Poetry

 What happened to Granny?  She used to be the saint of the sugar-bowl, over-candying our youth and fighting a nap just to turn the page on a nursery rhyme.  A weathered relic of a "Greatest" time, guarding us from rotting teeth and the jaws of Death. Then the record skipped.  The needle hit a jagged groove and stayed there, piercing that lamb-like legacy.  She’s shredding the blueprints of her era, taking the shears to her hemlines, and laughing at the ruins. The Greatest Generation just lost its finest: She’s gone lawless. A reckless hooligan who traded her "sage wisdom" for a getaway car.  What has the world come to? Granny isn't watching the world burn—she’s the one holding the match.

  True love is not the thing we see, or what the fables once portrayed.  Beneath the wings of purity, a clever trap is being laid. He felt the scratch of his own steel, but was it love or merely thirst?  The grim reality is real: The "gift" is often just a curse. It lingers where the hopeful wait, with hollow ribs and hungry eyes,  To offer up a bitter fate dressed in a lover’s thin disguise.

  Bipolar, you inspire me to revel in your chemical embrace.  But I refuse the nuptials you seek;  I cannot afford the luxury of living under your thumb.  By your own hand, you perched me on a pedestal only to shame me back into the dirt. Fool me once, my smiling, sinister, fair-weather friend.  I’ve had enough of the drama, the years of bait-and-switch.  Fool me twice, the shame is mine— just a penny waiting for change.

  I finally stopped letting the vampires bleed me. I cut the cords, let the toxic attachments drop like dead weight, and I thought I’d won. But then the world turned its volume up, a static hum of global chaos trying to vibrate my bones. They told me the sky was falling, I laughed, until the falling elements actually hit the glass. But here’s the thing about a storm: It’s only a threat if you let it inside. From behind the deadbolt, the wind is just a ghost with no hands. I looked at the walls of my house, then I looked at the walls of my soul, and I realized I’d been leaving the windows wide open, letting every passing tempest track mud across my sanctuary. My spirit is a temple, not a storm shelter. I am the high priest of this headspace, the bouncer at the door of my own heart. When the "spiritual tempests" come knocking— The loud-mouthed, the soul-drainers, the architects of outrage— I don't have to invite them in for tea. I don’t argue with the blizzard. I don't ...

 I’ve learned to walk from toxic breath, To break the ties that bind and strain, And though I’ve mastered quiet depth, The world still brings its driving rain. They promised snow would claim the day; I doubted it until it fell. But safe inside, I watched the grey— A silent world, a frozen shell. The blizzard raged against the glass, Yet found no gap to enter through. I watched the howling shadows pass, And found a logic, stark and true. My heart is like this sacred room, A temple built for peace alone. No storm of spite or social gloom Can claim a seat upon the throne. I raise my shields; I bar the door, And tell the tempest it must cease. The winds may rattle, scream, and roar, But in this house, I dwell in peace.

 The wood is scarred by your own hand, a heavy weight of oak and rust. It stands where once you used to stand, a monument to all you trust. Though locked and latched, the hinges groan; it whispers through the narrow seam, a tether made of marrow, bone, and every unexhausted dream. To leave is easy—turning heels, walking 'til the soles are thin. But even then, the spirit feels the pull to turn and look again. As long as wood and frame remain, the past is just a room away, a curated and hollow pain that begs for one more yesterday. Then comes the shift, the quiet blur, where edges bleed into the gray. The grain begins to lose its stir, the iron handle melts away. It isn't "gone" like things we lose, or buried deep beneath the silt; It is a choice you finally choose To let the very structure wilt. The door dissolves. The wall is gone. The tether snaps into the air. No threshold now to linger on, no ghosts to keep a vigil there. The void is not a vacant room, but space wh...

  A line of ink, a sharp-edged shard, runs down his skin, a prismed guard. Four points of black, a geometric streak, that makes the bravest pulses weak. He walks with shadows, quiet and deep, with secrets that a diamond keeps. He moves through crowds like a ghost in the light, a master of hiding in plain, open sight. He wears the gray of the common man. But the ink betrays a different plan. He wants to vanish, to be just a face, yet marks his soul with a permanent trace. You fear the man with the charcoal stripe, the jagged edge of a different type. But watch him carry the youngest child, or stand by your side when the world goes wild. The diamond is hard, yes—unyielding and cold, but its loyalty shines like a story of old. It isn't a warning of what he might do, but a fence for the family he’s tethered to. He separates himself to keep them whole, a jagged line for a steady soul. Odd? Perhaps. A bit strange to the eye, like a sudden crack in a summer sky. ...