human

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?]

August 24, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

write what you know
and then write it a little farther away
using metaphor
or simile
or narrative tactics
that make it seem
like it may not be about your life
at least not completely
but we all know
we all know
every writer carries hundreds
if not thousands
if not millions or billions or trillions of
selves
with them at all times

[or is that just every human
as we live and grow and change and morph
into each of our
many
many
many
final forms]

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

September 16, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i know the steps i’d take
and the things i’d say
to be mean

but i never say or do them
they remain inside my mouth/my throat/buried deep inside my mind

and though those actions i’ve never taken
and i know i never will,
how come having those thoughts alone makes me feel like
the worst person who has ever lived?

[i know i know the point is
we cannot control our immediate reactions/thoughts/feelings,
but what we can control —
and what shows the merit of a person —
is how we act on them, but i guess i just want to be so good of a human
that i never have human feelings
ever]

February 24, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

sometimes
i
forget that i
am human

and i push and i roll and i run and i expect
to go and go and go
and i get so
confused when i’m tired
or exhausted
or just feel off
and even more strange is when i
take care of basic human needs
and feel
a little bit
better

like

how am i, an inhuman cryptid
a god
an entity expected
to have zero needs
feel less cranky
when i get some food in me
or have a sip of coffee
or actually get eight hours of sleep

how dare my body
betray me by being
[the normal amount of] needy