I was voracious in my consumption of the door

I stared at the headline
like it might change eventually.
Heart sinking into my gut—
a burning truth
I wasn’t ready to bleed.

This can’t be real.
Not you.
Not the voice that taught me
how to scream without apology,
how to ache in rhythm,
how to fight through static.

You were the fire
in my headphones
when the world grew cold.
Now all that’s left
is silence
and a thousand questions
choking in my throat.

How dare you.
How could you just leave?
So many leaned on your sound
to stand.
Did you not see
how we followed you
through every lyric—
every crack in your roar
a crack in our cages?

You had it all.
A family who adored you,
children still learning
how to be whole.
A wife who held your storms,
fighting beside you.
And us—
millions
who clung to your words
like lifelines,
because they made our own chaos
feel understood.

You stood on top of the world
with the crowd beneath you
chanting your name.
How could you fall
from a place so high?

Selfish:
A name for pain,
disguised as betrayal.
We needed you.
We believed you were healing
alongside us.

Yet anger, like grief,
is just love
wearing breakable armor.

As I sat,
face buried in my hands.
I felt the truth rise
through the quiet that followed:

You carried a war
inside your bones.
A darkness louder
than any stage.
We never saw
the weight in your lungs—
how singing
sometimes felt like drowning.

You weren’t a god.
You were a man
with a gift and a ghost.
You held back the tide
for as long as you could
while pulling millions
to shore.

I write
I play
I sing—
because your pain
taught me how to feel.
Because your voice
made mine matter.
You were my beginning—
not of notes,
but of purpose.

Your story
stirred a reckoning inside me,
I turned my pain into melody—
refused to let the darkness
have the final word.
Seeing what you carried
and how it crushed you
pushed me to write of
life’s worth for those
still drowning.
If one heart finds meaning,
then the hurt becomes holy.

You shined
through broken glass
and burning wires.
Decades of thunder,
still echoed.

Now, 
I feel this more than ever.
Your voice still lives
in every soul you reached,
in every note carried on. 
It’s true—
I do care
if one more light goes out.

the grayness of the day–
I don’t mind
reminds me of a place in my soul
deep and dark
where bitter things prey
making my life but a toll
the devils well
sucking on you till you pray to be eaten and quartered
left in the grayness of today

In the Shadows of a Little Boy:

is just a thug

                                            (On this day of protest and resistence,
                                              rise up like a river!)

I have become disconnected with my body

With my sense of self

In the pursuit of understanding

Why

Others

Are the way that they are

I went to a hoedown
on Friday the 13th
two days post- Strawberry Moon

I witnessed a throwdown
of power from truth
in poems full of spiritual swoon

I watched good love glow down
the grand marble steps 
to the streets (may it last beyond June).

Neanderthal to
Digital to
Virtual to
Artificial…
will it be,
Consequential?

The opposite is what you get she said,

As she stood there by the door.

There are donuts in the love seat,

There is a ballet in the corridor,

There are beignets on the wall,

There is hair strewn on the floor.

It reminds me of a slaughter,

Somewhere I’ve seen before.

A place forgotten to the sound,

The sound of laughter and of joy,

Cause no one is around,

At least not anymore.

And if by chance you see it,

Don’t think on it all that hard.

There are white pills in the bedroom,

Construction in the yard.

There used to be lifeblood here,

But it was more than I could take.

I took a loan out on the ugliness,

And tried to drown deep in the lake.

She stabbed me with a kitchen knife,

In a place I used to feel.

Now it’s just a gaping hole,

That no longer yearns to heal.

At the moment rhyme and reason are locked together at the horns.

I never swore that I’d give up,

But how I tire of the thorns.

If I obsess then I might make sense,

Or then again make more,

More ways to confuse the reason,

That I’m still standing at your door.

You never stop

I never stop

Keep spinning

Keep turning

Love on

Love off

Love on

We are getting old

This is getting old

The end