In the cellar,

greenglass vessels lean

          against one another,

  their shoulders dustpadded,

       throats sealed tight.

Some wait decades,

stoppered against the tremor of hands

that might one day twist them open.

Others burst early,

foam rushing into the air

as if silence itself were unbearable.

Life, too, is a rack of bottles—

some ...

Read and leave comments (0)

in the waning light

The streetlight flickers,  
its circle thinning and swelling  
like a tired breath.  

A man drags a cart of bottles—  
they strike and scatter 
against each other,  
a bright clatter 
that almost arranges itself,  

as if you could lean in  
and hear the fragments  
choose their own song.

.

Read and leave comments (0)

The knife rests,
its silver edge carrying
a small sun across the crust.

You wanted the impossible—
to butter your toast and eat it too,
to keep the sheen intact
while tasting its warmth.

Isn’t that the old wish,
to hold the thing and spend it,
to keep the flame unbroken
while leaning into its light?

So we practice the art of vanish...

Read and leave comments (0)

I promised

to keep quiet  

but the words keep rising—  

           worthless 

                    weak

a chorus I never chose.  

So I write them down,  

then strike them through,  

as if crossing out  

could silence the echo

               worthless   

                       weak

.

Read and leave comments (2)

"_underscore_"

the line does not end

it waits — a low bar,

a held breath _ not yet

beneath the sentence

the underscore drags its quiet spine,

pulling the eye forward,

asking the voice to stumble.

not in capitals,

but in undersong —

the half‑said,

the word leaning into tomorrow.

today’s poems fracture,

splinter on enjambment;

but th...

Read and leave comments (2)

“Gather up the fragments,
that nothing be lost”—
so even crumbs
become a silo of abundance.

The night keeps count
of every restless turning,
each tear stoppered
in an unseen flask,
as if sorrow itself
were vintage,
kept for the day of pouring.

What we labour for,
though hidden,
is never in vain—
the soil remembers
every hand that tills it,
every seed pressed down
...

Read and leave comments (4)

between the measure and its lingering chord  

a pause leans into itself—  

not absence, but a held breath  

threading the room with quiet weight.  

chairs remember their occupants,  

dust rehearses its slow descent,  

and the air waits,  

as if something might begin again.  

… and the night forgets its name  

the silence gathers in the rafters,  

an a...

Read and leave comments (8)

The world dims—
light falters, seas fall silent,
love cools to ash,
and memory frays into dust.

Yet in the hiatus,
a sudden blush of petals—
sakura, trembling in the air,
a brief rebellion of beauty
against the certainty of decay.

For a heartbeat,
the streets are rivers of pink snow,
  strangers pause,
    eyes lifted,
as if eternity had cracked open.

But th...

Read and leave comments (4)

Stand in your own light—
even when the lamps go out.

Carry your silence like a lantern,
not as a burden,
but as a map.

The world will tell you
to wait for rescue,
to lean on borrowed fire.
Smile, and keep walking.

Every step you take
is a small rebellion.
Every breath you claim
is proof you are enough.

Do not beg the t...

Read and leave comments (1)

uncored

a poem collapses language into feeling.
connection isn’t absent-it’s shattered.
grief lives in the space where meaning fails.

Love, once central, now spirals-
fragmented, erotic, falling inward.
It doesn’t speak. It disintegrates.

 

.

Read and leave comments (2)

I fold the silence into paper,
address it to your absence,
and let the ink wander
where my voice could not.

Every word is a bridge half‑
built across distance,
collapsing into the river
before you ever arrive.




.

Read and leave comments (0)

“Rusted Edges, Burning Gears"
 

The gears don't just turn;

they gnash—teeth of industry,

blood-stained from forgotten hands.

Whispers don’t drift;

they crack like breaking glass,

but no one listens.

Faces sink into hollow screens,

cogs spinning louder than their voices.

You scratch at the edges,

but the rust doesn’t heal—

it spreads, then con...

Read and leave comments (0)

The sundial misses the hour.
So, what?
Clocks lie too.

Shadows hesitate,
but hesitation
is still movement.

The woman tracing her coffee rim
isn’t lost —
she’s sketching a coastline
that might yet exist.

And the kite,
slack in the sky,
still holds colour.

Even fading,
it insists on being seen.

Read and leave comments (2)

The plaza holds its breath.

