Another pen is empty
Milked for all its ideas
By thrust and parry
In a dance-off with entropy
It gave all it had
And all it had is in my sketchbook
Dried between pages
Covered in the entrails
Of pens before it
-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Dead Emperor“)
It seems like she needs some space
Rapid movements on stiff shoulders
Signal frustration or maybe anger
I understand
Sometimes I need space too
So I hang back and give her room
A peace offering
A gift of understanding
But my misophony efforts land hard
She is confused by my avoidance
Her splendid morning shadowed
Because I seem distant
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone“)
Many a great and inspiring bosses have I had
Idiosyncratic and wonderful and overworked
They have coached and advised and nudged
Fatigue and worry clinging to their ankles
While I am carried on their bending backs
Now I sit in a similar uncertain seat
Dealing in a currency of validation
Seeking wins and losses and stayings and goings
Keeping all our legs pumping in a direction
Any direction as long as it’s forward
-T. Weeks
(A response to “You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me“)
In the glass shade
Where questions lie still
After the long march
In that spot I’ll plant it
The last of all question marks
Set over it’s fallen comrades
To ponder forever their passing
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Twilight”)
In the shadow of tomorrow
Lurks a thing unknown
Gray periphery betray energy in the darkness
And obscure its form
Until the pop of a jack-in-the-box sunrise
Tears the curtain aside
And I see it clearly
For a millisecond
Even as it shrivels into the distance
In perfect hindsight and shifting definition
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Orange Buds by Mail from Florida“)
In the center of the room
In the center of our attention
A woman leaps
Out of and into the past
A dance a song a photograph
Channeling her mother
Imitating her father
Recalling friends and teachers
And after 80 tantric minutes
She is here and so are we
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Twenty Years”)
Seems like such a silly thing
Ink sown just below the skin
Pins dropped on a fading map
Tumbleweed waypoints marked
Totems of dreams, jokes, inspirations
Mixed and matched
To tell one tale a thousand ways
-T. Weeks
(A response to “A Prairie Sunset”)
On a gym floor back against a wall
Earbuds injecting Nirvana on drip
Score of my youth
Lubricating rusty hungers
Towing me across time
Where was I when I heard it first
Was I angry like Kurt
When I rode summer nights
Windows down and music up
And now as I ride Sagan’s blue dot
Is there catharsis in a riff
Or just the familiar scent of my teen spirit
Floating through the room
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Stronger Lessons”)
Each morning we break from sleep
Interrupt unbroken unconsciousness
Where we are peace and terror and invincible
We wake to see in daily stop-motion
Snapshots of chaos and sunlight
Stitched together by the soundtrack
Of what it feels like to be here now
-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Dying Veteran“)
Sitting around the Bluetooth speaker
Listening as Harry miscalculates
Each brain in this room
And lost in the halls of Hogwarts
Safe in our messy kitchen
And piqued with fear
We boarded this ship together
Inter dimensional nomads
Claiming wilder dimensions for our own
-T. Weeks
(A response to “While Not the Past Forgetting”)
Life Immense 