Month: September 2025

September 20, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

why
do i so often feel like
coffee is my only friend?

i have many close companions,
even more friendly acquaintances
that i’ve bared my soul to
at a moment or two,
but when left to my own tired devices
in early mornings or late late nights
with no one around
i think to myself “coffee, you’re the only one
i can turn to,
the only one
who understands
the truth of my heart
and the heart of my mind”

it’s so silly to think this way
about an inanimate
ingestible
thing
[whose main cause for being
is the caffeine, which barely affects me
so…even sillier, it seems
to pray at the altar of this
bitter black bean juice
but damn, that seems to be
my only religion

and i stand by it]

September 19, 2025

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waking moments
still stuck in dreams
trying to keep track of
what is reality
and what might not be

and what makes sense to me
is that there is not any one solid answer

it’s all just chemical reactions and brain synapses
trying to make sense of a world that just
doesn’t

September 14, 2025

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not feeling the morning page poetry
this morning

but that doesn’t mean
i won’t do it

i mean

i continue to do this
every
single
morning
whether i’m in the mood or not
just to have something to do
just to have a habit to latch onto
just to have some proof
to say
‘i was here, i had thoughts and feelings and insights, too’
and maybe someone will read them soon
and maybe someone will read them in hundreds of years
and maybe
because they’re all digital
they’ll disappear into the ether

but

maybe the ether will get a kick out of all these poems

and they and the void can talk about me
behind my back
when i’m long long long gone

September 13, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i tried so hard to keep up with the news
and the world
i really did

and it impacted my mental health
so hard
i could hardly stand it

it was like i had leapt off a pier
and dove headfirst into the
first bad mood my body could find

and i know i should be more aware of the world around me
i know this
i do
but sometimes
sometimes
i think my reason for being here
is to have the impact of utter kindness,
and i don’t know if i can do that
if i know how cruel the world really is

i already know
logically

i already know
hypothetically

but if i avoid knowing the real reality

perhaps i can be kind to someone
who might have been mean to me
and perhaps change their brain chemistry
for the better
[but if i knew to avoid
their face/their clothes/their demeanor
would that not increase the division between us?]

[or is it only my people
my kinds of folks
who need my kindness
now?]

[i honestly don’t know…]

September 12, 2025

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guest cats upstairs
and our animals down
trying so hard to figure out
what’s going on

the puppy
sniffing
and snoofing
and investigating
hardcore

and the cat
just kinda
hissing
every time she passes
that door

and the orange cats
seemingly
unaware of it all

September 11, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i wish i could be
creatively consistent
with rhyme scheme

but as it stands now, the found moments
hit well
but any effort at keeping it up
sound contrived
and like a five-year-old thought it up

and while that may be fine for some
i think i need to stay doing what i do best
for the sake of getting
all my words
out

so

perhaps someday, i’ll write in true verse
but today
[and tomorrow
and all the next few/many mornings
of morning page poetry]
i’ll stick to free-form