Resistance Poetry 2020.05

I Can’t Breathe

Published in

Resistance Poetry

9 min readJun 2, 2020

Spirit speaks to us in metaphor, the language of the soul, the language of poetry. It is for us to heed the whispers, connect the dots, draw the lessons, act.

Rather than my words, I choose to lead with this piece by Ryan J. Petteway this month.

May you all stay safe.

Fragments On Police Killings, Humanity, and Poetry as Praxis/Testimony

(Or, Dear White People, Your N*gger Is Showing)

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White on Black

Max Smith

The War on Black Bodies

The perception of black bodies in everyday spaces

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Ryan J. Petteway

AMERICA//Again

(5 Steps to Making a Masterpiece According to Bob Ross)

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Nathalie E. Amazan

White-supremacy is an affront to the mystical story of American equality under the law; a poem.

Is this my body? T. Jefferson states our lives are misery What do we know of speech, literature, beauty? He states we…

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Jack Herlocker

Don’t Let Fear Steal Your Freedom!

And have a nice day! 🙂

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Jessica Gupta

Miranda Warning for a Citizen’s Arrest

You have the right to remain silent. Remain invisible, or we will find a reason to blame you for your death.

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Jamie McIntosh

Smothered

Injustice covers

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Ian Moulton (new poet)

I Am Police

Brutality of the God Delusion

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Revolution for All

a tipping point in America

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Violet DeTorres

Running For Your Life

A Villanelle With Imagery

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Free Me

A Villanelle

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Carmen Fong, MD

Ahmaud Arbery

As we question the wisdom of vigilante citizenry

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Ice Cream Shop

#JusticeForFloyd

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maurice blocker

American Memory

America, remember me? I’m the black boy You beat and killed Emmit Treyvon Two of thousands Innocent brown bodies…

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Run

So tired, of all this running. Stop, put hands on knees. Take a breath. Look back. They’re still coming.

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Breathing Black

Hold your breath boy. Here come the cops. If they see us breathing, they’re gonna stop.

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Meg

Two Sides

Two parts of the whole

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Pandemic Poetry

Lisa Patrell (new poet)

“Hello” Is Broken

Bent low over a blank patch of my vegetable garden I hear a neighbor’s dog barking for another ball toss, a laugh from…

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Alex Kilcannon (new poet)

Mother Nature’s Timeout

A poem

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Onalenna Neo (new poet)

Washed hands, muddy mind

A quiet reflection or a liberating scream?

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Sanjukt Saha (new poet)

How we lay, as wooden men

Or how the tracks we built, set us free.

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Muthita Kanwerayothin (new poet)

Wildflowers

Wash your hands, Go!, Wash your hands

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Ryan J. Petteway

FRUIT//Labor

(A Poem for May Day)

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Anangsha Alammyan

Pain To Politics

An ode to the millions of migrant workers across various states in India trapped in big cities, unable to go home…

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Violet DeTorres

Voices Silenced

A Villanelle

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Will Schmit

A Consequential Claws

Third night of Venus rivaling the barn’s motion light across the alley. Unsure which pulls our cat from the couch to…

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Jonathan Greene

Paranoid

A Poem

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Edis Rune

I Felt Carnage, in My Brain

I felt carnage, in my brain, And screamers and mourners Continue to bend — bend — The muscles inside my brain like…

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Sushree Soumya Mishra

Granny was always right!

I laughed at my granny Her way of life for me was uncanny. Three decades weren’t enough, All it took was the virus…

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craig rory lombardi, bronx born

Coronavirus Doesn’t Change a Thing

for hermits misanthropes & xenophobes

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Pejorative Pastiche

A neo-realist approach to verbiage

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Uday Jhunjhunwala (new poet)

Shelter-in-place

shower in the morning keep your schedule don’t touch your face

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Places of worship

are essential

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Francine Fallara

Wall of faith

Desire of a wall

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How low can you go?

Breathing the experiment live

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Christyl Rivers, Phd.

The Mask Of The Red (States) Deaths

With many thanks to Edgar Allen Poe

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What We Got With Nothing

We found a lot when living simply We found a home, a tree, a sky

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Let Them Eat Cake

We stumbled through the days Of an enemy called COVID 19 Our leaders made displays Of waging war and venting spleen As…

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Carmen Fong, MD

Done with the News

A week ago our death toll was higher than the new hospitalizations. I asked, Where are these people dying? The answer…

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Ode to Oz’s Little Neighbor

Where furry-footed Frodo lives A bunch of billionaires have buried bunkers Eleven feet under the ground. On reading…

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Seven p.m.

