Breaking Poems

A former journalist, I now write poetry inspired by the news. I have a Creative Writing degree from the University of Houston. As seen in the Houston Chronicle, Suffragette City magazine, and Bluestockings magazine.

[breakingpoems]

Prove that you’re human

Do you breathe through gills? Do you have any chill? Do you lust for anything? Do you understand spring? Do you believe there is good? Did you have a childhood? Have you ever felt love? Have you ever been shoved? Do you understand pain? Have you ever not campaigned? Are you from space? What was your birthplace? You’re a mystery, Ted. You might be undead. Or perhaps made of parts: Five livers, no heart.

Texas woman asks Ted Cruz to take a DNA test 'to prove' he's human -- April 5, 2018

Before issuing the DNA test challenge to the senator, the woman told Cruz that she's a woman older than 50 and has seven pre-existing conditions.

"I purchase my individual policy on the Health Insurance Exchange. If you force me into a high-risk pool, you will either bankrupt me or kill me. I take your threats of medical aggression personally and seriously," she said, before popping the DNA test question. "I can assure you, I'm not the only Texan who does."

[breakingpoems]

World Poetry Day

I lost my voice once. Forgot how to speak verse after losing some books. It all returned on the day the flowers bloomed. I sat in the soft, watched the bees hop, thought about words for the neon spears that broke through the dirt: are they pink or orange, the color of flame, what is that color’s name? Why do they come here? Why are we blessed now, and tortured come May? That night I squeezed blood on a page: every phrase felt wrong, but it ended and it sounded like song.

[breakingpoems]

What’s in a name?

Oh Rafael, Rafael, wherefore art thou’s sense of smell? That which we call a rat by any other word would waft like that, like a creature dragging feet through fetid puddles on the street, or a man who would align himself with evil that delights to malign his very own wife, his very own life! Oh Rafael, you played yourself, you failed to see your very own tell, for what hides in an ungiven name but a man who lives in shame?

Ted Cruz, who goes by a nickname, attacks Beto O’Rourke for doing the same -- March 7, 2018

In the campaign ad, Cruz went after his opponent, Rep. Beto O'Rourke — whose full name is Robert — on immigration. "Liberal Robert wanted to fit in, so he changed his name to Beto and hid it with a grin," the jab sang. The entire ad was a Texas-style country song that took shots at O'Rourke for things such as "open borders" and wanting to "take our guns."

O'Rourke has insisted his name was given to him when he was very young and that it's something he's always gone by.

"My parents have called me Beto from day one, and it's just — it's kind of a nickname for Robert in El Paso. It just stuck," he told CNN on Tuesday.

But Cruz's major mistake, aside from issuing an ad hominem attack in a race that he's overwhelmingly favored to win, was that Cruz seemed to forget his own real name is Rafael Edward Cruz.

[breakingpoems]

Gods of cast metal: a found poem

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal. The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. Those who make them become like them. You shall have no other gods before me. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress. What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? They are worthless.

Couples clutching AR-15 rifles hold commitment ceremony at Pennsylvania church -- Feb. 28, 2018

Crown-wearing worshippers clutching AR-15 rifles drank holy wine and exchanged or renewed wedding vows in a commitment ceremony at a Pennsylvania church on Wednesday, prompting a nearby school to cancel classes.

[breakingpoems]

Six months

This peak is flatter than I want. Each milestone passes me quietly, maybe I smile, maybe I sleep. What was sodden is now clean, if not erased, sent to the pile of a city’s wet waste, memories mingling, mangling history. I am a tangle, death dreams in rain, water is sharper, carving new lines on my face. This house is healing too slow, the new floors are cold. But I am now clean, if not erased.

Illustration by my friend, Jason Dibley.

[breakingpoems]

Reprieve

When the president is a philanderer and his aides are abusers, when signs point to collusion and democracy is an illusion, what else but confusion and the murders of children could put the kings at ease? The news cycle shifts its furious riffs to the dead, the sadness, what did you witness? what were his problems? who tried to solve them? did you see him bleed?

Meanwhile the grifters take a quick breather thanking their devils in their posh, padded hells for conjuring violence that brings about silence, a welcome, needed reprieve.

For the weary White House, Florida shooting offered a ‘reprieve’ from scandals -- Feb. 19, 2018, Washington Post

“For everyone, it was a distraction or a reprieve,” said the White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal conversations. “A lot of people here felt like it was a reprieve from seven or eight days of just getting pummeled.” The official likened the brief political calm to the aftermath of the October shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 dead and hundreds more injured. That tragedy united White House aides and the country in their shared mourning for the victims and their families.

“But as we all know, sadly, when the coverage dies down a little bit, we’ll be back through the chaos,” the official said.

[breakingpoems]

Arms

these extensions reach for softness but cannot hold what good is a limb that does not leave a sting, a rip yes it is cold yes I am cold but this is me touching you this is me persuading you to forgive me if you live this is me this is me me me me me me losing grip

Nikolas Cruz was investigated after cutting himself on Snapchat -- Feb. 16, 2018

The DCF investigation came four days after Cruz’s 18th birthday, meaning he could legally purchase a rifle.

