I feel poetry everywhere.
I feel it blow through my hair and dance across my very flesh.
Each blink holds significance with an inhale and exhale of chance and wonder; the drums have started and the guitar will strum again.
I’ve started to sing and without a doubt you will become part of the verse. It’s inevitable and irreversible and maybe my favorite part of the sky’s breath.
My eraser is running low and I continue to write. I continue to trumpet my biggest feelings into this little notebook with the knowledge that it can blow away at any moments notice -
It is however comforting to know that the wind wishes for you to read this poem – that it will find its way to you and the mountains, both of you in common with how beautiful and grand you’ve become. In time with the moon and the stars, you’ve become,
well?
You.10/2024
Our shoes are strewn about
and my sweaters on the floor,
sometimes you have to wait a count
to push the bedroom door.
My books end up toppling
but I love to see them there –
we should go food shopping
and clean up some of the lair.
I’m in love with our decorations
the flags of the queer
I’m sorry if it’s not to your perfections,
you don’t live here!10/2024
I sit at the edge of what may seem like an entrance – not for me, and not for you.
A gateway for the wind and leaves
for the birds hidden in the dew,
for the spirit only a bystander weaves.
I go about my day —
it’s none of my business!
I can only appreciate and applaud!! Happy day to you!!! Safe travels dear spirit!!! I will wait here for your exit!10/2024
Carry stars in your pockets and flowers in your hair,
write haiku on your hands and pick that purple pear!
Get distracted by bugs and fill the fields with your love!
Smile at that passing stranger, say hi to the rager.
Bring joy to wherever you are, let the great big unknown get you far! 10/2024
2 Haiku
A tree of flowers –
we forget, how fleeting this
long life truly is
This cold turning chair
my inked up pen stained fingers
time ever so slow10/2024
And perhaps this is where inspiration comes from –
the hungry belly of the poet-beast
quiet in nature
loud in feast.
A squeal of correct words and puzzled stanzas.
The heavy clomp of the tall sitting boots
a run of the poet-beast to the poet-friend to declare the new poet-writer invention.09/2024
My favorite books as an extension of me –
my arms come with John Brehm in my grip,
my legs with Wendy Cope at the hip –
to give you my books,
I give you a piece of myself.09/2024
And now that it is morning
I've lost all the poems from the night.
I watched them leave,
pack their bags and go.
No way to stop them,
I’m left alone, and with nothing to show,
but my empty page and motionless pen.
Until this night, I will wait
for my dear poems return
carrying nothing but fate
and stars in their little briefcases.
And as I sit
I would rather chat than
write them down,
because who am I
to trap them in this town?09/2024
They’ll tell me to stop rambling - but where would I tell my tales of woe and stories of night?
I’ll catch the stars with my running words –
I’ll make you hear, I’ll make you here. – I’ll study this poem and send it off.
We’ll fly and speak and twist, you’ll see.
I’ll read you piracy with plot twists and yelling ships.
We will sing together and you’ll see – I’ll fill my notebook with your name and I’ll keep it right and plain. Pencil scratches and finger bruises.
A few days I’ve known you,
and yet here I am; pencil in hand -
spelling out this whole sham.
Perhaps to look back on -
or just to move my pawn,
out of my soul, and into my eyes.
Summer laughing in wind and rain,
spring leaping in flowers and pollen.
Maybe I’ll keep myself on my toes, not letting my pencil go until it burns into my skin and I’m writing in part blood, part wood.
Until I find a moment of breath to keep myself afloat – away from you. 09/2024
I’ve found that it is important to keep my pencil dull, for fear I might break through the paper, the table, carpet, ground.
Past the fossils and core of the Earth;
I may dig and dig and dig down without an ending thought –
until I break through the opposite end of Earth, upside down and foreign.
Me and my now dull pencil would go down in history as the girl who wrote herself upside down. 09/2024
And maybe this swirling spire of leaves isn’t just the wind in your hair but a circular wonder of dreams. All collected in your deepest mind and highest hopes.
Perhaps this poem was written for another reason.
One that hopes you’ll look over as I sit, biting my cheek over this teal paper,
writing about how I wished you would look over at me, as I do – you. 09/2024
Maybe there’s some truth in the summertime.
Some truth in the child that becomes the drip drop of the ice cream on the pavement.
Maybe there's some truth in the rocking cradle of tempo – slow summer days and harmonic summer nights.
Maybe there's some truth in the accompaniment;
the fragments of jazz and rag.
The chorus of baby cries and textured attention.
Maybe there’s some truth in the words of the wind.
