HAZY HEAT

 have a little fun, care a little less. learn a thing or two. be nice to yourself. 

I am looking at a picture of you that makes me want to read a poem. You are a face framed in magnolia blossoms, staring reverently out at not-sure-what like it is a vast ocean. I google queer love poems  and then queer happiness poems  and then best love poems of all time.  You are none of these things, you are all of them. The door that safe-havens us, knocked by time or misfortune or legislation, will not budge from behind. Feet side-by-side, hands finger-laced, sturdy and malleable brick. This picture will hang on the walls of my soul; our hearts more ancient than written word. You are always the poem.

As the summer has started to unfold, I have not been very nice to myself. That 5:00 pm golden hour hits and I wonder why I feel anxious, hollow, and weak. Could it have anything to do with a day spent drinking four cups of coffee with zero water, forgetting to eat, and doom scrolling on the internet instead of going for a walk? Well, it actually has everything to do with those things. Are you surprised? Me neither. I am no more resilient than the plants in my house - I am an organic being. We are organic beings who need to be tended. I can churn up as many melodramatic reasons as I want about why my soul suffers on the sunniest days or why the world seems to be moving around me at a pace I could never match. But when all is said and done, if you're not giving yourself your basics, not much beauty will be able to grow.   Two days ago, while unable to sleep, I was struck with the urge to write this in my notes app: "Every day the realization becomes clearer that I can be anythin

Being a human is a unique and brutal experience. It is beautiful in that it is so singular; there is respectively nothing else like it, us, or you, in the universe. But planning a future feels more and more like walking into a fire. We have so much at stake, but we have somehow found a way to lay our odds in the hands of people who operate only on self-interest and control. I recently read that hope is a discipline, not a feeling, and I believe that. I am also not a discipled person, hence my attempt at last month's NaPoWriMo (some may call it a failure, but I call it a reminder that I love writing and hate structured activities with deadlines). I wish I was the type of person who sought instead of retreated when the world seems as though it's burning. There are a lot of people like that in my community, and the hope they provide people truly makes the world a better place. Hope has never been my strong suit, and I feel too small to save the world. Sometimes all I can muster is

hot skin, pressure peaks above the surface, silver needles in my chest as familiar as a smell — why do you visit if you do not care? I sit on the counter, look down from the mountain, search for a relief that might save me 

  Grass grows off the side of her head at a gentle slant. Bright foliage glitters in our sunlight. Her side of the mountain always receives the best light.  Two faces balance gravity with  perfect  synchronicity, she and I.   We are planets, created from land formed beneath our bodies, beneath sediment and ancient history. We  rotate together through indigo hours. And to kiss you feels like breathing. I taste each touch, photosynthesis into you, I open at the first sign of warmth and you say there is nothing more beautiful.  

early fall breeze made a gentle entrance through lace curtains /  the sun shines differently once the summer ends  / It lifts its haze, cold and loving / and says  do not forget that all of this will die / it is time to remember to feel  / I turn to find you / my angel  on earth/ and I wonder what you must dream about /  have the leaves changed where you are yet?  / my heart swells as our legs intertwine / like light peering through the window / no season can compare to a warmth like yours 

  Sitting at the public pool, alive I watch humanity do exactly  what it's meant to. Movements  signaling the world's pulse, still in-tact. A man fixes the knot  at the nape of his wife's neck A few extra minutes spent on a swimsuit top just to prove he loves her the most, without asking. A teenage couple holds hands for what is clearly the  first time. Children run, play,  learn the art of occupying space. They charge from the water to their parents' arms, reckless & joyful abandon, undeterred by those passing in the crossfire. These children do not know their actions could be burdensome & they do not know such a feeling exists of no longer deserving love. I  think about myself, so young and deeply feel I always knew. 

This one fine life, this miraculous loveliness, this way  you have of conjuring spring in me even when it's cold. This deep devotion, highest of standards, this promise to remember you are a choice forged from gold. This  small and quiet poem, this not-different-but-better,  this slivered moon of proof that my life begins and ends with you. 

when this world is cruel, you are always soft — my head rests on a heartbeat swelling through  your breastbone — together we fuse and nothing can touch us — not pain or time — we are sovereign and quiet — we are love surrounded 

she looks around the room  to find a chosen family living in the mouth of what she long ago deemed never enough —  and it becomes clear for one single moment that she has been there  entirely loved  even when she herself could not taste it 

  I get high and I fall / right back  in love / with  every song, every one  /  I've ever had on my mind  / and it’s  okay to mourn what's gone / because  it probably won't come back / it  always make me sad /  to watch strangers walk by 

we are avoiding today's poem by finishing a playlist :~) songs that have been my companions in staying present as I've moved through this spring. the name really says it all:  something feels different  and I am ready for it. sending love to all. 