“Mr. Cruz has fresh cuts on both his arms. Mr. Cruz stated he plans to go out and buy a gun. It is unknown what he is buying the gun for,” the DCF report reads.

Investigators concluded there were “some implications” for Cruz’s safety but determined he was receiving adequate support from his school and outpatient care from Henderson Mental Health in Broward County.

About five months later, he bought the AR-15.

[breakingpoems]

The Wall is the Wall

The Wall is the Wall it’s a Very Good Wall well, it will be, it will be a Very Good Wall. The Wall is the Wall, it’s big and it’s tall, it will be see through, you know, like a wall. The Wall is the Wall, you’ll die if you fall, so don’t try to climb the VeRy GoOD wAlL. The Wall is a mall, selling beans and meatballs, to rapists and criminals, a Wonderful Windfall. Have you the gall to question my Wall when I am so tall, a very tall mall. The Wall is the Wall it’s a Very Good Wall well, it will be, it will be a Very Good Wall.

[breakingpoems]

The Button

I hit the button. Black becomes movie, the men move fast, running to find me.

The button is warm with my hand by its side. The button is friend, trembling, like wife.

Bigger is better. I am untethered. Watch as I float to our deaths.

[breakingpoems]

For Alabama

Bloodied, we fold broken limbs toward our hearts and rest for one night. It has been a long sound, foul and loud, shaking the ground we trudged daily. The blows stopped when they found green pith they didn’t expect. Bitter, waiting to ripen, we showed our teeth, and won.

[breakingpoems]

Roy Moore is a pedophile

There once was a man named Roy Moore whose proclivities most would abhor but he’s on the right side so we’ll let the worst slide and hope he never darkens our door.

[breakingpoems]

Woe begone

The strong women waited in their midwestern towns with their world-weary eyes drawn to the ground as the good-looking men dragged out their stories of how they were stronger, covered in glory. The strong women waited for a pause in the natter, their limbs atrophied, their dresses in tatters, to creak upward slowly, to steady themselves before they unleashed a torrent of hell: Strong, we have waited for hundreds of years raised all the children, poured all the beers, assaulted by words, by protrusions and gropes as you strung us along, played on our hopes, locked us in rooms and showed us your worst, yelled at us when we tried to leave first, we are tired, we are angry, we are finally gone, we are hungry for better, we left with the dawn. In the dust that we leave on our way to a coast each wretched memory is written on posts for other strong women to find where we’ve been as they find better towns free from your sins.

For Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor and any other man who was fired today for being disgusting. -- November 29, 2017

[breakingpoems]

Destroy/Create

I will take your death and make it bigger, a crater visible from space. I will rebuild your frame in clay, I will search it every day for meaning, redraw the pools of blood, paint them onto walls, compose a symphony of wails and play it through police car sirens. I will take apart guns and scatter the pieces in shapes: your name written in metal in the great chasms that are growing between the living.

-- Image: Lauren Bon, Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that the Society has the Capacity to Destroy, 2017. Neon, 6 x 14.5 feet. This sign illuminates a quote by Sherrie Rabinowitz in 1984

I saw this on Instagram today right before I heard about the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

[breakingpoems]

Me too

I know when a car slows I hear the gears shift the window is open hey baby where you goin hey baby what's your name what's your name I do not remember anymore I am meat call me meat I am haunches and quarters I am handfuls and swollen I am lipstick on a pig I am ugly I am fine you would hit it you would cook me I am burning let me go

[breakingpoems]

Take a knee

A holy man is humbled by the sea of evidence that proves he is not free. Despite the lies that claim he has enough, that money buys whatever makes him tough, the truth will blind the strongest, tallest man. His legs will buckle when he tries to stand. Relief comes when he meets the beaten loam, where men have died to best secure their homes, where slaves have toiled despite our lofty trusts, a complicated land so rich with rust it falls apart like dust when simply pressed to question how its people have been blessed. A holy man is humbled to his knees and finds his actions louder than the sea.

[breakingpoems]

Hurricane prayer

I point my body to the sea the night before landfall and remember every unsettled dusk I’ve lived before, all named after kids down the street I never liked: Ike, Rita, Alicia, the redhead. Each one steals a little piece, a marble from the set, leaving me incomplete. Bites of skin gone from a brown recluse in debris, the horror of a snake riding a raccoon to the creek, and carpet, so much carpet, piled on curbs, wet with an ocean we never thought we’d meet. Here I am again with a plea: spare my friends, spare my dumb-looking dog, spare my family, please. If you must take anything, just take me.

Harvey to hit Texas this week, cause devastating flooding – Aug. 23, 2017

“If Harvey stalls, 10-20 inches of rain and locally higher amounts would lead to a flooding disaster.“

There is the potential for significant flooding in the region, even if Harvey remains weak,” according to AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski.“

[breakingpoems]

Eclipse

In darkness, every color of red comes back to my tongue, conjuring rage I felt one summer that tempered to mournful gray by fall leaving a ring of rust behind. I looked back too long, too hopeful. You are gone but I see you everywhere.