The connection of opera and ease, doubt and symphonic harmonies.
And I wonder if the up in time has become what living grows as.
One of these mornings I'll run and run and run, being sure to tie a little string around my pinkie. For if I start to lift off I would hope a large tree takes notice, and wraps its large branches onto the ball of twine. Keeping me anchored.
Yes, maybe there’s some truth in the summertime.09/2024
3 Haiku
A near and dear warmth
this little pencil I have,
partner hand in hand.
A new learned talent
may take extra long for me
and my stubborn mind.
A story I’ll write;
this man, his kite, windless flight
journey - finding might.09/2024
I’ve come surrounded by new,
all I’m here to do –
cling to my worn books
and hope somebody looks.
Mom said to stand tall
it's all I can try, not to fall.
But then a change, a new face made known –
I suddenly don’t feel so alone.09/2024
Maybe I’ll just wait and wait, with others sprinting, I slow to a jog.
Coming anew – to any sort of leftover stew.
The droplets left at the bottom, perhaps this is the best part.
I get the taste of every mix – not left full by any given one.
I don’t have to keep with a single person, so I lead my one man band through a field of observation and track of simple joys.
I’m taking my time with myself and all of the selves around me.
The trees to the breeze I see them, they see me.
When the clock chimes 07:30,
I pick apart my verse and sink deeper and deeper into this muck of ‘untalent’
when I think there needs not to be a point but to tell you that I stay in this college building, hoping to learn whittling, thinking between my twiddling, about the absolute hunger for a good plate of mac and cheese. 09/2024
Tin Pan Alley
Out in the midst of the summer sun, a chorus–
Specialty's interest and melodic rally;
if you find yourself sad, in the republic of Manhattan,
make your way to the Tin Pan Alley.
The days of echo ring through the streets,
float down the windows carried like a leaf by winter’s draft.
You may want to bring a piece of paper or two–
for some people find that they wish to write their sadness and gather a bouquet of paper airplanes to throw into that window there, or these musicians’ lair.
leaving Tin Pan Alley you may find the quieting of your affliction;
each step lifting you up and up until your feet leave the pavement and you lift off, carried by the tune of the birds and the leaves’ wind.
For, your story is over, my dear melody;
I’ve put down my strings and cut the recording. Your friend lyric will follow suit, finally adding my tally
to Tin Pan Alley.09/2024
I admire the fly that has just landed at the end of my pencil, not the most stable of places, certainly not the most comfortable, but maybe this fly needed a companion as much as I.
I'll put my pencil down and go for a walk, yeah that sounds nice.
Maybe I'll land atop someone’s pencil, while they scribble rapidly in the back of their book of haiku, desperate to fill the empty space with some flowers or a happy word or two for their new friend, the fly. 08/2024
Places,
I would run many races
to pick up tiny traces
of all my favorite places.07/2024
O annotated book —
Is it okay for me
To take a little look?07/2024
And when the wordflow gets clogged
and my brain cloudy–
I know it's time to hang up my pen and go for a walk.
The wind may blow through me, my hair, my ears, my lungs–
leaving me plain.
Upon returning, I choose a new pen–
I’ve found that letting each pen have a breather gives them and I a new life.
I can wipe the snow off my boots and stand for a second. stand and hear the tender murmuring of chatter among the pens.
I shall pick one up, asking if it is ready, knowing that a few poems later, the cycle will begin again–
with my wind washed body, and the pens’ excited chatter. 06/2024
The Monkeyman of Manhattan lives
only in the title
because if you could see him in real life, really see him,
his ears droop and his eyes sag
with no one to look at him for longer than a second.
You’ve picked the wrong city and the wrong people this morning MonkeyMan.06/2024
Here I am, in my room writing once again. As opposed to the time before, in the subway, and the time before that, in the park.
And who knows what other places me of the future will pull out her notebook.
You reader, would have no idea if I write this with my head soundly on my pillow, or shakily resting on the shoulder of another.
Perhaps there are subtleties,
change in diction if I'm on unsteady ground.
Change in tone if I'm in a field of daisies.
A poem written still wet from the shower may be sloppy with the drips running down my arms.
A poem written in school may be bland with the grayness of the walls and the stiffness of my pencil. Beige like boredom on a Tuesday at noon.
Maybe this is how poets keep their poems new and different, a psychological phenomenon, the external world subconsciously seeping into new poems.
And if I hit a wall, the words would shift abruptly,
my mind over it,
ready to quit.
