You’ll not believe
–as if you could hide such a thing–
I was strong enough to walk
but I sat down
and sobbed.
They were
weeping, too–
bless them,
they burned it.
That land should be blank forever.
It was terrible to watch
and know
“
When someone does not realize they are corrupted, and think they are walking around as a moral lightening rod — what they end up conducting is intolerance and ignorance.
The folks that love taking pictures with non-white children on mission trips and stay silent when non-white children need help in the US.
They are the anti-abortionists who don’t care if the child has access to health care once they are born.
They believe in charitable donations, if they can write it off on their taxes.
They rally against social welfare programs and promote the expansion of military presence to help “liberate” the same folks they trample in their anti-immigrant rhetoric.
They are white blood cells that attack their own body — corrupted and lost.
Yes, we all know these people — and the realization is demoralizing when they identify themselves.
”
The hot and cold times, unseasonal and unexpected. Brutal storms dividing peaceful interludes. Endless days with too-brief nights. Contrapuntal changes in the music of the years. Yes: Life together. We were giants, in our way, towering above what besieged us, sometimes to our own surprise. With time, without warning though predictable, the ground beneath us shifts in increments. Some around us fail, fall, become the wreckage of old dreams. And we, our stories joined, carved deep into our surface, stand among the lucky, leaning on each other.
I have a dove made from clay
My voice is drawn to a whisper
I no longer cling to these marble pillars
Will you listen?
The dove holds not an olive branch, but a seed
My voice is a smooth silver, reflective
I have a message as clear as cool water
Will you listen?
The dove turns from soft clay to stone
I raise my voice to brass
My hands carry tension in clenched fists
Will you listen?
The stone wings open and glisten with stained glass
I hear my voice cascade around these halls and come back to me in triplets
I am steady
Will you listen?
Have I grown too accustomed
to quarantine’s day-drinking lifestyle,
or is the halting force of next week’s vacation
preemptively setting in,
or maybe it was yesterday’s full day
of back and forth forklift motion
shaking all motivation out of me
leaving me little more than a potato
planted in my suddenly super comfortable chair?
Of course, the answer doesn’t really matter
because they all mean the same thing.
I don’t feel like doing shit today.
Lines laid above space
spatial function affect
suspension grid shift
Intersecting points
rectangular illusion
perception design
you said,
as i plucked off
pieces of my skull,
transforming them
from something
terrifying
into something
ingenious.
i took the flowers
off the casket
that held all the sacred
things in life,
and planted them
in my backyard,
and waited for them
to grow into
something magnificent
and they never did.
so now i use the corpses
of all the ‘what ifs’
and “could’ve beens”
to cage up the
overwhelming darkness
that traumatized me
into the self-proclaimed
artist i am today.
i’ll never stop writing
because i will never
be happy.
On the shores of 1968 I played in puberty
and finding myself before the world found me.
Poets fled to Canada and trumpet players
bled in Vietnam.
Streets were electric and a
balcony in Memphis was sighted by the ghost
of grassy knoll.
Felons and goodfellas did what
they’ve always done, run the reaping machine.
A book of poetry, written in 1968, by a
writer whose name I can’t hear in the
dream where I see the cover matted by a
pastel sky of orange and blue, limns the
truth in lines about the war.
I search for
this book, my errand tasked from outside
time.
I haven’t found it yet, but I have found
hope because
the world is searching, too.
My father’s second visit after his death
Was in an abandoned library
Underground, dust coated
And again he couldn’t talk
I think he was picking up books and gesturing
as if to speak on them
And that one was ecstatic
It was wonderful to be there
in the library that was buried with my father
