experiment

March 8, 2026

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the rapture didn’t come like how we’d been taught

we thought
standing around
perhaps asleep
perhaps in prayer
we’d
just be levitated from our bodies
up
and up
and up to heaven
instantaneous
immediate
immaculate

but the rapture took so damn long

trekking from old homes to new ones
each more dilapidated
less clean
than the last

there was very little sleep
and even less prayer
towards the end
crossing borders
swept into vans
when least expected
[i suppose at least that one
was instantaneous
and immediate]
[but the insides of those vans
could hardly be called
immaculate]

and now here i am
being told that this final step
is the real rapture

but haven’t i been told that
for each step of the way

i’m starting to stray from my faith

and this tiny cup of gross-smelling liquid
barely coated by some sickly sweet scent
over top of it…
i thought the rapture was something that would happen to me
but it looks like i happen to it
i control it
but maybe
just maybe
i’m sick of all this rapturing

maybe i wanna try my luck, after all this time, with the heathens

February 25, 2026

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i am sitting
i am writing
i have nothing i need to be doing
at this exact moment
[plenty i should be doing
whenever i have the time]
but the animals are fed
and the kips are being watered
[by tea and coffee and actual water]
and i am trying something new
with my writing time

perhaps this could be a thing i do
every morning page morning

[but the point is to not plan
the point is not to plan
the point is not
the future

it is

now]

take stock in what is in this moment
the snow falling in big, fluffy flakes outside
the forced air heat in the kitchen blowing
the ambient music twanging from
our labeled “d20 speaker” so named for the
neon sign it is placed above

i take a sip of coffee
for the taste
but i probably should be sipping my water
for the hydration
for there’s a tickle in my throat
that i don’t know where it came from
[could have been passed to me,
could be the dry air around me
could be my allergy affecting me
in a whole different way this time]

the rumble of a plane
so low and loud both kips glance out the window
but it’s gone now

kip in their keith haring sweatshirt

me in my cozy yellow and black plaid sweater

the puppy, who devoured her breakfast, laying down right next to my chair

the cat is…somewhere…

and the music that has just come on is one i know from a film or something
and i am going to look to see what it’s called/who it’s by
so i can remember for the future
[though this poem is not about the future]
experience by ludovico einaudi
which i know from something in my past
that i can never quite remember
[but this poem is not about the past]

and i’ve already surpassed my word count goal
with only one [experimental-ish] poem
but this poem is not about the goals
or anything but
this moment

there are parts of thoughts in my head
that spin around endlessly
that go too fast for even me to see
and there’s another part of my mind
that is so damn quiet sometimes
that i don’t actually know
if there’s anything going on there
and perhaps they are both one in the same
that the fast thoughts go so fast
the blur makes them seem
nonexistent

[can ones own mind be too fast for even that person to catch up?
it seems counterintuitive
but also, we know so little about the human brain
and how thoughts and souls actually work
and we may never
but this poem is not about our own knowledge
or about what we may someday find
this poem is about finding
exactly what’s happening
in this
now]

the problem with an experimental poem
about the moment
is that the moment keeps going
so there is no concise way to end
other than just
stopping.

January 12, 2026

/ HJ / Leave a comment

writing about things
about losing
and possibly gaining

[about gaming the system
that seems incapable of collapsing
without dire consequences]

about consequential
and inconsequential
choices

for our own choices
will always always always bring
something
to our own lives

but in the grand schemes of planets and universes and stars
what is one
human’s
mistake

[what is one species’
constant
blunder?]

December 29, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

how high would you fly
knowing you must, eventually, fall?

could you resist the sirens’ call
convincing your flawed human brain
you might just resist it all?

could you throw yourself, knowingly, into the sky
just to see what the view is like up there
just to prove yourself mighty
for a moment?

or could you stay down on the ground
safe
but knowing you’d never know what the clouds taste like?

December 27, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

just past my house
on the dead-end street it lies upon
is a strange sort of
Wishing Well
and, well, it never grants wishes
instead it grants
Fears

but the nice thing is
most of our fears
are far worse in our heads
than they ever are
in real
life

so my fear of spiders
erupted
but didn’t bury me
as i’d assumed it would

and my little brother’s fear of losing his favorite toy
of course happened by him
dropping it in
but it was the late nineties by then
and his tonka truck was available
at any toys r us
and it “magically reappeared”
the next
morning

and my friend’s fear of
losing her grandfather
of course happened the minute she touched
the side of the well
but she also got to say goodbye to his spirit
which stopped by
at that very spot

so

so

well

i guess

what i’m trying to say is…

now that my fear is societal collapse
and ultimate armageddon,
but i also can’t see how we’ll get out of this
very rough point in history
without it
i’ve been thinking about that
Fearing Well
a lot
and wondering
if it’s still just past my parents’ old house
on that dead end street
and if believing in the magic of the object is enough
to cancel out the fact that
this fear is now
a wish
as well

