We were artists
But you had the brush
And I had the pen
You drew the worlds, the people
I wrote down the feelings, explanations

You captured the images perfectly
While I can only guess at the words
The way you moved your brush
While I can only stick to lines
Beauty versus perfection

You express your worlds radiantly 
But I can only write in black and white
I wished I traded my pen for a brush
To feel the colors you weaved 
To see the world beyond my script

Maybe if I knew how to color
If my pen drew more than rigid letters
You would have understood me 
In a world of black and white 
You were the color in my life

i wrote  
again.  

(a minor miracle: after  
8 years of not caring for the craft
let's call it deviceful degeneration,
unintentional uninspiration)  
                                    
the thing about  
nearly getting better  
is  
you start  
thinking you're better.  

i wrote something this week  
(it wasn’t bad)  
sat back in the chair like  
i'd just nailed  
a wasp to a wall  
with a pencil.  

but this morning—  
the poem’s still there  
and the chair still squeaks  
and the rot in my ribs  
hasn’t gone anywhere.  

eight years  
of eating my own teeth  
chewing time like  
it owed me something.  
"writer’s block"  
was a nice excuse  
for cowardice.  
so was  
"perfectionism"  
but now  
i’ve got words again.  
& i just realised
they don’t save me.  
they never did.  

the poems may come back  
but what if the fulfilment
doesn’t?
  
so what now?  
what’s left  
after the confetti  
after the applause  
dies in your own throat?

you write.  
maybe you write.  

even if  
no one  
is waiting.  

even if  
you  
aren’t either.  

& if the ache comes back  
(which it will)  
you greet it at the door  
let it crash on the couch  
pour it a drink  
& say  
fine.  
one more night

a man came up to me today
and told me I might look prettier
if I coated my mirror
with the blood of the golden goose
and call me cynical
or a caveman
or a luddite
or whatever
but I didn’t believe him.

a blue great shark  
(she)  
   wears muscle like    wet velvet

          a  
     slip   of fang’d prayer,  
  flitting      between glass  
       (between    god)  
              & the breathless hymn of vacuumed air

           I: was              not born to trap—
but you
          (brine-womb'd deity, slit of eye & icepick heart)

         how you undulate: (slower than sound faster than thought)
   the way a sigh    pulls threads from skin  
             & your dorsal dreams
      puncture my             museum bones

                        (curators watch—)  
with    chloroform-thirsting hands  
          & tongues that catalog moan  
                        in latin

                "carcharodon carcharias (desire in aqueous form)"  
                 whispered into tubes of   blue    gel-light

they                (we)  
    hunted her in sonatas  
            dissonant harpoons      
                            like broken violins
                      stitched with heartbeat wire

   a net of     unreason, &     peach-blind codes

           she swallowed our time  
                        whole

(yes)  
& spat it out      garnished with  
                         cumulus

                          (‘*** in bubblewrap’  
                             & I wept:  
                                   not for her  
                                       but because)  

you should see  
   the way her eye  
                 bends around corners  
       like velvet crawling up the leg of the void

       (can glass blush?)  
            mine does.

        the trap was not a cage  
                   (never a cage)
              it was a vowel—
   unspoken  
                    caught between  
         two mouths                  both too full of salt
                    to say "stay"

they filed her fins  
         under “****** geometry”  
          & mopped her breathless body with silk
               (I dream in that silk now)

   mythology in the gift shop:
                 $17.99 / laminated lust

    "do not tap the glass"—  
         the signs say
    (we tap anyway)  
         it sounds like  
                    a kiss

                          —or knuckles  
                                  trying to remember what “prayer” felt like  
                                   before museums

she moves inside
                   (me?)  
     (it?)  
             the tank of days
                            like a wound that doesn’t know  
                                     how to close

                   her movement becomes time:  
            an ellipse of pelvic   clocks  
                            hips made of tide

          (I counted the ******* by wave-height)

  a fin shadows my sleep
        & my sleep is
             /liquid/ & /open/
                   & /wanting/
                       & /neverthirsted enough/

the exhibit is called  
            “arousal in lowercase”

        the plaque reads:  
            “species suspended in ****** amnesia”  
        (but I know:  
                     she swims to remember)

her gills—
         fractal *******
                   (every inhale an alphabet of longing)  

          & oh how she  
                   spells me

a.museum.is.nothing  
                   but a lung that cannot  
                    exhale

