Author: Cameron Martin

• Basil Pruning

  The poem about the basil
  I picked fresh from her yard,
  juxtaposed with the wilted shit
  I left behind at the supermarket.
  That way the cycle of waking up
  becomes one thousand eyes
  spat in and defied because
  all I’m doing is waking and spitting
  and spitting and waking and

  make no mistake, I’m trying
  to break your heart. I refuse to
  let this sob-wracked awe die off
  with me, I stared so long so hard
  emptiness filled back up, again,
  the fingertip feel of a toothbrush
  was electric and new – Jesus,
  what a wonder. What a wonder.

  The poem about the toothbrush
  and the wonder. The one about
  the podcast title in the feed –
    [NEW] Call Your Parents
  and the poem about voicemails
  that trickle through the lines,
  transcripts marking out mom’s
  cognitive decline like tally marks,
  one after another after another.

  Writing poems used to be easy.
  You were young, and your heart
  was breaking and goddamn if those
  don’t come the easiest, the poem
  about the pocketknife, about hot
  July sun beating down our backs
  bayside on the dock, the poem
  about watching my joy ripple out,
  cresting waves all racing away
  to break on someone else’s shore.

  The poem about how I’m pulled
  to playgrounds like magnet poles,
  forces draw me toward swing sets
  I’ve grown too tall for, the poem
  about cutting up rings of plastic
  methodically to save the turtles,
  whom I love so vastly infinitely
  more than myself, oh, the poem
  about the turtles. They’re there,
  sailing ocean gyres, which means
  everything is going to be okay.

  The poems about being okay, sing
  praise for middle ground, stretches
  of spitting and waking all woven up
  into long chains, the span of days
  that lives between the two truths –
  spent watching, spitting, waiting
  for the next mundane miracle so
  I can write them down, savor it
  like the way I enjoy hunger pangs –
  proof something good is coming,
  and make no mistake, something good
  is coming. The poem about the waiting,
  each day electric and new – Jesus,
  what a wonder. What a wonder.

  July 20, 2026

  estrangement, healing, hope, Poetry

  ---

• Chatter

  I got stuck up in my yesterdays
  and the crows caught me, again.
  They cackle up in tree canopies
  casting shadows over my front door –
  look at this asshole. It’s today!
  ha, ha, ha, ha –

  but oh, how yesterdays trouble me –
  little bits of lunch caught between teeth
  your tongue just can’t leave alone, those
  problems that can be, must be solved,
  closure you can literally almost taste –

  but the wind sweeps the bags out
  from my fingers, the crows watch
  and they laugh and they laugh,
  Careless! Careless!
  Leave some for me –
  ha, ha, ha

  July 5, 2026

  Poetry

  ---

• Thirty-Nine

  thirty-nine years. the first half through (if we’re lucky)
  tongue-bloodied because we’re so eager to bite, now –
  throw me the heat, I’ll swing. one reckless haymaker
  after another. I’ll leave myself absolutely wrecked and
  breathless, staring down sunsets, soaking in last licks
  of twilight – cool, slow sighs before temperature soars
  and heat chokes us out, but not now. tonight we’re all
  crushed by gratitude, grief drowned in fat, happy tears –
  tomorrow we get to do it again. we get to do it again.

  June 30, 2026

  healing, hope, Poetry

  ---

• Wait For Me

  I’m coming – bags tearing open
  with all hopes we were promised.

  I’ve unshattered the plates.
  I’ve un-slammed each door.

  I steal the breath out of raised voices,
  I exhale satisfaction, I sing showtunes –

  I sow stillness. Leave every room so quiet
  under the blankets you’ll hear cicadas roar.

  Peace is minutes away. It’s coming.
  I’m bringing back long, slow sighs,

  sought-after rest. The sadness is forever,
  but so is the joy. I’m bringing it all –

  steady hands, they only caress – watch,
  your child never flinches. Bringing back

  the boxed-up memories from basements,
  look at the treasures, thrown and mixed with

  everything we were promised. It’s coming.
  All that love sent out, like corked bottles,

  it all came back.

