Poetry

the painting of a thought.

  • "Every word has consequences. Every silence, too."

    SARTRE

There is power in pictures

Telling us stories

no words can convey

Revealing atrocities

the world hid away

The pain in their eyes

The death in the air

The blanketed numbness:

an innocent’s stare

They lay on the streets

Exposed and abused

Their bodies are broken

taken, then used

Pawns in this fury,

Chess pieces at play

Innocents consumed

engulfed within flames

What right then have we

To sit drinking our tea,

Settling in

to our safe-space routines?

When out in the real life,

The dirt is still riddled

with fathers and sons

mothers and littles.

Bodies are left.

Children are shot.

All for whose profit?

Was it pleasure or not?

Who knows what to do?

“Not I,” we all said

here we still sit and

look past the dead

Is it pleasure or profit?

Perhaps all just the same,

The grossest of outcomes

in our world’s selfish game.

Look past the dead

  • She holds me

    Softly, kindly,

    Mossy warmth embraces my head

    Veiny paths capture my feet

    I feel her rhythms breathing

    Her waves, they’re breaking

    Ebb and flow,

    Her moon is waning.

    Listen.

    Her quiet asks:

    Are you awake?

  • Summer will come again, dear one

    keep your love and light

    though we reside in darkness,

    keep tender in the night

    you are not alone, my love

    your friends are all around

    rest within their wholesome arms until the light is found

  • Numbness - settling around you

    memoried wisps

    floating past us

    a vague sadness

    it is what it is: Numbness

    Once we accept

    sit in this nothing

    maybe we’ll see

    when moments are shining

    though this moment may be

    numbness

    Be present in pain - as present in joy

    we live what we live,

    the course of life’s story.

    Though this moment may be

    numbness

    Hold tender your heart,

    when emptiness sits

    Time is a healer

    She cares as she ticks

    Though this moment may be

    numbness

    Pleasure, pride, pain:

    take it all in

    For we never will have each moment again

  • My soul is heavy—burdened

    With thoughts of loss and love

    It weighs upon my brittle bones

    Like those shrouds we’ve all heard of

    This world feels much too large for me

    My smallness strikes me now

    A painful wind blows through my heart

    I shudder at the sound

    “The children, they are freezing.”

    This one thought in my mind.

    How could we just keep being

    When so many people died?

    The warmth that we can give now

    Our love, our care, our mind

    These are people of our world

    Why do you pass them by?

    I feel the anger of the country

    “It didn’t have to be this way”

    But earthquakes are just politics

    That the big men like to play

    Geçmis olsun Türkiye

    Kendine iyi bak

    Suriye, Türkiye, güçlü kal

    Çok şey var—yapacak

  • I have been preparing the garden lately.

    Digging the manure from its rotten grave and carting it across the fields to dump upon old soil.

    A taxing job, filthy

    the garden has a new face

    of muck, mire, and decay.

    Soon I will tear through the dirt, intermixing the shit with the soil

    destroying what has been a building itself there for months.

    somehow, decay and destruction is the key to its growth.

    If I don’t destroy it now, it won’t develop later.

    The vegetables won’t sprout, the flowers won’t bloom, and I will have nothing to eat.

    So I destroy and defame what always has been

    creating what will be, remove what's within

    knowing this act will propel me towards sustenance: A cycle of struggle that produces sufficiency.

  • He with the bright eyes

    When he smiles they shine

    Who knew that brown could be so bright

    holding meaning

    your soft wells

    they capture me

    make my soul sell

    all of its past pretenses

    to simply watch

    while my heart is captured

    by all of your realness

    I long to see what those lights see of the world

    when they measure the perimeters

    of truth

    how they’ve grown past their youth

    to become all that you

    seem to be

    in a riddled world of falsity

    you oddly resemble

    reality

  • Drawn together.

    Our struggles bind us

    shoulders to shoulders

    Stuck in the shattering

    world's unstacking

    pain spread across the back

    of us all

    We are Atlas:

    link arms

    So no more will fall

    Unbuilding of the walls

    that are broken by our breaking

    Safety lies beyond quaking

    and does not beckon to our calls

    link arms

    So no more will fall

  • We claim ourselves

    Lay siege to the lands of our souls and cultivate them

    Burning the demands of those who have trespassed our soil

    It’s violence to become,

    Fury to unfetter.

    Bold brutality,

    We fight as stormy weather

    to become

    ourselves.

    none

    can dwell,

    upon us.

    Upon these lands

    We grow

    With our hands

    We sow

    Seeds of life

    amidst the charcoal of their burning

    uprooting their insidious sojourning

    Becoming

    a storm

    a viking crown is worn

    destroying those who never learned to sail

White Noise

Everything fades into gray

Simplicity bound by emptiness

Encompassed with a drumming white noise of

sadness

Am I unfeeling?

Too buried to express

I am waves crashing

tossed, unrest

Overwhelmed

I am looking for myself

here

yet seeing nothing

blindly running

Only time will tell my story

waiting for you

seeking you out

Yet you, indelibly missing,

somehow

Can you feel me?

Do you know me?

my soliloquy to the mirror

why must I drown

in moonlit mourning

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”

Buddha

She is Still Here

I have a deep well within myself
that is full of care for others.
It was my role to keep the warmth
for father, mother, brother.

Since I was way too young,
I could feel their hopes, their fears, their hurts.
At some point, I began to comfort them
with actions and with words.

But that little girl had no idea,
that she could have warmth too.
And slowly over time,
She forgot she was allowed to.

She was a glowing, burning fire
Enlaced with warmth and care
How strange that so much love,
Kept forgetting she was there.

She’s older now and stronger,
Wiser, one might hope.
But still she forgets often
that she is worthy of that glow.

Sometimes I need a moment
To remind me that I’m there
She who is so used to freezing,
Please know your welcome here.

Holding Space

It is the light that binds us.

Wound together,

wounded together

We build ourselves

up

We hold space

for the other,

empathize with

each other.

Collectively

in empathy

we light

fires of change

warming our hands with well-being

through the darkness

light bringing

being

together

Our darkness

transforms

to light

we hold space for ourselves

in the night

Previous
Previous

Music

Next
Next

Projects