May 15, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

perhaps you wake up one day
and the sky is purple instead of blue

still the same brightness — no sunrise or sunset vibes
making the change, though many things may adjust
from your point of view — like are you near a body of water?
look at it, it’ll reflect the sky, and you’ll realize
in that moment, that the ocean is not, in fact, blue,
or even any color on its own,
but a simple showing back of
the sky above it

but

no one else remarks on the suddenness of the purple in the sky
and when you see a game show with simple questions
or shadow your niece’s kindergarten class
the correct answer to “what color is the sky”
is “purple!” every time

so what now?

do you ask someone about it?
do you try to sleep it off?

do you check your own kindergarten worksheets
dug up and pulled down from your parents’ house’s attic?
there, in your own handwriting, is “purple”
and even poems you wrote ages ago
where you rhymed “blue” with “true” at the end of a stanza
put forth the same rhyme scheme, but with purple in the middle
“the sky’s purple hue/makes my heart beat true”
and it works
better than
“blue”

do you take this to your therapist
crossing your fingers behind your body
that it won’t be enough to get you committed
again?

how long has your reality strayed from everyone else’s?

is everyone else under an illusion now?
were you picking up nonreality for twenty-seven years?

why
why
why
is this happening?
to you?

you wait

and perhaps

you never get an answer…

May 6, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

spectacular
spectacle
and spectacles help us all
see
wonders
in our own
and each others’
eyes

for once
for twice
for as many times
as we might find a rhyme
and/or reason
to climb
and explore
and discover
and become
one
with some sort of
happiness
[if we can
if we can]

~~~

there’s still a bit of
misalignment
when it comes to
my own self
and my poet self

and i cannot tell if that’s because
i don’t perform my own poetry enough
that it becomes as second nature as
acting
or aerial
or simply listening
but my own poetry
i have to remind myself
‘i made this
and it isn’t
half
bad’

~~~

or perhaps it’s because
i’m all self-taught
and i’m just flying by
the seat of my pants
and i can’t totally tell
what works and what’s a fail
except that
some poems flow like water
and some drip like sludge
and every now and then
i find a rhyme that tastes as good as it sounds
but i don’t know how i found any of that
it just happens
through trial and error
every
single
time

like i’m always starting
from one

June 24, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

we have a spider plant
transferred from my father’s domicile in ohio
all the way out to the bronx
and we watered it
and replanted it
and it made two sweet little spider plant babies

i planted one
[still have to cut off the cellulose umbilical tho,]
but the other came in later
and has stayed attached and ready
for just under a year now
and i was contemplating making the effort to
root it
pot it
plant it,
but
we have a bowl of water just under it
[for humidifying purposes]
and it seems some of its tendrils have found it
and now i want to see
if it will slowly make its way over
to that bowl
to soak up the h2o
and grow
new roots
and try to make that
its home

here i was about to do the good thing
the right thing
the thing i’ve been meaning to do
for months and months
and then an experiment falls into my lap

[young me would never believe
how hard i’d fall
for science]

May 20, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i’m already well past 300 words
and i’ve gotten such good work out
for me
but not for anybody
else

maybe i should start taking old poems
and redoing them/
adjusting and rewriting
for use in a book of some kind?

i’ve now written
more than one poem every single day
for over three years now
officially 1,134 days
according to this calculator i just found
on the interwebs

let’s calculate a bit more:
i know i usually write at least three poems —
though sometimes there’s a lot more/
but sometimes i’ve skipped days to come back later
and use an unpublished poem from a previous writing session —
let’s just say it averages out to three a day
[i know this will be a low estimate]
that makes, at least 3,402 poems
[probably closer to 6,000 if we’re being honest]

[i wonder if it would be worth it
to go back and actually count
how many poems happened each day]

[that would be wild
to say
the least]

and all of this look back/calculation has helped none of the
‘i have no poem to post today’
issue…

i suppose i could post this word soup,
give the internet the knowledge
that while i post one to three poems daily
on that site, the need to write
is overwhelming sometimes,
and sometimes i just gotta write and write and write
and i guess i’ve written somewhere between 3 and 6 thousand poems
[honestly probably even more]
since i started this experiment
in april of 2021

[also, i thought it would be an
experiment that would last me a year
and here
i am…]

May 12, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

sitting here
thinking of neurodivergence
thinking of
anxiety and depression
thinking of
acting from such a young age
thinking of
diagnoses and non
thinking of
societal standards
thinking of
pressure and constructs
thinking of
freedom from expectations and all that

~~~

experiment
think of words not often written
ponder places and things alike
you rarely ever write about
and maybe
just maybe
your poetry can have fresh(er)
life

~~~

to write about what i’m feeling:
a little bit of pain
a lot of hunger
love for my dog and for my kip
(and begrudging love for our
hassle cat)
the cold of the ice pack
the water flowing from esophagus
to stomach
and on
the tap of my elevated leg
toe against air
to the tempo of the music
yawns
tiredness
worry about armpit stinkiness
this whisker poking out from my chin
and an extreme itchiness on my scalp, under my braid
my teeth clenched together
(relax, relax, relax)
the taste of this blueberry coffee
and a little bit more centered
than when i started this poem