  June 20, 2026

  healing, hope, love, Poetry

  ---

• Observatory – an original oratorio

  A multidisciplinary expression of music, poetry, and deep-space astrophotography exploring the cosmos, our humanity, and our place within time…

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Combining David Matthew Brown’s music, poetry by Cameron Martin, and deep-space astrophotography by Dave Hockenberry, Observatory is an original oratorio for choir, vocal soloists, and full orchestra exploring the human experience, the cosmos, and the interconnectedness between us and all things.

  View the breathtaking photography alongside the libretto text, and listen to the June 7th, 2026 performance of the MLUC choir and Music Sunday orchestra:

  Experience Observatory

  June 10, 2026

  observatory, Poetry

  ---

• Sea Legs

  Rogue waves won me over.
  Once those waves of shame spit
  you out, drenched and gasping,
  you’re left with something new –
  maybe a gleaming treasure, some
  pocket-worthy trinket, worrystone
  rubbed smooth by pressure, time –
  I’ve learned to love slow undertow,
  salt burning tears down my cheek,
  I’ve grown these sea legs. I watch
  the ambling of tides, dutifully tie
  all my ropes, savor the tedium of
  treading water. I’ve made myself
  a home on this sea. Day breaks
  and I hide from the sun, at night
  I scream my terrors into the dark –
  The water laps quiet on the shore
  and it never answers.

  May 24, 2026

  healing, Poetry, trauma

  ---

• rain washed it clean the next morning

  I used to have a family,
  I tell the flowers, I tell
  anybody who’ll listen
  and not just wait to talk, I
  tell the broken queso jar
  on my sidewalk, outside –
  largest shards kicked over to
  pallbearing blades of grass,
  I confess all the ways
  I was once one piece of a
  broken whole, somewhere –
  I say this out loud so
  my grief disturbs the air
  and makes it all real.

  May 18, 2026

  estrangement, Poetry, trauma

  ---

• A body is more than the morning after

  the kind of secret
  that kicks off a giggle fit –
  how everywhere I looked
  there I was – tucked away
  quiet, inside – eventually
  you keep finding yourself
  at the center of everything,
  oh, and the thought of it was
  just delicious

  March 30, 2026

  healing, identity, Poetry, trauma

  ---

• a message to myself, ten-years-old and hiding in the vacuum closet:

  We’ve hit the big time, honey.
  The life you’ve always dreamed of.
  We can’t be fooled – the skies are blue
  and I saw those blossom buds on branches –
  they never froze out our hope. Watch us now,
  on Saturday, how we danced in their kitchen
  and Sunday the hail tapped on windowpanes –
  I caught you in the mirror, Monday. You’ll make it,
  sweetheart, I swear – and on Tuesday, oh –
  the way the cat arched her back, clawtips
  teasing our luggage, stretching to the sun –
    she’s come back home
    she’s come back home
    she’s come back home

  March 19, 2026

  healing, hope, love, Poetry

  ---

• Thank You

  for mistakes, for being born
  the very best kind of cosmic
  mistake, never supposed to
  happen but so stupidly happy
  it did – so that I can shed fat
  sobbing tears for the most
  stupidest of shit –

  for burning the cinnamon rolls,
  for the smell of menthol rolled
  onto an aching back corded with
  knots, for promises made and
  just as quickly forgot, god,
  thank you for the forgetting.

