Ilunga

If you should hurt me,
I’ll give you a smile and then
turn the other cheek.
If you trouble me again,
I’ll explain once more
and pray you learned your lesson.
Should you wrong me thrice,
I will break your shallow pride
and hound all your descendants.

Cualacino

Warm is the home
whose tables bear marks
from cold glasses.

Cold is the home
whose furniture lacks
any laugh lines.

Pochemuchka

Why do you never remark on
how much I flub and flounder
when you queue such querulous quips in moments
where only a few minutes of mindfulness
would ease the ache attached to one’s soul
which strains itself with such graspings that one
can barely breathe while deigning to deliver
what answers one is able to arrive upon.

Gigil

Oh, how that creaseless smile
strums my heartstrings
and tugs at my memory.
I reach out to touch that joy,
and revel in remembrance
of golden days gone by.

Forelsket

The sight of your smile
throws me into the heavens
to drift amid stars
whose radiance pales before
your bright prominence
which joyously draws my eyes
back to my beloved’s Earth.

Meraki

My gaze discerns the nature
of beauty lying within
a deceptive container.

My hands are shaking
yet still act with courage
to draw forth the hidden.

My throaty whispered words
breathe a meaningful truth
which animates newborn figures.

Waldeinsamkeit

I stand alone amid the green
and give voices to the failing trees.
Enthroned at the heart of the world,
my land ripples out beyond me.
I am lord of the leaves,
king of the canopy,
and yield my divinity to none.

L’esprit d’escalier (the spirit of the staircase)

The bitter words and screams and shouts
as they laid their grievances out
echoed off the very walls,
echoed down the empty halls.

Their clamor shook the wooden beams,
tempers whistling through the seams.
Their words and tempers were so crass,
they nearly cracked the windows’ glass.

They left no hurtful words unsaid
favoring their pride instead
as they tried to save face,
as they tried to leave that place.

Now the house stands, cold and bleak,
quiet but for every creak
of one who walks with teary eyes
for kindnesses unrealized.

Desperation

Only one way out
and that way is guarded by
ninja assasins,
lions and tigers and bears
my, oh motherfucking my…