2025 Processing II

 I go to bed & think

About a tale of two brothers

Each done wrong by the world

Who instead of standing back to back supporting one another, 

Instead beg their neighbours to bring their daggers

To slice the other open

In hopes the blood spilled

Will keep their feet warm.

2025 Processing I

 In the cold of winter 

Two brothers

Egged on by neighbors 

And baited by “friends”

to hate each other

Into an inability

To cohabitate

Smoke silently

Lips and noses bloodied

As investors eye

Their unit 

For more profitable tenants.

(2025) several short poems on having left Appalachia

 I miss the mists that felt inevitable 

Rolling down the slopes regreened 

Over the lifetime of my grandmother;

Her childhood was browner, 

Before the roots took hold again

Keeping the hills from eroding,

And leaving verdant canopies I grew beneath.

———————-

I gave up my skin willingly,

And followed you far from my shore;

While my skin (and heart) are yours, still,

Being so far from my waters has gutted me,

And I long to bathe in them again.

————————-

My heart hears my ancestors 

And tries to crawl from my chest

Towards the mountains and hollers

To hide.

—————

I want to bury my feet

In pebbles

Worn smooth and round

By eons of water

Rushing around them—

The same water flowing over them

And the same in my veins

———————

Even the willing selkie 

Will yearn for the sea

—————-

Several short poems from 2025

 Welcoming me at my weakest

In sight of you beating others at theirs

Feels a little like a trap—

Will I feel your fists, cousin,

When I tell you, “you are wrong?”

———————

I need you

To pay attention;

You said you were on our side

That the things that effected me 

Affected you;

That you would make sure I didn’t completely fall—

But you are safe in your houses

And I had to scream for you to see

A loudly approaching train. 

———————

There is no silver bullet

No SINGLE action that cures what ails us

But a barrage from several directions,

Large and small,

What you have on hand or can seek out,

Can make the difference

On if we survive this horror story 

———————-

I don’t believe that any *one* can save us—

I believe that *we* can save us, together. 

————————

How many people cannot run to safety

Because the courts won’t let them

Without the express joy

Of those they are trying to escape?

They’ve children. 

————————-

Hope

Is the soul

Begging us

To take action;

It may not demand

But it pleads

In the sweetest tone

To imagine better

And make it so. 

————————-

I’ve seen too often

Fear so deep

And hope so tiny,

So overwhelmed,

That the fearful crawl into bed with monsters

And rise from them the same.

————-

Buying 

Will not

Save you. 

(Giving 

A small thing

might)

(2025)

 The first thing too many people

Sacrifice on the altar of fear

To ward off cognitive dissonance 

Seems to be nuance—

There are other burnt offerings

Acrid on the breeze,

But this one turns friends to demons,

A simplicity that is doomed to failure.

I gather the tallow you left behind

Piecing together from cobbled bits 

A candle to light my way,

To lift the smallest darkness—

Hoping with every step

This forbidden light

Does not offend

So to render me also

To soap for your hands.

(2025) live to see these times

 My grandfather sat

Quietly smiling

As we scrambled by his feet

I, the strange child, asked

To watch the History channel

When the picture resolved 

Revealing a WWII boat

We both let them change it back—

Memories too dark to tell

The children at his knee. 

(He is dead now,

The tumor taking him

Before he had to see, anew,

These times.)

(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.