Category: Poetry

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #110

I dream of a New York apartment. Ceiling-to-floor windows, a torrent of light. I can’t see anything in all this optimism. Can’t make outthe shape of my own demise anymore. Can’t think of a better way to die. My body dressesitself and clockworks its way to work and back.20,000 days to go before a final […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #109

Jericho Brown once said every metaphor is a vehicle and a tenor,bringing you somewhere you did not know to go. Looking out the window down sun-dressed boulevards, the radio a soft purras the sand comes into view,I find myself out there in the light. Here, I imagine building a home by my hands, plank by […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #107

For I I want, and I want. I have learnt of your body, and the way she co-exists with mine. My tongue, my pesky mind. My over eager hand, my overthink. Even now I dream of home ownership, and then some. Maybe marriage?Maybe a distant vision, like a neighbour’s cat clawing at a window.Or that […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #106

So it goes, most of the time; the page turns and withers away. Those dreamsI’ve brushed past in my youth – where did they go? Into the drawer of a dusty office, into somebody’s waiting hand. I have not written, truly, in months. Where did I keep the key, where did I fall from, where […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #105

Can’t draw ink from an empty well.Can’t speak when I mean nothing.Don’t, then. Eyes rolling like heads,teeth clenched shut like iron girders,I live through life, distant. The futureis already here. She takes up too much space and now I don’t know how to write anymore. Nothingflows when you’ve dug deep enough.It’s time to get your […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #104

For I. Under the warm pillowy cover of night my hand stirs and reaches for yours. If we kept sleeping this way, limb to limb, our palms the interchange of our veins, our quiet thoughts; or the ones that scream at us every day, as we walk by doing nothing but existing; or thosethat bark […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #103

These thoughts whisk themselves in the bowl of my skull: a quiet righteousness, pacing restless in its room, its hands grabbing ontonothing; how my tongue is slowlycurling backwards onto itself; my voice falling into the pit of my throat. There is so much I can do little about that I wish I were God. I […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #102

In recent months I have beenabandoned by sadness. Moreaccurately, I have left her behind. No more the plucking of leavesfrom her overgrown crown, herlaurel of memory. She would not let me go – a root, tangled aroundan arm. My fingers planted in the bark. As a trade, I had to cut off my tongue, toss […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #100

The flowers on my balcony bloombut shed their petals in a week. The floor is now an aftermath. I sweep up the shredded whiteand place them into the soil.I live so comfortably well that I only have to kill once in a while.An ant, a spider. A wayward fly. Tonight I will sleep without guilt.Tomorrow, […]