The Unknown Poet

To the Moon, in Absence I passed you by though your light was spilling like wine over the roofs and the trees stood still as if listening for your step I might have spoken might have told you how the day’s weight bent my neck so I could not lift it toward you how the city’s lamps mimicked your sheen and tricked my eye away yet you remained a patient witness in the vault above while my shadow lengthened behind me like guilt if you find me again take me as the tide takes a leaf it never meant to lose carry me out until the shore is only a rumor

To the Moon, in Absence

#poetry

YouTube video by Maxence Cyrin - Topic Larmes glacées

the dark passes through me
like blood through glass
each pulse quieter
than the one before

I carry the silence
as if it were language
& almost remember
what it said

maybe it told me
where I left myself
in the wreckage of yesterday
maybe it whispered
that forgiveness
is forgetting
in a softer voice

Wonderful!

coffee bitter,
paper late,
sunday’s mouth wide open-
I step through,
find nothing
but a train
heading nowhere

#poetry

street’s quiet,
like a mouth closed after the lie.
I light one match,
burn it for nothing,
watch smoke fold
into the morning.

#poetry

Already Closing

the river passes
without speaking
its reflection is older
than the trees

I follow
but nothing ahead
is mine to reach

in the grass
insects rehearse
in a language
no ear remembers

I think of time
as a door
opening into another door
already closing

#poetry

neon Friday
steps into the street
traffic lights flicker
like cheap saints
selling grace
to the weary

#poetry

Quiet Orbits yesterday I went out after the last light left the ridge the field a low sea of grass moving above it the dark kept its courses unspoken and I felt the ancient pull that does not begin or end I gave it no names the stars needed none they were already on their way from before our voices began I walked down toward the river by the fence line posts leaning like forgotten questions wire gone back to brown in the weather crickets threaded the edges of night the sound a narrow path I could follow until water lifted out of the dark carrying itself as it always has I thought of your breath beside me in other years how as children we learned to look up together not for answers but for that larger patience the bodies above us turning where we could not see each orbit a lesson in continuing without witness without reply the river gave me my face and let it go the stones kept their shapes in the current I touched one and felt time simply being itself no promise no warning only the weight that holds what is here until it is time to move in the field again I paused a thin wind moved the tall heads of grass and something in me leaned with them not surrender not refusal only the small agreement of moment with moment the sky widening by degrees toward morning planets somewhere beyond sight drawing their wide ellipses through the dark so slowly the word slow has no measure I said your name in the quiet and listened not to be answered only to hear how it lives now part voice part distance the way light lives after the star has gone on arriving here as a softness on the ground that shows itself only when we stop to look when I turned back the path closed behind my feet the grass stood up in its own time the river kept speaking to the stones and overhead the silent planets continued not keeping us and not letting us go holding instead the room in which we walk until we learn to walk as they do carried and carrying present in the unbroken turning of the dark into day

For @alanparrywriter.co.uk and
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
I wrote this recently and adapted it for this #PoemsAbout #SilentPlanets. Remembering someone who is no longer here.

#poetry #writing #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity

Quiet Orbits

The Long Silence above the ridge beyond the clouds they pass unseen their weight bending the distances I cannot measure sometimes I think your voice is among them now circling in silence never falling away but never returning I look up into the dark and though I see nothing I feel the pull of what is nameless the slow turning of orbits that will not break the long silence that waits for us all -Gerhard Oevermann 9/19/25

The Long Silence
#poetry

Beatnik Riff snapchat halo around a kid’s grin, saint of disappearing messages, relics dissolve before you can believe in them. at the bar they pour IPA sacraments, heads bow to glowing screens- a thousand poets hiding behind emoji masks. I write a manifesto on a napkin, then use it to soak up spilled gin. that’s how revolutions end: not with a bang, but with a bartender wiping down the counter.

Beatnik Riff
#poetry

subway koan
train roars like a steel throat clearing
we sit shoulder-to-shoulder strangers
earbuds sync to different eternities
graffiti saints drip halos over rust
and the question is always the same:
when the doors open
who are you?

