Tag: 2025

I woke from a dream of a memory
of a story you told me: you had
a yellow dog who ran loose in
the woods and the neighbors
hunted him.

I asked you and you laughed and
you said you never told me that
story, that you never had a
yellow dog.

You told me that the dream of the
yellow dog means I'm chasing
happiness, that I'm held back
by fear, by doubt.

Fear, surely. Doubt, not anymore.

I can still see it in my mind, the
yellow dog flashing in and out
amongst the trees, a lab maybe
or a golden retriever.

I've never had a yellow dog.

Dogs are sentinels in the cards,
the guardians of boundaries.

Dogs bring messages of hope
and good tidings.

Dogs are happy creatures, cheerful,
optimistic, bounding through life
with affection and joy.

What they have they give away
without hesitation, without
condition.

They look ahead only to the next
moment. They provide what's
needful, what's asked of them,
and more.

Am I chasing happiness?

Even in the middle of these dark
woods, this pathless place where
there are no breadcrumbs to follow?

Were the neighbors the parts of
myself that so fear the unknown
that they fool themselves into
believing they can shape the
future, bring the gods them-
selves to heel?

I woke from a dream of a memory
of a story you told me.

Maybe I'm chasing happiness.
Maybe it was just a dream.
Maybe someday we'll find
the yellow dog.
Together.

December 23, 2025

I live here but this is not
my home.

I spend all day with these
people but they are
not my family. 

I labor relentlessly,
hour after hour
after hour,
but
build,
nourish,
create, complete,
accomplish, sustain,

nothing.

I give my body
willingly (reluctantly),
stoically (not indifferently)

to the machine,
to be consumed

vertically, top to bottom
a whore

(in between the numbers)

to
feed
my family,

to
be as
obsequious
as I need to be,

to
yes sir,
right sir,
right away sir,

until I'm allowed to go home.

What it takes from me
is no longer replaced,
and yet I have
no regrets,
having
no
other
option.

Threads are all I have these days.

I hang onto them with both hands
even if there's no way out
of this maze.

I wind them together if I get two,
or braid them if I get three,
but there's never
enough
to weave into
the fabric of a better life.

Sometimes I only have one
and then I make
nothing
at all.

I just hold on.

Hour after hour. Day after day.
Paycheck after paycheck.

I gave up food thinking I could
hold onto hope.
Now I have
neither
and
a
heating bill to pay.

The intensity of my daydreams
can't save us. (I'm no wizard).

They grant me only the burst
of the matchstick,
one
after
another.

Pff, pff, pff.

If you can't help my family
I no longer have
the time
or
the energy
to listen to you.

In fact, I no longer have
to listen
at all,

I
only
have to endure.

I endure with dignity.

I sacrifice pride,
entitlement,
self pity,
and
every
illusion
that has ever
tricked me into
walking a false path.

I need to know where I stand
even if it's only in front
of a mirror
with
black eyes.

I'm haunted.
Dogged by fear.

It walks with me, sleeps with me,
eats with me. I can't shake
it anymore,
there's
no
escape.

It's etched itself on my face
deeper than any scar.

I treasure every good moment
knowing it'll never come again.

I treasure every good moment
knowing there may never
be another.

I forgive everything else.

I live here, pared away from
my home, from
who I am
and
where
I belong,
from all good
and beautiful things,
from wholeness,
duty, obligation,
satisfaction.

I leave the best of myself
behind when I'm here.
I am what's left.

I give everything I have.
I am what's left.

I have nothing for anyone else.
I am what's left.

If there's a way out I will find it.
If there's a way out.
I will.

December 3, 2025

My lips taste like salt on a cloudy
day in mid-November.

Snow sugars the fake slats
of the fake alpine cottage
across the highway,
a diner or an outlet,
I've never known.

It's a good omen when
it snows in mid-November.

A righting of a balance upturned
by summer migraines and heat stress.

I'm warm today and that's all
that matters. I can feed my family
today and that's all that matters.

I'm a ghost here, an indifferent
spectator of decay. I've stopped
caring. I'm okay today and
that's all that matters.

Silent.

My feet bled white by the unyielding
counter pressure of concrete.

One more day,
I've got one more day
to meet his unflinching gaze,
to listen to his interior retort,
to smile at his outrageous claims,
to laugh at his dark wit,
to play along if I have the wisdom.

Or melt into the floor beneath
the burden of his misery.

Either way, the one will follow
on the heels of the other and
I'll find myself looking through
a one-way mirror wondering
how I ever did without.

I never will.

I've earned my ring in reverse,
as we all do, and there is no world
without him, not for me.

I look out through two panes of glass
at the mid-November snow.

I'm an island. Isolated. Drowning
in an ocean of strangers. There
is no sun, only a uniformity of gray.

My heart is free to return, and for
the moment my thoughts.

Tonight my body will follow.

And like the feather in the dove's tail
it'll all make sense again and I'll
fold this away for another day
and remember who I am.

November 13, 2025

i'd rather learn to live with hunger
than learn to live without hope

October 23, 2025

My mind is free.
The machine does not own me.

October 4, 2025

When you labor for a stranger
you are a slave.

When you labor for your family
you are free.

October 4, 2025

Songs are what you sing, music is what you make. Copyrighted noise is artificial gay and fake.

October 4, 2025

The law does not apply to them.
They pay no taxes.
They don't participate in "the economy."
They don't eat the food you eat.
They don't drink the water you drink.
They don't take the drugs you take.
They have a hand in everything you see and hear: television, movies, news, video games, social media, music, books, education.
They own every politician.
They control every government, every corporation, every military, every university. 
They shape every religion.
They fund every scientific and medical study and vet the results.
They sell every pharmaceutical, vaccine, pesticide, poison, and processed food.
Their sport is the rape, torture, and murder of children.
They supply you with everything you think you want, everything you think you need.
They are to whom your ancestors bequethed you, in a fit of agony or avarice.
Condemn no more generations to be sacrificed to them.
Be no more a host for them.
Expose them.
Deny them what sustains them.
They have nothing you need.
They have nothing you truly want.
Find what you need outside of the artificial world they have constructed for you.
Find what you want, inside yourself.
Give them nothing to feed on.
Know your enemy.
Expose them. Name them.
Face your enemy.
Don't look away.
Deny them and they will disappear.
Deny them and you will be free.

September 29, 2025

Money is fake.
Labor is real.

Changing labor to money
is how the money changers steal.

September 29, 2025

Our gods are not always kind.
Our gods are not always
where we are.

Our gods are sunlight through
the trees at dawn, an ever-
present light
obscured
by
one leaf
or another,
fueled by an eternal
engine propelled by devotion.

To thank them is to turn them
into strangers who hold
open doors,
and
even if they
hold open doors,
they are never strangers.

Seek instead to spend wisely
their gifts and to look
them in the eyes,
not as equals
but
to
shed all
illusions as to
desire and sacrifice.

Be direct and so be directed,
shot like an arrow loosed
from Skadi's bow
stretched
across
the
morning sky,
without hesitation
or remorse, and
when the
leaves
fall
like
stars
you will hear
their whispered reply.

September 22, 2025