But for right now, I am simply in my room, realizing that my eclectic playlist may have had a role in the stanzas and their auras.06/2024
You see, if I write nearby
a window, in front of it even –
I wonder if every idea I’d have
would float right out of my
Head and into the clouds.
Maybe the clouds need it more than me
to pass on these ideas to the birds above,
or the apples growing bigger each day.
Maybe it is these collected poets ideas
that fuel the natural cycle of life.
Invisible thoughts floating out of every other house,
not to be remembered again until that watermelon
is bit into or the flower is plucked. Passed on from one
Mind to another, keeping nature alight and the poets alive.05/2024
Waiting is such an interesting phenomenon,
with all our bags and their headphones and our souls
standing simply, trying not to think about the ache in our feet or the person screeching down the platform.
But rather,
the audiobook or music working its way into our brains.
Adding to the whole pile of this interesting phenomenon that is, waiting.05/2024
There is something poetic about wearing a watch with the wrong times ticking.
this is is not of my choosing,
just one day I looked down and it was all off.
I don't know how this came to be, maybe the watch is faulty, maybe the battery is dying,
or maybe it is simply a different time zone hinting its significance -
a zone I will one day call home,
a zone of someone I will want to keep on the phone,
late into the my night
their first light
my dreams of flight,
to bring my watch home.05/2024
The sweat stuck to my forehead is the same
as the couple across from me with a playbill,
the man next to them with a bandaged elbow,
all coming from somewhere, all going nowhere
on this stopped A train,
one minute into Saturday.05/2024
I once said
to keep a poem in your back pocket
incase you need it,
but my back pockets have grown heavy
and my front pockets spill over
with letters upon letters
twisting together
holding me down on this earth.
No - I don’t think we should give gravity the credit
because without these poems in my pockets, I might just never be seen again
unless you look up at the sky
and squint at the blue dot floating away. 04/2024
My cat looks over my right shoulder
at everything I am writing.
I look over at her every few sentences
a quick yes or no
shake or nod of the head,
my little editor.
If I look at her now,
she will shake her head,
she hates to be perceived
in the public eye,
so if you would be so kind
as to not have a perception of her
it would be lovely
because she is gravely afraid
of losing her anonymity
in this Brooklyn apartment
with the dog and all the plants
as her coexistors.04/2024
The book binders–
they left these pages blank.
In the back of this book of poems.
Maybe it was for right now–
me writing, you reading.
Or maybe it was coincidence,
a lovely one at that.
A wonder- that I am able to write whatever I want.
As long as I am lucky enough to have pencil and paper, I am lucky enough to have words in space.
I know now that this page will come with me furthermore.
Always in this book, always in my bag.
So I'll leave you with this–
there is no coincidence,
and the bookbinders thought right, leaving this page for us– on this empty Friday night. 04/2024
I don't need to write down every thought
but when I looked over at the bus driver - how happy he was while eating that cookie,
I needed someone to know how I had misjudged his
watchful glare, and silent face as rude;
all the while, he was just waiting to get on the road
so he could be where we are now,
with his spread of snacks,
including those pretzels, that fruit cup,
and that joyful chocolate chip cookie.04/2024
I am walking up a mountain,
where I can see the top.
Where I can see a faraway groundsman
in front of his shop!
I've heard of his boutique
selling bikinis and swim trunks-
Stocked with swimwear atop this waterless peak.03/2024
Orange in these hills
ladybugs ride up the frills.
Imagine the conversation hoarders,
filling our town to the borders.
Merry Christmas my lovely one
I've written this poem,
to hold you in my sun.03/24
Love for my friends,
love for my home,
my heart that mends,
and winters comb03/2024
If you gave me a small amount of time
to write a poem,
I would write a small poem.
Just as I am now,
because I have a small amount of time
to write this poem.03/2024
Standing on this mountain
I feel impossibly small
as if to a fountain,
I were a tiny ball-
bopping around the surface.
I feel that I can scream
I can jump
I can beam-
and no one will know!
I can write bad poetry
and keep it for myself
there is no better rotary!
I can spin and spin and spin!
I can leap and bound and grin-
and not hear a single peep!
All to myself, this world.
All on this heap.03/2024
Teacher - Junior Year Precalculus
And I wonder if she ever read
over my shoulder - into my notebook.
Stories about the ocean, that old fish hook-
as she witnessed the beginning of my roam through poetry.
Prose sharing a page with precalculus,
quadratics sharing a page with "To hell with this!"03/2024
No one listening,
this teacher, his advice.
