I SEE YOU

I see you.

No one else may, but I do.

I know you’ve been up nights, pacing, or lying there counting breaths.

I see you wondering if that cough is a sign, 

Taking your temperature just to be appeased.

I see you running to the arms of a stranger despite the risks

Because the one you love is being smart, safe

but you need a hug, a fuck, to be held.

Rendering that professed love void.

I see you suffering, as we all are.

I see you hiding that suffering as we all do.

I see you posting inspirational quotes instead of

Emoting the truth

I see you white knuckling as the carriage takes you

Closer and closer, up up up to the pinnacle 

After which, on the plummet, you can scream with permission

Scream with terror under the guise 

of a roller coaster ride

I see you seeing your friends sick and dying

Questioning the horror of dying an unlived, unseen, uncelebrated life

I see you.

I see you trying to pivot 

Bound up in the effort to be normal

You are not normal

You are not loved

Enough

You are in a place where you can never be loved 

Enough

To let the seeing ones in. 

To let someone, see you

I see you

Every day sporadically

Slip into a puddle of grief and sorriw

Tears

Sobbing

Randomly

4:52

It's 4:52 on a glum New York Sunday

When you've just got back home and your socks are still wet

Sun sets on Manhattan, the sky is still gloomy

rain ticks on the sill with the clock, a duet

Tear Temple

I would like to create

a sort of tear Temple

A place where we go

Just to grieve

A mosque to unmask

A town crier church

to remember, let go

And then leave

To break down the walls

The ones against wailing

And take pride in a guttural woe

Stocked with soft hankies

And big weighted blankies

where sorrows commune and echo

2024

It's the end of the year of my Dad dying

and I'm thinking about why, so much, I'm crying

It's for what he won't see that I'm gonna do

but it's my ego's perspective of his seating view

Because he's gonna see whatever I do

but I selfishly want to see him seeing me too

BUS STOP

you've spent 

way too long

sitting on a bench

just one street over

from the one 

your bus

drives down

Not Just The Right

Stop praying, such fools,

don't you know WE are god

We are the creators,

made in the image 

of the deities we formed

to make it seem like 

we are separate.

We are god.

We are making it rain.

Rain bullets

rain blood

rain pain

rain injustice

rain murder

rain oppression

rain terror.

WE are doing this 

as god 

because WE are all one.

the thought that some of us 

don't have blood on our hands 

is the problem.

The sooner we get that 

the sooner we stop dividing 

our responsibility

by 

MY problem 

and 

YOUR problem

by 

righteousness

and

self-righteousness.

The right hand 

on the body 

of a man

harms a child.

The left hand 

on the same body

just hangs there

or flaps around

in the air

impotently.

Both hands on the body

are 

guilty

the whole body is guilty

not just the right hand.

WARMER

You were raised in New England

and that means 

summers on the beach

toes in the sand

learning to swim in the 

Icy Atlantic.

Where you are told 

“you’ll get used to it”

“don’t be a pussy”

“be brave, girl”…

Blue fingers.

Blue lips.

You never got used to it.

And now you’re in your 50’s.

And it still spits you out.

Blue fingers.

Blue lips.

And never once did they let on

that there are places…

Warmer.

Anyone can go. 

Any Body can go. 

There are places.

That don’t.

That won’t.

Spit you out.

Freeze you out.

There are places that wrap 

around you like a blanket.

Always warm.

As if they actually 

want you
to stay.