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Carlo C Gomez Aug 2021
Racist in a cab,
deputized,
weaponized,

Heading for the wealth
of the Tulsa Wall Street,

His hateful hands cannot
drown God in an pond,
but they've often
lynched his sons.
Laokos Mar 2021
when I stop
and
just let the
silence
be. . .

everything
is ok:

the tattered
tarp partially
buried in
the
hillside is
ok

the broken
bough used
as a toy
by the
poor
children is
ok

the
jaggedly
chopped
tree stump
by the
parked
car is
ok

the
unevenly
placed
stairs
that force
you to
change
your gait
are
ok

the
distant
tower
with the
blinking
light
is
ok

the
solitude
among
other
mortals
is
ok

the
whelming
sense of
being
lost is
ok

the
neat
glass of
scotch
from the
isle of
skye is
ok

the
divorced
lesbian
with two
kids at
the end
of her
rope
is
ok

the
minuscule
fly that
landed
on my
forehead
in the
bathroom
this
morning
is
ok

everything
is
ok

even the
things
that
aren't

they're
ok too
ry Nov 2020
It is not that I have the urge to run away,
I just have the urge to run toward anywhere but
where I am.
Sequoia has called my name for lifetimes now and
I have ignored it’s siren song for far too long.

Emotions are like stepping stones.
Some are loose and long to be unearthed
while others are stubborn, jagged, and lingering.

In Sequoia, the trees are to be trusted.
Their reliable roots grip deep into mother Earth.
She holds them, limp and twig, leaf and bud.
I long for a trust like Sequoia.

Part of me is still in Oklahoma, my dorm,
shoving on shoes that will never fit.

My body is in bed,
but my mind is on an Arizona highway
searching for my soul in the blatant sun.
My mind is on a Montana mountainside
staring at the sprawl of an ancient glacier.
My mind is in my childhood home
combing through dusty boxes
for pieces of my mother before the divorce,
In New York, the MET, Gogh’s self portrait,
Illinois, Round Lake, 4th of July 2009.

My body is in bed but my mind is in Sequoia.
The trees are bigger than my ego and
The wind is nothing Oklahoma, it’s slow.

I think Heaven left a piece of itself on Earth;
I won’t tell if you don’t.
Glenn Currier Apr 2020
He is walking slowly where step by step
measure by measure in the lush meadow
he plays a dulcet meandering air
inviting me to join him there
unbound by dark and foreboding forces
of the viral pervasive present.

I join him and we fly to the open plain
recently refreshed by rain
Oklahoma and its green fields
where the spirits of Native peoples reside
and in soft spring breezes glide
and remember their ancestors’ names
and the simple childhood games
they played kicking up dust of earth
in earshot of their mothers who gave birth
to those precious souls and bodies brown
made of love and Red River and ground.

The flute’s tune again catches me
in its lively streaming strain
and pulls me up to airy heights
to join the dance of darkness and light
in spirit realms where beauty
and reality tango together in peace.
I bow to spiritual writer and mystic Richard Rohr and Kiowa, Pulitzer Prize winning author, painter and poet N. Scott Momaday who grew up in Oklahoma and once said “Realism is not what it’s cracked up to be.”
A May 2018
People talk about Tornado Alley,

The part of the U.S where I live.
They act like tornadoes touch down every week in May through October,
Like storms go through every other week.
Like everyone’s not scared and they’re always calm.

The truth is,
Tornado Alley’s not like that.

Tornado Alley is worrying
When a tornado touches down only five miles from your house,
Your family’s in the basement,
Wondering if everything’s all right,
And if your house will be damaged.

Tornado Alley is praying a storm will pass,
The ever-looming threat of a supercell,
Swirling clouds above your roof,
The sky a nasty green and purple.

Tornado Alley is taking everything you have for granted,
Then being scared when it’s threatened.

Tornado Alley is knowing tornadoes exist,
But being thankful that you’re not in San Francisco,
Or Hawaii, Florida, the coasts.

Tornado Alley is flat plains and wide open spaces,
Not being afraid of a storm,
But of what lurks when the beginning is over.
Chloe Apr 2018
The teacher strike has been going on for 5 days. We can’t keep school out any longer without extra summer days. Mary Fallin has funded each student half a textbook and said teachers are asking for too much “like teenagers wanting a better car”. In this essay I will...
empty seas Apr 2018
the wind roars
with patches of rain
covering cracked sidewalks
it was warm this spring morning
perfect for a picnic
or walking your hyper dog
but now the warmth is smothered by rain
and there's even a freeze warning tonight
so I guess
I'll be staying inside
and that's alright
refresh mesh Feb 2018
Kiss The Officer

Good luck. Duty calls
for which she is paid
in lone righteousness,

I'm afraid. Patrol
clean towns with sidewalks
Not To Be Slept On

while more sweet piglets
snort through the mundane,
saving for Swine Week.

North High wrestler:
baby molester.
All those wasted prayers.

Courage emerges
among the new ash
of my burning brain.
refresh mesh Feb 2018
dreamed that Current studio hired me
to design
a walkthrough of a ceiling-high,
openly grinning,  paper mache pig's head:
the stable's entrance to tiny pens
packed with caged (paid)
human children
who passed out tiny buttons
enscribed with varying notes:

Please Help
They Did Not Ask Me
I Don't Want To Die
Can You Find My Mom?
I Can Do Math In My Head
Eat More Monkeys
Please Save Us
I Don't Want To Die


But it was an unpopular exhibit
The Oklahoman would not report it
The Gazette managed a story on page 9
Yet advertised Cane's Chicken on page 5

Rattlesnake Roundup is just a few weeks
away
And I have no clue how I could possibly
convey
The value of wild
life.
The degree of their
strife.
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