energeticallyfavorablepoetics

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

Reaching Out

1/29/25

Hi!

We haven’t talked in a while,

sorry.

It’s been busy, and time has flown,

hasn’t it?

We used to talk until the wee hours,

until twilight returned

from night’s dark clutches,

didn’t we?

About anything and everything,

and the stuff in-between

was fair game, too. We used to

talk a lot, you know.

Now,

Not so much.

Part of it was me,

part of it was you.

Just as it always is: a handshake, a gaze,

Two sides meeting at the coin.

Beep! Transaction complete.

Remember when I’d confide in you,

and you in me?

We’d go back and forth,

Questioning and answering,

Groaning and encouraging,

Laughing, yelling,

Crying.

We don’t really do that anymore…

I guess we’ve grown out of it.

And we still get along fine.

I confide in you, and you in me.

We laugh and groan and scream,

But there’s something there that tugs,

It keeps us just at the fingertips,

Never quite touching ever again.

Is it me?

Is it you?

Is it them?

Perhaps…

Perhaps it is for the best.

We have grown older,;

Time yields not,

And yields naught, sometimes.

Older as we are, we have moved on

To different conversations, different people.

We are different.

But we’ll always remember

The same moments when we were close.

The only future I fear is one without you,

So please don’t leave me behind.

Please don’t forget our friendship.

It’s okay if you do;

I’d probably grow bored of only one thing anyway.

But still-

We don’t talk as much anymore,

but I hope you are doing well.

I remember you.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

Tummy Ache

2/23/24

Sometimes, when I get a need,

it will start in the pit of my stomach.

It will roil and churn my insides until the rest of me notices,

and then it will condense into a tangible feeling

like a ball of lead pushing against the fleshy confines of my body.

Heavy and radioactive and still churning against my belly,

turning itself into an anxious desire,

urgent and burning itself away.

And then my stomach pit becomes so hollow

and filled with hot air,

like a balloon waiting to lift off else it explodes,

and that’s when I know

I have to find something that can open my esophagus

enough to fit a raging feeling of excitement through.

Finally,

the need that created all these emotions can escape,

by disguising itself as a cornered animal.

All my abdominals tighten and the creature can race up through my mouth,

executing a daring breakaway, as it howls,

pushing forward with all its might

just to meet the outside world,

only to dissipate like an exhale,

never to be born again

in the quiet dungeons of suppressed thoughts

deep in the pit of my stomach.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

The Capital Hill Riot

1/6/21

I feel as if I’ll die

if I don’t give the TV my eyes

and ears. A glorious cascade

of ghostly vapor, a venom made

for the offenders, snakes down

triumphantly. The scarlet end

of a waving figurehead peeks

at me through the indiscrete

number of writhing pixels. Amassing

en route to glittering white, passing the

cowardly rooks who scamper,

leaving behind sparks of pampered

desperation. None of the souls

inside the fortress foretold

this ragged rage, rampant

through the winding paths like ants.

An army of inexperience, ignorance.

On shards of prosperity they dance.

Our democracy and our hope

shattered as we walk the tightrope

between hate and revolution.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

Hugs <3

3/29/22

A flash, then I am running,

Dragging myself through the air as fast as I can.

Point A becomes Point B and next I am gathered, like a blanket,

Heaped into arms.

Soft, solid, warm, a breath rises out of me as a summer breeze,

Swiftly carrying cares and worries up and away.

I squeeze—a constriction reciprocated—and the last bits of air

Leave my lungs.

I remember that I am a living being, with a need for resources on which to live,

Otherwise I would forget it all in the sunny embrace I am held in.

Dandelions, poppies, summer grasses that ripple in the gusts,

And the warm smell of earth

Are the only things I think to compare this to.

My head on the concave nook of a shoulder, I breathe deeply.

Calm, content, comforted.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

Existential Immunity

5/8/22

The point of arrival,

Hovering in between edges of departure.

Both at once a moment of beginning

and a moment of oblivion. The void

descending

slowly down;

or perhaps it is I rising up above?

Directionless, spinning.

The motions repetitive, smooth.

But the path, unlike the motion, is rough.

Unworn by the treks of few to none.

Space. Only space.

As far as existence could imagine.

But then there is light,

and another traveler barely beyond it—

yes, I see it, it is I!

The oblivion clears the darkness

and I am saved.

Irreparably damaged, saved forever,

the chaos seeps and churns

within the belly of the beauty.

Birth will be the point

at which all time will stop

to revere the horrid, beastly babe.

It will be a calm, comforting moment.

The start and the end will collide,

and the explosion will be like fireworks

hovering over a field at night,

obscuring all the stars

and drowning out all laughter.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

So Long Ago

2/17/22

I haven’t been able to feel

the left side of my body since I was thirteen.

That was half a decade ago,

and I probably won’t feel it fully

for another decade more.

