A humble door lies to the observer about what lies beyond.
Azure blue paint faded and peeling reveals aged wood.
Above the door a faded sign.
“Assume Nothing”
Ornate calligraphy painted gold, red, cream.
The intrepid onlooker sees an opportunity to explore.
Addict homeless person prostitute you guys
Rule of thumb picnic wife-beater trigger
Warning disabled victim survivor
Lame freshman spirit animal insane
I am a man of my people,
and I am loyal to my community.
My city stands steadfast and proud,
and my fellow men and women, friends, are strong.
Yet, something inside me has always nagged me,
and try as I may, this feeling continually intensifies:
That jellyfish gathering is no mystery
Like everyone they want to go to the beach
To play in the water, soak up some rays
Picnic, show off, buy some souvenir mugs
Only there is no coffee after Mass
No cookies or Kool-Aid for the kidlets
The parish hall has been locked up for months
And you know, there’s just something wrong with that
Many sing this anthem but do not know the tale,
They do not know the dark, the unsettling suspension
As Francis Scott Key and his prisoner soldiers
Waited hoping that God, would give them attention…
Do you remember lying on the grassy bank
On a summer afternoon, holding very still…
Like a 16-year-old crossing a field at noon
A little word has a lot of ground to cover in the heat
A mile of open ground to a wall and some trees
Where confusion does not want it to arrive
One of the merry mysteries of midsummer
Is that midsummer isn’t midsummer at all
Maybe it was, back in the shadows of time
When Tolkien’s fairies blessed a happier world
My father beached at Normandy on the second day
(He was okay with having missed the first)
From there through France to Belgium in the mud
For a bloody Christmas in the icy Bulge
This massive land that I see
Spread from sea to shining sea
Is a very unique lot
It’s been called a melting pot…
Memorial Day is when we remember our friends
As they were…
He found his DaddyPaw’s young adulthood
In a box of letters from New Mexico
About fighting forest fires and building fence
To the stockyards at Magdalena
As history’s mundane toil, and epic battles ensue
It’s clear no race is exempt
From ways that are imperfect, unkempt.
You still approach the Altar as a child
As you once were, and are, and will be forever
For God will have it so, will have you so –
Enchanted by His magic – a little boy
Whenever I take my book to the front-yard oak
The squirrel stretched from the feeder to the trunk
Flees in a seed-strewn panic across the lawn
To a farther tree, free of human menace
It was at court our eyes first met,
Many others were there,
We had not spoken yet.
Though I conversed with others,
and from you stood apart,
Like foals to their mothers,
To you went my heart.
Infections are up and deaths are ‘way down
Or is it that infections are down and deaths are up?
Schools must be closed and the restaurants open
Or schools must be open and restaurants closed…
My dearest Ana,
You lied to and enslaved me
For which I bear animosity
Because of your “generosity”
My body has become an atrocity
You were so thankful, and my friends
Were so proud of my gracious
Charity, seeing
I had aided
You…
LogoSophia Magazine 