Popcorn

for one more time 
i will sit in the same place 
as I have for so long 

for one more time
i will be the people 
i've grown to know 
love and hate

this president can turn even the solemnest of holidays into an opportunity to say whatever he wants. the gravestones crumble in their fields of poppies listening to him speak. all uppercase. all lies.

I want to write something beautiful

but I don't have anything beautiful inside me.

This spring it has been cloudy and rainy almost everyday,

but oh...those sunny days.

Tradition is

Runner beans

Shells being cracked open

Until fingers are sore -

Sitting around a table with

A game of Dutch Blitz going and

Graham crackers with peanut butter

i'd like to think that the founding fathers, the framers, the men who wore wigs & makeup & helped make all this a possibility for me, would look at our country, at the cherry blossoms refusing to bloom next to the white-columned house engr

you've felt

the brambles and sweat, 

the curl of berry-stained lips.

you've seen

the cornflower sky stolen

by a red-orange river,

the evening still thick

with lightning bugs and laughter.