#carolina
In the shadows she now stands
a bridge to the past
a link to yesteryear.
Beside her modern day brother
of concrete and steel
she whispers " I'm still here"
She doesn't pale in comparison
that fact is clear.
She shines in the sun,
in a weathered sort of way.
Saying "Remember me"
I'll be gone someday.
My purpose is now much grander
than just reaching from one side to the other.
I reach into history, into the memories
of those who remember me,
when I was vital
when I was necessary.
Not many left now,
of them, or of those like me.
So visit when you can,
hold a loved one's hand,
and pass beneath my eves.
"We're still here", so make new memories.
Cause when we're gone we're gone,
and all that will remain,
Is faded photos, old stories,
and memories.
Apr 20, 2025
Apr 20, 2025 at 12:53 PM UTC
You held me in grass,
In times of despair.
You my very last,
Dont worry, beware.
You told me its fine,
You’ll see me again.
All loves have a line,
Never wanting end.
To roam the woods more,
Was all I wanted.
What love away soar,
Ever known daunted?
All sweet passing through,
Carolina knew…
Sep 7, 2023
Sep 7, 2023 at 11:13 AM UTC
i only made it twenty-four hours in a place i thought i had a love affair with.
i only made it about twelve hours in the presence of someone i had created a false narrative for.
it only took me about five seconds to realize that something was wrong.
i shouldn’t be here.
“there’s some spark for you and i.”
but i mustn’t have understood as there’s no room for a broad like me.
twenty-four hours later, i’m back on a plane to north carolina.
because the city of roses, your sparkle is gone and everyone i meet lacks luster.
kind of, you know... dead in the eyes.
an average day is heavy enough, but i can’t carry the weight of this entire city.
though my pockets are empty, i know where i belong - and i can put my mind to rest.
cause he’s hopeless.
Oct 3, 2021
Oct 3, 2021 at 4:50 PM UTC
How could you know?
How did you take
All the right parts
Kind, gentle, and sweet
What did you learn?
What made you able
The first time you tried
To make our lives complete
When did you know?
When did the stars
So neatly align
To bring wonder into our world
Why is it us?
Why did the heavens
Choose people like we
To parent our precious girl
Dec 13, 2019
Dec 13, 2019 at 1:21 PM UTC
It was New York.
La vie en rose playing in the background as you read a script you wrote the morning before.
The way your blue eyes look so sad and yet so peaceful and you smirk for me and me alone.
The way your hands are rougher then they should be but touch me softer then they should as well.
We were passing cars in the night.
Looking for each other as destinations we would never get too.
It was North Carolina.
It was green. So much green.
It was airports that seemed to hold too many tears and not enough smiles.
It was road trips that blossomed into a never ending love and irrational fear.
It was summer in July and the way your lips found mine in every moment of every time.
You were the light I had been searching for my whole life.
And you became the darkness that was always there under my skin.
You are my unfinished book and my unfinished heart.
It was California.
It was never enough and thoughts that don’t ever truly go away.
It was watching you leave.
Your fresh start, your growth.
My jealousy, my envy.
My wishful and spiteful thoughts of wanting to be in your shoes but not wanting you enough.
It was Nevada.
Damaged and uncontrollable.
The never ending fighting and back and forth insecurities.
Your ability to make me swoon and cry in the one sitting was gold.
The unquestionable loyalty I had to ruining my own life.
The sadness and depression.
The love I had but never dared speak of.
The way you broke me down and don’t understand my feelings still to this day.
***** and *******
Your true loves.
It was Me.
My will to love too much and yet not enough.
My hazel eyes and mismatched hair.
My gaze of sadness and darkness watching the men come and go from my life.
My inability to connect because of damaged heart strings.
But
It’s also my strength in finding my flaws.
The power I have to change.
The growth at self confidence and care I am working on.
It’s me.
It’s them.
It’s someday... someday finding someone who won’t leave.
Mar 28, 2019
Mar 28, 2019 at 1:11 AM UTC
eighteen years,
my heart has been yours.
every time I ran away
or wanted to be free,
you let me go.
but I came back...
you had my heart.
