The morning began with multiplication tables
and the soft scrape of chairs
a room full of futures at
Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School.
Backpacks and organizers held pencils,
parent notes folded like quiet secrets,
half-finished doodles and dreams
tucked between pages.
10:45 a.m. -
a time that meant
recess was fast approaching,
to playful plans,
to the small negotiations of childhood.
And a decision was made.
A Tomahawk flew.
And Minab boomed.
Not thunder..
but something colder, more deliberate -
a violence that does not announce itself
as a warning, but as a consequence.
They say it was meant for something else -
an adjacent target,
a miscalculation of distance,
A misidentification.
A margin of error drawn
in “someone else’s” ink.
And it stinks…
Because the children and their adults
were not margins.
Names were still on attendance sheets.
Some present.
Some already echoes.
The walls didn’t fall all at once.
They hesitated -
as if even the concrete knew
this was wrong.
One hundred and more -
Numbers that should belong
To their morning math problems,
not to tallies of the innocent dead.
A little shoe by the doorway
Waiting for a foot that won’t return.
A notebook lies open -
The last word written: “tomorrow.”
And that is the shock:
Not just that they are gone -
But that the world kept using that word
As if it still belongs to them.
Chalk dust lifted like breath,
and for a moment,
even the air tried
to hold them together -
tried and failed.
Desks stood in rows of learned obedience
but nothing could prepare a classroom
for a sky that chose “targets”
and found children.
Seventy-three boys.
Forty-seven girls.
Teachers who stayed
when the sky would not.
Their names -
almost still warm on the paper..
Become something colder than silence.
This is the violence:
beyond the blast -
the quiet paperwork
that follows,
the statements,
the sudden end of bedtime stories,
and the beginning of one
recurring, endless nightmare,
a fever dream.
As distance becomes measured
in regret and fury, instead of responsibility
or young possibility.
Somewhere, it is called collateral.
Somewhere, it is debated.
Somewhere, it is explained away
until it sounds like it makes sense.
But it doesn’t.
This math will never math.
And in that room,
time broke its own rule -
refused to move forward
instead carrying their silence.
A deafening silence.
A classroom
still reaching
for its students
while barely intact.
A tomorrow
with one hundred missing answers.
A truth that should never have to be said -
They were innocent children.
And someone decided
with violent carelessness
that this was alright for “some people,”
That some children can afford to be missed.
As my stomach gets sick.
And the sky fell.
For a moment,
receiving its new angels
while we are stuck down here,
searching for accountability
and empathy that may never come.
May 5
May 5, 2026 at 8:01 PM UTC
We are lost in a deafening part of history -
where truth is but a rumor that limps across broken glass,
and every promise arrives already bleeding.
Men in pressed suits redraw the borders of a stranger’s breath,
their hands clean, their signatures and pockets not so much.
At best, they speak in polished vowels
while cities collapse across our country and the globe,
like tired lungs beneath the weight of a foreign flag.
Children learn the language of sirens before lullabies.
They know the geometry of rubble -
how corners can cut skin,
how ceilings can betray their duties mid-sentence.
The news hums like a fever that won’t break.
Every hour, a new cruelty dressed up as necessity.
Every screen, a mirror that refuses to blink.
We scroll past grief and tragedy
like it’s a ten-day weather forecast.
While spineless leaders smile with their teeth
and calculate their ambushes in silence,
trading futures like cards in a dimly lit room,
stacking the deck with green bones
that no one can lay claim to in the end.
And the wars -
not just the ones with tanks and ash,
but the quieter ones,
fought in courtrooms, classrooms, hospital beds,
where dignity is rationed,
and mercy is taxed.
We are told this is order.
We are told this is the cost.
We are told to be patient,
as if time itself were not complicit now.
And still -
somewhere, a mother braids her daughter’s hair as if morning is guaranteed.
And somewhere, a man plants seeds in soil
whose shade will know better centuries.
I have seen hands reach across divides
to show maps they insist are permanent,
until, of course, their nature changes again.
And they become cartographers with knives,
trimming the world and reshaping the geopolitical landscape
to fit their hunger with no horizon.
— —
I have heard laughter slip through checkpoints,
unsearched and unafraid.
Maybe that’s the smallest rebellion -
no shouting or making fires,
but the quiet refusal to forget
what we are capable of becoming,
or where we came from.
Because we were all strangers in a strange land at some point.
So when my students ask me,
“Teacher, are we lost?”
I don’t say yes or no.
Because I have walked long enough in this darkness to know it is not endless.
And while I will not tell you exactly who I am,
or how or when
this tired spool will unthread -
I will end by confidently telling you this:
I have seen the way people look at each other
when no one is watching or recording.
