morning poetry

March 22, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

capture
the way
poetry
made you feel;
say
the phrases
only you
could come up with
within your big [fat] brain
(we all thought that was hilarious
way back in grade three:
‘you have lots of fat in your head,
if someone calls you a fat-head
say “thanks, it’s true!”’
so thanks, Bill Nye,
for giving us both an insult
and rebuttal
in one educational episode)

but the words
and flows
don’t flow
the way they ought
they used
to
they should
too
be calling from my mind
climbing
clambering
to come out
like i once came out
no, wait,
twice
came out
first from the closet
then from the binary
and finally,
maybe someday,
i’ll just come out from expectations set upon me
through old traditions
and new
and if i only knew
how to come out from under my own
oppressive
thumb
how free could i be?

but
the feral cat is still meowling
somewhere
outside
and the music is making
both myself
and my spouse
subtlety sway side to side
and the coffee hasn’t entered my system
fully
quite yet
and i wish there was a way
to have a style
without
reusing the same tired
words
phrases
that i use
every day
in every poem
in every way they come to me
(but i suppose that might be
because
humans
and humanity
and only having a certain capacity
and phases actually being a thing
that happens
it’s just, sexuality/gender is not usually one of them
(but sometimes they are, that doesn’t make them
less legitimate
and real)
(and, as a cis human, isn’t your gender ever-phasing
ever-changing
too?
is what you thought as the most important part
of being a boy/man
the same as it was when you were 7?
15?
20?
40?
70?)

all of life is moments
phases
fading in and out

let’s just acknowledge
pay attention
and enjoy the ride.)

March 8, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

falling asleep just
thinking
about the words i’m about to write
and the things necessary to be done today
and the accomplishments i need to do before this week ends

there’s a van down the street
just a few doors down
rumbling
and popping
and waking itself up for the day

if this van with
[clearly]
many things in need of fine tuning inside it
can take its time
getting itself ready
for its tasks for the day
then i certainly can wake myself up
through poetry
[and coffee]

~~~

but
i’m not awake
yet

~~~

the fake fireplace glows
and blows
forced heated air
at us
while the tiny humidifier
blows vapored water
up
into the air
into the plant beside it
reflecting in the mirror behind it
and we drink our coffee
as the dog tries so hard to lick her legs
on the couch
(that has become 100% hers)
and the cat is…

…somewhere

(a standard morning at the kips’)

February 18, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

my brain is not awake yet,
nor is my body, really,
and the first sip of coffee is cheap
when
you know you could sleep for hours
even with the whole mug in your bloodstream,
and i keep getting distracted by tiny chores
which probably could/should be done,
but will it take away from these
morning page poetry streams of [semi-un]consciousness(?)
and
why can’t i think of myself like i did
at fifteen
seventeen
nineteen
when i fancied myself a mini-ee cummings
well on my way to
making language my b*tch(?)
even though now it’s probably more reality-based
to think that someone else has thought of
‘streams of [semi-un]consciousness’
before,
but boy,
did it give my ego a boost
to think i was thinking
entirely new thoughts
new concepts
new words
new communications
with new people
instead of how my brain is now
knowing that there are no new ideas
and instead of that spurring me on
to create without worry of plagiarism,
it instead spurns every concept i have
with the barrage of
‘you will never be creative enough
to think of anything
fully
new’
[
you
].

February 4, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

man
these morning poems aren’t doing shit for me
and i’ve felt adrift since 2022 day three
and i thought i’d found where my serotonin was lost
but it turns out it was just capitalism in a silly mustache
and i tried for a while to follow the dopamine
but i guess that dopamine i followed wasn’t meant for me
so i suppose i could just succumb to the unconscious dreams of sleep
but naps give me less time to accomplish the day
but is it even day if the sky is so grey
and the haze of the rain pounds the panes in sheets
and this playlist slaps but sometimes too much too deep
and i’ve probably lost the rhyme scheme somewhere in this mush of words
but i push and i pull and i try to open new doors
but they scare me so much
i’m paralyzed
to the floor

so i guess i’ll write
and write some more
until i can pull up my feet
and walk outside
once
more.

January 30, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

not knowing what to write
from day
to day
makes the flow of
‘i don’t know what to write
day to day’
both overdone
and
sparklingly new

like, if one looks at the
subject matter,
the themes between the lines,
it all kind of
muddles together,
but the ways i go about
expressing
these same subjects
can sometimes have
lives
within the poems themselves.
like the tempo of
‘it’s been days since i knew what to write’
is much slower than the pacing of
‘i’m itching for something to write about
and i feel on a precipice
about to find
it’
and the stuttering step of
‘who am i and what do i write’
clashes at its core with
‘i’m figuring out
that it’s ok
if i don’t know what to write
from day
to day
to day,
i’ll just write
and write
and see what happens
and what writings
may sling
from my head
to my fingertips
to this [formerly] blank document page
before my bespectacled eyes’

and that,
i find,
is the difference.

January 18, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

as i do more things
i feel like my mainstays
stay in the background
(so far back
that i forget if i did them
or not)

but they are habits/rituals/consistencies
for a reason
(and it is not the worst thing
in the world
to miss a day
or two)

so
stop
worrying
about it,
and stop
worrying
like there’ll be punishment
if some other thing takes a day
away

just because
physical exercise
has been added
and social classes
have continued
doesn’t mean
the morning poems will cease
or the language learning
will falter

there used to be
dozens
of things
in your day,
you enjoyed
filling
the day-lit hours…
don’t force it,
just
remember.

January 12, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

{unknown}
what i want to write
{unknown}
what i want with my life
{unknown}
what decision to make from
a life
rife
with greatness
and gloom,
elation
and existential dread…

speak what my mind
wanders to wonder
about day to day,
week to week,
(second to second,
why am i always second in my actions
but the only thing on my mind?)

{experiment
unknown
until
something makes sense}

January 8, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

too tired to write anything
of substance
too word-play-y
to not,
stuck in a limbo
of will i won’t i
(a new take on ‘will they won’t they’)
(get it, cuz i’m nonbinary and use they/them pronouns)

listening to music from the
‘Roaring 20’s’
so what are we?
‘The Coughing 20’s’?
‘The Dying 20’s’?
‘The Denying and Closing our Eyes and Covering our Ears and Screaming “[B]LA[B]LA[B]LA”
Over All the Signs
and Words of Learned Folks
and Science
20’s’?

i wish i had the compassion of
Amanda Gorman
the faith in people of
Anne Frank
the calmness and knowledge and belief
of so many
but i am caught between
i want to see the good
and
i can only see the bad
played
over
and
over
and
over
again
behind my eyelids
every time they close
(and most of the time while they’re open,
too)

i know i’m doing little
to halt/hold/stop the division
of one side
‘gainst the other,
but it’s hard to listen to folks
who’d never listen to me
were i to show them my true self,
who argue that folks like me
are a disease unto society
and deserve the worst of death.
if you can’t look at me like a human
then why should i listen to you
like your opinions have any say
in my living my own life
in my own honest way

(maybe this is why
it’s so important
to look inwards
for spirituality
as opposed to outwards)

but this poem
is kind of a mess,
but it is morning
so i can mull through
my thoughts of the day approaching
and get them all out of my fingertips
and onto this blank page/document/screen
for all to see
(or at least the six of you who usually read)
(hi, by the way)
and the poem doesn’t ~need~ to mean anything
it can just be,
a product of my brain,
my overthinking-
obsessive compulsive tendency-
pessimist in the body of an optimist-
-brain,
and leave it
for whomever may need it
(which might just be me
needing to get it out
in order to write
other things)