A wind gathers,

but only enough to lift

the corners of yesterday’s paper.

I walk the edge —

stone to shadow,

shadow to stone —

smiling the smile

I made a couple of hours ago,

still warm in its pocket.

Visitors pose for a photograph

they will put off

for another hour,

or another day.

The fountain repeats itself,

Read and leave comments (0)

At the pier’s end,

a lantern swayed in the wind,

its light holding back

the dark by inches.

The tide had gone out hours ago,

leaving the seabed bare —

a map of ridges and hollows

drawn by hands no one remembers. 
Somewhere in the shallows,

a fish turned once,

as if to read the lantern’s flicker

like a message meant for it alone.

When the wind drop...

Read and leave comments (8)

I am not the benevolent Oz, great or otherwise —
no levers behind velvet, no emerald gates to dazzle the credulous —
only the stubborn machinery of my own making,
a few cogs greased with irony,

    a crank that squeaks in the key of

                 don’t take this too seriously, 
                         until the hum you mistake for a hymn 
                    becomes the ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Between Shelves

The air here is thick with the weight of almosts.
Books lean toward one another,
spines whispering the titles they wish they’d been given.

On the floor, a stack of drafts waits without complaint.
Some are missing their middles,
                            others their endings,
but all of them know the sound of a reader’s breath
when they’ve found the sentence wor...

Read and leave comments (0)

an unread poem
is unwritten poetry —
ink still dreaming in the vein,
a slow current beneath the skin
where no light has yet entered.

Pages breathe in the dark,
their margins uncreased
by any gaze,
their fibres holding the faint salt
of the tree’s first rain.

They live in the quiet tide
before the pen descends,
in the pause
between heartbeat and word,
where silence ...

Read and leave comments (0)

I’ve walked the length of my sentence
long after the gates unlatched,
counting the gravel underfoot
as if each stone might still accuse.

The years have grown moss over my name,
but transgression carved into memory’s vestibule
means there is always one chair turned away,
its back carved with the shape of my absence.

I’ve mended the fence,
stitched the ...

Read and leave comments (1)

In the breath between rafters,
a figure tends the slow orchard of pages,
turning each leaf as though coaxing
a season from sleep.

Their hands move in the grammar of dust,
palming the soft weight of forgotten syllables,
listening for the faint pulse
in the paper’s marrow.

Spines lean toward them
like elders at a fire,
offering fragments of weather,
the taste of ...

Read and leave comments (0)

"reader, read her"

at 2 AM, your screen dims then brightens— 
a single stanza pulses in the corner, 
waving like a lantern in the fog.

you swipe past: new playlists to follow, 
coupons to clip, endless feeds to scroll, 
poets you’ve liked, genres you’ve bookmarked.

but she—this blinking poem—leans closer,
her words unfurl, constellations expanding, 
beckoning you beyond your ...

Read and leave comments (4)

Poems for Money, and No Kicks for Free


Verse 1
The air smells of printer’s ink and cold coffee,
and the page stares back like a shopfront window
where the mannequins wear my metaphors,
price tags swinging from their wrists.

I used to think the words were a kind of weather —
blowing in from nowhere,
soaking me through for the sheer joy of it.
Now they arrive in invoices,
in neat...

Read and leave comments (3)

They name me Cleaver, though I am no hand,
but the patient edge of centuries,
a blade honed by the Southern swell,
by wind that tastes of iron and kelp.

I split the dolerite as kin are split —
not in malice, but in the slow necessity
of tide and time,
each fracture a journal of what was kept,
and what was carried away.

Below, the broth seethes —
foam thick as ghost‑milk,
stea...

Read and leave comments (6)

parched wind, salt‑tongued

from the far edge of the bay,

licks the last drift of

mauve jacarandas.

in the tin‑roof blush,

I hear the slow heartbeat

of soil— patient, cracked,

still keeping the memory of rain.

I walk the market’s narrow spine,

hands grazing mango skins,

the laughter of vendors lifting

like myna birds into a sky

just beginning to remembe...

Read and leave comments (5)

gate mist

in the hour

before names

footstep /

echo /

gone

puddle edge

holds the sky

too still

.

Read and leave comments (2)

Once I was starling voice at dawn, 
A flock of chimed echoes on my tongue,
Wheezing whistles on choralled lawn,
Each verse a mimic so sweetly sung.

