Nobody is home, but I left the lights on for you….

365poems is an online journal of poems written daily over the past year. Its goal was to force me to observe my unfolding life experience in a more critical, purposeful way. Three hundred and sixty five days and two continents later, I’m happy to announce that the magic was discovered and rediscovered many times over, but not always in the way I would have imagined.

For lessons learned along the way, read my interviews here.
To watch/listen to poets who have inspired me, click here.

This site was a labor of love into which a considerable amount of time was invested. Click around the site—there are many surprises to be found. For your convenience below I’ve compiled lists of the most interesting poems that emerged from this project. Feel free to comment on or post to Facebook anything you like.

Though no new poetry will be added, 365poems will remain open to the public. You can support the site by supporting the sponsors. After each poem a click on your way out would be much appreciated.

Your friend in never settling,
Trevor

TOP TWENTY-FIVE-ISH POEMS:
(by preference of the author)

0. 139poem
1. 254poem
2. 91poem
3. 193poem
4. 272poem
5. 89poem
6. 126poem
7. 30poem
8. 165poem
9. 251poem
10. 203poem
11. 280poem
12. 277poem
13. 186poem
14. 88poem
15. 350poem
16. 182poem
17. 95poem
18. 219poem
19. 260poem
20. 69poem
21. 77poem
22. 123poem
23. 129poem
24. 238poem
25. 239poem

RUNNER-UP POEMS:
(in chronological order)

40poem, 185poem, 192poem, 201poems, 215poem, 242poem, 269poem, 311poem, 317poem, 319poem, 338poem, 345poem, 362poem

SHORTIES BUT GOODIES:
(in chronological order)

12poem, 15poem, 18poem, 42poem, 43poem
54poem, 56poem, 66poem, 84poem, 100poem, 103poem, 106poem, 115poem, 124poem, 128poem, 162poem, 202poem, 225poem, 290poem, 319poem, 338poem, 345poem

PROSE STORIES:
(in chronological order)

4poem, 14poem, 35poem, 44poem, 87poem, 98poem, 109poem
133poem, 140poem, 155poem, 194poem

With a sun-swept face
humbly retrace the road back
to the beginning.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – A haiku send-off; one year later this is my last poem for this 365poems site.

With curved English vowels
I slice souvenirs from the air.
I hang her laugh on the mantelpiece.
Her tear-wet cheeks in the closet.
As the earth tucks itself below snow
and autumn yellow seeps into soil,
plastic versions of her comfort me.
Faced with a black-and-white winter,
I stack and restack the warm memories.
Her outline thins as others’ ivory smiles
push into my heated one-bedroom.
I worry that with each invasion
her retreat will slink one inch farther.
Constant movement never gives life
a chance to bloom its pedals, she said
in a contradictory fit of wanderlust and love.
Remember? Errors are inevitable
with so much invisible inventory—
Nothing to date compares to how easily
we slipped into timelessness.
Nevermind that. Winter has almost frozen
our wide-eyed walks into regular commutes.
Her fingerprints on my spine are smudged.
In our sold-out symphonies audiences
clap but never cheer. Unstack and unstack,
hibernation bites back the skinniness
allowing muscles to emerge.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – She now has a man, I have a girl, but it’s still difficult to accept.

Central heating like Saharan sunflares.
Lamplight creeps through the table cracks
like a crimson moon reversed, a hum there,
or memory slowly leaking. Uncertain poetry.
Observe sound of thought, thought of sound.
We are the interpreters of unwritten stories.
Woodfloors wear past lives in graceful silence
without the toddy smalltalk we use to distract
from the decent, hard-earned scratches of plot,
as if life were a screen to obediently wipe clean.
All the while nothing is perfect, nothing is exactly
as described when they told us full steam ahead.
White-blind yourself into the happiness of assent.
You’ve no reason to complain unless your solution
fits neatly on the war table. Spend wisdom wisely.
The blasphemy of noble rage is not knowing where to stick it.
There are no direct routes there only crooked lines and fun.
Forget, keep calm and carry on oxford comma be damned.
Hand yourself in before you dare lift your head
to powers that laugh at your seriousness, shitless.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – Too much red wine and thought for being this geographically disconnected; I can’t help but feel there is a whole world going on out there that I don’t know.

A bang like heavy
smoke from a humid gun
poured all its sound
into the silenced platforms
of nightime Retiro—
The cold continuity
of cement and periphery
warmed when the future
became another alluring lie.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – Remembering Valeria and our bus station goodbye in Buenos Aires; the forecast says tomorrow thirty percent chance of snow, the first of the year.

Everyone balances
their days on the hope
it all leads somewhere
while the horizon melts
thoughtlessly not Buddha
but buttered up quietly
by the panoramic sun.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – An important business meeting happened today; the evening sun shone on the downtown buildings as if through a canyon.

Dark is dainty against
your white wreckage.
I swim through the chaos
master light of ceremony
and you’re glowing too.
You’re everything except
abandoned when filling
with phosphorescence
the mapped and gridded
spaces you casually undo
like kelp in Pacific currents.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – Drifting to sleep I dreamt I was swimming in green ocean with light shining through it; I’ve never felt so far from the beach yet so near to an out-of-body experience.

Your song is bass in my bones
when you say you’re unwell
but the hum is silent when your air
rises up the steamy latitudes of calm.
Quiet me from the inside by being cool.
It’s always summer somewhere, go there.
Treat minutes like the eternity we won
elongating spines in moonlit playgrounds.

Yes, we will die and probably suffer too.
Your face never could hide that great concern
but not far from here banana leaves are plates
and the third eye is curried for good fortune.
Maybe they know something we don’t—

The obstacles are immense but our minds
can flex back against the expanding space.
I could lie to you and you wouldn’t know it.
These words could fall over themselves
then slip through the cracks until the mess
is irreparably dumbed to a kicked-about paste

but I prefer the confusion of perception.
Sacred truths at inconvenient moments.
Your balding lover listens to death metal?
My tropicalia is a few beats off, too.
Maybe that’ll put you at ease as you wander
the world bold and beautiful one of the luckiest,
one who knows not her own endless bliss.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – Dedicated to the one who couldn’t move her body today.

I saw his artificial lungs
after I repeated her words:
our mission is not our own.
I couldn’t agree less
mimicking intonation
until death pleased her
like a coffee smell
in the other room.

LOCATION: Undisclosed – Medical interpreting.

The meaty part of the afternoon
floats around the livingroom unnoticed
the way we drift through space unmoved.
It’s there like a ghost on a TV screen.
I imagine the movies your mind stores.
A pink maze behind upturned lips
you are the sum of your expanding memory.
I hope it’s true then with each new moment
when your skin grazes fresh sensation
when your eyes undress a virgin vision
that the weightiness of your whole
lightens to the shimmery parts deep
within the wrinkles that too are you.

LOCATION: Lincoln, Nebraska – Thinking about Valeria in Argentina.