I’ve compiled all the poems I wrote in the last half of 2022, threw them into an AI art generator to see what would come out and put that all together in a collection.
Full color high fidelity illustrations, over 120 poems accompanied by over 120 pieces of art generated from those poems.
Woe to the contemplative real estate,
where the red light shines
quiets itself.
Shines again.
Where the sound is loud enough to oust
the compulsion of rationality
conceding to lunatics.
Growing like absurd flowers.
Bold crimson lines swaddled in shadow,
haunting the eyes, even in darkness,
animated almost.
Stop motion secrets.
The red light cries out endlessly,
while shapes play in the spaces between,
the noise flirting like waves.
Swallowing the shore at dusk.
Echoes of solitude.
Life is the sieve that filters our passions,
straining them thin;
permitting only a few freedoms – here
or there,
until the flow of it runs clear.
With a lattice like maze of obligations and tollgates,
keeping all the big dreams on the other side,
our mind desperately scours for starbursts;
reflections of light caught by precious minerals,
hidden amongst all that dirt –
salvation.
Poetry,
is life with cheesecloth.
There is an umbral seed
inside all of us that will grow
if given light and watered.
There are gnarled weeds too
that will choke those seeds to nothing
if not ripped from the soil.
Gardening is hard, messy, but intentional.
Find the seed and gift it your light,
inspire fertile fruits.
Harsh unbroken lines;
parameters.
Light falling like ash,
disappearing into the depths.
A lie is only a lie when plotted against the truth,
alone, the deception is plausible;
with time enough to gestate, undeniable;
with power enough to overwhelm, unchallengeable;
with support enough to rise, unquenchable.
Determined diminutive deceptions deftly directed,
degrade democracy, defending dictators.
Truth torn to tatters, tortured through tantrums,
transitions to trepidatious tragedies, that turn tail,
then takeoff.
The world, a hollow husk on strings,
begs for the vitality it once entrusted.
Countless efforts shine like stars in the night,
while the sun silently hides, claiming to be a star itself.
Be not silent in that darkness, but,
loud enough to fill that space,
to name it – or at least replace it with dreams.
When you wake, wake with open eyes ready.
The end, random probabilities,
radiant whispers in reality
bright enough to see, bright enough to pursue,
labor over and finally celebrate;
having met the source of the echo you once were.
Those sounds we make resonate.
All want a voice that enjoys being heard,
climbing over them in toccata only welcomes discord.
Listen long enough to find the harmony,
make music you can be proud of,
songs that will be heard long after you’ve gone quiet.
Could you stash your memories in a secret box,
wrap them in chains and bind them with locks,
if it meant more memories could be made to fit,
in the space you’ve spent your life making for it?
Some thoughts grow and grow and grow
until those thoughts and those memories are all we know,
taking the place of the thoughts we should think now,
unless we can find a way to quiet them somehow.
“Perhaps if we feed them they will just go away,”
I hear a voice inside me meekly say,
but thoughts are like hungry cats pawing at your door,
no matter what you give, they still want more.
A friend told me not to think of them at all,
treat them no better than a fly on the wall,
but thoughts are bigger than flies, louder too,
and if you let them, they’ll hide, jump out and surprise you.
When I asked grown ups what to do, they said,
to find other thoughts or memories to make instead,
but some thoughts don’t like being alone,
and will steal the new ones to make them their own.
In the end I had to find for myself what to do,
because of all those I asked, no one ever really knew.
I held those memories close, whispered softly in their ear,
“I love you, but I need to move on. Don’t worry though, I’ll be near.”
And I gently tucked the thoughts away,
in a big cedar chest labeled, “for another day,”
so I could make new memories, keep the old ones at bay,
but go back to feed them or keep them company should my thoughts stray.
Childhoods absurdity wrangled,
rooting through thick wooded landscape,
reveling in every winding curve,
each ambitious jump,
just high enough to hang a dream on –
backwards.
Like memories gone false,
long past their sell-by date –
our minds are starved,
so we eat the dirt.
The shadows feel like water.
The way they move around me,
reminds me of my daughters;
the light kept from them, the silhouette they see.
Prescient moments arise
lived backwards like memories,
rowing past soft pastel skies,
in the universe’s transient reverie.
A burst of life shines like hope,
feels compassionate like home,
the sober end of a rope,
that will throttle the throat when we are alone.
These moments shouldn’t be here,
any purpose they portend
defies the cadence once near.
We all curve in strange places as time bends.
Grow Gray With Me 