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Roxalana Malone Dec 2024
J. Edgar
You were a great men
Even the rest did not appreciate
You
There are some like me
Who appreciate your deeds
Your help with society
J. Edgar
Even though I don’t know you
I know we are similar
In mind and spirit!  
As well other people
Who go misunderstood
Jack Groundhog Dec 2024
The mason works the living stone
to shape it for its slotted place.
Pale flakes of rock fly as he hones
it to a rough-hewn sandstone face.

With chisel and mallet in granite hands
and flinty grey eyes to plumb the line,
the rock gives way in grains of sand.
He chips and flicks one blow at a time.

His fingers trace each pit and dell
that he’d worked in with his iron tools,
while nostrils fill with chalky smell —
light dust clouds through his workshop move.

As one by one his blocks are laid
by his apprentice at his side
to fill the role for which they’re made:
they’ll be joined in one more arch of pride.

More arches form as months move past
then building up to many a year:
They mark the time of a life well cast,
his mason’s mark left on each stone sheer.

Each arch arises, pointing high
to the master mason of us all,
who carves and fits in his workshop sky —
by shaping, marking us in his wall.

Then piece by piece, the church takes shape
while grains of sand from worked stones fall;
The mason, now old, his final finial makes
as falling sand an hourglass recalls.

And here I stand in centuries hence
to spot the mason’s mark he left behind,
his arches pointing upwards whence
the mason built his final shrine.
Inspired by seeing mason’s marks on stones in St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. Medieval masons “signed” their work by leaving a personal symbol on stones they carved. Sometimes you can spot some of you look carefully.
Kara Shirlene Dec 2024
They don't know what to do
When I say I'm a Witch.
Blank stares and fake laughter
As the words just roll
Like honey from my lips.

I'm not afraid to admit
Out loud my descent.
I take pride in being a line
Of Healers and Wise Women
Who knew secrets of the Earth
And took care of their tribe.

The ones burned at the stake
Because of fear and greed
Will live on inside of me.
Through my work
And my heart, and my hands.
For I, too, am a Witch you see.

A title that's blessed
For eternity-
An honor, royal, full of dignity.
There's no shame to claiming
My Heritage.
For it beats loudly in my chest.

Natural remedies come easily
A gift that I possess.
Potions made from oils
Healing herbs and crystals
Stored inside my mind,
While Mother Earth does all the rest.

So I dare you to look past your fear
And deep inside my eyes
Where secrets of ancient Wisdom lies.
Maybe then you'll start to feel the truth
When I tilt my chin to proudly proclaim:
Why yes, actually I am a Witch.
(Sister, so are you.)

©KSS 10/2018
Zee Dec 2024
They'll call her ruin.
They'll call her shame.

They'll never call her,
by her name.

Once the deed is done.
Her world it shakes.

As all her secrets.
Are laid out bare.

There is no hiding.
This ruined girl.

They'd call her pretty.
They'd call her smart.
They'd call her art.

Till she fell in love
Then fell apart.

The man he ran.
Like most men do.

Escaping the wreckage.
Of his youth.

The ruined girl,
was left alone.

Becoming a cautionary tale.
Of women's woes.

Whispering through history.
"Be careful with whom you love."
irinia Dec 2024
a world in motion and who would,
who could guess the next rhyme
bliss, hope, and horror
tyrants falling, resisting, raising
fresh terror in sheep's clothing
these are mental wars, fake news tsunamis
feasting in our blood in our sweat in our tension
the invaders possess our minds, our souls
these are reality games, the most dangerous
who cares about facts or consensual reality
humiliation, helplessness, loneliness
manipulated in the transition between nothingness to utopia
an acid destroying the human form and social body
they can feel again after a long apathy the call to heroic action
let's not be afraid, the tyrant is inside and we kind of know it
I look at the face of nothingness, of dread
no power no reason no words
dread is alive too
"gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts, that man may be free to change his own past at will, and that the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition"
Hannah Arendt
nanimono Sep 2024
She who came in my dream
Only in dreams are we still together
Everytime I woke up
And realized,
Reality is a trully nightmare
Maybe in another time,
Day,
world, or
a parallel world
We are still together
She's the reason why I have to protect my history
.....
Nadya
Nigdaw Dec 2024
I've not the arms to hold you
nor the heart to keep you warm
in spirit I am with you
to walk among the ruins
and watch your history burn
your face will always haunt me
as a fleeting moment passes
eyes that looked right through me
cradle so close to the grave
Jack Groundhog Dec 2024
In the days when we first chipped stone
and carved from earth long lines of chalk,
we set in place rock circles honed
to hear the nature spirits talk.