I am moved by the light.  By dusty pinks and purples that swell inside the sky and  spill out golden. stained from  years of  smoke. By streetlights cutting through balmy  indigo summers. Sometimes it’s enough  to just want your life to be the art. There is beauty in existing the only ways  we know how. 

T hey ask, what's the craziest thing you’ve ever done? and wait for palatable answers. Hoping to hear stories that are common and pleasant and maybe a little bit dirty. I dig up stories that I know can be replanted. Not untrue, but not the truth. Each time I build a vision of myself. There is safety in choosing mirrors over words. Here is the goddamn truth: The craziest thing I’ve ever done is refuse my own reflection. Years I’d been given to pursue the light spent making home after home in shade. Each structure takes time. They are sturdy but cold, and after each construction I leave just as I’m told. What a crazy thing to do when it is I who is the sun.

This spring does not feel like the others. Sky comes through the window light blue and each  year it feels  how I assume a prayer would   though I do not take the time to learn.  But now, our days are growing longer  and thicker. They are aching.  This feeling is wildgrass;  dry September death.  Forming a line around the casket  we are gentle captives  standing six feet apart as above, as so below.  Discomfort like this is  an unseasonable affair.  We mourn what it no longer  means to be alone. But together we will witness this season’s departure.  Color will leak through cracks of newborn eggshells.  Symphonies  of spit and sweat will  play as our skin  touches in the sunshine.  And finally, the fences  will be covered all the flowers will vine  in ways we thought  would  never return. 

Mid-month check-in, friends. It's feels serendipitous that NaPoWriMo lands in April, a month that I expect to be emotionally charged regardless of whatever else many come up. And man, have things come up. Something has been in the air this month, something I'll definitely write about once I feel like it's run it's course... and that time hasn't come yet. For now, I am doing my best to pay attention and write my little poems. This challenge has been so personally liberating and to have been told my writing, both the act of it and the work itself, has inspired other insanely talented people I know -- that's probably the best thing thus far. Thank you all for reading, truly and sincerely.  Today's poem is courtesy of the NaPoWriMo prompt: Write about something you have no interest in. Sending love to all.

A funeral for a flower picked gently off the ground, fallen bellow fellow congregants of pink blossomed branches who all have the privilege of growing old -- to find their natural end in a way that it no longer can I stand with selfishness and wonder under a bright blue sky and ask  What is inside, what is underneath? Something tells me you have answers to the questions I've been trying to ask So in an act of holy depravity  I rip it open, a pyre made of petals  soft white and sweet scent -- an unraveling of splanchnic spring time glory and I find my greatest fear turned real  Because what is worse than mourning what never had the chance to become  is seeing that it had been there all along and saying goodbye to a season cut short

I drank my coffee with whipped cream. Opened all the windows, sunflower seeds in the birdfeeder for the first time in months. I put that Radiohead vinyl on and sang out loud Lit a joint up, showed my shoulders.  A female cardinal arrived first and I wanted to shake her by her bird-shoulders and say,  your feathers are muted grey and so are mine. Sisters-in-glow, we are the same. Please share this coffee, this warmth, this sound, with me. 

This room smells like my childhood  Artificial ocean, salty skies  People meet because their music makes them  I can't tell what's the past and what's not  Soak in the present  like bad news you can't shake Don't worry honey  I'm here for you only  It feels like everything has opened up  I sit alone but I'm not lonesome  A fly on the wall with a girl to call home  Drunk for a week straight  Love, whiskey, trying not to fuck it up  It feels like I'm waking up for the first time  Have you ever heard yourself sing?  Destined to keep orbiting  Safe landing never comes  I don't want to give you a reason to not play that song  because forever is a concept drawn  by fear and brightness in galactic eyes  And if anything can happen, then maybe  we’ll emerge like dusk  And watch it all go down together

I have been searching for a desperate state of honesty. The kind that will allow me to chisel away at the rubble laid deep in my chest. A cold cement that keeps me quiet, contained, afraid. Paralysis is laid at the hands of fear disguised as protection. I fantasize about the weight being lifted and destroyed in a frenzy. In my fantasies, these moments will attack my home made heartache, swing after brutal swing with a hammer I build myself. Moment by moment I will live like this because this feeling inside has been home for too long.  Do you see tears running down my face? I am so often drowning that  I can hardly feel them myself.  But when the battle is over, the rocks inside me will disintegrate into fine powder and exit peacefully out my ears holes and eye sockets.  The dust will settle easy. You will hear my healing. Like remnants of an abandoned construction site, left untouched longer than I'm proud to admit but with a light that still comes on when the sun goes down.  I thi

Shards of glass. Fractured crystal. The light flakes gently and it reminds me of your eyes. But then, so does  the ocean. A soft jagged line of foam prolongs the kiss between land and water, between gold and blue. I wade in these waters and reach. Sea glass sand reflects the nape of your neck as we sink deeper into place. I stand knee-deep and humbled by the light in you. 

for the times you miss the deadline, admit the wrong, accidentally click the button — when you are not yourself, when you are someone you’re ashamed of — when the worst of you is also the most true — for the moments of weakness, of the turn-your-head-in-spite, for the young inside of you who would not be proud — forgive yourself, again and again. 

