Posts for June 10, 2025 (page 5)

Oftentimes

Poems arrive in a sketch form in my head

and act like little newly hatched birds with no feathers, half-blind

rolling in the nest..seeking and sensing

even though not fully formed

On arrival

a poetic sketch sometimes makes me run out into the yard

with a big shovel and start digging for something

deep in the dirt —better words—-the right words

maybe something I just sense is there —

but I must get at it while the idea is still breathing

—still sparking within —

though making me breathe a different way,

semi-gasping through the dirt clouds forming

After digging a while

When I look down I see myself

looking up clawing my way out

I meet myself there in the dark, nod,

and see that I have just gone far enough

having hit a vein of gold to buy myself some time

I stay behind to bury the words that perished along the way

Then run away with an armload of possibles

seeking a cave of solitude

where I throw spaghetti against the wall until some sticks

On this day in 1933
Lilian Harvey Lewis
was born, not early, 
but tiny. 

Doctor’s advice: have 
her baptized right
away. She won’t live
out the week.

She outlived that
prediction by 78 years.
Left her childhood
in Scranton, became

a nurse, married 
a Midwestern doctor,
raised six children 
in upstate New York. 

She was always fragile.
She was always strong.
Rheumatic fever, arthritis,
heart disease slowed 

but did not stop her
from laughing, from
becoming a late in life
political activist.

And when her heart
finally did wear out, she 
quietly let go, surrounded 
by all the people she loved. 

I am a lousy poet
evading rhythm and rhyme
expecting words to eloquently tumble onto the page

I am a lousy poet
a leech who longs for others’ poetic moments
only to craft them into my own faux experience

I am a lousy poet
who begrudgingly etches words onto a page
and whines about why I don’t write as much any more

I am a lousy poet
who blames my stubborn writing habits on politics (it just might prove to be true)
and wonders, “were all the famous poets also this lousy?”

There’s really nothing new to see here.

Civilians lie prone on the grassy land,

heads raised to spot the moment’s foes,

which only increases the risk to them.

Behind them, a young soldier races:

clad in standard camouflage and kevlar,

eyes fixed, his weapon at the ready.

We’ve seen all this before, but where?

Do we really need a list, and if so,

how to order insanity’s legacy again?

(after an undated and untitled photograph from the portfolio, “Early Works,” by Nick Hannes)

In a city veined with ghosts,
where time pools in the corners
and the air holds its breath,
the past rises like steam
from cobblestones—
warm, familiar,
and aching to be touched.

You are not here.

Yet everything feels touched by you.
Your absence wears a shape,
and I have learned to live around it—
like furniture left in a room
no longer meant for comfort.

Your fingers,
invisible,
still trace the hollows of my face
like wind through cathedral ruins,
a reverence in their retreat.

Your voice—a thread unwinding in my ear—
offers the promises you would give,
with none of the weight to hold it.

Were you ever real?
did I really touch you —feel your embrace?
Or have you always been
just the shadow between heartbeats,
-the echo between words?

 I pause and breathe…

A shiver climbs my spine-
like ivy on old stone. 
I am gripped by a phantom wind,
and some part of me
blooms at the thought of you,
despite knowing
you are memory, not form.

This haunting—
A ghost not of loss—
but of pause.

Sometimes I hear the future
breathing beneath the present—
a whisper beneath the noise,
asking if we are done
or simply
waiting.

And as this city lulls me to sleep
as it sings its ancient melody-
I am reminded-
It is hard to bury something
that is fighting to stay alive.

a turkey slapped me
they are stronger than they look
my urban farm life

So much love in our hearts.
Harvest it, sow it,
erase wrong where you can.
Leave the earth better
than when you came in.

June has been rainy
Next comes a strawberry moon
and hot summer sun

Jazz orange! Incorporated cardio!
Celestial or antidepressant?
American sign language for I love
you too much like rock on so I really
love you (extra finger cross). 
High throat noises pup. Scrabble 
with the camp counselors. Dadaist 
as hell, the whole day, my hands
darting flecks from the sparkler
of my body. Some full sentences
but mostly not. Clocked in
to wringing the lemon skins
which I’ve used to make metaphor
before of paining oneself,
but I’m dancing on sour.
I’m trying not to make it all
about myself but please look!
I made it up the peach tree
all by myself, and before it rotted
of fungus! Metropolitan leaf blur
out the train, blur me out, blur me.
No more summaries. A sash
calling me beautiful, calling me.

It begins in the mind—
no harm evident,
no progress undone.
The most dangerous thought:
“I deserve more.”
It creeps in corners left unchecked,
where truth is traded for comfort,
and comfort becomes the cage.
Not fire, but fog.
Not chains, but choices.
Repeat them until they rot.

The slow destruction of a man

too proud to admit fault,

yet too lost to justify cause.
I don’t follow noise—
I follow routine,

familiarity,
what feels like home.
Walls built from compromise.
Windows sealed with pride.

Where comfort lives,
change often dies.
Slowly, quietly,
with the faint resonating sound
of “maybe tomorrow.”

I found peace in drifting.
I became familiar with change
when chasing transformation

left me suffocating.
I adapted on the surface of erosion,
like it’s evolution.
I celebrated milestones,

while my soul stayed still.

Freedom only avoids guilt
Growth only distracts from grief
Purpose is left unknown.

Comparison is not the only

thief of joy.

Temporary pleasure is its accomplice.
The illusion of a quick fix

has a job to bury potential.

I pretended this is okay
hoping it would vanish.
I prayed without kneeling,
hoping conversation mattered.
I stood near the gate without knocking,

hoping my entry was guaranteed.

What good is forgiveness
if I treat grace
like a loophole
instead of a lifeline?

What good is Heaven
if I drag my hell with me?
Wearing the name,

yet carrying no resemblance?
Entering cleansed, yet cold,
Forgiven, yet foreign?

This is not peace.
This is panic.

Maybe it ends well
Maybe the road
turns gold and I force

this leaf to turn.

However, that “maybe”

is hope with no plausible evidence.

The journey is where the

pain of a sin-filled life is felt.

Forgiveness fades

when it becomes permission

instead of redemption.

When the pain of same is worse

than the pain of change,

most people wake up.

Why haven’t I?

A change MUST happen.

I cannot bear the thought
of standing in the Kingdom,
a stranger to the life
He died to give me.