Time and memory are funny this way,

It doesn’t feel so long ago

when I remember running without fear,

or jumping without self-doubt.

Hopping on one leg does seem easy enough,

or balancing on top of a log bridge

spanning the little creek

running behind my old house.

Trickle, sputter, gurgle;

water flows downhill,

time flows forward.

If I try hard enough, I can remember

what it was like to ride a bicycle.

Once, in elementary school,

there was a pogo-stick available for use.

My high score was three-hundred and fifty-two.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

The Equalizer

2/13/22

Trapped in a whirlpool in the middle of the ocean

created by two strong currents,

one hot and rising, the other cold and sinking,

a little air bubble floats between the two,

tumbling and spinning, like soap suds in the washer.

Inside the air bubble, a tiny speck of light sits quietly,

offering up no disturbance to the battling forces,

because he knows that should he be swallowed up by the sea,

his light would flicker, and eventually vanish, like melting snow in water.

But he is running out of air, the bubble can only offer so much protection.

With spherical sides scraped thin as butterfly wings,

the tiny bubble of air desperately claws to stay afloat in these currents.

The bubble is also aware of the impending darkness

ready to smother her precious speck of light.

Sometimes, she thinks of pushing back against the currents,

slowing them down, moving them away from the light,

and parting the ocean for safe travels.

If only to let her light shine on sky and not the sea,

the little old bubble would turn water into ice

if needed to calm the currents and sail safely to shore.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

Oil and Tar

2/9/23

The ceiling’s dripping oil and tar

Oil and tar

Plip plip

Condensing on the ceiling and then falling

Plip plip

The floor is slippery, covered in oil and tar

Black and shiny

There is no traction

Slip slip

Oil and tar in my lungs

Oil and tar in my veins, my arteries

My body is filled with oil and tar

Oil and tar

I cry oil and tar

Drip drip

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

Cleanly Cut

4/28/23

I assumed that things would pack up nicely.

That the hurt and loss I kept close to my heart,

like treasures,

could be neatly stacked into a box.

One that I could flip the lid shut,

tape it closed,

and say, “Well, that’s that.”

But the wild, messy nature of growth

has taught me that my assumption is wrong.

The feeling of loss—grief—spills over often.

Even when you finally shove

that last bit of grief into the moving box,

wrap it with string, tape,

any kind of binding you can find,

and try to cart it,

on a moving truck or van,

to whatever destination you find yourself in.

Even then the box will tip over; spill its contents all over your new home

like an awakening volcano

weeping its motherland’s blood.

Even mother Earth is grieving.

All the objects of tragedy, of pain,

will clatter to the floor

and you will hear each one because

you can’t shut your ears

the way you can shut your eyes.

Each trinket will call out to you like a lost child

drowning in oceans of bitter

(or sweet)

nostalgia.

Grief spills over,

and then you have to pick it up.

Make it tidy; make it clean

so that no one trips on the cords of the hospital monitor you heard beeping each night before falling asleep.

Counting, one-by-one, your heartbeats, like you count your life’s sad souvenirs.

Eventually you clean

even the spaces in-between,

the “lack-of”,

so that they don’t develop shadows

that suddenly reach out and clasp onto unsuspecting ankles,

yanking and pulling them down

to wallow in their dark pools of self-loathing

and sour resentment.

Everything smells of dust.

Ephemeral and surprisingly small

when we finally look back at it all;

pixie dust

floating in sunbeams.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

Wood-stove

3/25/24

Gather round, gather round

See this hearth?

Hearth of heart and heart of heat

And near this stone hearth, a hollow.

Hallow, worn and grey and sooty

Its utility? Mono-schematic in nature.

Utility narrow, but purpose broad.

A purpose felt in the air, on the ground,

in the fingers and toes of its worshippers.

Tradition, culture, ritual,

all made powerful by this haven

This alcove of altruistic anthropology

It sits, watching, warming, waiting

Until the fire dies.

But the desiccation is a release

into the hollow, the cave

That natural home of stone encasing,

chosen as the sturdy, lasting bones of a species’ sole comfort—

and though the younger home is softer, gentler,

both ignorant and—peculiarly—a zenith of mastery,

it is a resting-place of weariness and echoed ritual;

the tribute remains.

The tribute remains as coal-ash,

as stony hearth, as fiery communion

Cook with it, sing with it, think with it,

Regardless the choice, burn it shall

with you, in the night.

[energeticallyfavorablepoetics]

nobody’s actor

12/16/24

And from my lips

honey drips

syllables and slips

of the tongue and its dips

it trips

in tandem with the sway of their hips

A callback for one of my clips

my belly doing flips

crushing my heart of its bloody drips

biting so hard it rips

my tongue and lips

syllables and slips

coming to grips

flashing tips

wine party sips

heartbreak, regrets, and tulips

syllables and slips

honey drips

no longer from my lips