5.30.20 - Pandemic Poetry #0 - Back Porch Booms

Are you having trouble tonight?
Sitting on a tired wood porch
listening to concussive ques
Two drum beats before a fight
wondering if it’s fireworks or shots
Two horrible truths unleashed
in these burning city nights
Is it in your head, you wonder
ghosts and scars from a former life?
Is it real? The bag you pack
to bug out to the mountainside
Is it that time, or the moment to
step outside, despite the real threat
A virus that kills men in scores
Illuminating the true divide ‘tween
Left and the right, under hospital lights
I don’t know which path we’ll choose
so I listen to the crickets and booms
Watch the dog run ‘round the yard
”Lean in,” I tell you, “I figure we’re lucky.
We walk this road together. Way better
than living six thousand miles from you
We ain’t perfect, we ain’t right.
We wear the pain of disappointed lives
but I know we’ll face it together
side-by-side, guts or glory
brains or sly, I want to face it
all, with you by my side

*due to uncertainty on how to best utilize social media, I have elected to not include tags that might be needed for providing important information regarding the current crisis facing the world. In Atlanta, 2016. I was there and witnessed people peacefully marching for equality that has been promised for centuries yet never truly delivered. I hope we find a way through this and in the meantime, I’ll be here, listening, writing down stories. I would love to hear yours and share a few tears.

3.16.20 - #corona2020 II

I realized, only recently, how poorly I do with internal anxiety
There’s a train, running away, in my head sometimes
If I try, stay busy, maybe the brakes may recover before
I reach the end of the bridge, the end of the world

---

First full real day of what seems like a real, new normal. Not that we would go out if we could, ‘cause we can’t afford it, but because this illness is a bad rollercoaster ride. We’re not sure if J and D have it, since there weren’t testing kits last week. They’re supposed to call the Georgia Board of Health or something, go through a questionnaire, to even qualify for a test. Right now we’re operating under a 14-day quarantine diagnosed as pneumonia for J, and a 5-day quarantine diagnosed as bronchitis for D. I feel fine, but there’s a tension in the air. We’re faced with the added anxieties of having nothing better to do than reflect on our own past terrors and nightmares. While we wait on referrals for therapists to work through the overloaded for-profit under-prepared American Health Care nightmare, the news outside gets worse and the future darkens a little.

So I went to the gym anyway. I need something besides working my way through the feedback notes on Gravity’s Reach in preparation for a May Writer’s Conference that likely could be cancelled. I’ve been working on the Robin Hood homage, and that’s been more fun. I also have to check grades, put together plans for next week (both planning for online or in-class delivery), and take care of three hurting people.

”We’re broken, but we’re not damaged goods.”

”We do the best we can.”

At least one thing I can pull, a few moments with the dog in the backyard watching her play before she spent hours by my side while I wrote.

That’s the career I want, where I can spend my days giving head scratches while writing the next story.

11.29.19

Your dog once saved my life one night
I’d lost a piece of hope, lost a simple dream
He sat next to me and nudged my hand
Pat on the head, a simple connection
I wish y’all didn’t have to leave
But we grow on and dogs get gray
We’ve lived a lifetime like old hens
Go and live well, a pat on the head
It’s both beginnings and ends