Truths we’d rather not see
Raked into the compost,
buried deep–
Used to feed vines,
growing twisted,
roping round,
A soul stilled
in one place.
Destruction
Winter Destruction
The cruelest time is winter.
Green, nesting in the folds of flower petals,
That once basked in summer sun
Withers,
Crackling in dryness.
Then comes the stomping,
Crunching of ice.
Innocence destroyed.
SPIN
Spin the world back
Align the planets
In time and place
Before terms of “modern history”
Before debates of definitions
And the numbers swelled
To defy all meanings
Coalesced of horror and terror
When men hadn’t lost reason
Or eaten seductive fruits
Of celebrity and hate.
Spin the numbers down
Beyond all the eights
Of Miami, Louisville
San Francisco, Omaha,
Carthage, Appomattox,
Manchester, Seal Beach
Spin back the nines
In Jacksonville and Waddell,
Red Lake High School,
Charleston and Roseburg
Spin down the ten
Of Alabama
That added yet more
Spin down the even dozens
In Aurora, Atlanta,
And the Navy Yard
Spin down the thirteens
Of Camden, Wilkes-Barre,
Binghamton, Seattle,
Fort Hood,
And Columbine High
Spin down the fourteens
At San Bernardino
And the Edmond Post Office
Spin down the eighteen
Of the University of Texas
Spin down the twenty-one
In San Ysidro
Spin down the twenty-three
At Killeen
Spin down the twenty-seven
Of Sandy Hook
Spin down the thirty-two
At Virginia Tech
Spin down the forty-nine
In Orlando
Spin down the fifty-eight
Of Vegas
Spin down
To a time of innocence
Before blood
Of four hundred eighty-nine martyrs
Soaked the second
Before tears watered
Graves of the framers
Spin, spin us back
Or
Spin, spin us forward
To a new time
When no hate fed madman
Can attempt alchemy
With gunpowder, iron, and blood.
Disowned
More delicate than our dying Earth,
The fragile blood of our children dries,
Blistering in a baking sun
While we watch
Our babies gasping
Like hooked fish.
Our humanity broken,
We are wooden pawns
In the game of masters,
Men who would be kings
Posturing outrage
Over plans known
By them alone
Made in black secret rooms,
Selling us all to Mephistopheles,
Trading on the fragility of our attention
With the lives of our children,
Who made us human.
Nothing is left to wonder at,
But if this is the day
Humanity made
God tearless.
Power Rises
The Lady went dark,
feeling the decline.
The dawn trembled,
as the power of the mother raised
a sisterhood united.
While the capricious one
and his band of merry fools
turned tiny hands
to the magician’s tools
of distraction and deflection,
whipping their devout disciples
to a rabid, foamy hate,
ready to trample their different siblings.
Thus, the mother within the sisterhood
and a faction of the brotherhood
joins them to rise,
persisting in resisting
to protect a nation
for the next generation.
After Eruption
Rend the earth again
Tear, rip through miles of rock and soil
Till the swollen, rounded,
core lies exposed
Bubbling, glowing,
Sputtering out
Reaching tendrils of itself.
Note the flow,
Time the pulses of heat,
Beating with undulating life seen and unseen.
Then watch the viscous liquid cool,
Solidifying against the pain
Of each cold breath you expel
Stilling the beat of life.
The transformation to cold, hard stone
Within the earth’s crust
As thus,
A mother’s heart,
Torn open once too often,
Stops.
Let The Horseman Ride
The captain of industry forgets his history
As a populous forgets all the tales of prophecy
While writhing in the seduction of lies.
Thus, all the best in humanity is left behind.
Water boarding, black sites, torture now promised.
Yes, the captain says to let the horseman ride.
The angry world forgets
The path of anger makes the “world blind.”
Yes, the captain says to let the horseman ride.
The sun dons a robe of sackcloth, grieving
The ocean’s rasping last breath,
As the moon’s face rained blood tears,
Turning rivers red.
Yes, the captain said to let the horseman ride.
