Posts for June 8, 2026 (page 10)

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.

Don’t trust the government
Any of them
Don’t bother belonging to a “party”–
they are two sides of the same
corrupt coin

Don’t voluntarily place yourself 
inside the box they have planned for you,
the captured peering out from the lid,
suspicious of all not in a box labeled
just like theirs

Don’t limit your freedom to
believe or dis-believe according
to the whims of some bully clique
or societal pressure

Be your own person
Don’t label and hate others–no 
matter their “party”–

They want us to forget who we are–
human beings, much more alike than
unalike, capable of incredible things,
until we are split into factions, 
forgetting 

who we are
and who are 
our neighbors

        the sole purpose of government 
        is to control and limit
        the possibilities of those controlled

if you want something more, 
you must claim it, and face 
them on the battlefied, if necessary,
to keep it

or you can sit quietly and hope
you are not seen,
accepting your yoke,
lips sealed

create wealth for those already wealthy.
Assets circulate in sinister eccentricity,
in ugly secrets. Hackneyed platitudes
cannot repair this toxic landscape.  

Unscarred, over-fed barons manipulate our daily lives
through stock options and insider trading.
This hostile takeover of human resources
leaves the minimum wage at $7.25.  

Melted for minerals, what is my material body worth?
There are no traces of rare earth.
Perhaps my innards could be sold.
My only value lies in labor for others.  

What is the cost of a pound of flesh?

My poems recently have been angry,
and there’s a buzzing pressure in my chest
like wasps forming rank.
I want to be a father. I want to hold a child—
my child—to my chest and mean it when I
say everything is going to be alright.
but then…
We’re back in the Middle East. BUZZ
Beef tallow and Vacinnes. BUZZ
Data centers consuming my hometown. BUZZ 
Unbidden, the first prayer I’ve uttered in years
vibrates through my lips.

Let them be born into knowledge of their sins.
Let them see, in the moments before they die,
    the gaping maw of Hell
Let me feel their blood on my hands.

blessed are those with strong opinions
who spit shrapnel at any bold enough to seek them out.

acid-tongued oracles
shrieking empty truths with priceless lies
unveiling that which aches to remain hidden

Head:
Watch it.
You’ve seen this before.
It only feels real; you know it’s a fucking fantasy.
A trick of the light in the golden hour sky.

Heart:
This time, though!
Look at him.
Look at how he looks at me.
This is new, different. Perfect.

Head:
Foolish girl.
He’ll take what he needs
and leave you to sweep up the mess.
You’re crying because you know I’m right.

Heart:
No!  I’m crying because
…well, because I’m terrified
but also exhilarated.
Does that make sense?

Head:
[ . . . ]
I can only keep you safe if you let me.

Heart:
(whispers) I don’t think I want to be safe anymore.

6/8/26

picnics settle in the cracks of forgottenness
the way photographs used to live in shoeboxes
or photo albums tucked into the junk closet
of a spare bedroom (serving as emotional reflector tape
should life bring you to your knees too often) 

strangers join as friends who become family
wait for hot dog skin to blister
time passes as
everyone talks politics… weather…the differences
between creamy and vinegar-dressed slaw
then (if you’re lucky) someone tosses a giant
bag of marshmallows on a table
sticks are gathered…chocolate is melted…and
everyone’s sugar raises or
you top off another round of horsehoes with a brownie
a spoonful of banana pudding
a cup of fruit salad

the point of it all arrives a week later…or
the next year at a funeral or weddin’ when you
remember that one human (that good nut who
wore a bun’s worth of chili sauce on
that new tshirt and fed those people’s dogs the
cold weeners) and
lordy… lord… lord…how good it would be to
hear those laughs
again

I read last night in a fiction book, no less,
but backed by scientific data
that the chances that we (as in
all of earth’s inhabitants and the planet, itself
and all its constellations) will be sucked
into a black hole are one in a trillion.
It doesn’t take higher math to know,
that’s a lot of zeros.  And yet,

what are the chances that we—
that’s you and me, baby—
would be born out of one singular,
ba ba boom bang let loose at the beginning of time?
Or, out of God’s words, all of which began
with Let there be? I say again,
what are the chances?  
I’d say more than one in a trillion
since black holes came out of that bang.

Nothing short of a miracle,  
and yet here we are,
Alpha and Omega,
highly improbable, yet possible,
maybe even inevitable. 

On the off chance that we  
are swallowed by a black hole–
I need you to know now,
because then will be too late–
I am forever grateful for

everything,