Locust & Honey

-sweetening the ugly with just a little honey- 

[locust-and-honey]

For Ruth Stone

It collects the meadows and the trees and 

the voices of the villagers a mile away, 

The creek whisperings night owls can hear and 

Moon can see, 

and It barrels toward the next hollow vessel, 

And I pray it barrels through me  

[queerunderwood]

[locust-and-honey]

Another Day and It’s All the Same

Which is how you like it to be Your romantic hunting trip with your spouse Free of inconveniences, your trigger Untouchable And tonight your subconscious may Screen blankness as you turned on “Silence/Do Not Disturb” Over notifications from CNN No. This is a day of love.

Your attitude today especially nonchalant The kitchen left a mess Chocolate casings alternate with Shells Earlier today, your partner close to you In the sun, all melting                                   Candy                                   Mascara                                   Ashes. In a week for other families Lilies will take the place of roses Eulogies in place of telegrams But you will rest. Nightly armoring the next headline with Opportunity

[locust-and-honey]

It was the smallest moment I’ve known

in some ways. Hardly the start

of what should change me.

                                         But it’s

with me always, like a mist

burned off from the beach-

the familiar details; the knowledge it was there.

- Poem: L.M.C. by Tim Neave

[locust-and-honey]

Sh*thole

I don’t know if you’ve heard but your origin is a shithole perfect fertilizer and it leaves no wonder why your cultures your people you so offensively blossom.

[locust-and-honey]

flying is a poem

flying is a poem imagined and caught renowned because two brothers desperate, blood-boiling stupid dreamy take to the skies

and I think about this cabin courtesies vibrating turbulence eternal years of air advancement cushion my ass ear canals hammered by altitude and infant cries myself 20 minutes from seeing my own two brothers

a seat adjustment south would anger the man behind a gene adjustment east would anger the men below but this dream, this poem imagined and caught

now allows canines on board.

[locust-and-honey]

OXYMORON

an iphone captures the free speech of a young boy demanding the monsters at school hear his tearful pleas while Mother shakily exposes herself unseen behind the camera the face of her boy, championed victim, a white scapegoat, herself with black hatred

[locust-and-honey]

this weird dream I keep having involving a swamp

time bends at the will of my hand

and I stare deep into the pea soup

but I never try the water

I prefer lentils anyway

recognition billows ghastly in the wind

shaping ghosts or something less real

and I feel their black cloaking

suck such light from my peripherals

so I look ahead to a green beckoning

attention all-consumed

turning rudder slowly against

wisdom's heading and now I fear

a face

[locust-and-honey]

clearing the air

I don't mean to dwell on the properties of fire

enough is known about the physics and I have felt my fair share

to understand what it does

half my Facebook feed fills with Evangelicals that raised me on it and brimstone, thanking God for its arrival

and the fulfillment of prophecies that will “purify a land and preserve the apple of the all-seeing eye.”

now Gaza is under fire and unrest has woken in time to evacuate peace before a home seven decades in the making engulfs

if purity comes in the form of flames or whatever it is that ignites a spark, its burn is indeed lasting

like the scars on a jackrabbit in a California forest or the tanless skin where wedding bands once belonged to wives of producers, t.v. anchors, stars

I don't know if this makes what is left clean or just soot and ash that stains every step if you try to stomp it out

I can't watch or listen to the crackling so I just read

the news can really make you hate the color orange but try never to blame the color.