All poetry there ever was
all rhyme
is us now
syncopated across time
slipping into moments of synchronicity
pulsing this crux, this beat,
this emergent clarity,
this moment, this breath:
life.

we don’t think our way to freedom
we don’t fight—
we feel, we breathe, we taste,
we fall, we flow, we delight.
We remember, we grow, we surrender
we mix it up, we know, we discover
we share, we play.
We come, we go, but never get away.
Freedom is effortless
fun and focused
and above all else,
freedom is our self-collecting, expansive locus.

When you come into

the light

at the end of the tunnel and find

you’ve arrived in your own heart.

tumbling (spring ’19)

I need space
I need distance
I need you close
I need nothing between us
and everything
simultaneously
in unison
crying I’m here.
Love is our light
fun where we meet in the dark.

The unspoken question at the heart of my master’s thesis:

If Genly Ai had met Estraven
as an alien once more
in that stove-warmed tent all alone in the snow
would Estraven have said yes to life
instead of no?

Oh hi.
…
…
excuse me while I go
sort out the laws of the universe
so that I can talk with you.

…this might take some time. BRB

(Revisiting June 15 2000)

We tell each other,
with caution, with admonition
with wry sarcasm
“don’t drink the kool-aid.”

Ha! Check your cup.
You might not remember what anything else,
what freedom
tastes like.

It might sometimes taste like
Kool-aid. Or Tang.
Those sweet childhood elixirs
that were as satisfying to taste
as to mix:
watching the way water,
with the addition of practically nothing,
could swirl and shift and become
a simple sort of mana.

Until we were persuaded, that is,
by the additions, the dilutions of others
into drinking something just as alluring,
but casting very different light.

We do need to taste both sides, all of us,
as we mature, we grow.
Our tastes do change.

But freedom never does.

What do you do when the judge
simultaneously reached a verdict
and tossed the case
halfway through the proceedings,
and you’ve been pleading
in the dark for half a decade,
in an empty courtroom?

open the door and turn on the light.

If instead of looking above your peers,
you’d looked down, seen the way
all my furious, defiant, confrontational passion,
primed and ready,
froze in terror when my eyes found your face
so pure, so full of vibrance…
I wonder what would have happened if
I’d kept my original course
intercepting your path,
instead of jumping aside,
ducked down, crouching in fright
behind the legs of our peers
as you passed.

“follow your bliss,”
we say with profound cheer to one another
as we casually put our own
back on the shelf.
And then rationalize, reason,
urge and persuade
others back out of theirs, too.