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 Jun 24 Renee C
Dr Peter Lim
I choose
the life of freedom
lived in poverty
over the serfdom
of prosperity
Now the cuts
have faded to pale seams,
from the girl
who left her key on the counter,
and took the why with her,
and the friend
you hadn’t seen in years
but still called brother,
his paintings hanging quiet on walls
in rooms no longer yours.

like the ghost of an old song,
still in key
you rise again
fingernails dark with soil,
burying sunflower seeds
in morning’s cold fog.

The dog needs feeding.
There’s toast to burn,
and leaves to steep.
You carry your small life
like a cracked bowl
that still holds water.

After years bent in ritual hunger,
knees pressed to rice,
tongue dry from vow,
nights lit like altars,
no revelation came.
No divine telegram.
No trumpet of truth,
just the kitchen humming
and the silence after the call.

Only the widow neighbor,
waving through fogged glass.
Only the pipes in the wall
clunking like an old lung.
Only the light
barging in
without your consent.

You believe in coats
with missing buttons,
safety pins where zippers gave,
old threads that never matched
but held anyway.
You forgive the past
not because it asked
but because you need the room.

It builds in your bones
like wind in an empty house,
constant, uninvited,
and full of old names.
Like a tune half-remembered,
only the hum
remains.
i woke up in the blues,
sat on the only chair in the dark room.

put on my torn shirt, worn shoes,

I wished upon a tumbling star

and down the steps, out the
front door
I went.

the puddles electric shimmer neon.

a robin dances fragile and free.
(I tip my hat, ah, what the hell.
I wish the robbin well.)

old man Bennett sitting on a park bench
in the rain
feeding pigeons.

how are you? I ask.

he sighs, ah, things don't get any better
don't get any worse.

he gives me a smile. (ah,
what the hell, quiet mercy,
I gift him a smile.)

I woke up with blues,
wished upon a falling star.

fell into a full moon.

(feel the pull!)

it rolls me over
the ocean of misty streets,
tall alley walls,
the dark corners hiding my heart.
(so give a smile to tomorrow.
???will there be cold beer in hell.)

I ve lost my way,
creature of silent sorrow .
(so throw me a smile.)

I fell upon a fallen star,
how far from the grave?

a crow caws at my window.
the night is so long.

wishing on a tumbling star,
no matter how you look at it
you lose.

I woke up in the blues,
sat in the only chair in a dark room.
sleep-heavy eyes, my hand reaches for you
then flinches – you’re nowhere in view.
the imagined shape only a breath ago
fled like a bandit
into dawn’s dissolving glow.
now my waking mind falters,
disappointment finds the door
through which you chose to leave –
once more.
this one is about how you weren't a one night stand, but you made me feel like one.
June 22, 2025
The 101 slopes like a spine bent too long.
Camarillo yawns wide in the morning hush,
valley stretching slow, hills bare-shouldered,
fields glistening, half-asleep, half-prayer.

Lemon trees blink slow, bruised gold in the mist.
Figtrees call a name behind a rusted gate.
Sagebrush whispers gossip through chainlink,
its breath full of stories that outlive the tellers.

To the east, the nursery stirs,
plastic sheeting *****,
row tags flutter in the wind.
A thermos, abandoned, rests by a wheelbarrow.
Mud boots, discarded,
stand like sentinels
against the wood plank wall.
No footsteps follow.
I never asked where they went.

Matilija poppies raise their paper-white heads,
and the raspberries, furred with morning dew,
shiver, just slightly,
as if remembering friends
they were no longer allowed to say aloud.

A coffee roaster hummed somewhere distant,
low and steady, warming the wind.
That scent I never could shake,
burnt and sweet.
I could almost belong here again,
but it’s not mine without them.

I worked inside this valley with my back.
With my knees.
With the same hands,
now soft on the wheel,
muscle memory steering roads
as if nothing ever left,
as if the ghosts still ride along.

I pass a strawberry field, stitched in silence,
no voices rising in laughter today,
no corrido escaping from a shirt pocket radio,
no teasing between the furrows,
no calloused hands tossing tools,
only the soft ticking of irrigation
and the hush of work
that now waits for no one.
This silence has been swept, labeled,
nothing out of place but sadness.

I was here with them,
but only as a pair of eyes,
that never opened wide enough.

The strip mall stands like a broken promise,
painted stucco, faded western wear,
alongside roadside markets
missing the opening crew.
Still, the hills lean in to listen,
velvet green with memory,
quiet as folded hands.

Even now, under this sun,
the dust knows who knelt here.
Who sang into the rows,
who fled before sundown,
their names erased from the ledger
but carved into the earth.

And in soil’s hush, their names still root and rise.
In the aftermath of the immigration raids, the migrant workers I knew in Southern California, especially in Ventura County, began vanishing overnight. Faces I shared shifts with, broke bread with, waved to across the nursery lots and strawberry rows, disappeared without a word. Their absence is not abstract, it’s in the empty chairs at the diner, the shuttered produce stalls, the silence where songs and stories used to rise. These are the hands we rely on, the hands that shape the harvest, and now they hang suspended in uncertainty. The fields remember them, even when the papers do not.
 Jun 18 Renee C
rick
flavors
 Jun 18 Renee C
rick
the lockers rife with clowns and the frittering of time as the ***** boys got ready to work their ***** minds down at the ***** factory and boast about ***** things too often degrading and unkind.

I tried to stay out of it
until one officious co-worker
had the gall to ask,
“what’s your preference in women?”

whereby, my response was,

“I see my women like flavors;
white women are too bland,
black women are too flavorful and
Indian women are a bit over-seasoned.
you need the right amount of spice.
Latina women got it but they cheat
so, I’d have to go with Asian women.
they’re perfection is unmatched.”

laughter emerged and rumbled
down the grey factory walls
where the metal tin roof had rattled,
the ***** air pervaded with rust and tears
and a mouthful of peanuts were spat onto a grimy floor

they laughed and kept on laughing
until their bellies burst

never have they heard such
a response like that before

and I just went back to work,
treading in the depths of my own conviction,
not really seeing why I wasn’t
being taken so
seriously.
 Jun 18 Renee C
irinia
blue
 Jun 18 Renee C
irinia
I have toast and panick for breakfast
there's so much noise & scrolling without end
(I am/you are/he is just islands in the middle of words and infinite scrolling)
the coffee machines just lost their purpose in radical mornings
time explodes in our veins while
I'm dreaming of  blue hours
 Jun 18 Renee C
irinia
the sky is wet like a mouth
the light extremely fragile
bellow people keep fighting, dancing, dying
a soothing sustance, this perfume fills my nails unassuming
the real & the imaginary fuse & diffuse each other

imagination keeps you real
by chance tears feed the earth
we need the continuity of gestures
the prelude of silence foretells the foxtrot of words
a dream clarifies the windows, solidifies the doors
like a tide of awe against the void
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