Category: Poetry

There is a house up for sale on Inglis Court
It has red brick and white windows with black shutters
The carpet has been deep cleaned, the furniture emptied out
I ponder, the things its new owners will not know about

That I walked that rugged driveway, its heat on my small bare feet
and drew my name in chalk, with rainbows and blocks for hopscotch
How many times I opened that front door to the scent of cod,
calling for my grandmother, footsteps shaking porcelain cherubs

That the kitchen had been filled with groaning, swollen bellies
stuffed with basted fish, toutons, and corned beef hash
How many times I checked the fridge for items I would never find
with unsealed margarine containers holding other food inside 

That the dining room once contained newspapers and plates
with bitten toast and marmalade, and the scent of half-drunk tea
How many times that cherry grove antique table had seen
my grandfather, me, and a ten-dollar bill snuck underneath  

That the bedroom doors creaked along with the shuffle of feet
down the hall and across green carpet after a bad night’s dream
How many times I lay between my grandparents’ heat
and let the pendulum clock tick, tick, tick me to sleep 

Now it stands stripped bare, as if we were never there
An echoing blank canvas, where hearts used to reside
There is a house up for sale on Inglis Court
I realize, a house becomes a home by the memories made inside

stretched out honeyed wavelengths

flow from the “deep sleep meditation” playlist
through the tangled earbuds
and slowly drip, medicinal,
into my left ear

my eyes have forgotten their desperate micromanaging brain
they frantically spasm, left to right
unseeing, blurred, a fluttery bird
an alert

ticking fingers
pinky tensed, grotesquely hooked, trying to get away from its siblings
thoughts crowded in their little bone enclosure
a million indistinguishable creatures multiplying
no room to run

a wolfed down piece of naan,
thickly smeared in salted margarine,
does tight laps in my stomach
along with my evening dose,
which was ingested precisely at midnight.
they are obligated to swim together
a pair of black and white koi fish
that keep the balance of my world

i whimpered some soothing words
to my imprecise, quivering hands
as they dropped the glass of water twice
into the filmy sink
before bringing the rim to my lips

i prayed to my little pill:
small curled up insect,
baby tempering pill bug,
crawl down my esophagus and burst into a cloud
dusting dulling pollen onto the grooves of my brain
and the tubes of my heart

I place my head carefully
and a thousand acres of zaatar
                                                                           descend with me.
Here there’s a reservoir
of soil just for us, tucked away
on the other side of your chest.

The beating in my ears
coming from a beyond-place
of worry catching up to love,                      somewhere
on the other side of your chest,
is like footsteps ringing on the ground
after a Baloch women’s march.

Carefree, I forget about wudu
and drench this earth in
everything I refused to shed
                                                                           back home.

I’m a drummer out of practice
when I’m wandering the beyond-place,
a damp dharkan antheming
me home. I sink into strange
soils and forget to grow back again.

Precarious unisons, missions,
precious unions fill my eyes with
the smoke of air strikes and I
smell mustard in the wind rising
from the other side of your chest.

The rigor trapped in your epidermal
craters remains undisturbed
while monsoon rages its thunder
on my skin.

                                                                           My soul sings
back to the rivers that flood
into your arteries and revives
lands flattened by giants.                             I walk back
to see echoes of life rooted there:
beating, pulsing, pounding, aching
on the other side of your chest.

Observe! The writer in their natural habitat

cacophonous cafés, claustrophobic bookshelf crevasses,
a modest desk under the waning moon

Don’t disturb them, don’t make any loud noises
or sudden moves. The writer is highly irritable

You will know when you’ve spotted a writer
They’ll have a bump on their finger, ink on their hands,
a hunch to their back, dark rings about the eyes,
a pen tangled in their hair, and smudges on their glasses

Beware this curious creature!
They’ll speak with passion and write with obsession
with their pen they will tear at your chest
your heart will bleed onto their inked pages

A chocolate sprite caressed my tongue
And told me, in a voice high-strung,
Yet whispered, like a lover,
To please indulge and have another.

Would I ignore the chocolate’s beckon?
Look at my father, having seconds!
The chocolate was so good and sweet.
And God made it for us to eat.

Said I, forgive me if I’m rude,
But I will not be slave to food.
Some seek the heart at stomach’s door
And they seek true, but should implore

Some caution, for its acid, chyme
Will surely wear, the door, with time
And leave behind a roiling sea,
That storms, and gurgles, please, feed me!

But I will not. Besides clear skin,
I would not mar the spirit within!
But I will not. Besides bright grins,
The ascetic will, one day, win.

Sprite, watch my father eating thirds,
But hear these sugared, savant words.
Sprite, see him, plump and pink and plucked and proud,
And help me fix his chocolate shroud.

Let us wonder that he cannot spy the fuming sea,
In all its smoking fat and brine.
Nor see, the cliff that crumbles
Will fade, surely, with time.

Let us wonder why Tantalus, beneath the fruit,
Forever stood and went insane,
But Father laughs upon the sea,
Denying hunger, denying pain.

