overload

thriving on strangeness

celebrating otherness

the homogeneous of whiteness 

the homogeneous of pheromones

the world outside my head hurts

the collection of clutter

the tiger can’t change its stripes

the leopard can’t change its spots 

but I broke, am broke, was baroque

all Tiffany lamps and guilt

I adored dark woods carved ornate;

 

now the clutter overwhelms 

someone has to dust that

scrolling, could I breathe - harsh

edges, would I bruise things -

these questions have to be asked 

the tiger can’t change its stripes

the leopard can’t change its spots 

but I have, haven’t I - changed 

on my own volition purposefully 

listing and doing - checking boxes

forced by the traumas

of a life unforgiving, unfolding;

I exist in a 180 degree 

turnabout spinning 

on a hot metal go-round 

flung here and there grasping 

the middle pole singing flesh

landing in a minimalist 

journey, settling into spaces 

negative and white

peripherally away

from the collection of clutter

the tiger can’t change its stripes

the leopard can’t change its spots 

but I am not a wild cat prowling 

missing the hot buzz of cicadas singing

I came I saw I stayed

eye settled in uncomfortably 

stubborn in my decisions

playing the long game 

thwarted attempts at living

subject verb: I want

amicable agreement doing 

wash rinse repeat 

words mean little here

where my name lies

and Murphy-blood blooms

“All we ever got was cold…” ~ Bauhaus, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything 

she was a beautiful thing

I

M, the ink-man, the ar-tist

calls it negative

Me, the un-poetic

calls it white;

space, the final frontier

it’s the things unseen

in the peripheral there

between the lines in

crevices where life grows

despite the dying light

II

I read I write 

grasping Oxford commas

and double-taps 

in fists furled 

holding space 

in my little black heart

for the dead and dying 

we once rescued a kitten that ate gravel to fill his starving belly

remember when 

the poets ruled the world?

yeah me neither 

but the philosophers

weren’t they wordsmiths?

resistance of air

I

is anyone else tired?

like really tired 

in a bone-weary

exhausted tomorrow 

sort of way?

II

my body feels heavy 

arms, legs weighted

muscles active against 

the resistance of air

pushing back pushing down;

minute dips and peaks

trip-hazards in pavements

III

the world forgot 

what the pandemic taught 

easily readily reverting 

to what was but what was

is past and never will again;

it was a heyday fleeting 

(a roaring age of excess)

we just didn’t know it 

or didn’t care;

so the new norm 

is not the old norm

and no-thing was learned 

“Music changes, but the dance steps don’t…” ~ Good Die Young, Divynls