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I am What I am Not
If I were to make a self-portrait
and strove to keep it neat,
I’d be much smaller than I am.
I would strip all the mirrorsfrom all the rooms, to see myself
bare of all temporal distortions.
All the walls I have borrowedwould crumble to the ground,
to reveal the empty shell.
Then all memories of all I’ve known,and everyone they ever spoke to,
would have to be forgotten too.
Until layer by layer flaked away—and only my voice remained
with nothing left to say.
(July 30, 2026)
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For I am Here
Stop talking. Listen:
eventually someone will speak
to fill the irredeemable silence.
(July 29, 2026)
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Time to Go
by
I have a tendency, I’ve noticed, to rush
the ends of my poems, to hurry home,
as if I’m bored with myself as well.
I don’t question any more the days
I don’t write. I know I will write,
because I always, eventually, do.
I know someday it will all end.
My heart will stop; I’ll take a last breath;
I‘ll say one last word. But that’s okay.
Life does not have to be an adventure
full of subtle profundity, and radical awe.
It is more often the slow morning after
sunrise, or mid-afternoon’s summer heat
when nothing moves more than a sigh.
(July 28, 2026)
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A Reading of “Memory and Imagination are One”
by
Memory and Imagination are One
details, like mosaics, decades old
around eleven, the adrenaline slowfall from my red Christmas bike,
ripping skin on loose gravel,
catching the pain across my palms
facts of a sortfollowed by conjecture
the sky was winter grey—I was heading home (from where)
hurriedly (was I late, for what
or just the thrill of speed
or both— fear and joy dancing
together like flames)
perhaps, perhaps
what-ifs’ multitudes unravelwith time and causal doubts
as perhaps twist and spin into now’s
singular, tight, and irretrievable knot
I tell myself I know and knewthe bits of broken glass cohere
but I don’t anymore than I did
I fell, I bled, I musthave made it home
for I am here
(July 20, 2026)
