Originally shared over at Phoenix Fire Press on July 03, 2020.
Category: Poetry (page 2 of 2)
Being born Catholic is like being born cancelled I heard someone once say From your earliest days you are taught to apologize For your fallen state To beg mercy from an authority both benevolent And capable of a terrifying rage I realize now, though my faith has changed, There is wisdom in the saying To err is human, to forgive divine For as a human I have erred And forgiveness is hard to find Even from myself My life is like a bookshelf Filled with volumes, filled with stages I have lived—and how I’ve aged! 30 year old me cringes reading 20 year old me And 40 year old me will cringe reading 30 year old me And 60 year old me will cringe reading 50 year old me And 80 year old me will cringe reading 70 year old me And beyond the veil, Dead me Will cringe while reading Living me I’m sure that I’ve walked darker ways Within my mind and heart While searching for the light Than within the world at large And in another kind of life Someday, perhaps, I’ll have to pay Yet every moment, every day I shed my skin—it's a new life that I live I want to scream that I have changed And learned the value of Forgive I’m sorry for the times I’ve laughed At someone else’s cost For the judgments that I’ve passed Gone unsaid, they’re still not lost Upon my psyche—who I’ve been And who I still fight, to this day The ignorance, inherited A debt which I cannot repay Change happens from within so Looking back, it’s hard to see Who you have been in wild pursuit Of who you hoped to be Until you realize that who you are Is not yet all the you that you could be And age has made me feel For those who’ve seen the error of their ways Born ignorant of everything We’ve had to learn along the way And even in a life that’s mean Some love may be alive May find a way to grow and change Some goodness yet may thrive Separate the wheat from chaff In both ourselves and others Saint or sinner? What a laugh! We’re sisters here, and brothers Just people stumbling and faltering Though words and deeds are right or wrong No life is worth discarding For in this world we all belong So without patronizing And whether curse or blessing has befallen Me—I’ll live my life apologizing For my state of being fallen
I originally shared this over at Phoenix Fire Press on June 09, 2020.
Not a single heart among a nameless, faceless, uniformed mob Informed by a system intent to do more harm than good Uninformed of the way in which they wear a uniform that makes them see monsters beneath every hood And every mask—don’t bother to ask questions Answers don’t matter now as long as you stand with Black Lives Matter, man Knock an old man to the ground and walk away while his ears bleed Shoved him down without need, without cause built To offer help is to offer an admission of guilt That’s how you’re trained to see things instead of how to think things through in order to do the right thing Then claim he tripped and fell like how JFK’s brains just fell out of his head, too Whose law is at work in this disorder? And are there any borders you’re unwilling to cross to establish the right order? And what good could ever come of this, the way it is and the way it’s been, for anyone —including you— who isn’t sat atop the pyramid? It’s a scheme where they sell dreams to everyone who stands beneath their privilege Because it seems as though there’s something more important for you to do Than to be a brother or a sister to your fellow citizens Who you now see as merely wOkE denizens Of a world that’s rightfully yours, the lawfully good I would laugh if I could but it’s an awfully bad joke
This poem was originally shared over at Phoenix Fire Press on June 05, 2020.
All lives matter But do they matter equally? In theory, sure they do But not so in reality The cry itself to uphold All Drowns out the strangled voices When they do finally rise just to fall By being pushed into the background Made to fade into the black ground Charred and scarred From the centuries of flaming hostility And their mere existence barred All lives matter Does not mean the same As Black Lives Matter Only you don’t feel the pain When you duly repeat the refrain A choir of casual ignorance—or hate With a belly full of blame To drown out the shame Of your default position On this board of life game A game for you, maybe But it's just not the same When your skin means you lose by default And only few gains are made All lives matter Is an empty phrase Meant to erase race While racism plays The same role it has always played white only means race, a color Black means that plus a unique American culture Your people can trace their ancestry To the time and the place When your surnames became And your music, religion—your culture remains But Black people cannot say the same In America, the land of some free And the home of the brave Enough to keep fighting in spite of the pain Forced to become a new culture of people And Black was the name that your ancestors gave To a diverse group of peoples When only hints of their cultures remained Because the rest were murdered and buried Carelessly in unmarked graves All lives matter But the system won’t care If the people who uphold and defend it Refuse to prepare Their minds and their hearts to accept This was rigged from the start And it’s rigged to this day When non-white skinned people Must a higher price pay Just to be here at all Don't celebrate whiteness Celebrate culture, the customs and ways Of the nation you're in And the ones whence you came But always recall When Black Americans look backwards Seeking roots for their culture Their vision is clear up to, not beyond The plantation—ancestral origins erased As par for the course of Manifest Destiny And white European supremacy, of course And it’s plain if you care to see it at all That looking forward looks too much the same Struggle, restriction, harm, deprivation—injustice The lives that they’ve lived since they came To this land against their will Yet you cry out still That saying “All” Includes Black people Who’ve never been included in justice at all Keep your heads buried in the sand at your own risk If you’re willing to risk it all On denial But remember Pride always goeth before a fall
This poem was originally shared on Phoenix Fire Press on June 01, 2020.
Somewhere, Mozart is playing With dirt under his nails And leaves in his hair The sounds of his world want to leap out of him And he wants to keep them Inside Outside And share them He wants everyone to hear the songs Of the wind, of the rain Of the rustling of the trees Of the clock ticking in the hallway And the dishes clanging in the sink But, he’s tired It’s a long ride to school On a single dirt road And who is going to teach him Music With no way to pay Somewhere, Jane Austen is writing Notes on some loose leaf paper From a tattered text Under a dim light And the scent of something fried Clings to her clothes Ideas she wants told foment in her mind And just within her grasp The thoughts begin to structure Sentences Stories Flashing so fast behind her eyes She struggles to take hold And shape them with her pen But her mother needs her help With the other kids And there’s just no time for Writing And other frivolous things Somewhere, Picasso is working with oils In his father’s gray metal shop A full afternoon Red and warm After a long, blue day He takes in the hues all around him Vivid Muted Saying the things for which he has no words Wishing he could find a way To make the world See what he sees And feel what he feels But there’s so much to do To get by The sounds of the shop are numbing And there’s just no use in drawing When his hands are always dirty or in Art When he’s hungry
Somewhere was originally shared on May 30, 2020 at Phoenix Fire Press.