   & when I press against the glass
             (mouth to pane)  
     she flicks a tail      —just enough—  
                       & I almost break

   the security guard has seen this before

“don’t worry,” he says  
    “it happens to everyone”

           (but I am not everyone)  
                I am the one who kissed her name  
                         into the salt

I was not born to trap  
       but born by the trap  
               untrapping me  
                  through her

         & now (she)  
       is the one watching  
            me
               in a tank

          mouth full of air
                     no words left
        just one endless  
             fin  
                   curl  
                         ~  
                            loop  
                          ­        of  
                                      shiver

      ­       & she swims  
                        through  
                       ­     (my glass heart)

Since it was such a beautiful day,
my high school art teacher had us go out to sketch a section of the school.
I have reason to believe we were faced away from the scenery the entire time.
Someway,
somehow,
the sweet sublime of noontime in spring was consumed completely by unbridled,
uncleansed boredom.
We stared down the ugly,
open hallway that our teacher almost tried to persuade us is pretty.
The dirt between the two sidewalks had been so pressed down from rain and being trampled,
it would often be confused for the sidewalk when students didn’t watch their step.
The pebbles by where we sat were covered in dust,
about as dry as the spot made me feel.
There were a few trees that stood like awkward,
gawking freshman boys.
The hall was lined with faded paint,
and asymmetrically placed doors,
windows,
and polls.
Altogether it was an urban obstruction.

I write with uninhibited passion,
Drawing inspiration from the depths of my wounded soul.
The scars etched upon my chest,
Like riverbeds carved by a relentless force,
Serve as a constant reminder of my struggles.
My heart races like a war drum,
Creating a rhythmic cadence that resonates through the pages,
And reaching the very eardrums of those who dare to read the scriptures.

I write with the grace of a healer,
Smoking sage and smudging against the ramparts of my own mind. In this act of purification,
I strive to cleanse the filth from the membrane of my thoughts, allowing them to flow cyclically like filtered air—
Clean, pure, and easy on the chest.
I take deeper breaths, allowing my spirit to soar.

However, when praise is bestowed upon my efforts,
And the inkwell dries, I become chary of their accolades.
To captivate you in awe, I must bleed upon the page,
Pouring my heart and soul into every word.

There’s no mural I could paint  
No poem to compose
Not a sinner nor a saint
Who could ever truly show

The depths of my devotion
The desires of my heart
The extent of my emotion  
How my love for you is art

For love and art are tethered
Birthed from pain and hope  
Both beautiful, worn and weathered
A brilliant kaleidoscope

Dear ******* the groyne,
Forgive the forgeries upon my memory.
Forgive the feebleness of my firsthand.
Forgive the feeding of my frenzy.
Forgive the freneticism of my prose.
Take truth from the diction of my lens.

I trust you will grant me a fair hearing,
And offer me the clemency of purpose—
To once more capture or conquer
The presence of Iris herself in your greens.

Grant me a jury of judicious witness,
The pounding of the gavel as grace
For the crime of picturing the presence.
I bid the remainder of my fruitless fall.

Dear ******* the groyne,
Has your blacksmith forgotten you?
Left to entice waves at shutter speed,
Forged in flame,
Chiselled and tamed on Vulcan high.

Through his neglect has the time arrived
To render and share for all or none—
As Pandora, of beauty, of curiosity,
Doomed to open the box
For me and my eye.

Dear the man on the beach,
Do you have any sense of shame?
As if the still frame holds the truest face
The gods of our minds do not claim to fame,
But cower and quiver with a shout of shrill.

I beam bounty in the rays of the sun,
Watching the groyne creak and stutter
As the waves breach and mutter—
A voice of too great dread to utter.

I sense your presence, your song,
The siren’s call to prayer.
The screech of the zoom and focus,
Lulling and drawing a sailor of despair.

But it cannot be enough
To return the green to my grey.
It is but a mirror of Death,
For the true beauty lies beneath the skin.

As the waves crash,
And the wind howls,
And the flash—

Our moment in time, you and I—
A fleeting visit in a luminal light,
Between silence and soul,
Of a tune forgotten in the sands of us.

Yet for the sea, a distant whisper
Of a moment—
The opening of a story.

Was it a moment of theft?
A moment of true witness?
Good enough to frame?
Was I truly seen?
Or just a clutch for transcendence?

And still,
The tide remakes the shore.
The groyne groans.
The flash fades.

You carry the image.
I carry the knowing.

We both were framed.
We both were fire.