  Thank you for mistakes worth regretting,
  like stones splashed into lakes, standing
  shoreside and that perfect rock catches
  your eye, just begging to be thrown –
  thank you for the times I didn’t say
  no. Thank you for the letting go,
  for the soaring across the sky,
  for the certainty of the fall –

  thank you for simple forgivenesses
  that I’ve learned how to grow, like
  small smooth pearls I can hand myself,
  string into long strands, thank you for
  this opaline gown I drape myself in
  like an oil-slick glow –

  thank you for making me so uncomfortably
  tall, chaining me to this broken body like
  bricking me up inside a lighthouse – casting
  out light I’ll never see, but I’ll keep it close –
  just listen to the wind at night, I’m singing –
  I’ll tend the lamps; I’ll call you home

  January 2, 2026

  healing, hope, Poetry

  ---

• Handwriting

  Is there some holy center left behind
  that remembers, weak candlelight
  which could flicker and grow –

  like how I see your handwriting
  each time I open my bottom drawer,
  how grief can twist like longing –

  this is what I want to believe.
  That motherhood is a clumsy mantle,
  best dealt with as it comes, that

  the daughter you raised as a son
  meant more than some baby doll
  you still miss, some beloved relic

  you left claw marks in letting go –
  I’ve written you all of these poems.
  I wonder what you know.

  December 30, 2025

  estrangement, parenting, Poetry

  ---

• Spiderwebs

  How can I tell you I’m holding this moment
  gently, so gently, so delicate and scared
  like cradling a perfect spiderweb
  freckled by the morning dew,
  terrified I’ll twist threads
  but I had to show you.
  I had no choice.
  I saw it and
  I thought
  only of
  you

  December 19, 2025

  Poetry

  ---

• Abscission

  shed those recurring dreams of being the tree –
  shrug off the long branches, sentinel stillness of
  lifetimes as limbs, centuries of old growth –

  but catch yourself, when you are the wind.
  recall how bark and stone just flow
  like water through loose fingers –

  like dreams when you can fly – you’ve found
  the secret way how to skip from the ground,
  blades of grass scraping past your feet –

  a promise between you and the earth, it’s okay,
  let go let go let go

  November 10, 2025

  healing, Poetry

  ---

• Murmuration

  You’ll take it for granted.
  You will.

  You can’t feed a ghost,
  no matter how sweet the childhood,

  but sometimes, you’ll drive home
  and starlings will burst out in flight –

  swirling constellation of spear-tip wings
  spilling out from behind the warehouse –

  that’s when you’ll gasp, remembering
  you’re alive you’re alive you’re alive

  November 1, 2025

  Poetry

  ---

• Blueprints

  Hang me on some new skeleton,
  give me a ribcage polished gleaming
  to cage up my waiting-room soul –
  stress dreaming sprawling airports,
  lost tickets, forever just too late and
  rushing towards some perfect dread,
  the plummeting lurch in your gut
  that rips you awake. 3 AM, panting.
  Outside it’s silent. The world sleeps.

  Remake me, small as my dreams.
  Most content in corners –
  watchful wisher, breathing
  deliciously shallow breaths,
  borrowed air sweet honey mead,
  I’ll drink deep, I’ll make myself sick –
  known glutton for punishment, friends
  gather for interventions, all terrified
  of how I’ve romanticized the ache.
  I drink deep. I make myself numb.

  Turn me opaque, now,
  I’m ready to be seen.
  Arms weary and stretched wide
  desperate to hold on until
  all strength finally gives –
  ecstatic heart thrashing
  in a cage of creaking ribs,
  cracked teapot still desperate
  to pour, there is so much more
  warmth left to give, remake me
  strong enough, someone worthy,
  I’m ready, I’ll drink deep, I’ll pour

  September 1, 2025

  healing, identity, Poetry

  ---

• Instructions for a Birthday

  Look around, take stock.
  Count crows feet and smile lines.
  Count the missed calls from mom,
  six, now, since you blocked her

  paper-white, crying shaking cold
  in July – the laid out reasons why
  looking back like holding a mirror.
  Count your breaths, how many days.
  Delete six missed call notifications.

