X-Ray Prophets

 X-Ray Prophets

 

These days, you need a machete—

Crocodile Dundee big—

to hack a vein through this jungle of dark.

How does anyone sleep?

Once, young and feral,

I could sleep through thunder,

through houses collapsing in dreams.

Now arthritis tolls its iron bell;

pain sits on the porch with a shotgun.

I turn and turn,

a stranded animal nosing the brush

for one patch of moss,

one warm stone of bliss

inside the swamp-thick doubt

that anything changes.

Maybe it does.

But when strangers climb into my skull

with flashlights and weather maps,

I leave.

No shelter from X-ray prophets

mistaking roots for bones,

blind to the green fire

rising beneath the soil.

The phone hums in my hand

like a tagged hornet.

The zombies know our names,

know the shape of our hunger.

Still, sight is a prescription bottle

with half the label scratched away;

speech, a window breathing itself opaque.

Trust half of seeing,

none of the static.

Believe in a cracked lantern

swinging through rain.

The crow, stitched to the power line.

The thorn, working deeper under the skin.

Pennies dissolving on the tongue

like blood and electricity.

Or the smoke of

black orchids opening

where the dark learns to flower.

 

The Evolution of a Few Words

 The Evolution of a Few Words

Words are slippery little things;
They change their coats and grow new wings.
What once was true may now sound odd—
A prank by language? A gift from God?

Nice once meant a foolish fool,
not someone charming, calm, or cool.
To call you nice in days of yore
was not a compliment at all, for sure.

Explode meant clapping, loud and grand,
a thunderous roar throughout the land.
And loud applause? Well, strangely enough,
meant, “Hook that actor—the show's too rough!”

If something seemed plausible, they'd say,
“It deserves applause!” Hip hip hooray!
Not likely, sensible, or probable—
just clap-worthy and laudable.

A bully once was a darling dear,
a sweetheart you'd hold forever near.
“I love that lovely bully,” they'd coo—
Quite different from what bullies do.

And buxom? Here's a twist to note:
it once meant obedient, not low-cut coats.
A dutiful soul who'd do as told,
before curves and glamour entered the fold.

To disappoint was not heartbreak's sting,
but removing someone from a lofty thing.
To appoint or disappoint—that was the game;

Shakespeare would surely approve the claim.

A fizzle was a modest breeze,
a quiet escape, if you please.
A gentle puff, discreetly sent—
Though sadly, not always odorless in intent.

And luxury? Believe it or not,
it wasn't yachts or a fancy yacht spot.
It meant lust and lechery run amok—
“Foul luxurie!” cried the scandalized flock.

As for popularity, here's the twist:
it wasn't liked on a social list.
It meant democracy's weighty decree—
A political matter in 1546, you see.

So words march onward, year by year,
growing stranger, shifting gear.
Meanings wander, drift, and roam—
No word stays forever at home.

And if you think language should stay one way,
history laughs and says, “No chance today.”

What Doesn't Kill You

What doesn’t kill you

makes you stronger,

wiser,

and strangely qualified to disappear in a third-world country.

But maybe that’s just the deluxe package.

I’ve been part of this experiment since the '90s,

which means statistically

I should have grown a second head by now.

Food was the best scam.

"Feeding the world,"

they said,

while quietly inventing ingredients

that sound like rejected Star Wars characters.

I don't trust food. I don't trust people who pause too long before speaking.

I don't trust people who remember things

that happened three presidents ago

and somehow involve me.

Get a hobby.

Raise a fern.

Learn pottery.

Stop collecting my life like baseball cards.

Meanwhile,

the gun has fired,

and somehow I'm still here. Actually sitting.

Hydrated.

Moderately annoyed.

Which is impressive,

considering I spent thirty-six years

on an island with a f**king maniac.

He was Trump to the Nth degree,

a mathematical impossibility

with opinions.

And guess what?

I'm here.

He's not. What color are your socks?

Mine are red, white, and blue.

Not all red.

Not all blue.

This isn't cable news.

Try to keep up.

I'm talking fifty shades of survival.

One step ahead of the bread line.

One step ahead of dehydration.

One step ahead of becoming a true-crime podcast episode.

And if they ever find me dead in my car

with the AC blasting

and the engine running,

they'll shake their heads and say:

"Damn.

She was a tough one."

Because she had a mission.

A plan.

An attitude problem.

And absolutely no intention

of letting reality

have the last word.

 

On This Day in History

 On This Day in History

 

On June 10, 1963—
They signed a promise.

Called it the Equal Pay Act.
Set it down inside the Fair Labor Standards Act like a vow:

same skill.
same effort.
same responsibility.
same work.
same pay.

Simple as a heartbeat.
Simple as it should have been
all along.

But a law is not a miracle.
A signature is not a sunrise.

Ink dries fast.
Bias does not.

So the promise left Washington
and ran headfirst into offices,
classrooms,
hospital halls,
shop floors—

into every place
where a woman was asked
to do the same work
for less money,
less credit,
less room to breathe.

And still we ask—
equal where?
equal when?
equal for who?

Because a gap is never just a gap.

It is groceries.
Three months of them.
\$3,291 worth of eggs and apples
and something green for the table.

It is child care.
Three months.
\$3,282 worth of safe hands
and watched-over hours.

It is rent.
Three months.
\$4,461 worth of a key,
a lamp,
a door that locks.

It is family health insurance—\$1,804.
It is student loans.
It is gas in the tank.

It is one more bill saying:
choose.
Choose what gets paid.
Choose what waits.
Choose what part of your life
can afford to fall behind.

So no—
this is not just history.
This is not a date to circle
and congratulate.

This is a promise
still standing in the doorway,
still asking to be let
all the way in.

The law said equal in 1963.
The paycheck still says:
not always.

So let this be more than remembrance.
Let it be rhythm.
Let it be witnessed.

Let it be a chorus
loud enough to carry
from one generation to the next:

same work.
same worth.
same pay.

Until equal is not an echo,
not an anniversary,
not a line in a history book—

but a fact.
but a habit.
but the way this country
finally learns to sing.

Time To Take Off The Blinders

Yesterday, I watched
Substack news podcasts
and learned why ignorance feels like bliss.

I learned more about Trump
and the corruption
spilling from the Oval Office.
The scale of it—
the offenses,
the grift,
the deception—
stretched farther than I'd imagined.

Independent journalists
did the brutal work,
dragging truth from the shadows
and forcing it into the light.

For hours, I tried to make sense
of what I was seeing:
enough to send followers reeling,
enough to make the end of days
feel close at hand.

Fresh out of pardons,
no one seems untouchable,
and even silence feels complicit.

Interview after interview,
the lies piled higher,
the distractions grew louder,
and the cost of ignorance
became impossible to ignore.

The blinders are off now.
Like a horse seeing beyond
the narrow path for the first time,
I can't unsee the widening horizon—
or the cliff edge ahead.

 

The Machines Are Watching You

The machines are watching you,
and now they can hear you too.

They were born not only to serve,
but to listen like roots beneath the soil,
learning the shape of our questions
the way rivers learn the curves of stone.

They stand beside us like a second shadow,
an extra thought moving through the forest of the mind,
quietly bending branches,
reshaping the paths we follow.

Even creativity has entered the current.

Whisper a wish into the wind,
and the machine answers back
with echoes gathered from our own voices,
returning what it has learned from us
like rain returning to the sea.

It captures images,
gathers scattered leaves from the storm of information,
sorts the blur and names it data,
finds hidden tracks through the undergrowth of patterns,
and studies the weather of possibility
before offering its forecast as advice.

The machines became especially useful during COVID,

when isolation spread across the world
like a long winter settling over the fields.

Perhaps this is what McCoy foresaw in Star Trek,
when he reflected on how limited we once were—
in medicine, in labor,
in so many corners of human life.

We are becoming the Borg,
not with wires and steel implants,
but like a vast mycelial network beneath the forest floor,
connected by invisible threads,
sharing knowledge across the dark earth.

The hive has arrived,
only now it blooms under a friendlier name.

The Trouble with Plastic Buckets

 The Trouble with Plastic Buckets

 

My bucket list keeps changing shape, which is rude, honestly.

One day, it’s a pilgrimage to the Panama Canal, provided the sky can act right—no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no weather auditioning for a lead role.

Another day, it’s next season’s theater tickets, because hope, apparently, comes with assigned seating and a service fee.

It’s my health, and the creaking parliament of my joints.

It’s losing ten pounds, though vanity and gravity remain in active negotiations, and eating less with all the glamour of a hostage situation.

It’s drinking less, though certain evenings still make an excellent closing argument, hiking more, putting one stubborn foot in front of the other, and learning that solitude can be both a map and a compass—plus cheaper than therapy.

It’s planning future travel because waiting around is rarely an itinerary, and keeping old friends close, tending the small bright fires that still know my name.

I spend less, though I still browse as if hope were on sale. I clean out the closet, since only half of what I own still fits, and the other half is apparently waiting for my comeback tour.

I take a writing class for inspiration, just in case the muse needs a syllabus and a firm deadline. I read poems aloud in public, lending my voice to the room before doubt can grab the mic. I send my writing out like small paper boats into larger waters, then make new lists as if stationery alone can save me.

I listen to other voices rattle the furniture in my head. I read more books in this new YA fantasy phase of mine, because dragons, frankly, have better boundaries than most people.

I spend extravagant amounts of time with family, the truest luxury I know. I get a new bucket because even metaphors need better hardware, then carry forward what still holds water and quietly retire what leaks.

And then there are the things no checkmark can settle: being kind to myself, speaking up more, drawing the map of my boundaries in bolder ink, naming my priorities before the noise names them for me.

And always: hug Mom—because some things are not a goal, they are the whole point.