And I am not done believing in the trade winds
carrying us home,
wherever we roam.
Apr 29
Apr 29, 2026 at 2:55 PM UTC
There are losses
that do not arrive
with casseroles.
No folded flags.
No clean ending.
There are deaths
that don’t just take bodies -
they steal futures.
Stealing quiet walks
with dog dads and mothers.
Is this what we’ve become?
They’ve stolen
quiet Tuesday mornings
with Morrie.
Snuffed out coming birthday candles
and replaced them with yahrzeits
and descansos.
Robbed us of the ordinary miracles
of everyday life, and everyday people.
Tonight we speak three names
so the silence does not eat us,
or forget them.
Say their names.
Renee. Keith. Alex.
Say her name:
Renee Good.
She was not meant to be a headline.
She was breath in cold Minnesota air.
A transplant already contributing
to her vibrant, diverse community.
Her hands on a steering wheel - harmless.
Turning away
toward grocery lists,
warm coffee cups,
what dinner she might make
for her family that night.
Unaware of the mortal danger
looming around the corner.
And for what?
And the violence - so fleeting.
And the perpetrators, fleeing.
Only after vandalizing
the crime scene.
Witnesses said they smelled the fear
and frustration of federal agents
tasked with our public safety.
Grown men
shoving helpless women
onto concrete streets.
They said they felt the ripe, lawless energy.
Saw the putrid satisfaction,
of those who crowned themselves
judge and jury
On these tragic days.
No due process.
No final goodbyes.
No return
Of that Honda Pilot home
Just the gutter spit
of ******* *****
History says this:
Power always grows paranoid
before it collapses.
Mistaking motion and dissent for threat.
From chariots to carriages to cars -
the frightened empire
always fires first
and justifies later.
So we speak for those
Who were silenced,
Memorialize the future
They were building
In the present.
And we become the ritual.
Continue the good fight.
Remember.
Witness.
Carry their names forward.
Build on their blood and sacrifice.
Leave the world less cruel
than we found it.
Say his name:
Keith Porter.
Midnight fireworks
blooming over California skies.
A father’s laugh
reverberating into a new year.
Children waiting for morning pancakes.
A life interrupted by suspicion
disguised as authority.
In old villages
they rang bells when a father fell.
They stopped work.
They held the children close.
They said:
This matters.
Today, the noise never ends.
And the clocks don’t stop.
The news keeps updating.
The system shrugs.
And we go home -
Beaten down
by the brutality of it all.
But we rise again,
Ring the bell
Raise our voices,
Let our instruments sing,
Offer our gifts
In sacred memoriam.
Keith was not disposable.
Joy is not criminal.
Unless you go looking for trouble,
For storms clouds in clear skies.
Say his name:
Alex Pretti.
A healer.
A nurse.
Hands trained
to stop bleeding -
not cause it.
Phone in one hand.
Mercy in the other.
Guarding another human being
more vulnerable
than himself.
And in an instant
the hyenas swarmed.
A hero was
tackled.
Beaten.
Shot.
Silenced.
And applause
for the death
of a man who applied gauze
to veterans.
In ancient wars, medics
were protected by sacred agreements.
You do not **** the one
who carries bandages.
You do not shoot the one
who kneels to help.
But modern uniforms
have forgotten ancient rules -
and human ones too.
Alex stood between harm with hope.
Between what is right,
And what is easy to ignore.
Between an open hand,
And a closed fist.
We must continue to stand and resist
The hateful violence with the same grace
and hope that they did.
This is the grief of the unlived life.
The futures they never got to meet.
Grandchildren who will never be.
Songs that will never
reach their final movements.
Every empire collapses
under the weight of its buried truths.
We are living in a bone graveyard
Full of unwritten chapters -
Frost over unfinished soil.
Rome fell.
Kings fall.
Walls fall
(just ask Berlin).
Not by swords alone -
but by people
who refuse to forget.
Who stand arm in arm,
looking out for neighbors,
for community,
under a merciful God
who loves everyone equally.
The irony?
They said it, first:
“All lives matter.”
It just doesn’t hit home
until you bury your own.
And some have had the privilege
To turn the other cheek
On the brutality they see.
Any of us could have been
Alex. Keith. Renee.
On any given day.
If that doesn’t haunt you,
nothing ever will.
Still, they are present with us -
in every march.
In every candle.
Every prayer and vigil.
In every voice
that dares to speak about justice
in an unjust world.
We are tired.
YES.
But exhaustion is not surrender.
It is proof we still care.
We do not carry this rage or sadness alone.
We also carry this responsibility together.
To build a world,
where uniforms again protect
instead of terrorize.
