Wait and See?

They can tell me "wait and see",
but I have seen
what things can be--
bondage and chains
in the land of the free
and fires burning at night.
No, these eyes have seen
already, and I have
heard enough.
They want me to wait
until they see--
but that answer is not right.
It never was
good enough for me.
I have seen
and so has history.
The only response?

Fight.

Rather Wings

I would rather have wings than a halo
though my wings be black as night;
it is better to soar to heaven
than to shine with borrowed light.

A halo would do me no good,
for in the stories folks would tell
of the tarnish on my circlet--
not whether I wore it well.

But I could wrap my wings around me
to protect me from the lack of love,
and when the desire takes me
I would use them to rise above.

Empty hand

The imagined weapon in
the empty hand weighs about
as much as all the hate
in a lifetime of separation
and wondering why they
do like that, and how
they speak that way, and how
their eyes don't show the things they would
show if
one were respected for
one's uniform, and that
is why empty hands and
weaponized wallets
are, judicially speaking,
reasons,
by an unwritten book
where prey is always wrong,
and prayer is their only
answer.
And with my empty hand
I offer this argument
nothing
but the clap of my one hand
so much nothing to wave away--
the nonsense buzzing of a fly,
but the carrion is my people.
And I swipe
at this
buzz. These clear wings,
this garbage-feeding. This dropper of maggots.
To you, a gesture
of my empty hand.
I have more emptiness to give you,
but stop filling
these graves.

Were

The flood of the
dammed fluidity
overflows
the bed it
should have
stayed,
inconvenient perhaps,
but less terrible
than the chaos
that was made
when the force
so firmly held
broke out
from the unnatural
wall it slammed
against a direction
never intended
were it never dammed.

Owlets

I watched them on a webcam--
and wouldn't you?

Adorable nature,
struggling life
hatched, fluffy hairs
mostly naked and
weak,.

but so to speak--

how start we all?

and I wanted to see them
grow and fledge,
although I would miss them
when they went aloft

in four weeks-or five,
I knew the lifespan of owls,

and I thought these would survive.

But nature has her sway and say
what should be is not always that way.

And I saw them die--

And know more than I did before
of life and what it has in store.

Elegy for the Hangman

Should we eulogize the hangman
per the quality of his knots?
The kindness seldom spoken of--
and more or less, forgot?

When the doomed stood, blanched
fearful and subdued, wary of the drop
he gave confidence of the length of rope,
the length that made a lop

of the neck, cracking it at once
and granting peace of mind;
he accepted sometimes gold or silver
to do the deed he for kindness chimed.

Or would it be unseemly
to give the hatchetman his due?
Though we exchanged knots for strokes
past when his time was through?

Or could we acknowledge he
deserves sympathy for the sympathy he gave
though the clients that he served
were served unto the grave?

Elektron

Clear and slow as sliding dew
fall,
the trap found the
back foot of some six-legged life
as it came
from this broken branch
and seemed so ultimately
neither
clear nor slow,
not the bright beetle,
nor the amber flow.