I guess you always will
have part of me.
I can't deny that.
one way or another I'll always come back.
you have me for four more years
and then...
you gotta let me go
for good.
and not expect my return
so soon.
can you do it?
-you feel like home
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019 at 3:05 PM UTC
I haven't smiled with a glimmering passion since then.
The salt water wasn't as pure, but the heat filled my heart.
You weren't so far away, yet you were still many states.
I sigh with incomprehension, I've forgotten my lease and there's so much to do, yet nothing new to see.
I hope I make it in the blistering cold, as I miss who I was but this is who I'll be.
It's time for change, I hope we meet again some day.
When I reach a fervor with the mildest degree of sincerity, I'll be like I was back then.
Oct 23, 2018
Oct 23, 2018 at 12:04 AM UTC
The first settlers to the area called the Lumber River Drowning Creek. The river got its name for its dark, swift-moving waters. In 1809, the North Carolina state legislature changed the name of Drowning Creek to the Lumber River. The headwaters are still referred to as Drowning Creek.
Three p.m. on a Sunday.
Anxiously hungry, I stay dry, out of the pool’s cold water,
taking the light, dripping into my pages.
A city with a white face blank as a bust
peers over my shoulder.
Wildflowers on the roads. Planes circle from west,
come down steeply and out of sight.
A pinkness rises in my breast and arms:
wet as the drowned, my eyes sting with sweat.
Over the useless chimneys a bank of cloud piles up.
There is something terrible in the sky, but it keeps breaking.
Another is dead. Fentanyl. Sister of a friend, rarely seen.
A hand reaches everywhere to pass over eyes and mouths.
A glowing wound opens in heaven.
A mirror out of doors draws a gyre of oak seeds no one watches,
in the clear pool now sunless and black.
Bitter water freezes the muscles and I am far from shore.
I paddle in the shallows, near the wooden jail.
The water reflects a taut rope,
feet hanging in the breeze singing mercy
at the site of the last public hanging in the state.
A part-white fugitive with an extorted confession,
loved by the poor, dumb enough to get himself captured,
lonely on this side of authority: a world he has never lived in
foisting itself on the world he has -
only now, to steal his drunken life, then gone again.
1871 - Henderson Oxendine, one of the notorious gang of outlaws who for some time have infested Robeson County, N. C., committing ****** and robbery, and otherwise setting defiance to the laws, was hung at Lumberton, on Friday last in the presence of a large assemblage. His execution took place a very few days after his conviction, and his death occurred almost without a struggle.
Today, the town square collapses as if scorched
by the whiskey he drank that morning to still himself,
folds itself up like Amazing Grace is finished.
A plinth is laid
in the shadow of his feet, sticky with pine,
here where the water sickens with roots.
Where the canoe overturned. Where the broken oar floated and fell.
Where the snake lives, and teethes on bark,
waiting for another uncle.
Where the tobacco waves near drying barns rusted like horseshoes
and cotton studs the ground like the cropped hair of the buried.
Where schoolchildren take the afternoon
to trim the kudzu growing between the bodies of slaves.
Where appetite is met with flood and fat
and a clinic for the heart.
Where barges took chips of tar to port,
for money that no one ever saw.
Tar sticks the heel but isn’t courage.
Tar seals the hulls -
binds the planks -
builds the road.
Tar, fiery on the tongue, heavy as bad blood in the family -
dead to glue the dead together to secure the living.
Tar on the roofs, pouring heat.
Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon,
obtained from a wide variety of organic materials
through destructive distillation.
Tar in the lungs will one day go as hard as a five-cent candy.
Liberty Food Mart
Cheapest Prices on Cigarettes
Parliament $22.50/carton
Marlboro $27.50/carton
The white-bibbed slaughterhouse Hmong hunch down the steps
of an old school bus with no air conditioner,
rush into the cool of the supermarket.
They pick clean the vegetables, flee with woven bags bulging.
What were they promised?
Air conditioning.
And what did they receive?
Chickenshit on the wind; a dead river they can't understand
with a name it gained from killing.
Truth:
A man was flung onto a fencepost and died in a front yard down the street.
