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Current Events Poems Poetry

Whispered conversations

Graveyards are so much more than a final resting place

They are a collection of memories, shattered dreams, and half forgotten hopes.

A collection of consciousness laying underneath a curated lawn.

Perhaps that’s why, on the clearest day, a breeze always blows

It’s the whispered conversation of souls

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Current Events family Poems Poetry Uncategorized

Self-Care

In the spiraling modernity of a wired and connected world the influencers peer out of their square boxes. Against a pink or beige or golden background, they all share the same message.

Self-care. A modern woman practices a self-care routine.

The influencer will preach with the utmost sincerity. She is a trend setting prophet, and her bible is whatever pastel colored bottle has paid enough to grace her screen today.

The modern woman, her hair in a bun that’s perched atop her head, or in a day old sweatshirt that smells faintly of infant piss or vomit (or both) nods.

Self-care. She must find herself a self care routine.

But time is fleeting. How can one practice self care in the midst of a thousand daily chores that triple the minute one gets missed? Especially if the modern woman is expected to work, cook, clean, and perfectly parent at every god-damn minute of every single day.

Modernity is a dream

A beautiful one, sold in 10 second chunks of neutral colored smiles.

In reality, it’s profits for clicks. The capitalization of consumption.

And yet, still we scroll.

For self-care purposes, of course.

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Current Events family Poems Poetry

Changeling

My dear,

You were never meant to pick up the pieces of a life cut too short.

It is the cruelty of existence that requires you to soldier on. It is not God’s will, it is not fate. It is…happenstance. And you have met it with wide eyed courage.

You must feel forgotten. Overlooked and overwhelmed. Angry at the world or God or the Universe for leaving you behind.

Guilty for your anger. Guilty for your rage. Guilty for all the roiling emotions that ebb and flow with the circadian rhythm of the day.

Because you’re the one who stayed.

My dear, I see you. I see your youth. I see your bright soul alight with childish wonder.

I see how it’s dimmed now that you can no longer explore the vast expanse of this incandescent world with the man you love.

You’re a changeling. Alone in the bizarre shadow called Earth now stripped of light.

But please remember…

Grief is not attached to morality.

Grief simply is.

You will feel knives of anger, shards of hatred, and moments of spite. You will feel sparks of joy, bubbles of love, and waves of compassion. And all this will barrage you in staccato rhymes of confusion.

Because you were left behind.

But my dear, you are not forgotten. Though it may seem that way.

You were left behind. But we are by your side.

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Current Events family Poems Poetry

15 Years

She was born in the quiet hush of a snowstorm. Fifteen years later, there’s nothing quiet about her.

She’s as fierce as a tsunami and loud as a tornado.

Snow shrinks before the spring, and she, she is the raging river that’s left behind.

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Current Events Education family Haiku Poems Poetry

College

It’s easy to think

I’m abstract terms about “struggle”

But much harder

When your child is hundreds of miles away

And crying on the phone

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Current Events Education Haiku Poems Poetry

Lonely Satisfaction

Loneliness

It’s a feeling we’re all familiar with

But have you heard

Of lonely satisfaction?

It’s the feeling of newly unwrapped presents

The chill of first snow

The scent of your lovers sweatshirt

Found, tossed aside, in the corner of your house.

Lonely satisfaction is

Coming home from vacation

Or 501 pm on a Friday

It’s things accomplished

But a future

Not yet materialized.

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Current Events Education Haiku Poems Poetry Teaching

8 million

In America

Kids are always the battle ground

What they read

What we teach them

How we raise them

Yet in our hubris

We allowed 8 million of them

To be stricken with grief

You see

We were too busy arguing

To care about the consequence

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Climate Current Events Haiku Poems Poetry

Sunsets

Silhouetted trees

Black against a neon sky

Sway in a cool breeze

Summer is waning

Which heightens the nostalgia

Of teen years long passed.

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Current Events Haiku Poems Poetry

Sticky Words

I stare at the screen

My eyes crossing, contacts dry

As I try to paint

Using only words

Some words are sharp, some pointy

Others are vivid

Like a 1972 VW

Others are dull and sticky

Like hour old chewing gum

What’s true about words as art

Is there are thousands

And if they connect just right,

They create not just art, but action

And drama that invokes real emotion

Yet somehow writing is also…

Isolating

Because the art is real

But invisible

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Current Events Education Haiku History Poems Poetry

Progress

We drink our coffee

Skid into our parking spot

Late, by two minutes

The day is a drudge

Much the same as yesterday,

As will be tomorrow

Oblivious to

The obliteration of

An entire culture

That’s what we call progress