Poetry- The Written & Spoken Word
Not all art is painting- it can also live through words.
Welcome to the written world of NateTruly.
My poetry explores the complicated beauty of being human: the identities we inherit, the ones we fight to reclaim, the people we lose, the bodies we inhabit, and the freedom we discover when we begin to tell our own stories.
Drawing from personal experience, cultural identity, sensuality, spirituality, and the existential search for belonging, my work moves between vulnerability and defiance, grief and liberation, intimacy, transformation and enlightenment.
Some poems are confessions. Some are questions. Some challenge the beliefs we were taught to accept without question. Others simply make room for the parts of ourselves that have waited too long to be heard. Some ponder how to find joy in a complex ever changing globe.
Like my paintings, my writing is an ongoing act of exploration. Both are ways of making the invisible visible—of giving shape to experiences that are difficult to explain but impossible to ignore.
Whether encountered on a page or performed aloud, these words are invitations to reflect, to feel, and perhaps to recognize a little of yourself in someone else's story.
Welcome to the world behind the words.
Existential Poetry
Private Revolution
The world is a party
In the midnight wood
Where a young man sits
Playing a black guitar
He watches the globe get less round
Oblong, square even, in front of
The flat screen of life
A lamp illuminates his records
Spinning on their metal axis
The spiral cord of the telephone
Dial has long lost its spin
Four sunflowers stare into his golden face
Wonder why he rebels against the
Magenta purple streaks
He wears sunglasses to bling himself
His books are scattered on fodder
Even the Russian doll laughs
But his expression stays neutral
As he holds up the branches to
His one and only world party
Yet
Even the most gorgeous wedding gown stains
Even the magnificent mansion crumbles
Even the star’s face wastes away
Even the lullaby needs tuning
Even the honey-making bees sting
Even the calmest newborn cries
Even the deepest well runs dry
Even the blazing sun’s eye is blocked
Even the giant cowers to a nail
Even the oyster slime yields a pearl
Even the earthworm brings forth gold
Even the blue whale becomes prey
Even the ostrich cannot fly
Even the fruit can taste bitter
Even the mosquito can kill
Even the bloodstream floods its banks
Even the tall snow caps melt away
Even the villain kisses his wife
Even the enemy has a child
Spiritual Poetry
“Acts of Apostles”
A disabled man
They stoned him.
Then dusted off their hands,
A roasted sacrifice.
A yolk on their necks
They could not shake,
Erect with judgement
From their mother’s womb.
He cried to the heavens,
To the earth and the sea,
And to all the things within them-
Still,
The principle men of the city
Rose up,
Surrounded him in jealosy.
Reputable men
With fine garments
Stirred up every loose
Jagged rock.
Hurled the bulls
To strike him down
Before the temple
Synagogue.
Sensual Poetry
Sanguina Marmalade
At first, everything is dry ice.
Rib ridges are riddled in filth,
The prayerful lathers rub genie wishes onto rough fingers.
This slime is mine, olive skin basking thin,
Mediterranean men at my sides,
My middle lands subliminized by naval oranges.
Back home, oil from grinder basins anointed foreheads,
Always overripe and extra virgin.
Here I adapt to cheap musk floods that mist
Open fields of reaping rain, where
Thirsty summer trees adorned in full suns
Table top shade the young hot shrubs.
Slick long leaves all silvery, the
Drenching wets the blooming blossoms.
It’s hard to keep the lye from slipping,
Hard to wash the gentile clean.