Greta sat alone that day,
Presence more than words could say.
And in the time that's passed since then,
Greta's warned us again and again
The time is now, we need to act;
Earth is in danger, that's an urgent fact

Power tells us there's nothing we can do,
We're too small to see changes through;
But Greta won't cower for lying buffoons,
Their disdain of her only self impugns;
The earth is for all, from tiny to massive,
Those who can speak can't remain passive

If one girl's message can gain velocity,
One girl's uncensored words unveil atrocity,
It's hard to feel that hope's not there
When together we act, together we dare
To demand action, demand accountability;
Then maybe we'll survive past this century

Wasted space
Weak; no base
I am the solitary shoelace

They prayed to porcelain gods
In pursuit of imitation beauty;
Blithely sacrificing their youth
At the altar of fraudulent immortality

On hardened knees, they offered pleas
And the remains of their unconstraint;
They worshipped at magazines,
The gospel of each shiny, shallow saint

They believed in their inadequacy,
Failing scales, they purged their dreams;
Feeding hollows with empty fantasies;
Less is more is not always as it seems

The maple trees, their trunks festooned with moss and lichen;
Tiny ferns wave in the breeze where the branches meet;
Further out, limbs bear an expanse of rain glossy leaves,
High fives in a million different shades of shiny green


NCL September 2019

I could jump in that puddle
If I wanted to

I could scream and disturb everyone
If I wanted to

I could spill this coffee everywhere
If I wanted to

I could grab that chair and flip it over
If I wanted to

I could grab these scissors and cut my hair off
If I wanted to

I could take my shirt off this very second
If I wanted to

But I don’t
Nobody’s stopping me
They could if they wanted to
But they don’t
I’m stopping me
Because I want to

There’s a darkness inside all of us
It starts out pretty small
But in everything we do, we feed it
Let it grow big and tall

This darkness is our truest self
The face we try to hide
A monster deep inside us
That simply just won’t die