A girl with a grudge in her eyes slipped a razorblade from her teeth and ended recess.
I once saw an Indian murdered for stealing a twelve-foot ladder.
The red line indicating heart disease grows higher and higher.
The red line indicating cardiovascular mortality grows higher and higher.
The red line indicating motor vehicle deaths grows higher and higher.
I burn with the desire to leave.
The stories make us full baskets of dark. No death troubles me.
Not the girl's blood, inert, tickled by opiates,
not the masked arson of the law;
not the smell of drywall as it rots,
or the door of the safe falling from its hinges,
or the chassis of cars, airborne over the rise by the planetarium,
three classmates plunging wide-eyed in the river’s icy arc –
absent from prom, still struggling to free themselves from their seatbelts -
the gunsmoke at the home invasion,
the tenement bisected by flood,
the cattle lowing, gelded
by agriculture students on a field trip.
The air contains skin and mud.
The galvanized barns, long empty, cough up
their dust of rotten feed, dry tobacco.
Men kneel in the tilled rows,
to pick up nails off the ground
still splashed with the blood of their makers.
You Never Sausage a Place
(You’re Always a ****** at Pedro’s!)
South of the Border – Fireworks, Motel & Rides
Exit 9: 10mi.
Drunkards in Dickies will tell you the roads are straight enough
that the drive home will not bend away from them.
Look in the woods to see by lamplight
two girls filling each other's mouths with smoke.
Hear a friendly command:
boys loosening a tire, stuck in the gut of a dog.
Turn on the radio between towns of two thousand
and hear the tiny voice of an AM preacher,
sharing the airwaves of country dark
with some chords plucked from a guitar.
Taste this water thick with tannin
and tell me that trees do not feel pain.
I would be a mausoleum for these thousands
if I only had the room.
I sealed myself against the flood.
Bodies knock against my eaves:
a clutch of cats drowned in a crawlspace,
an old woman bereft with a vase of pennies,
her dead son in her living room costumed as the black Jesus,
the ***** oil of a Chinese restaurant
dancing on top of black water.
A flow gauge spins its tin wheel
endlessly above the bloated dead,
and I will pretend not to be sick at dinner.
Misery now, a struggle ahead for Robeson County after flooding from Hurricane Matthew
LUMBERTON
After years of things leaving Robeson County – manufacturing plants, jobs, payrolls, people – something finally came in, and what was it but more misery?
I said a prayer to the city:
make me a figure in a figure,
solvent, owed and owing.
Take my jute sacks of wristbones,
my sheaves and sheaves of fealty,
the smell of the forest from my feet.
Weigh me only by my purse.
A slim woman with a college degree,
a rented room without the black wings
of palmetto roaches fleeing the damp:
I saw the calm white towers and subscribed.
No ingrate, I saved a space for the lost.
They filled it once, twice, and kept on,
eating greasy flesh straight from the bone,
craning their heads to ask a prayer for them instead.
Downtown later in the easy dark,
three college boys in foam cowboy hats shout in poor Spanish.
They press into the night and the night presses into them.
They will go home when they have to.
Under the bridge lit in violet,
a folding chair is draped in a ***** blanket.
A grubby pair of tennis shoes lay beneath, no feet inside.
Iced tea seeps from a chewed cup.
I pass a bar lit like Christmas.
A mute and pretty face full of indoor light
makes a promise I see through a window.
I pay obscene rents to find out if it is true,
in this nation tied together with gallows-rope,
thumbing its codex of virtues.
