WHarryman

@wharryman

Scientific writer/editor at an NIH-funded comprehensive cancer center (work on adhesion molecules in early stage PRAD); psychotherapist for survivors of childhood sexual trauma; personal trainer - secular Buddhist, cyclist, poetry lover - personal account

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WHarryman@wharryman· 19d

it's been a while since a new poem showed up - the title and first line are from the Nine Inch Nails song "Dear World" #poem #poetry

Dear World

everyone seems to be asleep
while cicadas’ crisp whine
rises in the desert monsoon

while hummingbirds
chirp and squeak signals
defense of sacred datura

while a raven croaks
menacing the neighbor’s cat
with intentional playfulness

while dark heavy clouds
bring wind in the trees and
the rapture of thunder crashing

while the still small voice
of a child whispers prayers
for forty nights of rain once more

~ William Harryman
8.15.26

WHarryman@wharryman· 28d

WHarryman@wharryman· Jun 26

a new poem arrived in pieces over the last couple of days #poem #poetry

revelations

can piano keys weep
the way ocean rain
tastes like loss

a pillar candle
flame sputters and
drowns in its own wax

these things happen
said the priest meaning
god the father has died

death haunts our cells
after birth thrusts us blind
into life’s harsh light

falling asleep in a mountain
stream one awakens
abruptly with new gills

in liminal silence
one might ask why
water became translational

~ WIlliam Harryman, 6.21.26 - 6.26.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Jun 17

this poem showed up yesterday, incomplete and demanding - today it resolved itself #poem #poetry

choices

somewhere in the middle
a comma, maybe, or question mark

given a choice between an apple
or a knife, I chose a riddle

a question mark unfurls
to a sunflower cosmos

but fire purifies memory
with a hex or incantation

she added wood to the stove
while whistling Mad World

there must be a sentence
rolling as a tumbleweed

after the comma, infinite
possibilities wrestle for control

this is the middle, before and
after dance around the room

memory purified is cloudless
lost in a grass fire of indecision

she watched the pot boil
and poured two cups of tea

~ William Harryman, 6.16.26 - 6.17.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Jun 10

a new poem stopped by today, a thing kind of about faith, and kind of not #poem #poetry

Faith

when the ground beneath us ruptures
and swallows us into its dank uncertainty
we are told to embrace our faith

there was holy water in the bowl
when doves flew through open oak
doors and settled on the marble fount

I wore the cross as a red scar
on the soft skin inside my left wrist

last time I prayed the crows gathered
in Blessed Sacrament Dominican Church
and built nests with hymnal pages
in the incense-stained rafters

over Jim Beam I once spoke
with Brother Antoninus of his choice
to become a Dominican poet
of sacred sex and cutting firewood

I had not yet tasted the flame
that would mark my absence of faith

but Antoninus knew the Latin shaped me
in ways only a raven on a fence post reveals
so he kept refilling my tumbler with bourbon

that night around the wood stove I felt
the great God of ecstasy tear the ground
beneath me and I was swallowed whole

faith is walking barefoot in the forest
at night and believing one’s imminent
and predictable death means anything

~6.9.26 – William Harryman

WHarryman@wharryman· May 28

a new poem #poem #poetry

12 Questions
~ after Bhanu Kapil

Who do you see in your mirror when you wake in the morning?
Do you know where you begin?

Have you eaten mushrooms while sitting in a pitch black cave?

Can you feel the edges of your body without touching them,
where skin meets world, where words meet page?

What was your face before you were conceived?
Have you dreamed your death mask?

How did you get here, at this table, with this page?
Have you met your spirit animal for drinks?

How do you explain the texture of water?

When was the last time you truly cried, or
laughed until the world was music?

Which direction do you run when the lightning comes?
Do you know where tomorrow has gone?

~ William Harryman, 5.22.26/5.26.26

WHarryman@wharryman· May 8

a new poem showed up over the last few days #poem #poetry

The Child

Ashen shadows stain
Freshly fallen snow

Once there were no lakes
Then the fire came

Debris-dammed creeks
Gather snowmelt in their arms

And even then…

Time passed slowly
Turning uneven windows
Into a still life of spiders

And even then…

A girl on a bicycle
Rings a bell as she peddles
Through a shroud of snow

The man and the woman
Wave at the ghost child
Dragging a doll on a leash

And even then…

Hills scarred by fire
Hidden by blizzard

Frozen earth breathes
Fog amid the wheat stubble
Poking through snow

The woman leaves hay
For barned horses

And even then…

Night arrives as a promise
Frosted windows
Like crisp spiderwebs

The man and the woman
Sit in tender silence
As darkness quilts their loss

~ William Harryman, 4.28.26 - 5.6.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Apr 14

a quiet little poem arrived just now #poetry #poem #NationalPoetryMonth

April 14, 2026

children are playing catch
in the street this morning
before the sun’s first light

a golden retriever runs
back and forth, chasing
a ball it will never catch

I stand in the doorway
watching the game proceed
and enjoying the cool air

the world is so upside down…
but for a little while, before
the sun rises, there is play

