The White Rain

 The White Rain

 

The summer garden of us was lush,
until the frost bit deep.
We wake to a landscape
turned suddenly stark,
snapping the roots.
The clock fractures open,
and we let the debris scatter.
It is an ending, quiet as ash,
and the air settles still.

I refuse to drown the floor
in the white rain of what is spilt.
I am no showy Willow,
bending my spine in a theatrical weep,
Draping long green sleeves
to court the indifferent earth,
Flirting with the passing wind,
putting on a tragedy
for God knows who.

Yesterday’s downpour
is already a ghost on my skin,
long evaporated.
I am only a silhouette
leaning over the well of sweet, toxic memory,
Straining to see the reflection
of why I ever built the bridge at all,
As if a heart ever required
a logical blueprint to ruin itself.

You asked if the world harbored
a quiet malice against my name.
The shadows are too shallow
to hold a grudge that heavy, Marty—
There is not enough warmth
left in the heart to care.

 

I Rang the Bell, Didn't I?

 I Rang the Bell, Didn't I?

The joke was stupid,
but the punchline hit like lightning
through a church steeple.

Better than Viagra.
Better than anything
sold behind a pharmacy counter
or whispered across a parking lot at midnight.

For one glorious second,
the universe coughed up a win.

Now every day arrives wearing yesterday's clothes.

The clocks run backward.
The headlines molt and grow the same diseased feathers.
We're trapped in a carnival ride
operated by drunk historians.

Who's on first?
What's on third?
Who burned down the rulebook?
Who replaced it with a coloring book and a flamethrower?

The air tastes like pennies,
old grievances,
and freshly laundered lies.

Racism hangs over everything
like a dead possum in the attic—
bloated,
stinking,

impossible to ignore.

I'd just like to breathe
without inhaling someone else's delusion.

I want the tirade to end.
I want the fever to break.
I want normal to stumble back through the door
looking rough,
missing a shoe,
but alive.

Instead, we're all waiting for Season Three.

Not a polite season.
Not a prestige-drama season.

House of the Dragon season.

Dragon fire turning tyrants into barbecue.

Crowns melting into puddles.
Egos scattered across the countryside
like loose teeth after a bar fight.

Heads roasted.
Limbs crushed.
Entrails decorating the landscape
with all the subtlety of modern politics.

Let the whole miserable circus
reach its final act.

Then sweep up the ashes.

Strike up the band.

And for the love of God,

let me dance.

The "M" stands for Mouth-breathing

 The "M" stands for Mouth-breathing

The "F" stands for Fake.

MF.

A fitting title for a man who thinks a Peace Prize should be awarded for collecting dictators like baseball cards.

You think Putin is your friend?

Putin doesn't have friends. He has assets, obstacles, and future obituaries.

To him, you're that mosquito trapped inside the bedroom at 2 a.m.—loud, irritating, and one slap away from becoming a stain on the wall.

And then there's China.

Not because they admire you.

Because somewhere, a team of scientists is desperate to discover how a brain can be simultaneously overused and underdeveloped.

You are living proof that confidence can survive without evidence.

It's remarkable.

Engineers study structural failures.

Economists study market failures.

Historians now have you.

A one-man case study in how ego can achieve escape velocity while intelligence remains firmly grounded.

You wanted to make history.

Congratulations.

You did.

Just not in the chapter you were hoping for.

You're filed somewhere between "avoidable mistakes" and "what were they thinking?"

Future generations won't ask how you changed the world.

They'll ask how the world let you keep trying.

That's your legacy.

Not a Peace Prize.

A cautionary tale.

  

The Awakening

 The Awakening

Wake up.
The clock is ticking in reverse.
You sleep inside a velvet hearse.
You dream of infinite supply.
While rivers fade and forests die.

The cat looks down with dizzy eyes.
And laughs at all your golden lies.
Your billions cannot buy the spark.
To fix the engine in the dark.