Drowned out by the chatter
of burnt out seniors.03/2024
The more I write, the more ink creeps up my finger-
Still, here I am, hoping it won't linger.
I may, one day, be covered in ink
but what is life if I'm not allowed to think?03/2024
The happy thump of a dog's tail
old young plump or frail,
there is no stopping the fervor of a happy dog's tail.The joy of the sun,
the joy of the fun,
playing all day
wherever grasses may lay.There is a simple joy of a happy dog running in the glory of a new day.No time like the present! A dog would say, 04:00 am and we are ready to play! The birds and I have things to say!03/2024
I wish pens had logs.
Logs and archives of all things written in their life.
This very pen has been used to write poem after poem, essays, stories, just now, an analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 29.
Maybe in the pen factory,
someone needed to test it out, and scribbled something on a blank page.
A simple squiggle, or something longer
like their name-
Suzan, Joey, Julien, Zoey.
Or some of my older pens,
used to do math homework, science sheets, more poems.
the pens that have followed my years at school,
almost down to their last drop of ink.
And I wonder what they would say about their lives, if they feel they've had a noble pursuit in my schoolwork,
or feel wasted in doodles on my hand.
I guess that's something I can only hope I've given them,
a happy pen life in their pen years.03/2024
I napped today.
After a long day of reading and eating,
I napped.
I slept on the couch,
And upon turning my head, I saw myself in Japan.
I was walking silently alongside Bashō,
nose and pen in a book, muttering.
Hmm, I looked up.
I looked up and I walked,
I walked and I took note of the blossoming cherry tree,
and the haiku forming along the stream nearby.03/2024
I've found myself another blank page.
I think I'll bike across this space and let the tires
speak of the day we’ve had.
One of dreaming underneath trees and waiting
for ice to freeze.
A tip tap of my hand in the grass,
with the smooth breezes that pass.
Has anyone ever noticed the dance of the meadows
when the wind bellows?
03/2024
Thank you poets,
This feeling in my chest.
Not butterflies,
Quite the opposite–
A cloud,
A loving cup of tea,
My coziest blanket back home,
Soft and warm.
Right beneath my heart grows
a soft love for the art of language.
Excitement for poetry!
Excitement for the wind!
The stitches in my shirt!
The rumble of the train!
Excitement for everything!
Thank you poets!03/2024
Plans being made,
plans being skipped.
Still I remain–
here this desk,
the hub of my emotion.03/2024
A wonderful thing,
a pen as a gift.
I’d say, for someone with the yearn to write,
a pen says:
go on – Write.
Write me a field we can run through.
Write me a house we can grow into.
Write me a tree, one we can sit under, climb in, fall out of.
A simple act of support from a friend.03/2024
Hmm–
a pocket-sized notebook.
Does it also come with a pocket-sized pen?
To write pocket-sized poems?03/2024
When a poem mimics nature.
The flow in and out of a topic,
a stanza,
a wave,
the tide.
Wait,
a breeze is coming,
I lift my finger, closing my eyes,
feeling the wind.
I hear the next stanza as it approaches, as
it lifts my hair and sends goosebumps across my skin.
I think there is a reason I am here on this hill;
with these trees and lovely chorus of clapping leaves.
Excited to the breeze! Reunion of an old friend.02/2024
Oh quiet bedroom-
Do you believe the peace?
The simple absurdity of a speechless night.02/24
Huh,
my taste buds have changed-
again.12/23
Poetry connects. Poetry teaches us how to live. No matter the poem, it will find its someone in the world. Poetry knows no boundaries.
A ritual. Me and my friend gather at a bookstore, sit in the poetry corner, and read works ranging from ancient Mesopotamia 2300 BCE with Enheduanna, to 2022 in New York with Billy Collins. We are surrounded by new poets and old poets. Books with long, and books with short poems (some even mixed). No matter what, we know that we have one thing in common with the author; the love of language. And this is what keeps us coming back, two teenage girls with no experience traversing Japan, or talking to gods. Reading poem after poem, sharing the ones that linger with us, buying books for each other and annotating our favorites. Poetry connects people to poet, but also people to each other.
If you read one poem a year, or 20 a week, everyone will find a poem that gently takes their hand. Some find them quicker than others, and some even find multiple. But there will always be poems, patiently waiting to be discovered. Sometimes they find you in the most unexpected places. Almost like they are sent to you, that it's not a random encounter. You might be out on a walk and see a haiku on the side of a building. You might be on the train and the person next to you has a poem written on their hand. They have magical ways of finding you.
“Today, tonight is
no time to be asleep–
moon viewing!” - Matsuo Basho, 17th century Kyoto, Japan.