~ William Harryman

WHarryman@wharryman· Apr 14

our new paper has been accepted by @biophysj.bsky.social - thanks to the reviewers (especially the dreaded Reviewer 3) and the editors for helping us improve the paper

the picture contains the text of the title, authors, and Abstract for a paper on kindlin-2 function under hypoxic conditions in a prostate cancer cell line

WHarryman@wharryman· Mar 31

a new poem showed up today #poem #poetry

Breath

Can you breathe? Mind was an afterthought.
Hummingbirds chirped and chased each
other guarding white saguaro flowers. Time
stopped and danced a silent pirouette.

As a child, I imagined the grill of the confessional
as a window behind which god sat naked
and bored. I made up elaborate sins
to entertain her. She never smiled.

Can you breathe? Self requires motion.
The room was quiet but for the breathing
of lovers having exhausted their need.
Crows gathered in the oak tree to gossip.

When I imagined death I became a raven.
A hungry candle devoured my sister. Time
installed in me a soul, said the priest, but
I preferred to wonder in dark forests.

Can you breathe? Everything sounds like
something she said to me in college.
Memory is a basement flooded by rain,
I used to pretend I knew how to be a man.

The wound on my chest has never healed.
I wanted to be Orpheus, but I am Cassandra.
The weight of a soul is deadening, a heaviness
on my ribs, stifling my ability to breathe.

William Harryman, 3.31.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Mar 18

a new poem #poem #poetry

Child

I was born in a closet, encased in wax, and hanged from a hook behind woolen winter jackets.

Ravens regurgitated rotting flesh into my mouth, dragged me out into the rain, then replaced me on my hook.

Daffodils bloomed outside the window.

As I grew my cocoon expanded, swaddling me in thick wax that never cracked.

I lacked any sense of day or night, but I heard voices in the distance and so learned language.

My bones never solidified, remained rubbery and brittle like a newborn.

The ravens kept me alive, despite my pleas to leave me in the darkness.

After many years the hook broke free from the plaster and I fell to the floor, stunned and suddenly free of the wax, neatly cracked in halves.

Too weak to stand, I curled myself into a question mark and fell asleep one last time.

~ William Harryman, 3.17.26 - 3.18.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Mar 8

a new poem #poetry #poem

clairvoyance

with every step thick mud sucks at my boot
nearly rooting me – I never intended
to travel this far out, or this deep in

my pack – a ballpoint pen and notebook
Heaney’s The Spirit Level, bag of walnuts
two apples, a flashlight, steel water bottle

it was night longer than I can remember

for forty days I dwelt in Cassandra’s
dream, watched her see beyond minutes
tattooed and mohawked, something missing

behind her eyes, bewilderment, betrayed
from the moment of birth, and I watched
the dream dissolve into a frosty dark night

the night was colder than I can remember

metabolizing every minute into a pile
of letters, building words and lines, walking
an old logging road in the Cascades

the rain will never stop, I’ve seen the flood
in which I drown, oak trees uprooted
rivers slowly rising down in the valley

this night means more than I can remember

~ William Harryman, 3.6-7.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Mar 2

a new poem arrived today while I was trying to work #poetry #poem

One minute before midnight

I took the battery out of the clock
so that it’s always a minute before
midnight, always on the cusp

of something, a new day, or
maybe the candle lit at dusk
has melted over the window sill.

I drowned once, when I was small,
and I am not sure I lived, but here
I stand, gray and wrinkled, older

than I ever hoped to be, planting
sunflowers for the birds, a fist
of desert soil in my trembling hand.

I stood in the rain a few weeks ago,
praying to no one for the lightning
that never arrived, watching

my footprints fill with water, small
oceans surrounded by decaying
seed pods from the Mesquite tree.

It was necessary to abandon time,
to stop the clock and sit on the ground
outside the back door, to watch ants

strip the basil of all its leaves as spring
blossomed in color across the desert,
one last minute until the goodbye.

