Good and evil
The two of them
Eve and Adam
Original sin.
Who lured whom
To taste the fruit?
And does it matter?
The point is moot.
Nodding heads,
Blame assessed,
Pointed fingers,
Get ye dressed!
While they both tasted
Eve bore the blame,
Adam too weak
To fight her chains.
Away the snake slunk
Victorious and smug
His job of sullying
Woman’s place was done.
Category: Poetry
Justify
Justify your greed
Your corruption
Thinly veiled
Aid for the wealthy,
The young and the
Healthy.
Screw the poor and the
elderly.
Dine out on
Their misfortune,
Throw kickbacks to
The CEOs.
Surely foulness and
guilt will follow
You all the days
Of your rotten
Existence.
Fan Base
Surreal,
Pre-apocalyptic,
Post-industrial,
Oscillating fan,
Occupying the
Passing lane
Midway
Between Biloxi and
Baton Rouge.
A swerve and a miss.
Batting a thousand.
The crowd went wild!
Plump
My thighs are plump,
As is my rump
My tummy, too
Has a fluffy bump
And if all that
Weren’t bad enough
My face is fat,
My cheeks look stuft.
The only parts
That still look thin
Are my narrow lips
And pointy chin.
Don’t look for me
In this year’s issue
Of Sports Illustrated
Swimsuit Edition.
When We March
Good women, wives, and mothers,
Sisters, daughters, and the men
Who love us
When we march God smiles upon us
In all Her glorious grace.
You can’t contain our spirit,
Or silence our demands; we’ve come
Too far to turn back now
And this sky remains the limit
Bountiful stars mark our vow.
Caustic Creatures
They burn, these harsh words,
Scalding souls and hearts and minds.
Cauterize the wounds!
Affection withheld,
Absence scalds the heart that’s left.
Denies gravity
Your scorched earth tactics
Only make hearts grow fonder
For an unscarred love.
Calling Home
Mom weighed next to nothing as she lay dying; the hospital bed displaying the decreasing
Pounds like a stopwatch ticking off seconds. I couldn’t take my eyes off the digital
Readout, like maybe if I concentrated hard enough the numbers would reverse themselves.
One twenty seven would read one seventy two and the cancer cells would be rubbed out like
Misspelled words on a fourth grade composition. Little pink eraser dregs lingering,
To be brushed away by pudgy fingers. The marks still visible, but inconsequential. A week
After she died I dialed her number to relay a student’s amusing comment about
The complexity of simple machines, but realized after the third ring that I’d lost her forever.
I could not concentrate enough or erase fast enough to bring her back, to hear her voice.
Justice
No justice ’round here
No fairness or equity
Only exclusion
Life ain’t fair, pardner
Pull up your big girl britches
No whining allowed.
This brave new world lacks
Compassion and forgiveness
Callous survival
When Love Hangs Around
Impossible, she thought, that decades later the love still held. No one had ever cared for
Her this long and this well. Surprised after the first year when he still woke up beside
Her. Didn’t he know she had so little to give in the way of affection? And yet he mined
Every modicum of goodness, prying tiny pieces and holding them beneath a magnifying
Glass until they caught fire and everyone had to acknowledge their presence. Even her.
Excoriate
Excoriate is one of those wonderful words that comes close to being onomatopoeic, at least in my mind.
One cannot say excoriate without making the harsh, almost abrasive sound reminiscent of sandpaper on wood. The word is one I find myself using often these days, more for its secondary definition than its primary; although, I can make both work in this poem.
EXCORIATE
Come clean, down to the brass tacks with steel wool, superfine grit sandpaper, and elbow
Grease. We hold these truths to be self evident, you elitist bastards, that ALL humans
Equally created have an irrefutable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Try as you might you cannot scrub these words from the collective memory of this country.
Praying for Eyebrowz 