Posts for June 4, 2026 (page 3)

i need to write
everyday
tomorrow will be better 

Bittersweet is the mother unforgotten
The care she once gave,
necessity in return
All she once taught
has left her in stray

Unending love overlooks a horizon
a terminal line that
will always evade

A child now cares,
worries, and wonders
how to move on from
the grief of the loving

The mother once known
is already dead and gone,
but she sits here in breath
henceforth to depend

Mirror, mirror—
your spine lined with silver,
and your eyes a sharp blade of bone.
Where do you keep her,
my poor, lost sister
so utterly, dreadfully far from home?
You smile in secret,
teeth but a whisper—I see them!—
and, closer and closer, your hand reaches
a cloying cold claw into mine.
One last time—you say,
one more look—we’ll find her.

i talk shit
like he does
i smoke j’s
like him
the only coat 
i own is carhartt
i yell
just like he does 
i drink 12 beers 
to go to sleep 
when I drink 
i get mad
then happy 
then mad again 
damn i really am my
father’s son

Johnny thought his job was fun
hits and blood and guts
funny banter with funny partners
all night pizzarias
twenty-four hour shifts
the power of coffee
a friendly rivalry with a friendly rival
an unfriendly rivalry with an unfriendly rival
always something
never boring
never time to think

Janie had to go underground
and no one’s wit was ever quite as quick
Sandry got old
and then he got slow
and he was the one that liked the pizza the most
Watson’s coffee got discontinued
but Jackson’s coffee was good enough
Friendly Freddy got shot and hospitalized
then he got shot and died
Johnny was the one that shot
Unfriendly Frank between the eyes

always something
never boring
never time to think
hits and blood and guts
Johnny thought his job was fun

Use me as a placeholder 
Ride out my pain 
Hold me close as my mouth calls out your name 
Let me fill the pit in your stomach 
With the pressure of my body 
Trace my soul with your eyes 
Do anything but love me 

after Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary

The baby mosquitos are little aliens on the computer screen.
“There’s the siphon,” the professor points to a tubular vessel
that brings fresh air to the larvae’s tracheids.
Most of the larvae are still, dead, the better for us to study them.
One squirms, translucent brush bristles where I think a mouth
should be.  It’s filter feeding, passive, slurping
up particles I can’t see
while their brethren float in stagnant insecticide.
The survivor may as well be an astronaut
adrift in a crewless ship through a foreign solar system.
The microscope’s light is a new sun burning.
I hope they can see the glow.

there’s that one hill
where you can go back to the rocks
it’s up past the auger road
where we’d walk in winter
in soft snow that whisper fell
on our coats, melting
in clouded breath and
we dared not speak
the spell of the mountain quiet
too important to risk
breaking

A little less black. 
More, dare I say, a
bit more gray. Make
it dark enough, enough
to presume but not light
enough to assume. The jurors.
By god, remember the jurors.
Need not feel guilty, too.