Posts for June 9, 2026 (page 12)

Painted black panthers
on an 8-string
remind me

Of holy hunger,
Hegel,
hevel.

Rushing blood
copper veins
The Lion
rapt by the ascetic ideal, still

power and conflict
grief and disbelief

anxiety
anguish
uncertainty
indecison
about the future
about the past

strife
instability
ignorance
indifference
fearing un/known
filling a/void

tyranny
apostasy
corruption
decadence
deception
decline
and bears
oh my

well shit the byzantine bed man
maybe mahler no. 5
i left out slaughter on purpose

I use my teeth to pull tab off cream rinse.
       Frequently I find myself
near the front of the buffet line.  I’m mindful

I don’t run out of gas, toilet paper, milk, tea.
       My garbage and recycing
are out to the curb every Sunday night.  Backing

out of the garage, I look each direction and then
       look again.  Don’t tell anyone
but I check out new acquaintances on the internet.

My reptialian brain knows you can’t be too careful.
       All my forebearers would attest
to that, long resilient survivors that they were.

I.
Rain greens the leaving,
drops like needles prickling skin.
The path still beckons.                    

II.
Still drops, skin needles,
leaving greens the prickling path,
beckons like the rain.

LaDee, my Mountian Curr
plays squirrel games-
runs them up a tree 
then tracks them
in the canopy
as them as the jump from 
tree top to tree top.
A Woooooooooo!!!
A Woooooooooo!!!

She has been known to 
catch them,
before she trees
           but that is no fun
-ends the game
           quickly,
before it really starts.

i live two lives
(one beside the other)

one life for the world
(one in my mind)

i always say I’m fine
(i’m falling apart)

i smile and joke along
(i’m crying)

i play well with others
(i just want to be alone)

i do what is expected
(i’m so tired of trying)

i check every box on the list
(i’m shaking inside)

i keep showing up as myself
(but I don’t know who that is anymore)

i put on this costume daily
(i am running out of me)

(i don’t recognize my voice
and it is fading)

Nib on paper whispers
With movement of my hand
Ink left behind to pool
Along my words then dry
Story unfolding fast
Faster than I can write
Story forming better—
Then comes dry-formed scratches
I sigh as ink runs out

Paper towels and faucet
I fill the reservoir
Shake fast and shake it hard
Inject glass of water
Like spooked and fleeing squid
Then disassemble pen
Gold nib and feed and cap
Scuffs from pocket travel
All left to soak a while

Gently I assemble
All but my hands are clean
Boxes of ink jars clink
This is the hardest part
Green and black and purple
Red, brown, and autumn orange
I love them equally
But one catches my eye
Royal blue speaks to me

Dipped below the ink line
Rush of pressured vacuum
A sudden flash of ink
Pen weighted in my grip
Back to starving story
Nib on paper whispers
With movement of my hand
Story unfolding fast
Faster than I can write

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor
Self-Subduing and Repressing Implement

Four months before our wedding
he told me he couldn’t do it
unless I got my shit together.
(he may have used nicer words; I don’t know; I was drunk)

and thus I spent the entirety of our marriage (except for the 1st, planned, pregnancy)
on a drug that took deliberate aim
at my overly-emotional
emotions.

For sixteen years
I warily observed an existence
that didn’t require a box of tissues at a movie (happy or sad),
that didn’t include yelling matches with strangers in a bar over a baseball game,
that was so very balanced
and so very dulled.
Like watching life through a closed window,
when my grandma died
I felt the tears somewhere behind the pharmaceutical barricade
but they never broke loose.

Mere months before the demise of my marriage,
I ended my time on SSRIs
and then upended
everything.
I spent the early months retraining in feeling:
scream-crying along with Taylor Swift lyrics;
burying grief under a smile for my children;
soaring with pride and bliss as I wandered down new paths;
setting free the deluge of unnamed emotions that had never dissipated,
but was simply penned in
by the pills.

I still run from it sometimes
but as you kiss my forehead and tease, “So emo…”
I let myself get carried away again
in this tide I once knew
and it feels
like coming home.

6/9/26

Jimmy’d pop out the kickstand on his yellow bike
and stand in the intersection directing traffic,
his blue ball cap pulled low shading soda bottle eyeglasses.
Above his head the traffic light kept its separate rhythm.  

Folks who didn’t know him, at first and from a distance
thought he was a kid. In a way, he was –
a perpetual ten-year-old leaving the group home each morning
to cruise the streets on his bicycle,
no fancy gears, a kid’s bike.

The police department tolerated Jimmy
as he tucked his hand-made parking tickets
beneath windshield wipers of vehicles
threaded along Main and Washington.
“He ain’t hurtin’ nothin’.”  

I volunteered at the soup kitchen,
and the group home called regularly
reminding us not to feed diabetic Jimmy.
He took our rejection well
as long as he could sit down with his coffee.

Then he’d mooch off the trays of others.
“You want that chocolate cake?” he’d ask.
“Naw, Jimmy, you can have it.”
“How ‘bout them corn muffins?”
“Take ’em, Jimmy.”  

When Jimmy died
Shelbyville lost one of its flavors.
We missed the orange flag flapping above his bicycle
as he patrolled our streets.
Edgar, the Vietnam vet, and Booger Bill
with his wad of dollars stuffed
in the pockets of his flapping overcoat
momentarily kept us from becoming
any other small town in Kentucky.  

Now, they too are gone.