Every evening at seven p.m.

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Ten Bodies

Reflection from a surgeon during COVID-19

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My Grandmother’s Math

My grandmother ran a cigarette shop

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Delayed

Word of the Pandemic

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In Mourning

What anosmia feels like

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Satisfaction

A poem

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The Day The Clapping Died

Fortune-telling from the past

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Cancer Doesn’t Wait

Surgery during COVID-19

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Forgetting How To Be Human

Forgetting how to be

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Oh God

What has he done now?

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Ryan J. Petteway

FRUIT//Labor

(A Poem for May Day)

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Meg

If I Am to Die

If I am to die, Let it not be among strangers, A beggar to their kindness, A lash upon their hearts.

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NEW POETS

Lisa Patrell (see above)

Sanjukt Saha (see above)

Ian Moulton (see above)

Taylor Alarcón

Remember?

A poem on relationships, evolution & sustainability.

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Jesse Wilson

The Hidden Cost of Inequality

Is there a price that you are willing to pay?

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Onalenna Neo

Love You To Cheat Death

To mama and papa

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Eloise Davenport

A city stroll with papa

A season of unreturned glances

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Khushboo Patel

Why can’t I live the way I want

A girl who was never loved by her mother.

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Alex Kilcannon

Not My Monkeys

A poem

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Frank Ernest

How We Choose Presidential Candidates

In the United States of America

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Suzanne V. Tanner

The Creep Walking in My Direction

Why this woman, chose to pull the plug, ignore the boy-built multi-layer glass ceiling and charged forward…

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Uday Jhunjhunwala

Life

in this country

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Jean Carfantan

Spirals

Spirals for slavery, Spiral to freedom

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Virginia Roces

Child of the Soil

A poem.

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Swathi Raj

Behind blankets : The songs of the soul

The Songs of the soul are an ode to the inner light that guides us; a tribute to mother nature and over-soul that…

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ARRIVAL : The songs of the soul

Set foot in chaos, in the mundane, this suffering, carnal, selfish doom, what is your moral soul doing here? Pain; from…

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Saif Ullah

Let the worries be thrown away

Let the worries be thrown away,

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A Thing is Known by its Opposite

I saw a big shining star,

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The Present Moment

I wondered, how unfair life is,

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Muthita Kanwerayothin

Spiders

I found a spider in my house.

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Let Me Sink to the Ocean Floor

Let me sink to the ocean floor

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2010

Ten years has passed but your words still haunt me

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Keith Woods

They Don’t Retire Slaves.

Take the time to take a look

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I just saw a trash bag that seemed to be caught by the wind

wonder if he’s at a loss because he’s empty within

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I look up at the ceiling and stare

And think of many things of which I am aware Unsettled Watching them peddle Their villainous wares Know I don’t…

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I Made It Through The Night

Its gotta be obvious… My lack of confidence. Insults, I’ll honor them. Then duck all the compliments.

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Jamie McIntosh

Dance, Ending Darkness

So let’s dissent from oppression’s descent

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Dark Invitation

Will you flicker? Will you fade?

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Attend & Tend to Where You Might Mend

Healing inclinations

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Weep for the Broken

Weave also a bandage for their wounds

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RETURNING POETS

Michael Stang

Truth was Never Seeing

It.

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Nathalie E. Amazan

When we get there

Question everything Struggle in the present for the world we wish to live in accept tragedy as inevitable like the…

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Gail Walter

Whatever You Want

you can have

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Adeyele Adeniran

origin

a poem

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Frank Ernest

Serious And Silly

We need both

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Anna Rozwadowska

Consensus

I don’t know which reality I’m chasing…

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Aaska Aejaz

The Sense of Unworthiness

Arrogant eyes, pride in the neck, the splendor of mood You will cry after seeing my plight today, that, I have lost…

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Rob Cullen

ABSENCE

Absence

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Efe Nakpodia

Destiny’s Legend.

I’ve been chasing you forever, Through thick and thin Moments in life. But the closer I get to you, The more I wish…

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Michele Merritt, Ph.D.

