poetry collection III: snowdrops

archive of my poetry, January-May 2023

Mein Geist - 5th January 2023

and when i look at our lives, birds-eye
they appear stitched with God’s needle, star-crossed
looped and threaded, perpetually together
always just out of reach, makes your lips taste bittersweet
and the moon phases in and out, bringing us around
half alive before; briefly alive once more 
the sinews of my heart knot knowing 
these hours are precious diamonds, stolen
flashing smiles drunk under street lights 
bedside conversations, arms around mine
in a crowded stranger’s living room 
where foreign voices ring, but made for two.

and when i look at her and i, i could almost ask you,
almost as if i care to know, the mirror from the muse?
and to know who, if anyone, dances through your mind
when you’re playing those records in your bedroom?
unchanged, though i unchange there still, the past few years
i bear myself before you, yet cannot seem to shake my fears
what should i say, as we walk away from the train?
i mould myself to you, all the way back to your place.

you’ve become a touchdown, takeoff, familiar feeling
something i can wrap my hands but not my mind around
something i can’t quite pin down, irregular breathing 
until i’m crying in the bathtub for no logical reason
these days my mind knows no rules, only pathways
roads down which i know my soul has tread before
and if only i knew how, i’d bring you down here more.

souls must be true things, if this is yours touching mine
your ghost, Mein Geist, obscured by trains and planes
holding tight the thread that binds us in God’s greatest design
let slack, just for a second, as the record rewinds us
back to fourteen, nothing between us unseen 
before my head began to spin with dreams 
dreams of you laid back, bare under my lamp light
before you were merely a ghost in the grocery line.

though my September sage is burnt out now
nothing left, the smoke blows into the distance 
and the window lets the warm winter sun
in the bath, i’m all cried out; i set no expectation
my body and my memories, weak from anticipation
instead i like to imagine, midday musing to no end at all
those glinting moments in paradise, bliss before the fall
that tore us apart so far, i can’t place in my mind’s eye now
the universe playing different cards, taking up another tether
i can’t recall  how all those fragile moments
could have strung more perfectly together 
to make something so uncertain
it stands a chance against forever.

snowdrops - 16th February 2023

the day begins again, the road stretches and bends
bare branches of my cherry tree obscure the winter sun
on the silent snow moon drive, i leave illusion behind
i can see snowdrops, i can feel the white spots 
invading: my heavenly ascendancies, my earthly memories
snowdrops, as i run past, a tangled wasteland in my mind.

in the late hours, i’m high above the moon
playing american whore on the hardwood floor 
desperately digging, with tunnel vision
that cosy chapel crumbling, caving in, leaving me
lost, as in running nowhere, with a false sense of direction 
lost in stranger’s smiles and friendly conversation 
lost in the gaping hole, left by desire unrelenting
by rotten autonomy, my organs hand-blown glass bottles
and hunger deep enough to tear my nights apart.
or perhaps i’m lost, as in words you never heard
floating away on the wind, fated cityscape 
a freeing release, feeling the breeze warning me
of perpetual loss, it whispers of my new forever.

as in, my confession across the table - i asked you
to take me back to nature, my mother, my creator 
you asked me, for what great fate, my purposeful stride?
none; the destination remains, endlessly lost along the way
at least, navigating this golden thread, i’m lost in
your warm glow - it spreads across the soft carpet
melting roadside snowdrops and wayside dreams
planting new seeds that take root slowly, surely, truly
unlike fragile phone lines and language divides 
i only trip on all there’s still left to be said 
i trace the pathways of your lips and am steadied 
led around the bend of your soft fingertips
where by your touch, my cherry tree blossoms 
to your sweet kiss, where loss and life and fate collide.

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

—Pablo Neruda

fresh paint - 12th April 2023

my hands move deftly, from muscle memory
side-stepping, stitching up, from end to end
reminding me: what breaks, can always mend
though these violent delights have violent ends

that blood red gush is now nothing against 
the strong currents of the sea, sweeping me 
though the eternal thread unspools so swiftly
still somehow, it’s longest thing i’ve ever seen

golden rope spinning smoothly as i run along
each step comprehending and absolved 
each tender nerve ending constructing me
into the most complex being i’ve ever been

a far cry from toppling wooden beams
from twisting knives and stifled screams
no more clutching dust, if no more’s swept up
i’m fresh paint, beaming and dry-cleaned

now old vices taste too sweet for my brittle teeth
i prefer fresh firm earth and abundant dreams
it’s so pleasant to watch the sketch take shape 
my form like none before, glinting, refracting 
light spilling through the cracks, a sweet escape

faith in obscurity - 13th May 2023

i've got good lines, but never make time 
i've always got to go. so i take messages 
from god like, i've got him on the phone. 
and you looked so sad, when i said that 
how could i believe - that karma speaks to me? 
so cruelly but so sweet? i suppose 
in that way, god's just like you; i'll never know. 

yet i walk by, i realise; all the things i know 
things i thought i’d never find, inside your mind 
it's a diamond mine. not like the coal lumps 
that i spoke of, under streetlights, on urban nights 
takes me back again to places i thought i'd never go

i'm terrified, the way you remind 
me of a lightning strike. and i 
can't move my hands in that same deft way 
that i did, at fifteen, under those trees 
where we lay, used to spend our idle days 

but i know my darling tricks won't fool you 
so easily. lost for a safety net, i look around 
our hands search; find solace in the dark 
i hesitate now - because i feel the waves 
washing over me; compassion, sensitivity

or are they stagnant pools, am i a fool 
to indulge insight? when it's just narcissism 
read between the lines, write notes in the margins 
it's the food of misery, these imagined connections 
i swim in deep murky lakes, getting caught in 
tangled weeds of memories and introspection 
keeping faces, keeping places, in my pockets 
jars of snowdrops on my mantel and pictures 
in my locket. heart shaped necklace, hanging 
at my house, i guess you forgot it. 

so i keep a chest locked, of notes i forgot 
i swallow the key. but something clutches 
at my throat like, the throes of ecstasy 
caught in a slip of the tongue, caught 
just walking past, in a glance, twice back at me 
caught between fear and desire and divine time

i know my obscurity might keep you up at night 
(only if i'm right), so i'll accept some blame is mine 
but if you speak to me, like i'm not there, i must 
disguise. pass you notes in class, write between the lines
lust to distraction, but pattern so i come off right 

life catches up to us, and like i always say 
that's what karma wants. but now i'm praying 
to your records in my room, i do it secretly 
like they preach the gospel, like you give a fuck; 
but do i, honestly? writing poetry, like it's so deep 
though i never cried once (and i cry all too easily). 
i'm not worried about faith, that depends on 
what you choose to believe.