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 12:47 PM UTC
Rotting meat lined the walls
of the spot where the crime was committed
Locked from the outside
Shut in as the oil burned,
the smoke engulfing,
the flames consuming the people as they screamed, "Let me out"
but the indentations of the footprints on the door spoke loudest
They spoke of 25 beautiful faces
lost in pursuit of the American Dream.®
May 2, 2018
May 2, 2018 at 6:33 PM UTC
The places we hide under
For sanctimonious pleasure
If it fits, it sits, little sisters
So don’t get cold hands on me
For our feet will burn elsewhere
Pious, but intuitive sensations
Receieved for all of us
Here in our makeshift cubby
Underground
The faces we hide from
For sacrilegious fervor
From one scene to another
We’ll be the last ones left
Here in our makeshift cubby
Under the ground
Jan 25, 2018
Jan 25, 2018 at 7:17 AM UTC
A tale of dawn where
my genius at play for her beads
if thunder hie will quicken quinine
why Doeville surely nigh and on route yon
that bare a drove her handkerchief spar
in field with hills to make her rich still clad in negligee
and between her steps arose Carthage in antiquity
a lore of ages to unfold Spain today
with a guitar strumming this spicy song of quest so inane
Oct 30, 2017
Oct 30, 2017 at 12:29 PM UTC
There was a beautiful lady in China
no, not North, or South Carolina
prolific of men
over, and over again
the cause of her death, from angina
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 30, 2017 at 10:57 AM UTC
<Loud as you can say it>
I am Outlaw!
-call me Pirate!
I live such freedom,
all souls admire it!
The awful God,
has judged my soul,
Weighs his measure,
I'll pay my toll!
<In a high-pitched voice>
The sailor's way,
path unknown,
Stars are clouded,
nothing shown?
The sea's are high,
a storm is here,
Davey Jones' Locker,
my home is near.
<Loud again, yell it>
There is no heaven,
there is no hell,
Life on seas,
the seas they swell,
Fish scales on arms,
scales on my legs,
Heart born free,
dread-locked and dregs!
I am Outlaw!
-call me Pirate!
Lost lives redeemed,
some should admire it,
The ship upended,
all hands to drown,
In Davey Jones' Locker,
a peaceful sound...
<In a high-pitched voice>
The sailor's way,
path unknown,
Stars are clouded,
nothing shown?
My time has ended,
fate is near,
Davey Jones' Locker,
my death is here.
<Loud again, yell it>
I am Outlaw!
-call me Pirate!
A man of valor,
some do admire it.
I am Outlaw!
-call me Pirate!
A dreadful life,
though some desire it.
I am Outlaw!
-call me Pirate!
To Davey Jones' Locker,
my deeds require it.
I am Outlaw!
-call me Pirate!
I AM OUTLAW!
-CALL ME PIRATE!
I am Outlaw!!
-call me Pirate!
My life on the ocean,
my God inside it.
Aug 21, 2016
Aug 21, 2016 at 11:56 PM UTC
I want to tell y'all a story
About a man named McCrory
Made a law about who can use what *****
The rest of the world thinks he is dotty
This man is a bigot
Can you dig it?
North Carolina really wonders
How he could make so many blunders
But soon we will make him pay
When we throw him out on Election Day!
Sep 2, 2016
Sep 2, 2016 at 11:25 PM UTC
If I could lay in silence all night
This would be the place
In the middle of North Carolina
With the moonlight shining upon my face.
Listening to the trees talk their secrets
And the stars shining so bright
Yes, if I could have it my way
I would be out here every night.
I would clear my mind and pack a bag
Kiss my dad goodbye on the cheek
For tomorrow he will return to California
And you will find me dancing amongst the leaves.
Next to the river along a county road
Under the willow tree
Yes, if I could have it my way
This is where I'd always be.
Nov 18, 2015
Nov 18, 2015 at 2:22 AM UTC
We can wait ten years to change the flag,
Or another whole generation.
We can turn this thing into just a snag
or rebuild from the foundation.
We can change the confederate flag tomorrow
Or just wait around til we’re last,
We can bring the next fifty years some sorrow
Or mark it as a thing of the past.
We can get made fun of by every other state
First place in everything bad,
Or we can start to fix our problems with hate,
And make being actually first the new fad.
We can cling to a symbol of hate and loss,
And pretend it’s simply tradition,
Or we can dispose of that top-left cross
And avoid all of the opposition
Because Mississippi,
We can wait a week, a month or a year,
It really is a choice.
But the flag is going to change, it’s clear,
With or without your voice.
