I haven’t had the time or energy to finish the chapter of Infrared Isolation I’ve been working on, so I decided to collect the highlights of my daily haiku from last year. They’re more of a way to do some daily journaling than a proper attempt to employ the traditional poetry format, but the following poems are representative of the year I had, each one of them named after the day I wrote it. It’s kind of funny, but looking back through my collection of thoughts and feelings without context, I can’t remember what about a quarter of them are referencing. It’s nice to see that my pursuit of a simple, quick emotional expression has done just as good a job of managing my general anxiety as journaling did, but without all of the frequently frustrating and depressing details attached to it. Now I can look back at what I wrote and not worry about being reminded of specific troubles. Instead, I can focus on reviewing the emotional arcs of my life over the course of 2022.
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Recorded and Reposted: A Moment of Imperfection
The early dawn light,
Too strong and eager to ignore
Even under the cover of sleep
That calls to me like a languid lover
Not ready to release me
From my place by their side,
Breaks apart the restless peace
Of a night I hardly marked
As I tumble from my bed
In an admission of defeat
And slowly begin a sour morning
I had hoped would instead be sweet.
Recorded and Reposted: False Summer
It takes only a moment,
The space between whispers of wind
On a scorching September day
As the sun roasts pavement
Two feet from where shadow shelters
A wilting garden unaware
Of how little time it has left,
And the past mixes with the present.
Fingers tracing rows and lines,
Too large now to intertwine
With the holes left in the table
Made of rubber-coated steel,
But still looking for something to hold.
Recorded and Reposted: Hollowed Out
A simple shifting of feet
As movement changes from past my door
To through it and I,
Lost in some deep reverie,
Move from past to present
To catch a smile, warm and expectant,
But betrayed by a furrowed brow.
Hollow words meet hollow eyes,
Or at least they should read as hollow.
I can never tell if what I feel
Is written as plainly on my face
As it is written in my heart.
Recorded and Reposted: Empty Echoes
I cannot tell if I am haunted
Or trapped in an endless reverberation.
Words from the past beat upon my mind
Again and again and again and again
Until I cannot tell if they are newly repeated
Or just bouncing around my head
Like an echo that draws strength and volume
From the walls I’ve put in place
To keep words like these out.
Recorded and Reposted: Everlasting
The sullen thrum of a distant engine
Rings in the cascading hills
As they rise and fall on the horizon,
Fading into the white haze
Of a humid Wisconsin evening.
A fire burns to cinders in the foreground
And the stars silently conquer the curtain of night,
Pinpricks of sunlight poking through the shroud
That wraps a dying day,
As we cling to the hope
That we are as eternal as this moment.
Recorded and Reposted: Sleeping with the Window Open
I used to sleep with the window open.
The washed out yellow street light
Standing sentinel at the corner next to my driveway
Throws wild shadows on my shelves and walls
That are occasionally stretched into thin waving lines
As the bright pale blue light of the patrolling cop’s
Fluorescent headlights roll past my yard.
The silent murmur of the woods holds sway
Broken by a passing car on a distant highway,
The echoing sirens of a police car needed somewhere quick,
Or the mournful blare of a train lost somewhere in the hills.
Gone Solo
Every walk I take is a performance,
A concert for next to no one
With no instruments to speak of
Save for the rhythm of my feet
As one step follows another
To the solid beat of my gait,
Stride staying steady
As I cross paths and walkways,
Each one a measure
In the score of my day.
Recorded and Reposted: She Waits
She waits,
Like a mountain reaching for the sky,
Pushed up by unseen plates in an embrace
It will never know or feel,
She waits for a call
To hear a voice she knows
She may have already heard
For the last time.
She waits for comfort,
A desert cactus counting days
Since the last rain,
Pinning hope on each passing cloud
As the little water it has slowly drains.
She waits,
Breathing deeply, fighting anxiety
As each buzz of her phone,
Each ping on her computer
Resurrects hope she abandoned
When it pulled out her hair
And chewed her nails to the quick.
All I can do is stand by and watch
While she waits,
Useless words weigh down my tongue,
Empty gestures tie my arms,
And the knowledge I cannot fill
The void she feels bows my head.
She waits,
Knowing what might be lost
Cannot be replaced,
Like a dried up river
Leaves a furrow in the earth
That will linger on until
The entire world has changed.
So she waits,
Living the best she can
With one ear cocked for a sound
And one eye watching for a face,
And a smile to hide them both.
Recorded And Reposted: The Ellipses
Once upon a midday dreary, while I browsed, bored and bleary,
Over many a wikipedia page of unverified lore–
While I drowsed, my head swinging, suddenly my phone was ringing,
It was my favorite band singing, singing about a red door.
“Someone is calling,” I muttered, “ringing like some common bore–
Who calls someone anymore?”