1.

Life is like

Eyes wide open
Without the dark glasses

The common things
Without the will

I’m grappling with myself
Spilling blood in every word

The oppression
Language barriers

A forbidden spirit
Serving a life sentence

Inside four invisible walls

2.

Into the night, the sound of knuckles cracking
Steady sound of insect buzzing
I’m spread thinly through the silence

The poem slipped into my body like a burglar
Quietly
Scraping all that’s left of my indifference

Me muttering a word
Into the ear of each soul around me
The word that could never be repeated

Like a ginseng leaf is the poem

3.

They avoid me
A guy who talks too much

The poem losing suddenly half of its soul
The fumbling words made little sense

The shattered pieces of rocks inflicted
Upon a beaten mountainous range

Sleepwalking through the worn earth
I’m absent

In contributing something of value?
I begged myself to pity me


4.

I’m racing across a thread of fear
Strung across the chilling precipice of nothingness


(October 2021)