Posts for June 27, 2024 (page 4)

Today I went to visit my friend
at the memory care unit.
We ate pizza and she told me
how much she hates it
and how everything would be okay
if she was at her house.
She told me she was going to climb
over the fence and walk all the way
home if she had to. She told me
the same thing last week.
Everyone hates it there.
It’s a beautiful place
with a lake in the front yard.

On the way home I stopped
at Walmart and saw a little boy
standing in a grocery cart.
I’m a big boy, he shouted
and I realized that next week
he would be graduating
from college. And the middle-aged
woman picking out the best bananas
would be in a nursing home
and how many of the other shoppers
would even be alive?

I will not watch.
I am not sticking
my head in the sand
just acknowledging 
that nothing I might
hear tonight could
change my mind.
I will go to sleep,
unburdened by
apocalyptic dreams,
wake tomorrow,
steeled for the fight. 

What are you
black, why
We have to report it
and it’s not obvious
It is if you have to ask

I saw a guy standing in the park
he was creepy 
You should have called the police
That’s the whitest thing I’ve ever heard

Black people ruined public schools
You are not American 
You taught in public schools 
without a teaching degree
You ruined public schools

Well you sent your kids to private school
I sent my kids to one of best schools in America
to save them from ignorant people like you.

I don’t like his hair
His hair looks like a child’s
Those are corn rows
and those are braids
When he got it done he
didn’t consider your thoughts

Black people are violent
said the man who approves 
of apartheid and genocide

Did you come from money
Why, because I have good taste

Your kids are fresh air fund kids
My bank account would disagree
It’s $4000 dollars short

You got your job because you look white
Actually I slept my way to it

You look white
I’m the same color as your Daddy

It was nice and shiny
Yesterday,
Even, colorful,
Smooth,
But it’s chipping,
Cracking,
Falling off at the sides,
And when one falls off,
I peel the rest,
Bare nails,
Scuffed, naked,
Broken

silvery moonbeams 

Drivel and dogma
drown in a dearth
of dilemma.

Dispel depraved deeds
of deception with
daily devotion to truth.

rocks in the tumbler always have me jumping
stage four of the tumble has my heart pumping

has any of them cracked or gotten really small
no matter what they look like I will love them all

from Lake Superior I have some quartz thats lovely and white
I hope to find some rocks that glow under a black light

a rock i found in a kentucky creek that looks like candy corn
I love rocks that are so smooth that the rushing water has worn

when walking around I find rocks that catch my eye
there is even one from Louisiana that looks like a little slice of pumpkin pie

I glue them to old fence boards to make garden art
I am always on the lookout for ones shaped like a heart

there is something so magical holding something so old
then placing it in the tumbler to see what secrets it might hold

The birds were really going on about something
this morning—likely some telephone line
gossip or perhaps whispers about what dirty
laundry I’d be airing today along with the wash.

Or maybe I’ve got it all wrong—they were
crowing about how quickly chicks leave
nests these days, wanting nothing more
than fast access to the very highest perches.

But what I want to believe is that it was
just a bit of whimsy the mist brought on
or better yet a clear-toned couplet or two—
for a full-feathered start to the day.

And from her lips I stole

A good morning, A whispered

I love you.

Whether the day is long,

Good, bad even.

It is no bother,

For like a thief once struck gold,

I’ll return and steal from her

Again,

that deep kiss and love thereafter.