**** the witch
hogtied to this
thin-skinned wagon
packed with privilege
call me wicked
if it makes it easier
view my plight
as one of my own making
I should have done
as I was told

Brand me traitor
as dust obscures
this timeworn scene
I know what it means
to be a whole divided
drawn and quartered
dragged to all four corners
left for buzzards
along the walled
deserted borders

scattered limbs
seeking unity
I reach for what’s mine
only to find
healing hands
too tightly praying
too busy manufacturing
high ground
in this time
of righteousness

Label me other
as I diverge
light the skies
with fireworks red
belt patriot songs
I will not mouth
empty words
to an anthem
I no longer
believe in

when you enter a library
its not just the books
its the shared silence.

I hope that you will smile today
and give yourself a break.
A smile can be great medicine.
It helps when hearts might ache.

Perhaps, if you try hard enough,
the smile becomes a grin.
And when you've worn it long enough,
you'll feel it grow and then...

The grin becomes a chuckle
and it then becomes a laugh.
And everyone will wonder if
you've made a social gaffe.

For laughter is contagious
and it helps to get us through.
Here's hoping that today will bring
some happiness to you.

I was the star
who lost his
glow -

automated
as I function
living for the
sake of living
as my heart
has stop breathing
the love he
suppose to
give.

so...
I burried my own
unglowing star
thinking
its hopeless.

I've been reading, reading,
watching, watching,
and working, working
same old, same old
until I lost my glow
and stop being wishful
as I know time has stop
as I drop
my dream,
sometimes....

I lived because
I can still pretend.

a bird, clever, watched my footsteps
took note of my being, my general movements,
was I injured, slow, old, at the near end of my days.
this bird has been around for all my wandering
and I would not be whole without its presence.
Hoodie Crows, that clever bird,
may yet peck and pick over my carcass.

What do I have left to give
I’m spent and fading like a week-old rose

I gave my beauty to uncaring eyes
Who never saw beyond the makeup

I gave my talent to unfeeling moguls
Who used it just to monetize

I gave my wisdom to foolish clowns
Who read my musings upside down

I gave my razor wit to empty faces
Who never tried to get the joke

I gave my toil to unappreciation
And unwillingness to compensate

I sang my song to deafened ears
And never got to hear applause

I wrote my words on tissue paper
And they left them outside in the rain

I gave my heart in hopeful sharing
And got it back in shredded pieces

I have nothing left to give....but up
And somehow I just can’t do that.
ljm

It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT