The Poet (delayed)

What is light?

Not metaphorically.

In this conversation with Suzanne Bates, we explore light as biology, energy, communication, healing, emotion, rhythm, consciousness, and connection.

We talk about why morning sunlight changes the body, how the heart emits measurable energy, why coherence matters, how suffering shapes us, and why healing may begin with learning not to abandon ourselves.

The more we talked, the more it felt like light is not just something we see — it may be the thing participating in everything.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

Special Guest: Suzanne Bates.

In the fire’s heat

What if the goal isn’t to destroy the fire within us, but to learn how to live with it?

This episode explores passion, shame, anger, desire, transformation, and the difference between purification and integration. Not becoming less. Not cutting parts of ourselves away. But learning how to carry what burns inside us without letting it consume us.

Drawing from Nietzsche, Will and Ariel Durant, personal experience, and poetry, this episode reflects on the possibility that our virtues may grow out of the very things we once feared in ourselves.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

The Poet (delayed)

The cold, dark morning

There are moments when life goes dim.

Not because everything is ruined, but because weariness, grief, fear, or overwhelm can make the path disappear.

This episode is about what to do in those moments.

How darkness can hide what still exists. How discouragement can distort reality. How you do not need to solve your whole life before breakfast—you may only need the next faithful movement.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

There is a quote attributed to Nietzsche that reads: When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

I’ve found that to be true.

When we’re exhausted physically, emotionally, or psychologically, old fears return, clarity fades, and problems that are solvable can feel impossible. We forget who we are. We forget what we’ve survived. We forget that help exists.

In this episode, I reflect on fatigue, overwhelm, and the temptation to surrender ourselves when life feels too heavy. Drawing from my own poems, Forgotten Walls and Terrible Potential, along with images from Théoden and Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings, I explore what happens when the fog sets in—and how we begin to lift it.

This is an episode about remembering who you are when you’re tired, asking for help when you need it, and acting with integrity in the next honest hour.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

Why Things Fall Apart

he tried

In this episode of The Poet (delayed), I reflect on why some relationships that feel meaningful, beautiful, and deeply connected still fail to hold over time.

Using the metaphor of a beautiful building with a weak internal frame, I explore the difference between appearance and foundation—between chemistry and character, connection and structure.

I talk about how trust, communication, comprehension, consideration, repair, and boundaries form the unseen architecture of healthy relationships. I also reflect on how many of us become “water”—adapting ourselves to unstable dynamics rather than building an internal structure of our own.

More than an episode about romance, this is an honest reflection on friendships, family, self-respect, and the wisdom of learning what can truly hold.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

A Tree, a Star or a River: When Giving Becomes Loss

What does it really mean to give?

In this episode, I explore a question that has been quietly shaping my life: Where does our giving come from? Because not all giving is the same—and some forms of it come at a cost we don’t see until it’s too late.

Drawing from my own writing—including On Becoming a Black Hole and On Being a River—I walk through three models of giving:

Along the way, I unpack a hard truth: you cannot continue to give what you don’t replenish. There is always a reconciliation.

This episode is about recognizing the difference between giving from fear and giving from fullness—and why only one of those is sustainable.

If you’ve ever found yourself exhausted, overextended, or quietly losing yourself in the act of giving, this conversation is for you.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

In this episode of The Poet (delayed), I am joined by returning guest Josh Baron for a wide-ranging conversation on uncertainty, growth, and what it means to truly live inside the unknown.

Drawing from the Tao Te Ching’s line—“darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding”—we explore a central idea: uncertainty isn’t something to escape, but something to enter.

Together, we examine why we instinctively avoid uncertainty—fear, discomfort, and the pressure to “have it figured out”—and what happens when we resist that impulse and instead choose to stay. Through personal stories, philosophy, and lived experience, they uncover several key insights:

The conversation moves fluidly through topics like faith, science, parenting, identity, integrity, and even music theory—illustrating how tension, dissonance, and uncertainty are not obstacles to understanding, but necessary parts of it.

At its core, this episode is an invitation:

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

Special Guest: Josh Baron.

This is Part 2 of my series We Die of Being Alive.

In Part 1, I explored a difficult truth: we don’t die because something goes wrong—we die because we are alive. Life includes uncertainty, loss, and things we cannot control.

But that leaves a deeper question:

How do we actually live inside that reality?

In this episode, I explore what happens when fear takes over—when we panic, freeze, or react too quickly—and how, in those moments, we can lose something essential within ourselves.

Through a personal story, reflections on thinkers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and ideas drawn from poetry and lived experience, this episode moves toward a simple but demanding principle:

Stay in the doorway long enough… then move with integrity.

This isn’t about eliminating fear.

I also share practical ways this shows up in daily life—how awareness, boundaries, and what I call “containers” can help reduce overwhelm and allow us to respond more clearly instead of reacting out of pressure.

If Part 1 was about accepting reality,

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

Most of us carry a quiet belief: if life feels hard, something must be wrong.

In this episode, I challenge that idea.

Drawing on a line from Michel de Montaigne—“You do not die of being sick, you die of being alive”—I explore what it really means to be alive, and why pain, loss, uncertainty, and struggle are not signs of failure, but expressions of life itself.

But understanding that intellectually is one thing. Living it is another.

When life becomes overwhelming, many of us respond in fear. We avoid. We run. We freeze. And in doing so, we don’t just avoid pain—we begin to step out of our own lives.

This episode is about that tension:

This is Part 1 of a 2-part series. In the next episode, I’ll explore what it looks like to stay, to move, and to live with integrity in the middle of it all.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()

Healing alchemy:

It’s an invitation to look at the weight we carry with different eyes—to see our struggles not as proof that we’re failing, but as the raw material for something deeper, stronger, and more meaningful. I brought in a line from Epictetus that has been sitting with me lately, and we explore what it means to transform our suffering instead of being crushed by it.

And as a way of saying thank you, I wrote this haiku in calligraphy, framed it, and I’m giving it away.

Giveaway details:

Thanks for joining me.

“may I be I is the only prayer—”

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the episode including thoughts on the poetry and the topics that were discussed. You can email me at [email protected].

My books of poetry are availabe for purchase at

Amazon.com

["The Ghost of a Beating Heart", "My Mother Sleeps" and "Haiku Village"]()