  Write all of the wretched poems,
  get them out. Go ahead, rhyme
  heart and apart, write it down
  because you can’t crumple up
  thoughts – we’ve tried – get up
  and look outside. Fireflies glow –

  slowly remember calm nowheres
  you used to know, they glimmer
  inside your chest – lightning bugs
  flickering beneath umbrella bows
  of the tree out back, rain pours
  in steady sheets down the glass,
  whispers go to sleep on windows –

  Listen. I promise it will all be here
  when we wake.

  July 12, 2025

  estrangement, healing, hope, Poetry

  ---

• Intake Forms

  Cameron Martin, returning client –
  six foot three, underweight, vitals normal,
  old enough to catch classroom chickenpox –
  my gender? Snowy mornings & flannel sheets,
  no option for that so I’ll just check ‘other’ – no,
  I lack any significant history from my father
  and no fleas from my mother, but heavens,
  the stories I could tell… And sure, I’ll concede
  for all intents and purposes I’m doing “well.”
  (Yes, I am seeing a therapist.)

  Past medical history significant for some
  ear infections at three that screamed louder
  than the rest of the world, now I hear
  too much; midnight brings soft whispers.
  Bullies peppered me with scars, there’s
  four that you can see – skin a tapestry
  of cigarette burns, freckles, road rashes –
  heart thrashing out an irregular beat –
  I’m told it’s concerning on ECGs but just
  familiar and sustaining, to me. My bones
  tell stories, ice patches that snared me –
  the hills I’ve rolled down, carelessly, the
  compounding cost of chronic clumsiness
  pre-arthritic joints confess my true age,
  this soul has slogged through centuries.

  Oh, lots of concerns, doctor. Innumerable and
  nothing that’s present to check on your form,
  but I’ve left you my memoir in the margins.
  No new medications, just some vitamin D
  since I’m still learning to step into sunlight –
  it’s harsh and it burns; I shy from spotlights –
  and I meant to ask, have you ever wept from
  the impossible glow of a springtime sunrise?
  Signs the antidepressant is working too well
  or not enough? Can you validate my surprise
  that the sunrise happened at all? Or at least
  my parking?

  April 10, 2025

  healing, identity, Poetry

  ---

• Thresholds

  My upbringing prepared me for cuts.
  I check corners for traps, watch my feet
  while I’m walking. I’m waiting for the fall.
  My father used to perch around corners
  and leap out to frighten me, bursting out
  from behind doors, ignoring my begging
  to just please come out, please come out –

  hard lessons. Ceilings were all riddled
  with swords of Damocles, I learned quick
  how terror was all theirs to manufacture,
  all mine to manage. My better self left me
  messages written in wounds on my skin,
  keloids all cleverly conveying concerns –
  antsy letters to the editor. Please advise.

  I’m just trying to explain why peacefulness
  feels to me like the setup to sad punchlines,
  leading to jack-in-the-box pits in your gut –
  I can paint murals of melancholy, of hate,
  I’ve practiced in each medium of grief, but
  joy leaves me lost for words. Dumbstruck
  by the stark gentleness of my own hands.

  You see, the other day I nicked my arm with
  my fingernail – to my wonderment reflexively
  I apologized – contrite and polite like I had
  bumped into a stranger in a supermarket –
  never had I offered myself such a stupid
  and simple kindness. Never before had I
  seen myself as someone worth protecting.

  I can show you all my scars, stitch lines to
  navigate night terrors – but what words for
  uncovering love I have never known? Like
  stepping out into sunlight, feeling light and a
  primal warmth which my skin has never felt?
  Standing at the threshold, soul crying loud
  to just please come out, please come out

  April 2, 2025

  estrangement, healing, hope, Poetry, trauma

  ---

• Latchkey

  When the love you’re born into
  is a vacant house – what then?
  Love only used to be found
  while latchkey, ferreted it out
  from inside the absence of fear –
  no fathers looming around corners,
  waiting to scare you – no, love was
  a quiet hallway. An empty room.

  March 12, 2025

  estrangement, Poetry, trauma

  ---

• How Long Love Lasts

  

  Your inquiry was forwarded to me –
  our department handles those questions
  of more existential caliber, and yours
  has fallen into my eager and open hands.