~ William Harryman, 3.2.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Feb 25

a new poem stopped by today #poetry #poem

$Refractions 1. Who can say what the self is? The face in the mirror shifts imperceptively, each feeling or thought wears a different self from the dark closet. 2. Wind whispers a lullaby, but these are my stones stacked beside the road, a raw marker to a self who left the body in a ditch filled with water. 3. Is it possible to undress myself and stand as a blank page? Runes tattooed on my bones reveal echoes of the Big Bang, a chorus of quiet forgetting. 4. I am a verb. A voice dragged to suffer, to dance, to scream a desolate howl into the night, and in the chasm between words a different self peeks out. 5. Childhood abandoned in dust. Memories of possible selves collect on the merry-go-round, a pocketful of pebbles the only secret held when sunlight fades. 6. Her body wrapped me in silence, the dark closet where I crouched behind boxes filled with old photos. It began with a prayer, syllables of longing and the first words… ~ William Harryman, 2.25.26$

WHarryman@wharryman· Feb 19

a new poem #poem, #poetry

Route 66

red and white checked
tablecloths cover tables
in the dimly lit diner

coffee cups filled
to overflowing spill
puddles still steaming

the neon sign said Diner
nothing more, some
bulbs barely lit in twilight

we ordered apple pie
because this is Route 66
after all, peak Americana

the waitress pours more
coffee and asks if we
need anything else

yes, I think to myself
we need a destination
a reason to keep driving

we need a sunset to drive
toward, a cliff to drive over,
a sharp turn into endless desert

but I smile and ask her
for the check, leave a tip
larger than the bill because

just because, we are lost
in a world that stopped
making sense, the plot lost

so we drive, town to town,
looking for a reason to stop,
unpack the trunk, settle

as darkness descends, we
leave behind our selves
hanging on the coat hooks

~ William Harryman, 2.19.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Feb 18

a new poem, first draft #poetry #poem

Ash Wednesday

as a child I wore the cross smudge of ash
like a scar barely healed, flesh raw
to the touch, a melancholy marker
of a life left lying in dry weeds

years later, still young, I traded prayer
for a bottle, began to scribble words
onto blank pages seeking deliverance,
seeking escape in empty landscapes

there is only the doing and the undoing,
rosary hanging from a thumb tack,
gray hair and grayer eyes, gaze turned
within, speaking only in abstractions

~ William Harryman, 2.18.26

WHarryman@wharryman· Jan 8

the "party" is maga, and this is happening right now, every day - they are working up to making rejecting this demand punishable by prison or death

WHarryman@wharryman· Jan 4

from @theparisreivew.bsky.social

a poem from The Paris Review

Joyce Mansour

“I stole the yellow bird …”

I stole the yellow bird
That lives in the devil’s sex
He will teach me how to seduce
Men, stags, double-winged angels,
He will remove my thirst, my clothes, my illusions,
He will sleep,
As for me, my slumber runs along the rooftops
Mumbling, waving, making violent love,
With cats.

—Translated from the French by Emilie Moorhouse
~ From issue no. 243 (Spring 2023)

WHarryman@wharryman· Nov 28

this morning's #poem is mostly just an exercise in atmosphere #poetry

house

the stranger stopped a moment
in front of the abandoned house
window glass long-ago broken

it was here the musician played
his violin for the spiders and mice
while clouds swirled and darkened

bodies have been buried behind
the house where the fence failed
to keep the dead from wandering

children dare each other to enter
the house for one eternal minute
before echoes of the violin return

even a direct lightning strike
did not burn the house to the ground
when the night erupted in thunder

~ 11.28.25
William Harryman

WHarryman@wharryman· Nov 27

not a happy thanksgiving #poem #poetry

family

once a year the pipe came out around Thanksgiving
a bowl of walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts

sweet whiskey-tinged smoke lingered in the kitchen
the man called father sitting at the table with his coffee

a vinyl record played something classical on the stereo
the woman called mother folded laundry in the back room

the scene was obviously framed, the spoken lines cliched

how did I get here? a misplaced childhood with strangers
my cousins ride shifting winds far from this gray city

sitting on the floor of the bedroom trying to write myself out
artificial light from the windows refuses to cast shadows

the mother dramatically opens the door and quietly smiles
I can hear the girl called sister playing tea party with her dolls