The time machine is missing gears.
To fly beyond these heavy years.
Before the basket burns to ash.
And all your limitless illusions crash.

You move in rhythm, perfect, slow.
A zombie dance is all you know.
Hypnotized by what you own.
While sitting on a hollow throne.

A gaping hole begins to tear.
Through fabric made of empty air.
You are the ghost; you are the seed.
You are the story that you breed.

So tell yourself a better tale.
Before the final anchors fail.
Look back to see where you have been.
The past is where the truths begin.

Remember what the silence cost.
Remember everything you lost.
Remember…
Remember…

The Reflecting Pool

 The Reflecting Pool

 

The surface should be perfectly still,
reflecting every approved procedure,
every box checked, every signature filed.
A model of order.

Never mind the algae bloom.
Never mind the growing heap of mistakes
rotting quietly at the water’s edge.

“YOU’RE FIRED,” rings across the lawn.

Problem solved.

Because nothing cleans a polluted pond
like tossing one or maybe thirteen unlucky fish onto the bank.
Because accountability is most effective
when it travels exclusively downhill.

We can simply agree the disasters were anomalies,
the warnings were unclear,
the experts were biased,
and the evidence was taken out of context.

When the glass begins to crack,
we'll blame the temperature.
When the foundation sinks,
we'll commission a report on gravity.

And if confidence starts to waver,
I know the perfect distraction:
let's bomb another country.

The markets will love it.
The flags will wave.
The headlines will cooperate.

That ought to prove we're in control.

And if somehow that doesn't work,
we could always try a coup—

though, in fairness,
it helps to know how to spell democracy
before attempting to overthrow one.

 

Fair-Weather Princess

 Fair-Weather Princess

A fair-weather princess
once wandered gardens long.
But she had no use for rain,
or getting wet in song,
with either friend or foe.

She's devoted to calm,
avoids forecasts in principle,
files storms under unacceptable
and thunder under whimsical.

"Better viewed from afar," she'd say,
than splashed in this weather’s mess."
So she built a moat of umbrellas
around her happiness.

By dodging every cloud,
every puddle, every scar,
she slowly turned herself
into a pickle in a jar—

sealed against the tempest,
safe from every squall and squirm,
until the rain she feared the most
was life itself, confirmed.

 

Juneteenth: Turning Towards Dawn

 Juneteenth: Turning Toward Dawn

Freedom was signed.
The door stayed open.

A clause stood there,
small as a nail,
strong as iron:
the Thirteenth Amendment’s
hidden seam.

Except as punishment for crime.
Angola rose
from plantation dirt.

The fields remembered.
The hands remembered.
The law did not.
They called it justice.

The whip
learned another name.
Black codes
walked softly,
turning free men
back into property.

A charge became a sentence.
A sentence became a body.
A body became profit.
The convict lease
bound the loophole tight.
Men were sold
to roads,
to levees,
to fields without names.

The state counted money.
The towers
counted men.
The country rang bells
for freedom.

Freedom waited
behind the loophole.

Years passed.
Decades passed.
Lives passed.

Then came another promise,
The Fourteenth Amendment
written after blood,
after ash,
after the country had seen
what it had done.

Section One spoke clearly:
Born here,
you belong here.
The Citizenship Clause
erasing Dred Scott’s stain.

No state
may take your life,
your liberty,
without Due Process.
No state may deny
your equal place
beneath the law.

Equal Protection
carved into the stone.

Yet the states resisted.
The shadows fought the light.
So the authors built a weapon:
Section Five.
The Enforcement Power.

The gavel swung.
Congress claimed the authority
to pass the acts,
to march the troops,
to break the codes by force.
The constitution was given teeth.

The words were small.
The hope was not.

Juneteenth is not late history.
It is a bell
still learning
how to ring true.

It is a promise
dragged through chains,
but not buried.

It is the law,
slow as stone,
beginning—
at last—
to turn toward dawn.

And dawn,
when it comes,
must come carrying justice.