The hurried sun wheeled all around
these massive stones we made to stand,
casting shadows on this fertile ground
that tell us when to sow this land.

Then came the age of bronze first wrought.
We built our temples where oracles spoke
foretelling how our world was caught
in snares and schemes of gods provoked.

But tin and copper fell to iron;
A new temple grew upon Zion’s hill,
as gods to just one god would turn —
iron presaged dark satanic mills.

Another grain in the hourglass fell:
the sharpened skill of work in steel.
Our churches rose with tales to tell
which called us to in sackcloth kneel.

We wedded iron with coke and steam
to summon power, rip from earth
all we ever craved: a false dream
of boundless bounty, endless worth.

From one old god to a new model,
religious in the cult of me,
prepackaged for our blind apostles,
Mammon’s black seed sowed eagerly.

This seed turned slick with silicon
from which grew fiberoptic veins
injected with an ****** balm:
A new cult idol it became.

Today the circle’s stones are laid
in server nets that span the globe,
with oracle influencers well paid
to infantilize our frontal lobe.

Bright magic mirrors in our hands
with retina screen technology:
Tech prophets lead to this promised land
of unkept promises to fill false needs.

The circle’s silicon steles stand:
new dark satanic mills for today.
A mock Jerusalem holy land,
bare desert where chalk lines once lay.

In this waste I find an old stone axe
of flint and oak and red deer’s thread.
Its polished head still bears the cracks
from when we first on this path were led.
Draws on various authors, books, and themes that I think about a lot, in particular William Blake, John Milton, James Burke (in particular the book “The Axemaker’s Gift”), Alvin and Heidi Toffler (“Future Shock”, “The Third Wave”), Rachel Carson (“Silent Spring”), Neil Oliver’s BBC documentary on the history of ancient Britain, and and more.
Jonathan Moya Dec 2024
On my father’s house
three slaves and six horses
died when the old stable blazed
a  century and a half ago,
and three union and
two confederate soldiers
slayed each other
in a forgotten skirmish
a few years later.
Their skeletons were found
two years after the war
under an uprooted white pine.
The county let the field return to forest,
except for the old stable.

My father, a nonresident,
cut a dirt road through
the upper quarter,
built a cottage house
over the old stable,
a gate house fifty yards leeward
with a pond in back
and a large windowed manor
that cut a wing between
earth and sky
just beyond
at the edge
of the rocky wrack line to the bay.

Until the houses settled in,
the earth screeched its pain
and revealed its ossified sorrows.
After years this plot
finally  accepted his tranquility.  

My father died and was cremated
far away from this adopted place,
He  returned only because
his will demanded
his celebration of life
take place here.

Except for the family,
who undutifully held
onto their allotted share
of his ashes, the attending
mutes, sobers, wailers and criers
faithfully flung
his cremains in the breeze.
They watched, cried,
bemoaned and wailed
as every speck
refused to settle
and blew out to the bay.
irinia Dec 2024
yes, it is real, as real as daylight
how history recycles itself
darkness is falling with the speed of thoughts
of certainties, of pathos, of a wounded hope
I feel like screaming, I feel like weeping and
this can change nothing, and I can't find a better metaphor
we hurt each other unwittingly if we stop thinking together
if we stop talking, stop listening to each other
how vulnerable we can be, how deceptive
how potent the unhealed wounds
they write history books

an abstract darkness is near, a concrete darkness
division and such pain in the depth of the living
a darkness without perfume but blind screaming
disguised in a blinding light,
so old that it keeps reinventing
the destruction of saturated worlds
the social body can not survive without a heart
without a multiple mind
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