the director has left, there is no curtain to end this nightmare

WHarryman@wharryman· Nov 25

a new #poem #poetry

$Falling I can’t say I was conscious when my small body slammed into the earth, bark scratches bloodied my face and arms, ribs and limbs cracked with each impact on branches breaking the fall, slowing the motion of a body falling as dictated by law. There was a brief moment of recognition, the fleeting awareness of falling, then a searing pain where breath left the flesh, and pain flashed against a blue sky fragmented and frantic, unable to fathom why the world inverted itself. I might have died for a moment. There was no white light, no ancestors greeting me, just absence, cessation, a calm before my eyes opened again and my fractured body screamed to be released, freed from this torturous world, a rejection of every next moment’s arrival. I spent decades chasing that emptiness, that peace of nonawareness, drowning so many days in vodka, seeking escape through language or sex, even watching my breath, nothing able to remove me from me. All these years later I’ve stopped seeking, given up the craving to feel nothing, and so I walk amid ancient red rock, ponderosa and chaparral, look for raven to lead me into the unknown, pools of rain water cleansing exposed stone, trails into slot canyons, bare aspen, juniper twisted by wind, as my body was once twisted, a wilderness calmly cradling me in uncertainty. ~ 11.25.25 William Harryman$

WHarryman@wharryman· Nov 24

a new #poem #poetry

Harvest

I can’t hear your voice anymore
there is nothing to be done

is it winter again already
ravens gather beside the creek

scarred flesh demands attention
I remember how longing feels

rustle of bare branches in the wind
sliver of moon in the western sky

my body has grown cold
a piano sonata for the soul

cold mornings forget the harvest
there is no voice in decay

~ 11.24.25
William Harryman

WHarryman@wharryman· Nov 1

a new poem showed up last night and this morning #poetry #poem

a new poem

The unburnt bush

The burning bush
fell extinguished
by torrents of rain
before revealing
its solemn secrets.

Bare feet bloodied
by sharp stones.
Untended sheep
scattered amid
brambles and brush.

The man stood blank
in crimson rain.
The staff at his feet
rattled and writhed
then slithered away.

He knelt on the wet
rocks and wept
as the prayer
I am who I am
stuck in his throat.

~ 10.31.25 - 11.1.25
William Harryman

WHarryman@wharryman· Oct 16

A new poem that showed up yesterday and wrote itself in about 10 minutes. #poetry #poem

A new poem that showed up yesterday and wrote itself in about 10 minutes.

still life

a small orange goldfish
swims imperfect circles
within the large crystal vase
surrounded by still life
with rotting apples
moldy cheese
a dull knife stabbed
into an old oak table

this is the vision
tattooed beneath
my eyelids
when sleep eludes
shallow breaths

there is no frame
by which to know
borders or boundaries

so the day fades
and candles are lit

tomorrow the goldfish
will be dead again
and the flies
imperfectly circle
the rotted apples

~ by William Harryman

WHarryman@wharryman· Oct 9

yellow caution road sign with two figures - sign says "Caution! Dipshits in charge"

WHarryman@wharryman· Sep 20

new poem #poem #poetry

new poem:

discovery

ground fog shadowed the barren fields
when I found the collapsing house
hidden within blackberry brambles

the once white porch lost its stairs
and the front door was covering
holes in the floor of the entry

old mason jars dated in the 1950s
filled with fruits and vegetables
lingered in the kitchen cabinets

faded paint peeled from rotting wood
of kitchen walls and broken glass
still littered the bare wood floors

the first bedroom in the hallway
had a large doorless closet
with stick figures penciled in black

some kneel while others cower
or curl in fetal position
as if the roof might fall

a child’s hieroglyphics left
for others to decipher
the dank mystery of meaning

WHarryman@wharryman· Sep 17

This beautiful image was captured by Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Web Master Liz Kemp #nature #storm #Tucson

image of lightning strike from purplish clouds against a red-orange sunset in the Sonoran Desert - image captured by Liz Kemp

WHarryman@wharryman· Sep 12

pie chart showing, in the U.S. between 2013-2022, that 75% of political killings are committed by right-wing extremists, 20% committed by Islamic extremists, 4% committed by left-wing extremists, and 1% committed by "other"

WHarryman@wharryman· Sep 8

album cover of Peter Gabriel's "Us" - abstract image of Peter Gabriel standing with arms outstretched, wearing a dark blue suit

WHarryman@wharryman· Sep 3

as the daily shit storm of this fascist/authoritarian regime rages on, it's important NOT to lose our humanity - I post this to remind myself of this need more than anyone else