awhile, had been us. I couldn’t look away, pain that I could not mitigate stifling my feet in the loose dirt. What I was waiting for held us both in place.

Others could only find difference in routine by scratching, pacing, and screaming. Directed in all directions, violence inflicted upon the self and their only companions at just a window pane’s reach away. There was an exhibit we only felt, we didn’t need to look to know what had happened in there. My mother was desperate to find anybody with a human ear to recognize any of this but there truly was nobody. Not in this park. More screaming and routine and howling lay behind a pseudo rock door. Rot and bodily waste wafted, breaching the gap between us as my sister merely cracked the door. At that, the screaming became more desperate. She immediately shut it. In all of their eyes that I did see was not vacancy, but all they had ever seen and felt, repeating. Repetitive actions of broken souls scarring their features.

As we progressed further, the enclosures emptied. Reptiles, amphibians, and fish in rooms lacking features aside from neutral painted walls and minimal themeing. Though, given their circumstances what lacked in décor was appropriate. Soon after, there would be nothing aside from a manicured area where people did in fact attend. I recognized there what no thought experiment could conjure.


—


Behavior analysis in animals state that, yes.

Repeating themselves.

Concluding that animals are unknowable. Experiments continue. But not because there’s truly a lack of something to know.

Lions' Cage

date: 08/20/2025

Heart thrumming against my barred ribcage

Through my breath, red hot anger of experiences had

to be had

and to continue living.


My result fear

discomfort of those who cage me and their cause

gratification constituting overkill

Ecstasy in the henhouse


What binds

needs me

needing something to fear

compare – contrast

right wrong self

inflicted


without us, the cage would not be.

without fear the bars

rendered obsolete

those outside of it nonexistent

power a fabrication

revoked of its manifestation


My circumstances in wait,

unchanged in present

Relishing my pounding

shuddering anger

Abstractions and extinction surrounding me

I know

I am fear to fathom

never reckon

Thunder ; Earth Won’t Wait for Us

date: 08/16/2025

Thunder sounds through the sky, as if the Earth is splitting open.

Releasing language too grounded and primeval for most to translate.

If one listens, though,

It is understood.


Language barriers such as this – and all others

are just like physical barriers.

They are self imposed.

They are an invention.

Entertaining the notion that experience shall not be shared

nor relatable.

Our bodies too are treated as such. Impenetrable

and unchanging

despite all fact and life showing otherwise.


This presents us with a reality made unreal

Against all fabricated odds,

you grow

you change

constantly shift.


you rot once this ends

Your skin – the largest bodily organ

flakes off, regenerates, and dies constantly.


Not always in death, or in howls of ending as old as time

we too split and release


The Earth is not clueless as to what has come for it

It is not helpless to the hubris but is fragile nonetheless

One does not fight for their life unscathed


All that the Earth has been and continues to try

to be

will come back

all that we’ve come to know

survive

won’t

Distance and Musing Made of Leaves

date: 08/14/2025

The sky in itself feels like a cradle – an embrace so deep and impenetrable. Night’s eyes, being the stars, gaze upon us; but here, the watchful trees’ are closer. After all, the distance is closed by their leaves.


Again, above is the all encompassing vastness of the sky. Its blue being both a force and blanket, comforting all the same. Dreams under this hue bring forth the real by day, attaching themselves to our lives; dancing within and out. The dreams turn indistinguishable from the enchantment of nature. How we could only long for its power again from afar in our sleep.


One is whisked away into the breeze as the branches conduct their song, a sound not only heard, but felt. Remembering the wind, I still sense it inside my head, underneath my skin, flowing alongside my blood; intermingling and weaving through the vessels. A symphony familiar, comparable to crashing waves. Those also of a similar tune, creating a melodic harmony when met with the trees.


Though far, the trees still whisk me away into their canopies – Pines, Magnolias, Oak and flowered souls – telling of stories, histories, and omens. This place is forgotten as it’s experienced – except many still remember its shelter, I do.