#poetry

Manifesto with Crosswalk I want a country where the crosswalk listens where the red hand becomes a palm reading yes where rent has knees that bend when you are tired where news breaks gently then stays to clean up where we tax the shadow that follows greed and subsidize afternoons by the river where tomorrow is not a password that keeps failing and a poem can be valid ID at the door

Manifesto with Crosswalk
#poetry

Instructions for Breathing on the 7:10 Bus inhale the stale perfume of yesterday’s storms exhale the meeting in your teeth inhale the child’s cereal sunrise on their cheeks exhale the headline that tightens the ribs inhale the driver’s patience at a broken light exhale the loop that says you are alone inhale the old man humming take five under his breath exhale until the glass stops judging you then keep going until the city fits in your pocket like a warm stone

Instructions for Breathing on the 7:10 Bus
#poetry

Wake to sirens weaving through dreams
coffee thick as midnight asphalt
eyes bruised but burning
outside, taxis stitch the dawn-
every light a dare
I step out
let the city’s mouth
swallow me whole-
heartbeat syncs
with subway thunder
I am awake
and the world is moving

#poetry

I walked out into the morning the light still uncertain among the branches shadows lying across the ground as though they were waiting for someone to notice I followed the path where the leaves had fallen long before I came their silence spoke to me not in words but in the way they rested without asking to be remembered & I thought of the voices that once filled this air the laughter that rose in the evenings the questions that never found answers all carried away like water slipping through its own reflection I kept walking and the river appeared moving without hesitation its surface breaking into a thousand mirrors none of which stayed I leaned down and touched it but the moment was already gone & the sound of it continued as if nothing had happened as if nothing ever could happen except what was already passing on the far bank the trees bent into the current their roots tangled with stones older than any memory they did not resist they leaned as though listening to something I could not hear & I wondered if silence itself might be a kind of hearing that outlasts the need for answers I thought then of your hand in mine how it fit without effort the way a shadow fits the ground and how it slipped away not into absence but into another form of presence that follows me still though I do not speak of it when I stop walking it arrives and when I move again it goes on ahead like the path itself always leading somewhere I cannot remain the sky shifted and the birds lifted out of the trees without warning their wings making a sound that might have been the air remembering itself I looked up until they were gone and the space they left behind was filled with light as though nothing had left at all & I knew then that the world had never been waiting for me yet it carried me as it carried everything without choosing without keeping and that even as I turned back the grass already rising in my footsteps it would continue without end without forgetting without needing a reason

Without Asking to Be Remembered

#poetry (alt text)

Thank you so much for sharing, Wren! 🌈🌤️
@wrenblack.bsky.social

Thank you, Ann!

Wednesday III

Wednesday knocks at my window,
rain dripping from her hair.
She doesn’t ask to come in-
just stares long enough
to remind me
this week is not endless,
though it feels that way sometimes.

#poetry

Wednesday II

Wednesday hails me from the corner,
slick jacket,
sly grin.
He says he’s got a shortcut to Friday-
but when I follow,
it’s just another block
with the same cracked sidewalks.
We both laugh,
keep walking anyway.

#poetry

Wednesday

Wednesday whistles through his teeth,
a tune no one else remembers.
He flicks cigarette ash on the curb,
winks at the pigeons,
and tells me straight:
the week won’t sing itself-
you gotta carry
a little of the tune.

#poetry

The street shines with last night’s rain,
every puddle holding a borrowed sky.
Monday glitters in small ways:
a stranger holding the subway door,
a busker tuning his guitar,
the smell of oranges at the corner stand.
I write it down
before the noise
drowns it out.

#poetry

Sunday morning sidewalks hum-
a sax player folds yesterday’s notes
into the river of traffic.
I sip cheap coffee,
pretend I’m not part of the choir
but my feet keep time anyway.

#poetry

cigarette stubbed
on a library step-
the poet’s manifesto
inked on a receipt
blows past
the feet of gay lovers
debating Nabokov
and last night’s wine.🍷

#pietry

Saturday spills its guts
on cracked concrete corners-
joggers, junkies, jazzheads
all jostling for the same sun.
I sip burnt coffee,
watch a priest flirt
with the barista
like it’s his calling.

#poetry

Street preacher trades call with skateboard reply. Amen, ollie, amen. Rain left brushes and a wet snare. Pigeons tap the rim. I am the unknown poet in a paper mask of light, walking easy, counting kicks: crosswalk chirp, bakery bell, one stranger nod. The tune remembers me.

#poetry

Morning slides in sideways,
bassline under my feet,
horns warming in the cracks of dawn.
The streetlights blink blue,
cabs syncopate with pigeons,
and I jot it down crooked-
notes chasing notes,
never landing,
just swinging me forward.

#poetry

Thursday’s a trumpet solo-
loud, cracked,
still holy.
Coffee bitter as brass,
train screeching sharp in my ears.
The city plays wrong notes on purpose,
and I grin,
because that’s the only way
to keep it alive.

#poetry

I wake into today,
mouth dry as subway air,
my notebook full of half-finished lies.
A girl with glitter on her shoes
asks the time-
I tell her the truth instead:
it’s too early to matter,
too late to go back.

#poetry

Thursday’s a crooked sax riff
in a cheap bar-
off-beat,
half-right,
still beautiful.
The trains stutter,
pigeons argue on the wires,
I lean against a lamppost
pretending the city
knows my name.

#poetry