Now I’m a lyrebird lost in the brush,
Framing my solos in shadowed boughs,
With heart unfolding in trembling rush,
A lonesome lilting with hidden vows.

With cheeslets and flummox in my beak,
I sift the flock’s bright feathers from my cor...

Read and leave comments (4)

"Moreton Mirror"

I nodded to a stranger
by the ferry pier,
and the stranger nodded back,
his eyes holding the flat shimmer
of the bay at low tide.

When his brow folded
it was like the mangroves bending
to the southerly;
I felt my own lines deepen.
Every small movement I made,
he echoed -
until I greeted him
as though we’d hauled crab pots together.
The lie tasted of salt.

Read and leave comments (0)

It was nearly midnight

when he slipped out of bed,

careful not to wake her.

The house exhaled its silence—

walls warm with sleep,

timber creaking

from the day’s last heat.

He padded to the kitchen

in bare feet, opened the cupboard

where li’l miss had hidden

a note for him the day before:

“I love you even when you forget milk.”

Read and leave comments (0)

i lean into the salt wind,

fingers tracing faint ridges

in damp sand.

“Where is my oyster?” i ask the horizon,

its answer swallowed by surf.

Kester Reed waits behind a driftwood break,

taps the shell-shards underfoot,

listens for that hollow note

that might be its name.

“What would it be, even?” he murmurs,

searching for shape in shadows.

O...

Read and leave comments (3)

"streambound" 

In the stream before thought, 

a silver thread spills from a cloud’s open palm. 

It beads the air with patient syllables, 

falling into the current where our minds already drift.

We wade in — ankles claimed by the cold, 

our boots drinking more than we do. 

Above, heaven’s ladle tips again, 

its rain stitching ripples into the moving mirror.

Read and leave comments (3)

"flight mode"

The higher they climbed, the quicker they blurred,  

Wrapped in code and status conferred.  

Juno sat still, mapped the ache,  

Her descent revealed what ascent forsake.  

A world within—a pulse, a thread—  

Flight not above, but through instead.

.

Read and leave comments (7)

"The Impossible Turn"

To hold what harms, to face without flinching, to shape warmth from wire.

To drop the name, to meet the eyes, to let edges soften.

To burn the mold, to kneel in ash, to rise listening.

Not conquest. Not perfection. Only forward motion.

.

Read and leave comments (6)

"Clockwork Reverie"

Tick tock — the echo mocks,

Time slips through paradox,

A ghost in velvet gloves, unseen,

Dancing deep where thoughts convene.

Murky depths and rhyming schemes,

Fractured poets chase their dreams,

Feathers inked with crimson lore,

Minutes bleeding evermore.

The spool unwinds, the tongue forgets,

What once was sung now drips regr...

Read and leave comments (0)

“untethered”

shelves of faces wheel past our names

we dissolve on blinking glass—

silent exits logged but never traced

by the circuits that once claimed us

our missteps vanish in tangled code,

no pardon queued;

the platform shrugs in empty bits,

leaving apologies half-typed and gone

perhaps erasure spills relief:

we unhook from worn-out errors,

...

Read and leave comments (0)

"her constellations" 

Her constellations are bite-sized galaxies of feeling,  

each cluster a starfield guiding fingertips  

across cool stone beneath the rush of night air.  

“Lantern in the fog” becomes Polaris—  

steady beacon anchoring a mind adrift  

amid distant buzzle of restless streets.  

Swipe, scroll, tap—  

three morning prayers in digital chord, ...

Read and leave comments (5)

Through the moor she whistles,

her presence a crystal shard,

slicing through the night air

scented with damp earth and pine.

Windows tremble, trees yield,

cries ripple across the barren plains.

Her voice, an echo of distant storms,

resonates from the ocean's depths,

a spectral cry that chills the bones.

She strides under the moon’s watchful eye,

her shadow...

Read and leave comments (1)

cleverly shunned
this clever lad
who once was
quite celebrated
applauded, even; 
that once and
clever tyke —

little did he know
one forward day
when he'd've all
up and grown
dependable lads 
are what's wanted

clever 'uns were

interesting enough
for a bit of a larf but
just a tad annoying;
when things gotta
be done — go figure
dependability and

cleve...

Read and leave comments (3)