Let me Count the Poets Left

Let me Count the Poets Left

You must not assume what I assume
You must not hold the sun between your eyes
You must not face the rapture alone
The waves of the future sink us
You will become obsolete
Can you endure that?

In fact, inject giraffes into your poems?
It will not be enough
As writers we skirt the issues of skirts
We duck the bullets of sense
We hide from the music of life
Yet we thrive living aloud with words

We thrive because fundamentally
We have no destination, we are the speakers
For the living, voice of our times
We relish in the fact, like contemporary
Truly bad contemporary poets
We can be the head-butting poem on Facebook
Nobody can afford to read again.

Her eyes can spell

Her eyes can spell

Her eyes spell the soft white fluff
Between sentences, the surmise
Of silence, the soft empathy
That floats like a whisper towards you

She does not exist for you
She incarnates in women and will
Do so for all eternity
They who watch shooting stars and aurora borealis

Who wake up at dawn to serve
A family whose mission isn’t sure
I could just watch them eternally
These eyes of yours, your eyes

That spell and spy and watch
With a regard to pure, attuned
To the simple things, the natural
Body language of serenity

We’d be lost without regards like yours
And I cannot even say we’d have each other
Her eyes are like a foreign language
They rest on me for a moment of wonder

My wonder to be seen by eyes like this
And it stays with me for the entire day
To be spied by a watcher such as those
A pair of nectar-soul eyes you know
That can paint peace with just a look.

A question of talent and work

A question of talent and work

If, you have discovered your talent
And if, it is something you love
This is the world on a tightrope

Do you choose to focus?
If, you have a certain potential
Are you ready to squander it

And give in to future years
Of holding your breath with regret?
If, by some sense of folly
You put the needs of others
Ahead of your own, can you

Reckon with the realization
That you squandered your talent?
Between your thoughts
As you walk to the place

Where you do your labour
In the morning, inching across
The space-time of your private
Agony and written there

In your soul’s secrets
Would you let yourself admit
That you once had talent?
I guessed as much, so

Teeter and succeed, and do not
Accept failure, but walk ahead
For talent is stranger that we
Might imagine, it requires
An incredible amount of work
To fulfill, make it work for you.

The Unconditional Will to Live

The Unconditional Will to Live

Say tomorrow doesn’t arrive.
Say tomorrow doesn’t come
Say we don’t make it, what

Would you do, in your last
Year on the home planet?
In your last revolution

Of the Earth around the Sun?
Live like it, like that
From the pit of your stomach
From the top of your lungs
With the moments staring

At your mortal beating heart
Don’t say, it doesn’t matter
Every moment does, we are
As common and rare as stars
With thoughts knitted together

Acts of helping that knit together
Communities, families, countries
Peoples, groups, lovers of
Knowledge, art, cities, humanity

Say tomorrow doesn’t arrive
Say you never get to have children
Say we don’t make it, what
Would you do for real

What really matters, what
Makes you feel lucky, grateful, heroic?
So do that more, and say

We never got a chance to meet
Say you stayed home that night?
Say you want to feel alive, then do.

Mask for Sunshine

Mask for Sunshine

Spring chases death
As light softens night
Into the realization that time
Floods a clear sky daily
Time wasn’t linear

It was just our incomplete
Perspective that made it seem
Chronological like a butterfly
But our software will become
Transparent, like how buds blossom

Organic, mornings turned pink
For the nectar of new opportunity
Spring chases death
Out of the door, but
By the window we see

Our missing half of our lives
How love chases out all memory
Pruning our hearts with the infinite
We’ve studied days and yet
Still cannot find the answers

Practically speaking, there were no
Permanent destinations, no true markers
Only the aromas of experience
As perceived by our executive will
To see bare branches or

To touch and behold buds
The sun will chase us all west
Like birds along the gentle slopes
Of time’s lonely and illegible engravings.