Where immigrants,
strangers in a strange land,
Are not strange fruit…
But the backbone of our society.
To be a nation again with a conscience
And a moral compass,
Who understands that none of us
Lay sole claim to the land or the sea,
Or who gets to be a “citizen”
Of this country.
Where joy is not suspicious.
And where just mercy
and protecting the meek
Is celebrated,
not fatal.
There may be no official ritual.
No government ceremony.
No sanctioned mourning.
But hear this:
We are the ritual, now.
We are the archive.
We are the living memory.
Renee walks with us.
Keith walks with us.
Alex walks with us.
Not as ghosts -
but as the fire
that refuses to die.
History is watching
what we choose to become.
Apr 29
Apr 29, 2026 at 2:52 PM UTC
I set out without a compass,
no destination stitched in my sleeves,
only the hum of zephyrs
and the crunch of footsteps
spilling into dirt and leaves
The world widens
when you let go.
Every path turns stranger,
every tree leans like a whisper,
and rivers bend their backs
to show me where to go.
It isn’t escape -
it’s surrender,
to the thrum of roots
and the unmarked sky.
To vanish awhile
is sometimes the only way
to be found.
And so if they ask where I’ve gone,
tell them I am gone getting lost -
learning the shapes of silence,
trading certainty for wonder,
and mapping myself
by the stars that refuse to stay still.
Jan 14
Jan 14, 2026 at 2:13 PM UTC
In the shifting halls at dawn,
where light bends into secret shapes,
there lies a map drawn on wind -
its edges frayed,
its ink alive.
They call it the Kaleidoscope Corners,
where the world folds at its edges
and shards of light spin
like jeweled cards in invisible hands,
dealing destinies you didn’t know you carried.
Here, rivers run backward
into the mouths of stars,
and mountains bloom
with flowers that hum
in colors your eyes can’t name.
The sky is a jar of spilled black ink,
shaping cities with wings for spires,
their windows breathing
like creatures half-awake.
Every turn is a gamble -
one step to a city of glass and laughter,
another to a mountain of sleeping giants.
Shadows trade faces in the glass,
whispering names
you’ve never heard before.
There is a gate of living bone
that opens
to a staircase woven
from coral and constellations.
It climbs into the mouth of a giant
whose breath smells faintly of tangerines.
Travelers speak of a door
carved from all the moments
you swore you’d never forget -
its handle warm,
its lock a heart key.
Open it,
and see yourself
in every life you could have lived,
each version reaching out to you
with a different smile.
The corners do not guide you -
they mirror you,
fractured and whole,
until you become the very pattern
you once sought to follow.
And somewhere,
far beyond those turning streets,
a man dreams of crushing clocks
with his hands,
shattering time into pieces
small enough to pocket -
so no one can tell you
when to leave,
or how long to stay.
Jan 14
Jan 14, 2026 at 2:08 PM UTC
Beneath the slow opal moon,
a lone wolf stands -
the frost gleaming on his coat
The night hums softly through the trees,
a low hymn of acceptance and belonging.
He remembers the pack -
how they moved as one pulse,
hearts synced even through the snow.
How a glance through the pines
Could subtly speak a lifetime,
How a single howl could call them home
from miles of silence and cold.
For wolves are born
with two hungers -
one for freedom,
and one for the firelight of others.
Even love, like the moon,
must wax and wane.
There are seasons
when the leader
Or lover
walks alone,
crossing borders.
Running the old hunting paths,
Looking for changes
in the storied wind.
He walks not away,
But deeper in -
into the forest of his memory.
Every rustle stirs the ghost of a hunt,
every star a spark of the eyes
And tails that once ran beside him.
He carries their echoes in his ribs
like a drum that will never stop beating.
Solitude is no exile.
It is the breath between howls,
the sacred pause that keeps
the chorus in harmony between lifetimes.
To stand alone is not to be apart,
but to keep the pack alive within.
And when he lifts his eyes to the horizon,
he knows his wild, twinkling ancestors
Will always answer back.
We are not lost in the wilderness.
We are found.
Jan 14
Jan 14, 2026 at 1:52 PM UTC
Bonnie Jean
Dancing Queen,
Giving life
To three
Blossoming leafs.
Bonnie Jean
Made the team,
As an underclassmen.
Bonnie Jean
Musical tunes, sunrooms
Feeling the grooves
Bonnie Jean
Songbird Queen
Telling you the artist playing
Before they even start to sing.
Bonnie Jean
As quick as Jumping’ Jack Flash
And always generous
With what she had.
Bonnie Jean
Born in a crossfire hurricane
But she never stopped howling
At the rain.
Oh how our dear bid
Could light up a room
With one smile,
And cool it down
With one look that said,
“Don’t push your luck around.”
