#vss365
A Theology of Broken Toys 🪽
Morning unbuttons itself drops its silver teeth into the porcelain sink
I keep finding buttons in the sugar bowl
small moons fallen off the coat of some god who left in a hurry
The sun shows up carrying a mushroom umbrella and a cup of saltwater for the flowers
Grapefruits mutter in their sleep the color of your voice
I name every silence after you
evermore—
the room after the furniture leaves the echo returning in someone else’s shadow
the sea’s last coin
evermore
orchids wear their roots on the outside now dragging the earth behind them a ruined dress
I wanted thunder but got a key with no door
Still the clocks are thick with bees
the saints
eat their own halos
the self steps out of its body then watches the body step back in
Maybe joy is the paper crown
the prayer with plastic lungs
pink unicorns grazing the spine of absence
Yet the sand forgives the morning
as it gathers its teeth
& smiles again
🪞
♥⊱a secret carried in ink
petals between the pages
Can you count the times
my hands have returned to this book
warming its pages with affection
filling its margins with longing
with tenderness that would not rest
Page after page
#perfumeforyourfingers#waitingbetweenthelines
There are places
where the sun never shines
Oh, wild forgotten valley
why do you hide from the light?
secrets linger in a ghostly veil
too dark
too sad
to reveal
hungry crows
eye limping lambs
doom hangs
#victory will dance
& covid will caw
when a weakling succumbs
#vss365
#vss365
Devotion ⋆
You trail constellations along my thigh
your fingers falling stars
mapping rivers of light
beneath my flesh
Each touch rewrites the night
Ursa Minor curls in the bend of my hip
The Pleiades scatter their faint blue salt
across the inside of my ribs
Your breath, warm solar wind
stirs the dust of ancient galaxies
sleeping in my bones
The room tilts. Or maybe I do
I am the field and the storm
as Andromeda coils her chains
around my spine and draws me under
until the universe presses itself
into my marrow
as if this touch
this velvet dark, this trembling hour
were how it chose to remember
its own beginning:
two forms learning the first alphabet
through the Braille of skin and sigh
Outside
the blackbirds hymn
Sunk below your handprints
I forget the dawn
⋆
Ink
bound victory clatter
Fingernails across blackboards
Trodded over pillar stones
Remnants tell the ancients #falling
We try to repeat these slippery groans
Greed is translucent not hidden
Lots deny as cost of living
#vss365#FoxProse
Art by:Wendy Sherwell
Alien Buddha Press, the US-based literary group, has just released Alien Buddha Zine # 87 (June 2026). It features three poems by me. I am sharing one of them with you — my warm thanks to Red.
Heaven rests
upon the backs
of Exmoor ponies
the vast ancient sky
and a small #primitive breed
a beautiful scene
one I could watch
from now until eternity
#vss365
Cy Twombly
“The Four Seasons: Summer”
1993
The thing I like about Twombly is that he moves me to dislike him, and question how I feel about art. He feels like he was just biting his thumb at the art world and tossing paint on canvas. But still his work gets me, as good art does.
Hibiscus
A wall awaits triples
Burdens not realized
#Primitive plucking cries
Days ago salty dreams
Striped shirted we rumble chests
In a tick weeded field
The only care,future
adore crumbled scents
that plodded dark moist soil
Sticky catch weed repurpose
#vss365#BraveWrite
"The mind is a thing deeply marked. I have bound myself to this damage."
This beauty by Laurie Sheck '[Did not forsee]', from a favourite collection CAPTIVITY 🤍
#smallpoemsunday@TomSnarsky#poetrycommunity
☆ a poem waiting for
you to read me again
Every time I find you
I forget another verse
your eyes unravel words
before I can keep them
and suddenly language feels
too small for everything your gaze
awakens in me
I find myself wishing I could
#beneath_your_gaze#I_become_a_book