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 3:40 PM UTC
Stopped into a back roads diner
Somewhere just off Carolina
Highway thirty three
Sign said "open", I went in
Pushed the RC handle made of tin
Not a soul around that I could see
Waitress came out from the back
Name plate said her name was "Jack"
I'm glad I came in
Ordered up some milk and pie
This waitress sure did catch my eye
Pushing that RC ad made of tin
Told her that I was passing through
Not staying long, had things to do
Smiling, she said "You'll stay"
I said I'' need a place to rest
She named one place...the best
Out by the bay
There's not much to do round here
We only serve three kinds of beer
and the Carolina Zoom Zoom
we make in the back room
It goes down as smooth as ever
Turn your insides straight to leather
That Carolina Zoom Zoom
we make in the back room
"Jack" sat down and asked my story
told her, "lots of pressure, lots of worry"
Don't worry *** it'll go
I asked her how she could just say that
Took off my coat and then my ball hat
Just how was she to know
She said "I read people when they're here"
Some folks stay, some disappear
You'll be here a while
She said "you're driving time is over"
"I think you'll end up, as the new owner"
"Of this place"...with a smile
I said "there's no people here to sell to"
"What the heck would I do"
owning this with no one here at all
She laughed and said "I am agreeing"
But you are looking but not seeing
Money's made behind the yonder wall
There's not much to do round here
We only serve three kinds of beer
and the Carolina Zoom Zoom
we make in the back room
It goes down as smooth as ever
Turn your insides straight to leather
That Carolina Zoom Zoom
we make in the back room
She said it was a truck stop diner
That sold the best ***** in all Carolina
Carolina zoom zoom in the back
Recipe's been here for ages
Brewed real slow, distilled in stages
Always forty jugs out on the rack
We've sold to Robert Johnson and Bocephus
You may choose to not believe this
I wouldn't lie about that fact
The diner never makes much money
But, the back room, there's the honey
sure as i know I'm called Jack
She said she lived in an old trailer
That she traded with a sailor
For a case five years ago
Moved it back on up the hill
There she could watch on the still
If I bought, she'd have to go
I thought a while, made two offers
Money to fill up her coffers
And she had to stay
She smiled, asked me if I'm certain
Did I mean it, or was I just flirtin'
I told her I was set to pay
There's not much to do round here
We only serve three kinds of beer
and the Carolina Zoom Zoom
we make in the back room
It goes down as smooth as ever
Turn your insides straight to leather
That Carolina Zoom Zoom
we make in the back room
I've been the owner fifteen years
I changed my life, by changing gears
Jack is still with me
Thank god I stopped in to this diner
Back in the back roads off Carolina
Highway thiry three
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 12:21 AM UTC
I know you haven't heard from me in years .
I thought I'd write just to let you know that Tommy Faulkner died , you know passed away . I didn't even know it until it was all over . Don't even know what he died from . Heidi told me . Oh , you don't know Heidi , my fist and third wife . She and Tommy were good friends . Last I heard about you , you were moving to North Carolina , your home by birth . But your home was always with us here on the Southside of Birmingham . Sigh !
I hoped you made a big splash back home when you arrived . Such a polar extreme . I kept your poems for years until Heidi threw out my box of poetry ,with yours included .
Also Steven Sedbury's . You remember him ? Last I heard about you , you had a brain tumor and you passed away . Now I stand alone with my ghosts and I have no address to send my posts .
Love Thomas
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 10:13 PM UTC
I sometimes pretend you were just a vision-- something I made up to keep me happy.
But I remember it all so vividly-- your red pants, that grey shirt, the cologne you wear and you leaning on the wall waiting for me.
Did you move around a lot trying to find the "right" way to stand on the wall? Did you get nervous when I arrived? Did you feel the pressure I felt?
I'll never forget the humidity and the way I stared at you when I first saw you again.
I'll never forge the butterflies when I tried to smile but frowned instead. I'll never forget the way you asked how my trip was and I replied awkwardly how I needed coffee.
I'll never forget the way I looked at you... Knowing we had only one week and then it would be over.
And I'll never forget how by the end of the week I lost myself completely... And let every wall I ever built fall down for you.
you kissed me goodbye... And meant it.
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 2:47 AM UTC