Wind-carved
spine twisted—feral, gnarled.
A body bent,
splintered—never severed.

Salt licked wounds raw. Brine sutured marrow.
Bark flayed to ribbons, limbs ink-blurred—
curling, unwritten. A thing undone, a thing refusing.

Roots plunged—teeth to brittle earth,
ribs against collapse.
Cliff crumbling, gravity unspooling—
but it held.

White-knuckled in ruin.
Fingers clawing the wind.
Wreckage. Crooked. Unnatural.

An old man exhaled— Survival isn’t always beautiful.

But what is beauty, if not this—
a body unmade, carved by violence,
and still, somehow, bloom?

It's the little things that
drives one mad,
a snapped shoelace,
on your way to the
liquor store in the
driving snow.
A cockroach in
the cereal,
dead batteries, when all you
want to do is listen
to music.
Shifty-eyed people in
my house, quietly plotting
my demise.
It's the tree of
life, cut down to clear
space for a parking lot.
No love from my brother.
Another frosty day in April.
Cigarette prices constantly
rising astronomically.
Footsteps in an empty
hallway.
It's Just a hop, skip, and
a jump to the madhouse.

I’m an ordinary girl
Born of ordinary parents
On an extraordinary day.

They came from ordinary people
Who lived out ordinary lives.
They never really had a lot
And seemed content with lesser.

How is it then that I was born
Always wanting something more.
Seeking that beyond the screen
Not satisfied with all at hand.

Why did I not fit the mold
That formed my sis and  brother.
It seemed to work out fine for them
But was a prison cell for me.

I bashed through those restraining walls
To seek my future my own way
Finding cliffs I could not climb
And oceans I could never swim

There was a narrow path to take
But I preferred to dance the edges
Gathering the shiny baubles
That melted in the setting Sun
And left me where I am today
Living an ordinary life

And seeking to plant Hollyhocks
Where only cactus ever grows.
                   ljm

So the freaks who have more alienated themselves,
And as consequence us all,
As though they are royalty
Slander the name of all of Europe;
It's nobility & law,
It's cultures & histories?
Asia and the Africas,
Even those of this same continent?

Where do you hope to go, creatures?

For when, not now if,
You craft for yourself a throne,
We shall pin you to it
And make ourselves a new monument.
There, on the banks of reflection,
You will hear our rally call;
Then you shall fall.

Ad tyrannos calcamus!