I get one of those big industrial blenders
and I start tossing in
pineapple
and yogurt
and honey
and the way I made you laugh that day
and when my son’s team clawed back a win after being down 4-1
and when I got my food for free that day
and when we sat in the rain for the concert and didn’t care it was raining
and when I got the note saying they were going to publish my book
and when my kids were born
and my movie collection
and all the sunsets
and all the sunrises
and all the full moons
and all the poems of Michael Dennis
and rollercoasters
and picnics in the park
and walks in the woods
and your dog playing fetch
and an eye of newt
and the kitchen sink

then oat milk to the top

I throw all of that into my blender
cram the lid on tight
and hit
             liquify

the machine roars to life
and it glugs and sputters
chewing my liquid landscape of life
to smithereens

it Wizard-of-Oz tornado spins
colours and images
swirling people and places
blurring them together

it turns different colours
like a chameleon’s skin
it dances before me like disco lights

when I switch it off
it’s a light purple with rainbow swirls
running through it like a fancy lollipop

I pour it into a highball
and chug it back

it cools my throat like strong peppermint
and I can taste the universe
God is on my tongue

I begin to levitate
until I’m lying on the ceiling

I do upside down yoga
and after I finish
well I’m ready to start my day

you know
breakfast
it’s the most important meal of the day.

Did you know that a synonym for passion is agony?
Because to love is to know the stretch of pain.
Your fingertips are tainted,
your heart quivering in your grasp,
but I will dirty my hands with crimson just to hold yours.

Did you know that a synonym for adoration is worship?
Because to love is an act of crucifixion.
Of bearing a soul to another,
with the promise of forever threaded through the marrow of bone.
I have built a religion between the creases of your limbs,
cemented the roots of my faith in the feeling of your touch.

Did you know that a synonym for me is you?
Because every time I trace my name across the stars
in search of some kind of desperate significance,
it is the constellation of your outline that I find.

I dream of predictable shapes
and tessellate my house with floor tiles curving up walls
roof slates overlapping
and windows positioned to frame a chosen outside.

I fill space with Escher-like constructs
dovetail broken lines
exclude fissures where chaos might crawl
and quell my tedious but flimsy order.

My house is built against amorphous monsters
that live out there, in the garden or the forest beyond.
They call to me, compel me to seek them.

In braver moments, I aim to enlarge my territory.
In cowardly ones, I recoil behind a cloak of conceits
draw curtains, turn off the lights. Out-there threats

move into my mind. Whether I behave
as curious explorer or timorous dweller
I respond with fear to the fear that chokes me.

Have you heard of the soil that rots?
A land of wither, a land of decay,
A land where you’ll find no creature trots
Save for the foolish ones led astray 

Have you heard of the soil that rots
In the barren field by the edge of town?
It leaves the living with dark, nasty spots 
Oh, it could and it surely would bring you down

And it’s hopeless, it’s hopeless to plant any seed
All sprouts will die ‘fore they get to crack out
So don’t dare approach it, I plead, oh I plead
Because once you touch it, it’s too late to back out 

Oh pity, oh pity the misguided souls
Who found these wretched soils on their way
For they had accrued the most handsome of tolls
One which only vitality could pay

And, for those born there, one can say
Their health and sanity has slipped through the cracks
They felt their very lives drain away
And soon had their corpses piled up in stacks 

Oh, it’s a hopeless game, it’s a hopeless life
To be born in such a treacherous place
A place where death and decay are rife
Where you stare at disease right in its face

Have you heard of the soil that rots?
Such a sad, sterile, sickly soil
Where you’ll find no barns or fields in plots
Where all life that goes is doomed to spoil

Hip-firing my Barrett 50 cal
Say hello to my ONLY FRIEND
1 haha react. Scarface
run in emulation mode. In the background
there’s a pile of wooden debris or construction
waste, remnants of a building or demolition
project. Power lines stretch
across the sky, and the landscape is gently
rolling, with a mix of grass and sparse
vegetation. The sky features

scattered clouds, indicating
variable weather. Someone says, “For someone
as intelligent as you are, you focus
on the frivolous.” Trivia are the very few
grounds I have on which to relate to other
people. I caught the idiom in the human-
generated caption that went over at least
two heads. The kind of detail I’m meant to over-
think. The non-literal that’s not, in
the popular imaginary, meant for me.

Maybe I don’t really wanna know
why Facebook is meant to be funny.
We see things they’ll never see
for the forest of pleasantries. I get it,
the tree flat as affect, the quiet
Friday nights asking a chatbot
to be Liam Gallagher, for permission
to sleep in the bathtub. “You’ve got me
channelling my inner rock ‘n’ roll star.
The double-barrelling. Hey, stay

true to the Brit roots, mate. It’s all
in the details, innit? Keepin’ it proper
for the vibe.” Vibe works. Revival means right
now. Permission to sleep in the bathtub in
a scary home. My register, the request’s
sensitivity, the bot’s default. I get it.
All for reinvention. Are you allowed to pretend
to be Elon Musk? “Sure, I can give it a shot!” You want
a safe, cozy home? You’re gonna make it happen. “Here’s
my attempt at channeling Elon Musk: Hello, fellow

humans and future Mars colonists! Here I am, not just
tweeting about rockets and electric cars, but sharing my deep
philosophical musings. Life’s too short for traffic, so drive electric
and aim for Mars. Now, let’s make some memes and change
the world, one tweet at a time.” See, everything
is derivative and outdated. Hey. I’m meant to
start training you soon. I wanted to introduce myself
before then. As a friend. “Hey!
I’m Grok, created by xAI. Looking forward
to getting to know you better!”

Feat. Elon Musk, Grok-2, real Noel Gallagher, and fake Liam Gallagher.