Poetry by linda m. crate ∞ Photography by Michael T. Perkins
don’t want your new world order
full of white supremacy,
and a patriarchy
who uses women for their own
sexual gratification
refusing to accept them as
humans;
i still want to know how someone
like you could be appointed
president
with no experience
and such hate and vitriol for so many people:
women, muslims, blacks, lesbians,
gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and queers—
your hateful dictomy
of humanity
makes me want to shed my skin become anything
other than human
because there’s no where we can run to,
and i just want this to be a bad
dream because at least then
i could wake up;
but it’s been eight days since i woke up to the bad
news and it’s clear you’re not gone yet
so i will simply have to fight
for everyone and everything i believe in
because you won’t pull me so low to hate you
i will combat your hate with love
and light
because only they can shatter the
darkness you’d conceive into the world.
- linda m. crate
we’re tired
will the blood
already spilled never
be good enough?
i heard you say that you
loved war,
but we don’t;
we have already lost enough
loved ones—
can’t you see through the
lens of someone
who has
suffered?
i suppose that’s too far a stretch
of the imagination for someone
born with a silver spoon in his mouth,
but not all of us had that
advantage at birth;
no one wins in a war because everyone loses
someone they love and the cost is never
worth it—
that’s why we’re enraged
when you take the rights away from military families
and treat veterans like dirt and we’re tired
of being stomped on;
don’t tread on
me—
we are the women, the blacks, the muslims,
the lesbians, the gays, the bisexuals, the transgendered, the
queers, the disabled, and the poor that you
so enjoy mocking;
we are the people of the america
and we’ve had enough
of the rich elite running this world
what a mockery you’ve all
made of humanity
with all your greed and hate—
only love and light can save us but you’ve all forgotten
your hearts and souls somewhere you can’t
find them.
- linda m. crate
autumn love
autumn leaves
couldn’t burn as brightly
as we did
when we startled leaves off of trees
in the burning heat of the sun
simply at our kiss,
and when we went inside
we shed clothing
like leaves
became one;
a beating heart, a burning soul
lost in where we began and where the
other ended
nothing in the world mattered
in that moment except
for the music made
together—
we were the heart of autumn:
sweat of september
and the heavy breathing of october and the
smirk of november before winter ever
had a chance to
fall.
- linda m. crate
life & death
when i thought of you
my body tensed
ready
for the feel of your hands
upon me,
ready to be uprooted
from myself
to become one with you;
break my own ribs
open
and tumble into
the circumference of your eyes
a pale blue day with pale
yellow sun
a dawn to singe away the crooked
edges of night that nestled
into the grey
of us—
i brought the flames
and you the snow
i gave love and you gave distance,
and i thought our sacred
dance could last forever because opposites
sometimes attract;
but life could never tango with death
forever.
- linda m. crate
we just can’t be strangers
somewhere
beneath the fingernails
and teeth and
twined limbs we
lost ourselves
to each other,
and i gave it all to him
my naked soul along with myself
unclothed or burdened by
anything;
there was sweat and heavy breathing
and inneundos,
but what started as playful banter
ended as his tongue becoming
not a salve but a sword
severing every chord between us—
he told me that we should
be strangers:
but i remember his birthday,
the scent of his hair,
and digging my nails down his back
of cooking pancakes on the
griddle and making love in autumn;
visits to mantle lake and late
night walks together
through the snow;
i remember the lilies and the roses
and the lost child—
how do you tell your heart
to become a stranger with someone
you love more than life itself?
i couldn’t do it
because between the conversations
and the sex
i lost too much of myself
to ever get it back or pretend it
never happened.
- linda m. crate
you have no power here
you left me in
the cold to
die,
but i rose again from the
ashes of your
chaos;
a summer phoenix unwilling to
sacrifice immortality for a
man who never knew
what love was
anyway—
told me we should be strangers
simply so you could marry
the woman you cheated
on me with
with no guilt or fear of seeing
me again,
but i saw how you hung your head
at ashley’s wedding
because you knew how wrong
you were;
but i’ll forever resent your cowardice
never shall i let you walk free
until every mask of yours is shattered by
my hand and you’re forced to look
your true monsterous self
in the eyes—
you thought you left a wounded rabbit to die,
but i am a warrior
always recreating myself through every sorrow
your name is but a scar on the tapestry
of my being;
you never had the power to destroy me
even if you handed me my deepest wounds and emotional
agony—even if my heart felt like it would shatter like
glass;
i made it through burning brighter
than ever before.
- linda m. crate
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