  I must confess, it’s been quite difficult
  to nail down this “love” concept, after all
  humanity has had it’s best people chipping
  away these past 6,000 years and so far we’re

  still just scraping against the very skin of it.
  I’m but a humble clerk; this feels inadequate.
  But here’s what I can leave you with, figures
  to hang your ruminations onto, late at night –

  Love lasts longer than the sunset and well past
  the certain sunrise, longer than seasons bleeding,
  calendar pages falling like autumn leaves gathering
  into impossible innumerable breathtaking mounds –

  well past rosy childhoods, past silly little crushes
  and the parking lot breakups, stripping bare at
  midnight on the beach, dorm rooms, backseats –
  lasts longer than scars, longer than crows-feet –

  longer than the marriage, past the eulogies and
  dull echoes of sobbing sitting at the wake, longer
  than grief that guts you, hollows you out empty
  and retching, shivering like flu, longer than that –

  love is something we get to scrape up against.
  Nobody can hold it, or place it soft into your arms –
  no, love is the sun, it rages hotter and brighter and
  longer than our brief, childish hearts understand –

  you find it when you hug. That space between bodies,
  what gathers in the valley between two heartbeats –
  it’s gravity will always pull us in. Inevitable, immense;
  love lasts longer than I could try to explain, endures

  past when humanity’s best and brightest will give up
  chipping at the skin of it. I’ve tried to tuck it into
  these lines, letter writer – question asker, love seeker,
  lingering lonely and doubtful in the cold of night –

  yes, love lasts longer than the night terrors –
  longer than the heartbreak, than longing,
  than humanity’s wreckage of poetry, music,
  longer than we all deserve, maybe, but still
  it lasts. It lasts.

  February 24, 2025

  hope, love, Poetry

  ---

• Vacancies

  I’ve filled up that yawning vacancy inside of me
  with words, again, the old problems reappearing –
  how paper pages make for thin skin, or haggard
  veins circulating ink which cannot carry oxygen –

  but I’m consuming them nonetheless, starved for
  touch and reason and all the hearth-fire comfort
  of skin just beside you, sharing warmth inside and
  out, pulsing like an ebbing tide between the two,

  but now I’ve filled up vacancies with distractions.
  I’ll pay no mind to skipping beats, no icy pangs of
  DSM-diagnosable panic, no sleep-wake disorder
  of waking up to the nightmare. No. It’s all too real.

  Do you feel as though you’re stealing time, too?
  How many of your dreams survived past twenty?
  Or does each sweep of the second hand shock you
  like it astonishes me, still – how my composition is

  melodic and not dissonance, not screeching, nor
  silence which would permit the whispering leech
  of old voices not our own, poltergeists conjured
  as children, campfire stories that should’ve burned,

  instead now I stack notebooks. I sing loudly. Sleep
  beside a faint video glow of fake fireplaces hissing,
  whispering warm wishes in the dead still of night –
  in the morning I’ll write something new. All too real.

  February 5, 2025

  love, Poetry

  ---

• Dear Dr. Bridgford –

  You are on my mind. Often. I had wanted to write you a poem
  but I found that I’d already written one, fourteen years back –
  gushed all my gratitude, already, even employed better words
  than I had planned. I just found my final portfolio, you see.
  That Happy happy life! you penned out behind the final page,
  the holy mantra I carried under my breath through the years.

  And what should I shout to you, now, past mortal planes, years
  after enduring my reckless free verse – mewling, fawn-like poems,
  those clumsy, first footsteps of grief and rapture scratched on page
  while you wielded forms like a surgeon. Ice cold. I was taken aback
  by your precision – finely faceted sestinas cut like prisms, let us see
  heartbreaking spectrums of language, whole kaleidoscopes of words.

