He was playing
soft shoe piano
Softly hitting
major blows
on minor keys
of sadness
His glass of scotch
and ice
sweating
on a coaster
overflows
dripping
on the floor
He was
a fountain
gushing
trickles
of gloom
He'd look up
and howl
at the
******
supermoon
The ******
of the ivory
keys
bowed
to the rapture
that captured
dissonace
on the edge
that growled
like a bear

No soft lullabies for this rage,
no bedtime tales for the scars.
Her rebellion, a waltz in combat boots,
spiked with grunge, venom, and a scream
that split the dawn like broken glass.
No lowering of voices—
it was them who whispered ******
while she carried the weight of silence,
their pills clutched in cold fists.

Madness was no surrender,
no white flag to psychiatrists
and their bottled truths.
She danced instead,
barefoot with demons that knew her name,
their laughter a dirge,
their touch as real as chains.

Words slithered into mirages—
truth, lies, all indistinct,
a love once pure now shadowed,
a muse now bound by sleepless nights
and post-traumatic hymns.
Our Lady of Sorrows bled for a flock
that prayed in her shadow,
kneeling in borrowed guilt.
But when she bled,
no one looked.

Plans drawn in whispered ink—
a razor’s edge,
a promise of release.
Love, a phantom now,
its face distorted with time,
matured, stretched thin by distance.
The scream of silence grew louder,
and demons conversed until the sun rose,
its light bruising the horizon.

She was no saint.
She forgave no trespasses.
But as the dawn burned anew,
there lingered a pulse,
a faint rhythm of hope—
love not redeemed,
but waiting,
coiled like a spring
for the next dance.

Grief came uninvited  
through my open doorway,
fear and rage ignited  
they made plans to stay,
and I was dazed by the
lack of foresight.

Then sadness came bounding
in loud and bellowing.
It consumed every opening,  
chaos was ensuing,
then it left without a trace
of what it was doing.

When the storm had ended  
someone held me,
they were kind,
gently she attended  
and peace filled my mind,
as love comprehended
the hurt it left behind.

For in grief's disguise,  
love had always been  
opening my eyes.
To what grief could mean:  
That love never dies.

©️Lizzie Bevis

all those doughy-eyed, snot-nosed, putty-cheeked, frog-mouthed, bull-headed, cowardice faces: they were born
without sorrow
until they hand over their lives
to someone they truly don’t know
and they do it with a smile
and a gleam in their eye
and then they get sandpapered down
and polished in something
they did not choose,
their freedoms get capsized and
they don’t know what they’ve done
or why they’ve done it.
they become enraged and frustrated
with themselves
but they do not know where
to project their anger.
they can’t do it at home.
they’re too afraid of what they might
lose: their own self-made agony
so they take it to work with them
or to the supermarket or to the restaurant
and aim at anyone over any little thing.
they can’t do it at home.
those poor deluded fools careening towards
the only elusive dream that matters: happiness.
some of them are regretting decisions,
some of them are stewing on mistakes,
some of them are plotting their escape
all that sacrifice, all that pap
all those easy words
whistling like stream;
“I love you.”
“I miss you.”
“I want you.”
“I need you.”
all of it: for nothing
all those droopy, sullen-glared, turkey-necked, warthog faces everywhere;
laying in cold beds, coddling empty blankets,
****** in sorrow, contemplating the error of their ways,
alone with themselves, alone with each other.

If it's true,
and you know it is,

sister, money don't grow,
on the tree of life, oh, no,

toil and pain and sorrow,
those grow,
on the tree of life, outside

these walls of mud faith bakes,
and builds heroic as formal evidence,
by grace alone, the blessing on America,

Oi, where Chickasaw whole life awaken dance
hey hey yahweh, same dance same sacred idea

We got StarLink in Chad,
oh, when can we read the heresies
personal savior level lucky prayer
online, free from press, amen.

All amenable Kilroy, was  here.
We pulledhisassoffhisthrone
with thunder words,
and other nonsense
We learned
to read, and write
shocking truths no slave should know,
money, has all kindsaansworn NDAs
there's the tie, the business
religion, re attaching
ligamental forces,
pending dooms
used
to make the peasants pay
for joy,
ceremony
of the veterans, paid
with joy,
ai, we die…
all we celebrate,
and all we worship Ares,
and Elon's trip to Mars, and Hermes,

tricking me
into telling a preacher story,
truer or not, it is too soon
to say, stories
sometimes hook up
with old characters,

brought
to mind using ceremonial reminders,
put on your respected veteran medal
of wit,
let this mind be
in you, this military mind, eh
strut your stuff, you patriotic consciousnesses.

A bubble
of belief engulfed the big parade,
the ompa blat left behind.

We blinked. They won.

I came away with an alienated mind,
to this day, I am happy to say,
that has made the difference,
I lived, while others just died.

My mind is a
scrapbook of
tattered
memories and
ghosts that waltz to
sullen Cohen
songs in my heart.

Sometimes
it hurts
like a
rotten tooth.
I have a foul and
electric
taste in my mouth.
A metallic bitterness.
There’s a febrile and
pale stranger in the
mirror that cowers
back at me.
Tears, like candle wax.

I used to
try and drink the
pain away.
Chase worldly
pursuits, like a
dog at the track
after that mechanical
rabbit.

As I get older,
I try to practice
wisdom.
I got off that
dirt road to
damnation Island.
We are in this
carnival of ****
together.
I seek a higher love
and try to ease another's
aching,
a pursuit worthwhile.

As the crow flies, my farm is less than two
miles from the Willamette River that flows
deep and brown through the fertile valley
of the same name, in Northwest Oregon.
From my porch upon a hill, I have views
out over that valley looking east and north
and as fall comes around, early morning
light and dampness transfers hints of rich
river scents, this added moisture paired
with the absents of wind pervades and
manifests an enveloping shroud of silence,
with low moving banks of slow white
ghostly ground fog that renders striking
visual contrasts to the landscape, with its
stands of emerald evergreen trees, and
autumn dressed orange and yellow leaved
varieties of deciduous ones, along with
sculpted brown newly plowed fields.
Another of Nature's own fleeting ever
changing painted canvases that never
disappoints.

One must rise early at first light on these
chilly morning to witness this seasonal
panoramic scene, but it is always worth
the effort. And what the heck, I'm retired,
I can snap some photos and always crawl
back into my nice warm bed to sleep, or
merely cogitate on what I've been witness to.

When stories
of scars told
in one town,
become this legend
in the next, retold to grow
on, even as we listen and find it told
a better way,

So  long ago we know,
so long now,
nobody knows,
stories be told to comfort,
none should be used to frighten,
or terrorize in the darkness, true,
holy terror
first we can recall, or was that
in a movie?

Maybe Fantasia, when you were three.

When was a way
to make a tie
to an instant
to which our social entities loosely anchor,
global Disneyification, animating old devils,
using Voltaire's rule
for adult conversations,
define the terms, regarding evil for good,
about Nuclear War,
at the final judgement of us all,
my side submits the work
of Annie Jacobsen, and offers the next 72 minutes
to a journey
a parsa, in contemplation

at least that long,
through a story
thought after knowing
a minute's worth
of ever after,

once one is old enough,

the trouble one causes,
when one dies, shan't change history,

the kids could make it from here.


A parsa is a distance walkable in 72 minutes.

72 minutes is how long it takes
for human influence
on the future
to be unthinkable,
for 30 thousand years…
after the first launch
of a nuke from anywhere, really.

No nation ever wins nuclear war.