New Poems

I wanted to protect you

I wanted to protect you from death
and so I lied
about the boy in the casket
who was anything but sleeping.
I wanted to protect you from violence
and so I bought a gun
to keep beneath my mattress.

To protect you from heartache
I said your Yorkie ran away
after I washed the dirt
from his grave down the drain.
To protect you from adulthood
I hid your gifts in the attic
until Christmas morning,
and took a million photos
of your joyful face
to keep you the same age.

I wanted to protect you from the elements,
the heat, the cold, the rain,
and so, come summer, our AC would run nonstop,
while the winter would fill our lungs with woodsmoke
and my hands with the callused work of cutting.

I wanted to protect you from apathy,
so I nurtured your every whim,
speaking with invisible friends,
naming the grasshoppers you caught in the lawn,
hanging your crude drawings of houses
under magnets on the fridge.

I wanted to protect you from disease,
and so you’re now afraid of needles,
despite my promises of ice cream.
I wanted to protect you from fear
so I said, “Of course, monsters aren’t real.”

I wanted you to be safe,
to know love like a blanket
fresh from the wash,
to know each living thing
as a tooth on a cog, amid the wheels
and gears of a grand machine we’ll never see.

But I was wrong
to try and protect you from this world,
to think you’d never know the itch
and swell of its sting,
something as simple as flesh
serving the purpose of food
for the microcosm beneath.

The last elegy

What can my words do?
Not bring men back to life.
Not make rose petals
fly from the mouths of barrels.
Not erase the myriad ripples
of time’s relentless consequence.

Love and beauty still exist
though it gets harder to see
through the haze of fear.
I’m privileged to suggest
that the world moves
regardless of man,
that self-preservation is trivial
in a cosmos of unknowns.

When you feel helpless
look to the stars
and remember how dark
the night is with eyes closed.
When you feel helpless
put your cheek to the ground
and breathe deep the absence
of murder and malice,
the earthly scents of soil and stone.

We all die alone.
What are we doing in the in between?
I want to believe
that people are good,
that these deaths matter
to everything that comes after.
I want to believe
that blood spilled in the streets
comes at a cost
never truly paid.

These lines drawn between us
disappear when viewed from space,
just as we disappear,
and only the lights in our makings
can be seen like distant suns
and the hope that light
is what we all eventually become.

The Nostalgia Awakens

Not a moon, a projection screen,
a bellows pumping light
back to darkened eyes,

a breathing apparatus for those
grown so tired of life
they’ve forgotten how to live.

My heart becomes a tiny fist
with a lightning bug trapped,
tickling the pink palm inside,

leaving its insect smell—
that pungent, licorice-like odor
as it squirms free and flies.

For a while I believe it,
that coincidence can propel adventure
and love can be defined,

that actions are anchors of intention
holding us, binding us together.
I want to believe it still,

but the cold luminance of artifice
waits like lingering frost on the pines,
hints of the winter to come,

memories of childhood
carried like precious fire,
one that must be lit again and again

to rekindle my mind
before the wick is burned gone
and I’ve forgotten why

my throat tastes of smoke
in this black tunnel of stone,
a darkness convincing my eyes they’re blind.

Call me Yi-Fen Chewbacca (Chewie for short)

This will be a poem in translation:
growl growl grumble howl⸺
a collection of raw, wet throat sounds
that others might recognize as music,
and some might know as a soliloquy
saying, My name must be remembered.

I carry a crossbow firing red lasers,
you’ll find my brown lips curled
into a snarl of contempt. I’ve been called
a walking carpet, a thing, a companion
for scoundrels. I made my way
from the jungle planet Kashyyyk
to this star-smeared cockpit,
keeping my wits away from my temper.
Sure, a few arms were pulled from their sockets,
but you do what’s necessary to win.

You might be tempted to bite your own hands,
you might want to yodel through a Tarzan swing.
You might think skin a luxury instead of fur,
except when hunting probe droids
across the harsh iced surface of Hoth.
But you haven’t lived inside this animal,
this forest-scented flesh, cloaked in rage like musk.
You haven’t chased down bounty hunters
with nothing to gain except a criminal’s trust.
You haven’t watched entire planets explode.

So, let me grumble, growl, snort mumble howl,
let me punch up coordinates
for speeds you’ll never reach,
the stars are still bleeding
in those constellations of mortal shapes,
just more targets
for the arrows of your dreams.
I’m hoping maybe some day you’ll learn,
a name isn’t given, it’s not something you take,
a name is something you earn.

No life lived to flash before his eyes,
every experience still new to his senses.

No fear of the dark held beneath the sea,
just a boy, a buoy caught in the wake

of much larger vessels,
every destination still new and unknown.

The red shirt picked out by his father,
worn like the promise of freedom,

wet, it turned the color of blood,
tiny hands curled to cradle an empty sky.

The hard-packed sand a shimmering bed
of waves that whisper and then recede,

a beach absent of his footprints.

~JS