Month: March 2025

Van Gogh retired from the world
and painted flowers, not as they were
but as he saw them. In families,
in aching color, whole even when broken. 

The world saw something else in those
pictures, and in him. Funny people
paint those funny pictures.
Don’t look too close.

I’m afraid of being seen. 
Of becoming a portrait on someone’s wall
that I don’t recognize. Or worst of all, 
being shown a mirror. 

I plan and analyze and overthink
so that I will never be caught
being human.

And yet when I see van Gogh’s irises, 
I don’t see flowers, I see a brain –
raw, disordered, broken, different, 
beautiful, powerful.

Tree of death, you guide me
through sharp nostalgia
for a world that has been left
far behind in the east.

Tree of resurrection,
you assure me 
that an ending is also always
a beginning.

This fire may burn your bark,
but it will yield staves
hard and sharp.

The labyrinth is burning.
Something or someone set it ablaze.

We who live on its edge watch
with horror and delight.

We always wanted to know
what was hidden within and now we might.

The secret in the darkness
at the labyrinth’s center, if it even has one.

The secret known only to a few priests
and the king himself.

A monster, or monsters, treasure,
secret learning too powerful to share.

The labyrinth is burning. Underground
chambers collapse and crack the streets.

The secret of kings will be revealed
by fire as the palace falls

and the walls fall and the roofs fall
and the sea rages in 

and the sun disappears,
we will be granted knowledge

locked away by our ancestors who taught us
to turn away from the wrath of god.

What has filled the labyrinth?
What could power not dare reveal?

Nothing at all.

Nothing.

And as the city turns to sand
and fans of water in the mud,

and some of us play the monsters,
robbing treasure they couldn’t loot,

with that knowledge of the world
as it really is will come freedom,

Luó, freedom through destruction,
freedom from all constraint,

no halls for lack of walls,
no paths for lack of forests.

In that expanse we will be forced
to decide whether to become kinder,

to grow a lattice from entwined fingers,
to build a wall or build four,

whether to rebuild the maze,
what to write down, what to hide.

Most galaxies don’t have rings.
The Cat’s Eye Galaxy has two –
A bright inner ring forging stars
and an outer one cold and diffuse.

And nobody knows why,
nobody knows why,
the Sun is cool
and the Moon is high,
but nobody knows why.

The Nike of Samothrace has
impossible wings and a modern
brace to keep her hands raised.
She may have balanced on her island.

But nobody knows why,
nobody knows why,
cities may fall
and marble may fly,
but nobody knows why.

Caterpillars can be trained to fear
ammonia before they harden and
turn to soup. Despite becoming goo,
the butterfly will remember.

And nobody knows why,
nobody knows why,
a mushroom will run
and a rabbit can cry,
but nobody knows why.

I’m frightened of change.
Choice paralyzes. At the start.
But all of us get used to it, whatever
it is, and keep going, or start again.

And nobody knows why,
nobody knows why,
I painted a rock
and I baked you a pie,
but nobody knows why.