Ambivocal

My irresolute identity

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Steven Rouach

Wasting Your Life

By Steven W. Rouach

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Laura Di Piazza

Wait that shit out

You’ll see the strong and cocky

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Larenz Brown

Abercrombie and Fitch under fire for only offering XS, S, and Undercover Cop sizes at their retail…

[May 3, 2020]

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Dale Biron

To Our “Beloved” Oligarchs

A Poem Of Just Fairness In A Time Of Just Greed

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Caterina Mastroianni

Familiar days

My relief settles felicitously on the back of the closed door sybaritic sales vamoose performances perish

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Dennett

Teensy

A poem of time and opportunity

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Rhonda Marrone

people in the night

a half-lit golden neon cross glows eerily in the fog floating high over city streets; half burning, half in darkness.

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Mark Juhan

Rainbow Fume Headache

Cycling to work through mist of fumes which cause as many rainbows as headaches

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Iulia Halatz

Lockdown Exulansis

The smallness of the evening Gives new beatings In my heart.

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Catherine Caruso

Hate Speech

A Poem

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Linda A Robinson, PhD

Political Corruption

A Haiku

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Jamie McIntosh

Catch them, if you can

Where the world is broken

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Pablo Pereyra

You’ll have to learn to walk!

A Resistance Poem

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Hank Edson

The Survivor Artist

Love and Faith amid Loss and Heartache

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Matthew Broyles

A Saucerful of Memory

A Wednesday Maybe a Thursday Midweek gigs are all the same

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From A Window Seat

If you drove Past this window Right now What would you think

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Cie Turvey

Pretend

Your words roll, empty Echo, pecked to pieces,

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Silly

Sounds roll around Unrepentant mouths, they seek

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Anangsha Alammyan

What Does Sadness Sound Like?

Poetry in free verse

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A Shattered Story

Poetry in free verse

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Sydney Duke Richey

Old Glory

Tattered Edges

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Injustice

Will We Rise?

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maurice blocker

Appropriation

Taking ours Pretending it’s new

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I’m Not Racist

I’m not racist. I have a black friend. We work together. He’s nice.

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Harper Thorpe

Obama Does Obamagate

Sung to Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone”

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100,000 .. uh .. My Favorite Tweets?

Sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things”← Play it, Sing it!

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John O’Bedlam

Many Masks

The many masks of one

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I Do Not Know

A fire burning

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Janet van Aswegen

The faded daytime moon

Hollow ghost of loneliness

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God’s Treasure

Amidst the beauty of God’s vineyard,

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Jack Burt

Blind Jog

Society, an only child High functioning, low art Alert awaiting happiness So close its serotonin lingers Its laugh a…

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Pull Here

Beginner..

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Big Mind Jet Fuel

Hard-lining at the opera The holy spirit rides outro Half-nodding Half-smoking in back row Fan of american spirits…

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Brian Pilling

TABLOID HEADLINES

The tabloids have the rough truth of us, the film in negative,

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SIDEWALK CAPERS

Purple-pigeons chortle

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Fox News

Tripping over spiked heels, the girl from downstairs waves as she gets out of her parked car, a partially restored…

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Self Serve

At Myrtle Beach Convenience “The Rush Limbaugh Show” plays , at a self-serving pump where Amber‘s Chevy Caprice idles…

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Edis Rune

Cinderella’s Pocketbook

Cinderella, scrubs the saucer with her cloth, And then with her Fingernails gets rid of a speck, where She began to…

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Vogue View

His hands move around like Dancing swords. His fingers dangle into glittery air through The rainbow lights.

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Gambleena

The falling cards are mending, The world of spare hearts calling The jokers.

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I Am Horizontal

I remember when I was vertical — I wouldn’t change being horizontal For the world, because I am already The world…

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craig rory lombardi, bronx born

He was willful

more willful than most truly with a nature that could be considered almost rebellious

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The U S… A Nation of Star-fuckers!

Whereupon the Supreme Court must decide Do we see Trump tax returns along the way We finally find out we’ve been…

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Soundview Soundbites

poetry… a.k.a. the crime in rhymin’

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I Used to Believe in Magic

I lived in an historical time many people did I’ve often wondered is that how things were when Jesus roamed the earth

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Heaven & Hell

not Blake not Huxley

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specious disputation

I expect no one to read this!!!

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Required Reading

For junior high and middle school

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Jane Woodman

Spring Thoughts on Food

Spring, not Winter, is the hungry season. When robins dogfight over nesting sites, The sun grows warm as freezers start…

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Kohlrabi

linked senryu

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Even Curmudgeons Are Right Sometimes

against thoughtlessness

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Against Judgmental Bullshit

a sonnet

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