Today's poem is in response to the NaPoWriMo prompt of the day - write about your alter ego.

In the back of a Midwest strip mall brewery he sits with folded hands, a gentle grin on his face The same one she last saw him with, inside a  rent-by-the-hour fake wood casket It is April, after all, and he's making a visit in commemoration.  He listens to his daughter play her first open mic even though she is almost thirty years old and even though she cannot see him Guitar was always her mother's instrument but tonight he watches her forge her own path the spirit of the girl she used to be, made of the spirits of the people who made her.  He fixes his hat and finishes his beer  (because if the afterlife is anything like real life not one ounce of the good stuff will go unenjoyed) before walking out the door into late spring sunset  she feels the air rush through the room and feels love of a ghost  as natural as the the turning of the seasons 

NaPoWriMo prompt of the day - write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first words of each line, à la an acrostic poem. Inspired by the recent dehumanizing legislative moves against reproductive rights in the United States. Sending love to all.

I am connected to the woman That phantomed housewife who stood on her tip-toes almost 100 years ago  to stare out the window I stand in front of now for a glimpse of the birds. Have the robins always come here? Is it in their nature to know when someone longs to fly away?  She shares a special longing, manufactured in the heart of looking up and out  from a place that feels like drowning. 

This poem comes from today's prompt from NaPoWriMo.net, to write a poem in the form of a poetry prompt. This is my first time writing off a prompt in... I don't know how long? But despite the initial struggle, it felt good to exercise the writing muscle (and the "finishing things" muscle). If you are inspired to create your own prompts, or to write in response to mine, please feel free to write me at  hazyheatblog@gmail.com and share. Thank you for reading, as always. 

A short one after a long day of anxiety. Hope everyone's doing well out there, sending love. Early morning, 5 a.m. I’m wide awake — This anvil on my chest  has not shed its weight yet The birds won’t stay quiet  and the worst thing about it Is that the comfort and pain — they’re exactly the same 

Watery winter tears fell on the second of April, one day short of a cruel joke.  We drove to the country stood beside rust-colored fields below an electric gray sky  on the backroad to your parents’ old house and I felt myself sink a little deeper  into your the soil of your heart.  We will never see    each other’s childhood homes , I said.  Did that make me feel strange? You wanted to know.   No, you are my spring snow storm; our love, the equinox that brought me above ground  for the season. The cold front will end, we will remain. 

 Hello and welcome to the first day of my first attempt at NaPoWriMo (or, National Poetry Writing Month) here on Hazy Heat. Because I am a newbie and bad at reading directions, I didn't realize each day you can, if you want, write off a prompt. There are tons of interesting ones out there and I think using prompts is a really fantastic writing discipline. That being said, today is not a prompt day, and this is just about some shit going on in my head. I hope you enjoy, thank you for being here, sending love to all. 

I'm working through the 6+ months of backlogged film that's been living in my desk drawer. When I let film sit this long, once the roll is developed it's like I am looking in on a world that existed so fleetingly that I am far past being able to ever process or understand it wholly. So much has happened since these were taken, around early September of 2021, but it also feels like they were taken yesterday. I do not check in on myself; I do not give myself space to feel more than I have to. I haven't journaled routinely in almost a year. But how do these feelings pass the time while I ignore them? They become stones in my soul. A fog and a further distance from myself. Sometimes I look at myself and only see wasted moments and blurry years. But there are more photos to share and poems to write and feelings to feel. So, once again and one million times over, I decide to begin. 

Red songbird, with your cardinal screams / and carnal knowledge / with me, of me / on this first day of spring. You scream for your life above my head - the closer I listen, I hear a song you once wrote about wishing to be loved.  You perch silhouetted on telephone lines against a cloudless blue sky, red body like a wound.  [something bright, then holes?]* Fly to a new branch, move closer, sit right above my head. If I say  your name on Earth out loud,  will you hear it for what it is? Were you always on the inside / screaming / singing / for release? You are so bright, red songbird, but I look down for just a moment and I lose you between shadows of branches. I lose you over again, each time - maybe in each life. I become lost in my mind and in a moment, you are gone again as quickly as the seasons change /  as quickly as a frightened bird flies.