Poems

The Diet Industry The diet was called something that implied biology,A title that had the words metabolism and the apologyOf science dressed in a program that cost forty-nineA month for the app and the coaching and the wineOf guidance from a certified health coach, certifiedBy the company’s own certification, not dignifiedBy any external credential, but […]

The Debrief The debrief was scheduled for sixty minutes and ran two hours,The additional sixty were devoted to the powersOf hindsight restructuring the project into the narrativeOf a learning experience, the declarativeStatement of the debrief is: what went well and what didn’t,The what-didn’t list was longer and the hiddenCost of the two hours is the

The Details No One Sees I finished the back of the cabinet the sameAs the front, the part that nobody cameTo see or inspect or ever know was thereThe details no one sees, that’s the care The details no one sees, the craftsman knows themThe details no one sees, the craftsman shows themTo himself in

The Day It SplitThe clock face shivered then it simply died.I found the fracture where the wiring hides.I ate my breakfast on the older side,then stepped across the fault line for the ride. The coffee tasted like a copper cent—I knew exactly where the morning went.A binary of breathing and the end,a jagged wound no

The Dead Always Listen 2025 I walked where shadows keep their place,Through silent rows and empty space.The dead don’t judge, they never lie,They keep my secrets when I pass by.No cruel remarks, no cutting stares,Just endless quiet that doesn’t care. The dead always listen, they never betray,They hold your sins and look away.No whispers back,

The Crypto ExplanationHe explained crypto at Thanksgiving dinner to his uncle,The explanation started with the word trustless and the uncleSaid he didn’t understand why trustless was a feature. It’s the crypto explanation, it’s the forty-minute lecture,The crypto explanation and the spectreOf the whiteboard drawing that explains the blockchain,The uncle looked at the drawing and the

The Cult They gather when the moon erases shadows from the pineswearing ceremonial absurdity like wisdom passed through timechanting words they found on Reddit mixed with Latin they don’t knowsummoning entities that probably don’t exist but here we gothe high priest reads from paperback he bought at Barnes and Noblewhile the acolytes pretend this bullshit

The Counting Song The children on the playground sang a songA counting song, a clapping rhymeThat no teacher ever taught themAnd no parent recognized the words One for the hole beneath the swingTwo for the face inside the wellThree for the fingers under the bedFour for the bell that has no bell They sang it

The Counting It starts at the lock. Did I turn it twice.I go back and check and the lock is right,but the certainty dissolves before I reach the stairs,and I am back at the door running fingers over pairsof deadbolt teeth. Again. Again.The number has to land on ten. The counting does not stop because

The Crayon Prophecy I drew pictures when I was fourCrayon on construction paperThe refrigerator gallery of childhoodStick figures and sunshine and houses My mother saved them in a boxAnd I found that box at forty-oneSitting on the floor of her emptied houseGoing through them like archaeological strata The first dozen were normalFamily portraits, the dog,