there they are
spattered
over frozen ground
always dark
always violent
always nearby
risen faceless
fueled through hate
not men but destroyers
(February 12, 2026)
Category: rage
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Our two dogs don’t like the cold rain today;
they huddle deeper into the blankets’
warmth still tangled across the bed upstairs.
I watch the neighbor’s small duck flock parade
behind his fence squawking their displeasure
with the world’s cold misappropriations.
Much farther north of here an ice hardens
quickly into a fiery discontent.
The TV weathermen predict winter storms
will settle darkly across the country
with dire warnings of icy roads to come.
We live out our lives in dangerous times:
where we must brave the cold outside to live,
but any warmth, like love, is hard to find.
(January 24, 2026)
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I want to worry
about our dogs
barking randomly
along the back fence
at shadows and leaves
while the occasional squirrel
fusses at them
from the safety of a tree.
Instead wolves roam the streetsfur stiff with dried blood;
and eviscerated prey
muddy the snow,
while neighborhood dogs
howl through the night.
(January 14, 2026)
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Finished the RFB book for this upcoming Sunday’s meeting. A fairly long (161 pages, seemed longer) rant from the point of view of a working class bloke (oppressed like Caliban in The Tempest by powers greater than him). Each chapter focuses on another aspect of his oppression.The main take away is the old adage: the more things change the more they stay the same. The powers that be (church, military, education, government, labor unions, etc) all contribute, if not conspire, to exploit, control, and oppress the working class. Much of what he shrieked about is pretty much still in play in our contemporary politics. So, it was not that I disagree with most of what he screams about, i simply found the writing to be over-wrought and turgid. The book cover claims it is a rediscovered classic. I am not sure a book can be called a classic if it had to be rediscovered. Isn’t a classic— a book that people have continued to read over the years? Not one, forgotten and unread, that some editor found in a book stall, then reprinted. But I quibble.
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It is not safe. Bears ramble
through the valley, eating
fruit and honey. Berries
stain the forest floor
in blackish red swathes
like ink poured accidentally
across a policeman’s ledger.
They have crossed the road
which runs along the edge
of the park. The dam moves
with purpose, followed close
by her rapacious cubs,
their long tongues loll
wetly from their mouths
like loose rubber pendulums.
Make no mistake, this time
it is more than mere hunger
which curls her black lips
into a sharpened smile,
more than resurgent spring,
more than the fate of time
at history’s end,
but revenge.
(March 21, 2025
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In my darkness, where I will not look,
live the parts of me I do not wish to know.
I sense their vague shapes along the edgesshifting toward the trees as the flames flicker.
Sometimes during the day, I can hear them—their mutters rising thick below my words,
like smoke billows from a chemical firefixing its pungent smell across a clear sky.
Mostly, they sleep like bears hibernatingdeeply beneath the snow. I let them be.
Better left with violent dreams of salmon,than cracking open the bones of the dead.
Better chained in soft recriminations,than eviscerated with what I am.
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Long vindictive waves
pummel everything
before them like tears.
There is no shelterfrom the storm’s dark surge
swallowing the shore.
Like dead jellyfishpulsing on the sand,
anger’s sting remains.
(June 21, 2024)
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I read once when I was young, I believe
in the I Ching, that a tall stone tower
on a hill is a great defense in war;
except it draws the enemy’s attack.
One can run, but not hide from an attack;nor run away while hiding. Paradox.
Yet there is a third option. Wherever
you are is the ground upon which you stand.
You stand openly, steady like a tree,whose roots have coiled deeply into the earth.
Allow the time’s darkness to surge through you,
yet again, in long slow pulsating waves;
until the latest storm’s violence abates,and you find yourself right where you have been.
(March 26, 2024) -
I have said this before: There needs to be photographs published of the aftermath of these shootings. Not the bodies of the torn up 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders (6-9 yo), but the destruction of the room. Blood spattered across the walls where their work had been displayed by the teacher. The work the children had been so proud to see hanging on the wall. Walls that are now blood stained. These common classroom artifacts desecrated in blood need to be seen…these murders are not neat and tidy, easily forgotten (obviously). Do not show the dead children, show the bullet holes in the walls, show the blood. The blood of the innocent. Maybe that would help in bringing enough rage to the surface to bring about meaningful change. Maybe.
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