human connection

January 17, 2026

/ HJ / Leave a comment

distract yourself with crimson glaze
with pink chiffon
with aesthetics and
art

[is art a distraction?
or is it a human need?]

[or is distraction itself
sometimes
a need?]

[i don’t know
i don’t know
i try to speak for
the entirety of the human race
but so few of them make any sense
to my own senses
that i’m simply trying to
live life
i’m simply trying to
continue to
want to live life
keep life
going
i’m simply trying to
try
sometimes
not even all the time
just
sometimes
sometimes sometimes
sometimes be my own human self
sometimes try to speak for
those in the human race that today’s humanity
seems to leave behind
sometimes try to
connect with others
in a way that
raises both parties up
from one level of existence
to another
greater
kinder
more enlightened
not to be better than others
but to carry everyone
with us — if i share enlightenment with three people
and each of them share with
three more
how long until we have all of humanity
together
and looking out for
each other?]

this rambling poem
is to say
as much as i feel like i
will never understand the
rest of the human race, i keep making art
for them for them for them
for the connection to get to know them
and have them know me

i can’t help it

that’s part of living as/with
humanity

October 7, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i hope i never lose my fascination
with other people

my deep-hearted desire
to understand others,
to hear about their lives and endeavors,
even when i don’t understand them —

listening to info-dumps
and rants about favorite hobbies
or points of interest
or simply stories of personal past histories

i adore being invited into strangers’ lives
[even when the stranger is one
i’ve shared a life with — their pasts are still
unknown to me and my life,

and being invited in, no matter how distant
feels so intimate]

i write this from the perspective
of trying to tell my own father
about my life
and what’s important to me
and seeing/hearing/feeling him
get antsy from
not caring
if he can’t
understand
or relate

and it breaks
my heart

i never want to make anyone else feel like this way

i hope everyone feels invited
to share their passions
with me

even
/
especially
if i don’t “get it”

[i adore learning new things,
and connection
above all]

October 4, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

half asleep
half awake
half in love with
half the people
here on half this earth
[though i love the whole planet
like i can’t get away from
my own desires, crying when i see
a single beam of sun
encroach over the horizon
of a view i’ve never seen in real life/
or simply the leaves of trees
i always see
but rarely really
look at
on my daily commute
using human infrastructure
and human pathways
to get to human-created endeavors
and human-built buildings
but right here
are magics
we could never
ever
ever begin to
develop on our own
without the pathways led to us
for us
from the
earth]

every
single thing
on this planet
is so fucking special
i cannot
cannot
get over it

[this could include
humans
and humanity…

does it?]

September 28, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i’ve ignored the outside
for too long
for not long enough

it’s still impacting me
it’s still making its way inside

what’s wrong with living a life
pretending
all of humanity
is actually
kind?

[can “fake it till you make it”
apply to expectations
of others?]

June 16, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

so interesting how
being in one’s 30’s feels
like settling into the person you
were before testing out all the other life things

i’m hungry for experiences
but i need only try something
once
and then i’m happy to go back
and just cuddle my kip and my cat and my dog
and organize books alphabetically
and wake up each morning
to write poetry

[i do wonder if this is the true 9-year-old me, but i also have to admit,
i still have that 9-year-old inside me, plus the 16-year-old who couldn’t
help but immediately drive to see friends the moment they got their
license, and the 22-year-old who just really wanted connection with
whomever would connect with me. i think it’s always been, not about
partying, but about connection. and i also think 9-year-old me
would agree.]

June 12, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

how can there be
so much horror in the world
alongside such beauty?

how can death happen one day
and the next, the miracle of a whole new life?
how can those celebrating a graduation/
a union/
pure friendship
be next door to
domestic violent terror
in one’s own home?

i haven’t figured out yet
how to be a happy person
while also knowing
so much that happens behind
tightly closed doors

in front of
tightly shut eyes

because, from my position here,
it feels counterintuitive —
i’m trapped in feeling like
one thing cannot be acknowledged
if the other isn’t also

but perhaps that’s my own black and white
fault
thinking

because there’s also
often
mundane day happening
alongside mundane day

and it’s the grey that
somehow
sometimes
keeps us going

November 15, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i feel my ability
to create
has been sucked dry
by a cabinet that has yet
to even take power

and i don’t want to let it

the universe deserves art

art is what makes life worth living

it doesn’t even have to be spectacular, world-paradigm-shifting/
perspective-altering/makes-you-see-new-colors-on-earth
great
art

it just needs to be art

because every human is creative
and every human deserves to look at something
and feel —
even if that feeling is
‘i want to do that’
for inspiration
or for competition
or for proving something —
art takes humanity,
splits it into a thousand pieces,
and connects every piece of us
back with each other

and even if we only ever see two or three pieces
of ourselves
connect with others in our lifetime,
those pieces continue on:
in your stories to the friends you make later,
in one audience member’s recollection,
in your peers’ inspiration
and on to making their own creations

we all continue to live through our art
because humanity
is connection
and connection
is art
and art
is humanity
and all reversed and back again
and we cannot survive
as a species
without our art, our connection, and our humanity

so please, as defeated as you feel, artists, keep art-ing
i will
i just need to stream these feels into my art
first
and then maybe this poem will reside in the heart of someone else
who will help someone else
continue on
and
on
and
on
it
goes

June 6, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

here we go
into the flow
of a habit
we’re tracking
and i’m tricking myself
[or at least it feels like it]
into feeling like i can actually
write more poetry
when i don’t have a creative bone in my body
[again, all perceptions
from the realm of the brain]
and i can’t even think of something i’d like to address
because everything feels overwhelming
to the point where i’m just beating myself up about
not doing anything
as i can feel the trauma of the whole situation
bearing down
and bearing through
what little defenses i had up
i had going
and i’m too hungry to think of good rhymes
and i’m too tired to conenct any of the lines
from here to there
from Palestine to liberation
but i know it’s here
somewhere
i know it’s there
and through it all we can liberate
the Congo and Sudan and Haiti
and everywhere else people look like me — in that i have two eyes
and a nose
and a mouth that smiles
and a heart that feels
and ears that love to hear stories
and the human condition is so much more
and so much less
than we make it out to be

the human condition is being human
here
on this planet

please
let’s not
lose it.

May 30, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

interesting when i write a poem
and can feel the subject matter/concept
has something there, but that the poem itself
is a rough rough rough first draft, like i know
i’ll have to re-write and maybe even re-re-write
but the subject
and a few lines
of this first try
are usable
and i don’t feel the overwhelming failure
that a ‘not good enough’ poem usually brings me,
because this is simply an opportunity
to write it out better/more accurate/in a way that everyone
might
identify with me and understand.