She laughed big,
Loved deep,
Tapped her feet,
Always in the key
Of life.
Stevie
Joni,
The Temptations
The Beatles
Gap Band,
Hall & Oates
A lump in my throat.
Lacrosse, field Hockey, twirling.
A whirling dervish
On the dance floor.
Many friends
From different walks of life.
Dear God,
Please take care of our Bondie
Make sure she has
A never-ending supply
Of mini-diet Pepsis in her freezer
That are chilled, just so.
That she has good soft shirts
And some warm PJs to wear.
Keep her in the upper room,
Because it wasn’t always easy
down here, and she deserves that.
And she deserves to keep dancing.
And as for you dear Bonnie,
You’ll Be Loved Yesterday.
Jan 14
Jan 14, 2026 at 1:42 PM UTC
I yearn for a day like that quiet room,
where rifles rested and the shouting ceased,
where history leaned forward, not to boast,
but to listen for the sound of peace, again.
Not triumph pounding its chest,
not banners drunk on blood and dust,
but a table, plain wood, ink, and hands
steady enough to choose mercy.
Let us return to that hour
when the war learned how to end -
when the victors did not sneer,
and the defeated
were not stripped
naked in the street.
Horses went home.
Men went home.
Names once cursed were spoken again softly,
as if the nation feared breaking itself further.
No cheers split the air.
No drums demanded one last shot
Or fatal wound.
Only the hush of a country
exhaling after holding its breath
for four years.
Mr. Grant stood like a door left open,
not backward into forgetting,
not forward into vengeance,
but wide enough for both sides
to walk through
without lowering their eyes.
And Lee - tired, composed, unbowed -
closed the book without tearing the pages,
showing us that surrender can still carry dignity,
that endings need not be cruel to be final.
I ache for that restraint today.
For leaders who know when silence
Is stronger than noise.
For victors that refuse to humiliate.
For endings that stitch instead of tear.
Bring me back to Appomattox,
not for the war,
Or the reality it clashed over,
but for the way it stopped -
when the future was chosen
with mercy.
And bound hands
were free.
Jan 14
Jan 14, 2026 at 1:40 PM UTC
We did not come for a song.
We came for the space between notes,
for the place where a melody forgets its name
and becomes a road.
A circle forms.
No front, no back.
Only breath passing hand to hand,
only time loosening its grip
as the night leans in to listen.
The music does not arrive polished -
it wanders in dusty boots,
trading certainty for curiosity,
risk for revelation.
Each song is a map drawn in disappearing ink,
each chorus a door that may not open twice.
Here, mistakes are not failures -
they are invitations.
Here, the song listens back.
The crowd teaches the band
how to become itself again.
Old stories walk among us:
railroad ghosts, gamblers with tired eyes,
lovers counting stars like debts,
outlaws, prophets, drifters
who knew that freedom was never safe
and never still.
Death is not an ending here.
It’s a crossing.
A quiet hand laid on the shoulder of the living,
a thank-you whispered from the dark
for being remembered,
for paying the price of burial,
for carrying the song forward.
This is the bargain:
You give yourself to the moment,
and the moment gives itself back -
changed, unrepeatable, alive.
The sound dissolves,
but something remains.
A warmth in the chest.
A knowing.
A sense that what passed through us
was never owned - only borrowed.
And long after the last note fades,
the music keeps walking -
taped, traded, retold,
held in voices that were never onstage.
Because some bands play songs.
And some songs play people.
And once in a while,
a grateful spirit rises,
smiles at the living,
and says:
Thank you for listening.
Jan 12
Jan 12, 2026 at 8:10 PM UTC
Give me one more day -
Not to fix it,
not to conquer the mess,
just to sit inside the wreckage
and learn its name.
One more day
to wake up tired
but still willing,
to stretch hope like an old sweater
with holes at the elbows
and warmth left in the threads.
The world keeps asking for plans,
for proof,
for progress
But today I’m bargaining smaller:
coffee cooling on the counter,
light slipping through the blinds,
the quiet miracle of breath
showing up again
without being asked.
I don’t need the whole staircase -
just a next step
that doesn’t collapse
when I put my weight on it.
One more day
to forgive myself
for not being who I thought
I’d be by now.
One more day
to carry the ache
without letting it turn mean.
There are people I haven’t laughed with yet,
songs I haven’t ruined with my voice,
versions of me
that only exist
if I stay.
So let tomorrow stay a question.
Let the big answers wait in the hallway
like coats I’ll try on later.
Tonight,
I choose the smallest courage available:
to stay.
To breathe.
To ask for one more day.
Jan 12
Jan 12, 2026 at 8:00 PM UTC