Category Archives: poetry

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go.

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Go where you feel God,
not where they tell you he is.
If it’s a mountain where you find Him,
then get your backpack
and your campin’ bags
and start hiking His way.
If you feel God when you’re runnin’
then run until you can’t breathe
and you can feel him in your heartbeat.
If you feel God on a beach,
then why are you still here?
Go to the sand and the shore
and talk with Him a little more.
If your God is in a church,
then find yourself a pew and a Bible
and wait for the sermon to start –
or maybe you go when no one is there
so you can hear Him speak, clearly.
Go, please go, where you feel God.
If He speaks to you in the dark,
then turn off the lights.
If He speaks to you in a crowded room,
then head to the nearest
auditorium, football stadium
Go where your God leads you,
not where their God has led them.

 

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words that i felt.

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the sand between my toes
does not heal me.
there is no peace for me here.

_________________________

 

When I grow up,
I want to be brave.
I want to say the things
that need to be said,
gracefully. gracefully.
I want to do the things
that need to be done,
fearlessly. fearlessly.
I want to love the ones
that need to be loved,
fully. wholly. truly. deeply.
When I grow up,
whenever that it is –
I hope that I am brave enough
to be brave.

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Stairway of the Macabre

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Quick, let’s build a wall.
Make it a hundred feet high;
better yet, make it two.
Take away their shovels
and ladders and ropes
and while we’re at it,
take what’s left of their
dignity and humanity.
Maybe we can tax the
ever lovin’ shit out of them
while were at it.
Just savages, don’t you know
that’s what they are?
If you put a door,
you better bar it.
Don’t let them out.
Don’t let them in.
They might taint our
hypocrisy with truth.
Guard it with your life,
sacrifice yours so that
they can’t have a better one.
Cover your legalities with
words like boundaries,
so it’ll be easier to ignore
the screams when the cartel comes.
We took away their shovels,
but maybe they can pile the bodies
like a stairway of the macabre.
maybe if enough people die.

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smoke trails.

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There’s something about the way
a cigarette lights up the dark,
and the smoke trails away,
just drifts away into the night.
You know it’ll kill you,
All the way from that first moment.
The first time you put it to your lips,
and inhale. Inhale. Inhale. Die a little.
Nicotine in your bloodstream,
kind of like a good dream.
Tar in your lungs,
drowning never felt this good.
Red in a black night,
a whisper only you can hear.
It owns you like you’ve never
been owned before.
It’s bondage of the soul;
pleasure they’ll never understand,
exploration of the dark side.
Forty years from now,
Hell, forty minutes from now,
you’ll still be a slave.
And it won’t feel so good
In the long run, probably.
When the emphysema kicks in,
and the cancer comes,
but my God, it was good.
You never looked so cool,
you never felt so calm.
Never felt so much like you
would maybe explode right
out of your skin if you didn’t get
just one more damn drag.
Tricks and trips and bullshit,
just to get you to take a whiff,
It might kill you, but
it’s still a beautiful thing,
watching those cigarillos
swirl and whirl and fade
away into the dead of night.

 

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consequences.

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She goes through the yellow light,
because she’s running two miles
two late on a bad hair day.
He doesn’t make it through,
brakes slam and there goes
his morning coffee; maybe he
should pull over to the shoulder.
He doesn’t. Swerves. Wipes. Drives.
He’s behind a car that swerves
across the yellow line. Once. Twice.
Safe driver, good driver,
four-second rule.
Another stop light, extra space.
Green light, green light go.
Coffee guy hesitates, then goes.
Extra safe, have a good day guy follows.
Young driver right behind,
second day with a license,
doesn’t it feel so good to be young?
Oh, but little one, look.
Please, don’t forget to look.
Here come’s a bad day in an
everyday, average car,
you’ll never remember;
right through a red light,
but there’s brake lights,
too late brake lights.
Twisted metal, twisted steel.
Just a bloody mess.
Too young to be gone,
but gone just the same.
An unintended consequence
of someone else’s bad day.

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bitter apples.

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The things they say will heal you,
sometimes they only kill you.
They’ll give you a rainbow dream,
with letters and numbers and
secret meanings.
They’ll take everything you own,
just so you can keep on keeping on.
No, no. Don’t let them take you.
Don’t go willingly into their dark night.
You are more than their
bottom, bottom line.
You should have more time;
don’t let them take that from you.
It’s degree versus autonomy,
in a battle to the death.
Be free, sweet soul, be free
Don’t eat the fruit from bitter apples.

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tell me.

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Tell me,
does it burn the roof
of your bitter mouth,
those harsh,
cold, cold words you spout
when you look in those
dark brown oval eyes?
Tell me,
does it make you cringe
on the inside,
every time you tell that
little boy
(girl-man-woman)
that he
should, maybe, just go die?
Tell me,
how do you do it?
How do you get so damn
God-awful hateful
that you could dismiss
the plight of someone
you don’t. even. know.
based on false premises
and stereotypes?
Tell me,
how does it feel
to know that you could be
the person to pull
the trigger on the
hypothetical gun.
I hope you feel it,
someday, that burden.
I hope you know what
exactly what you’ve done.

 

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everyone’s a poet

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everyone’s a poet these days,
don’t you know it?
charcoal marks on our fingers –
would be if this weren’t a
modern keyboard.
got a thesaurus
got a dictionary –
right at our fingertips.
let’s discuss the politics
of late-term abortion –
but for the love of the God
we sure don’t believe in –
make it pretty.

everyone’s a poet these days,
writing passion, fire, and nonsense.
paper mistakes in the waste
but not really cause we’ve
got a backspace.
notebook’s not a notebook,
not anymore.
guns belong in holsters,
not child hands, but
it’s kind of poetic
(and tragic) how another
kid just blew his brains out.

everyone’s a poet these days,
and they mean it.
don’t you question the authority
they got from who only knows
what kind of backwoods Bible.
history, history is a beautiful thing
when you have pictures of people
you can filter like cheap coffee –
sepia always looks a little better on
low calorie Jewish diet.
only 6 million people died.

everyone’s a poet these days,
damn keyboard warriors.

 

 

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the thing you could be.

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I get it.
I get how you can want to
wrap your hands around his neck
and squeeze until the life
fades from his eyes.
I get it.
How you can have such
a deep seated hatred
that you can lose yourself
in a fantasy of the macabre.
I get it.
The way the alcohol burns
away the bad day like a
match that sterilizes the needle
just before a shot of magic pixie dust.
I get it.
The way that being selfish is
so, so much easier than being
selfless. Yeah, but the guilt –
that will eat you alive.
I get it.
And I have never been so afraid
of myself as that moment,
that I knew I understood.
The moment I knew exactly
what I might be capable of.

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gun smoke.

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I see you, ready for war
with your gun and your attitude.
I see you there, armed too
with your judicial vigilantism;
your sentence would be swift,
in theory. Painless even.
I am not blind to what you see.
I see the world for what it is;
broken, but beautifully so.
broken, but tragically so.

I hope you never have to see
the aftermath of what I know
you’re capable of. I hope.
So beautiful through the haze
of a gun that’ll never stop smokin’.
Thing is, the thing is,
they were beautiful too.
Broken, but beautifully so.
Broken, but tragically so.