Face Card | The Box

date: 08/12/2025

a joint poem and short essay

I’d like my face back now

I’d like to have one at all


Rendered obsolete

Denied, wasted

potential


Organ wrap made important

Made subject

Issue taken with my very bone

Structure


Under scrutiny

or object of

praise


All this and yet

one fears peering

inside


themselves

rejecting their own skull

afraid of an existing body

for what

for how

it really is



*****



The Box

The omniscient and ever present; safety in definition. Withstanding in catagorical irony. Lacking in geometrical properties myself, I put forth my refusal. Only through it's margins would I find safety- more accurately, excuses. The margins of this house, not home, would be relented and not truly portrayed. Denying The Box allows assumption to fester, swarming insects buzzing and stinging. One becomes an intruder, unwelcome, yet asked to show up regardless. Pressed to the edge, ribcage splayed for the swarming insects to misidentify the heart and whatever viscera remain- rotting impatience.


I've had to forego considering assumption, and caring about inflicting the uncanny. My insistence on this way of life from time to time convinces me that my body will too warp outside itself into an undefined spiral. There's no greater comfort than that, to display such powerful difference that my familiarity, even if only through comparison, is gone.

10 Minute Writing Exercise - Termite Born

date: 08/08/2025

A 10 minute writing exercise I did of what visually came to mind while listening to Dysnystaxis {... a chance meeting with Somnus} by Sunn O))) and Nurse With Wound. The only edits I made were for clarity as it was a stream of consciousness exercise.


(I see) An abandoned hospital - ceiling caved with dried, hollow branches, laced with cobwebs and dirt. There's a tall, old person standing near the center of the collapse wearing rags. Mud on their face, shaking fingers outstretched, shuddering - much like the dead branches once did. Light somehow fills portions of the room - panels on the ceiling are missing. There's sorrow and confusion, desiring to be anger radiating from the elder - but anger is unable to surface as confusion triumphs. Its as if the individual keeps forgetting the source.


Perhaps it's the fact that places and times lived such as these are not only abandoned, but still persist unnoticed for what they truly are. Lack of awareness and care to the condition of the subject. The person becomes webs; thick, dirty plant matter- spiderweb, drywall dust and termited shaven wood combine to remake what- who should be human. Nature is that of understanding. It too is warped beyond itself in plain view, rendered 'appropriate' despite its clear pain and incongruence with itself.


Acceptance washes over the elder, elongated features made wise through togetherness with thier environment. They close their eyes, humming, breathing the first sigh of relief they've had in a long time. sunlight warms thier wrinkled face, tears finally allowed to pool and fall.


Winding into thier environment, fracturing and blending apart, the elder gives rejuvinated purpose to the hollow branches- creating a reborn oak tree. Shaken arms outstretched once more, they sink and fuse, shuddering slower... slower, until the tree is made human, the human made tree. Understanding manifest.

In Leaves' Home

date: 06/20/2025

In leaves’ lullaby

I do not sleep


lying awake eyes closed

still

I dream


Spiraling upwards in a dizzy haze

becoming one with the sky

memories fail in bringing me reprieve

strewn across my eyelids is some old

and familiar

others not so long ago

past nonetheless


Faces and places turned into something

jagged and fractured

worsening and dividing upon opening my eyes

and starting again


so many of those

faces and places failed

beautiful time so fleeting

grateful for what has gone


Only beauty could lie in spite of such horror

continuous ending

Such tragedy fills the heart with love

a need to make and keep making


it’s worse if you know it coming

foresight helps no one

if you’re dreaming

In the leaves


Skies full with smoke and flames above

and water below

Drowning and sinking as many have

foretold

As many have known it has never been

a secret


Singing serene they are plenty here

Trees filled with heart

and life to filter out the haze


Southern groves

that are groves no longer

have no such luck

An expanse of concrete invasive

with no plan


Trees in their last screams drown it out

with finality

Luck is not needed when your existence

is fact


Unable to sing their songs again

They pollinate

They exist

permeable through fact

fiction, memory.


Vultures singing

demise inside the home

with no doors

Hollow termite eaten platforms

What was seen will always be seen under blinding light

the sun could not have guessed its power

would ever be used against it

At night all night the birds sing and fly

making what they can out of what’s left


Lucky enough to have found the leaves

I am home welcomed at last

Having had my day and my goal complete

The sky will never fall and the trees

will again

blanket southern skies

safety and home


Being so far

these distant relatives have never met

but know each other in the same way


Various trees thousands of miles away

all lull us to sleep

They know themselves well


As we try to close our eyes

sleepless eyes

awake reflecting

fugue lullaby


We come and we go and in our soul we have never

left

Never having left every place we have ever been


Nothing has ever felt worse

Than finding home