  I’ve tried to be happy, Dr. Bridgford, but I wrapped myself in words,
  I mummified my heart – embalmed the calm inner voices light-years
  deep and far away, now I must carefully excavate exhibits so I can see
  myself in sunlight, again, a patchwork sewn from bones and poems –
  oh, but the happiness? Well, you saw those reaches, professor – back
  when I thought identity was what you wrestled down onto the page,

  I believed all contentment had to be proven, filed with cover pages –
  an explicit, bullet-pointed résumé, faithful testimony through words
  that yes, cosmos, I’m paying attention, those sunbeams down my back
  are warm like each hand I ever held, yes, I’ll flail – fight back the years
  of dissociation – I was certain you had answers, professor, knew poems
  spoke with a sacred power, pierced all foggy veils so finally – you see.

  I’ve tried to be happy, professor. I try to keep writing myself out, see
  how enjambment, twee slant rhymes dancing past bone white pages
  help a soul cope while time erodes, but even the most ardent poems
  cannot build up an identity, you can’t construct a person from words
  and now, I know – my golem of notebooks still walks beside me years
  after I gave the pain structure and form, you can’t just take those back.

  Now I find that I don’t want to. You passed away, just five years back –
  stark loss which struck me with a sudden knock of clarity – now I see
  why, my earliest idol had died – I felt that springtime air, again, years
  before that approaching drumbeat of grief and loss, a kid with a page
  behind a final project where a remarkable woman offered up her words –
  said yes, I see you. I hold such soaring hopes for you. I loved your poems.

  

  February 3, 2025

  Poetry, sestina

  ---

• The Chariot

  In this new year I shuffle my tarot deck,
  fray the edges, no more wincing. Accept
  wear and tear, welcoming all wounds
  like old friends; indulge their rambling
  about each terrible fable, catalogue stories
  and no more smothering them out silent
  like hiding bodies under the floorboards –
  this year I allow myself to be found.

  I lost myself in the echoing hallways of
  loneliness, canvas-white empty rooms
  strung in a web of hope and longing like
  veins and arteries just under the skin,
  like hiding under floorboards – struck
  blind by possibilities, bright like a sun.
  I’ve only just stepped outside. Ready to
  take my own hand – no more wincing.

  I’ll fray all of my edges, ramble, abandon
  endings – I’ll omit the shame, just the joy
  spilling over my lips like gems, silver coins,
  they’ll strike the floor like church bells ring,
  twist open the handles to each lonely door,
  spilling light down every darkened hallway,
  sing empty rooms full again, lost, now found

  January 20, 2025

  healing, hope, Poetry

  ---

• Scarcity Mindset

  Today I move slowly; gentler mien.
  Inner voices ranting, patiently listen
  but I don’t take ownership.
  Quiet startle realizing I’d forgotten
  what my father’s voice sounded like
  until I heard a voicemail – desperate,
  older, now – familiar headmate. I listen
  but I don’t take ownership. I gave up
  self-flagellation five years ago, dropped
  all his familiar wounds. Same ache, roiling
  guilt sour like hunger pangs, almost can
  understand the flailing – cornered, feral, but
  today I move slowly. Gentler. Loose grip,
  drop the feral terror. I don’t take ownership.
  Familiar fear and fangs, nostalgic pangs all
  never mine. Voicemail ends, silence echoes –
  free, now. Listen to new voices, slowly.

  January 7, 2025

  estrangement, healing, Poetry

  ---

• Rivulets

  A glance out the window, struck suddenly
  by the realness of the tree leering outside –
  picturing your bones deftly woven into the
  tangles of branches, like cradling fingers,
  rain falls, whispering windowsill promises
  to let go, let go, trailing down the glass and
  rivulets through the bark, fractal shadows
  of long tree limbs cast onto the wall, dark
  dancers celebrate letting go, letting go – but
  all I’ve ever had is a jealous desperate grip;
  I’ll rake raw rivulet claw marks before I go

  December 30, 2024

  2024 in poems, Poetry

  ---