Posts for June 8, 2026

I dragged a pen across the white door frame
To show how high Icarus walked above the driveway
Before realizing the sun had moved
To a different neighborhood.  

“It don’t shine on the same crowd
All the time,” said Job, alphabetizing scabs
In a filing cabinet plated in pyrite .  

“A finish line,” Lazarus said with baffling snicker
As he smudged the line’s blue ink with his thumb.  

“This is not a miracle,” the billboard mumbles,
Air quotes like cocked eyebrows
Discarded to the side
Above a secondhand shop, Puddin-N-Tane.  

“A tight rope,” said Sisyphus,
Though no one knew why.  

Then we saw an ant balancing on it
As it crossed the threshold. It tore
A fly—tattooed days before to the wall
By a swatter—in half, even though it was already
Little more than a collage—thorax, wings,
A thousand eyes.  

“Ah, yes,” I said, thinking of new ways to frame it.
“Ayes,” added Long John Silver, prompting
Baffled glances all around.  

Then autocorrect chimed in on the mark:
“it’s not a line, it’s a limb.”
We all looked at each other with genuine concern,
Heard a “crack!,” and fell through the bottomless shades
Planted below the tree of knowledge.

A basketball swings
around the perimeter.

Hand to hand.
The point guard sees something.

A cutter appears.

The ball arrives exactly
where it was needed.

For a moment,

everyone involved
looks like they knew
what was going to happen.

Sometimes you throw the ball
and no one catches it.

You cut toward open space.

No pass arrives.

You spend months
perfecting your timing

only to discover

the other person
is playing pickleball.

Dink.

Pop.

Doink.

Dink. 

Pop.

But every Monday evening,

the basketball leaves a hand.

The pickleball clears a net.

Someone calls for the ball
and someone answers.

For a moment,

movement is answered by movement.
Attention answered by attention.

The rare and beautiful experience
of not carrying the play

by yourself.

lust  –  i’m smugly pleased i grew up before internet porn

gluttony  –  why didn’t they think of door dash sooner

greed  –  capital gains offsets are not greedy

sloth  –  see gluttony

wrath  –  the bitter partisan collapse of comity in our political institutions

envy  –  ’69 Camaro RS glacier blue convertible white top with the 350 small block v8

pride  –  i’m proud i still have my looks

High above the hollers deep,
Where the laurel shadows creep,
Past the creek and through the pine,
Stands a cabin lost to time.

Folks say lightning split the sky
The night they heard her newborn cry,
And the owls all ceased their song
Like they knew she’d not belong.

She grew up wild on Blackthorn Ridge,
Beyond the river’s narrow bridge,
With raven hair and eyes of gray,
Like storm clouds on a winter day.

The old wives whispered at the store,
“That girl’s touched by something more.”
When crops would fail or cows go lame,
The mountain witch would get the blame.

Yet when fevers burned a child,
Or winter storms grew fierce and wild,
Those same folks climbed the ridge at night
Seeking help by lantern light.

She knew the roots beneath the stone,
Every herb the woods had grown.
She’d brew her teas and speak no word,
While outside foxes gathered, stirred.

The wind obeyed her, so they swore,
And black bears slept beside her door.
Even copperheads would slide away
When she’d walk the creek at break of day.

One autumn evening, cold and still,
A miner vanished near the hill.
Searchers combed the forest floor
Till they could search the woods no more.

Three days passed beneath gray rain,
And hope had nearly slipped its chain.
Then down she came from Blackthorn Ridge
And crossed the river’s crooked bridge.

She said, “He’s trapped beneath a seam
Where water runs beneath the stream.”
The men just stared, but followed through,
And found the miner where she knew.

Still they feared her all the same,
For mountain hearts are slow to change.
They thanked her once, then shut their doors,
And spoke her name in hushed folklore.

Years rolled by like creek-swept leaves,
And frost grew white among the trees.
One winter morn she disappeared
Without a trace, as some had feared.

The cabin stood another year,
Silent now and dark and drear.
Then one night a fire’s glow
Lit Blackthorn Ridge beneath the snow.

By dawn the cabin had turned to ash,
Gone as quick as lightning’s flash.
Yet travelers say on moonlit nights
They see a lantern’s distant light.

And if you’re lost in mountain fog,
Or hear strange footsteps through the bog,
A woman’s voice may call your name
Soft as smoke and bright as flame.

She’ll guide you home through storm and pine,
Then vanish with the morning shine.

And old folks smile and softly say,
“The Witch still walks these hills today.”

They were running up the hill above their house and the rising waters when they heard the water amplify into a liquid roar. The hard spit of steady rain peppered them. They watched the waters loosen their van from the driveway, then their truck. They yelled for the dogs to come back when they jumped in after the vehicles, as if to herd them back to shore. And dusk sighed into night as they stood on the hill. And the river rose to the roof of their brick rancher. And what might be swimming through their fluid rooms? And what stains would the swimming waters leave? They fed the dogs and made camp on the hillside among the waiting wreckage.   

I think about Icarus more than I should
But the oligarchs are clearly unaware
of the dangers of hubris

They move fast and break things with their chainsaws
both metaphorical and real
While feeling superior to the plowman and the shepherd
with their simple rough hands and tired muscles

But at the end of the day, or season, that plowman
will have fed his family and his donkey too
While the techbros and their ilk will have led young boys to suicide
and young girls to eating disorders

And we all drown as the ones and zeroes close over our heads
and the wings of democracy
melt beneath the blazing sun

Maybe one day
the floods will wash away
this secondhand sin
we find ourselves buried in.

We’ll climb our way out
of the deep-seated doubt
they sow and embed
‘cause we’re “just not well-read.”

We’ll rise without stops
‘till our heads meet mountaintops
where barons live in grandeur
‘cause they screw over the poor.

We’ll all take lighters
to those greedy outsiders.
Watch them burn like the coal
they traded for soul.

At the end of the day
sunset streaks across the sky,
crickets go mad
and a lone elm thinks
I have paper     Hell I am paper
I wish I had a pen
and joints in my limbs
as the wind lifts its leaves
and sighs in the branches
like a bow caressing a violin
I mean when we work together
we begin to inderstand
that we’re made out of song.

Attention All Shoppers!
It is now time…
to get out of here!
Run away
from the busted AC
be free.