(2025) two poems

 If your bloodlust 

Is bigger

Than your empathy

Than your love

Than your hope for a better future;

If no actual strategy 

No experienced counsel

No wisdom

Can appease

The call for violence 

In your soul;

Then I think

Perhaps

You have chosen 

Self-destruction

Over change

———————

There’s a season

A place, a use, 

For each prong

Of the pitchfork—

To wield them

Improperly,

Swifter than wisdom, 

Is to self impale

And fall

Into the cowpatties

You were trying

To shovel away.