This is a haiku I keep tucked behind my ear, ready to pull out when I view the moon. The exact same moon that Basho was writing about. A haiku master born in Japan over 300 years ago. Yet, we feel the exact same way about the moon. This poem has followed me through the years because I can't quite shake the feeling that maybe in another life somewhere else I would have written something like this poem, which in turn, has gotten me to start writing myself.
We read poetry to understand ourselves and the world around us. We read about people experiencing the same emotions, anxieties, and angers as us and think that maybe we aren't so alone in the world. Maybe we can get past the unpassable, because they did.
And the wonderful thing about poetry is that you don't need anything. You don’t need to be looking at the moon, you don't need to be climbing mountains. You can be brought into the poet’s mind in just 3 lines, knowing how they feel mixed with your own experience. However it might fit in.
Poetry is a way of being. A celebration of the mundane, the overlooked. Necessary to remember the past in a way that isn't just remembering wars, but in a way of remembering the connections between us that have carried on through humans everywhere. What feelings persist and what has been lost in time. Poetry connects.12/2023
I stare at the slice of bread on my plate and tilt my head.
I wait for something out of the ordinary-
and take a bite.
Ah! There it is! A chocolate chip has fallen into my confiture!12/2023
I want to master all crafts.
I want to build I want to bake
I want to sculpt I want to paint
I want to sew I want to know,
do, make, share.
- a jack of all trades12/2023
I've had some tea and a cookie.
Now I'm taking pictures of trees and smiling at the sky.
Amazing what a bit of wonder can do11/2023
Waffles,
With a side of tea,
And poetry.10/2023
Open window nights
Breeze in and out the lunette
Almost like my breath10/2023
I breathe in the air.
It is chilly, I am warm.
I smile inwards10/2023
Traverse into the forest, beneath a wide open sky.
Feel the secrets softly sigh.
A tree stands tall, quite larger than you, weaving through the clouds that hang low
Feeling the roots move as you travel past.
This tree can see, almost better than you and me
With thousands of eyes, wide open, searching for light.
Put your past behind you, dear traveler, and you just might.
10/2023
A slice of lemon looks so pretty on my plate.
Makes me want to dry as many lemons as I can,
(and who knows maybe the odd orange once in a while)
and hang them around my house for me to see all the time,
a beacon of beauty, a beacon of scent,
citrusy beautiful scent. 09/2023
Things people are carrying on the subway:1. a bouquet of flowers
2. a purple backpack
3. a bag of tools, including a hammer with a pink handle sticking out of the top
4. a baguette in a sleeve of paper
5. a letter with a red wax seal
6. a blue jacket, (I think my mother has the same one)06/2023
I feel summer crawl up my arms and legs.
Washing away the sleeves of winter covering my skin.
Ridding me of the chill
That has danced across my body for months.I wonder what will come
Of the warm mountain hikes,
Of the observations made.05/2023
Ive enjoyed this book time and time again
The sleeve hides stickers collected over time, the empty spaces hold scrawled writing.
Each moment of thought written in the object closest, my book.
I live my last read through the pencil in the margins.
Thank you past person, I remember you.04/2022
I sit next to the window on the B train,
looking out as we enter the tunnel.
There is nothing that compelling in the tunnel, but it is there,
So I look anyway.
I notice the tracks reflecting with each light we pass.
Metal glinting, barely noticeable.
There is a divergence, a new set of tracks turning into a tunnel;
I cannot see into the tunnel,
I wonder if anyone else in the train noticed the tracks splitting, the metal glinting,
or just me.
And as we pull into the station,
There is another train on the adjacent track.
I see a man in the window of the train next to mine.
He is asleep, head resting on the window of his train.
I wonder if he is dreaming.
My train leaves,
I rest my head against the window.
Thank you sleeping man, this is comfortable.05/2023
Words,Oh to be a welder of words
Oh to be the sculptor of stories
Oh to live in the experience, again and again.
I think about words quite often,
How they will work their way into my life.
How they already have.
My brain working as a constant reel, of everything and nothing 03/2023
The cabin doesn’t creak or crack,
it doesnt shake or rattle.
It speaks –
it asks for tighter floor boards, it asks for more oil in the hinges, it asks for more wood in the fire.
Mostly it doesn’t ask for anything at all;
It greets you when you arrive, thanks you for your help, and says goodbye when you leave.11/2022
The leaves are falling,
The scarves are returning,
The tea is brewing.
Autumn arrives and everyone is going to sleep.09/2022