Random Poetry Drizzle: An Ode To Coffee

Sing, for the day has begun!
No, no no no I will not escape
This glorious trap of pillows and blankets.
I will be restrained
Til buzzing continues until I find release
And shout, angry at my freedom.

Sing for the day is dismal,
Gray and foreboding with promise.
Oh, joyous foreboding, go away
Until I hear a drip.
A drip.  A slosh, a slip.  That is all
I ask of this day.

Sing the song, embrace the ritual. The ritual of
cleansing.
Clean away the sacrifices of yesterday.
Today's ashen bones are ground, their scent already
Excites the mind with the promise of new life.

And O!  The liquid.  That ruddy muddy liquid
Pours forth from the gods.  In supplication
I hold my hand forward to drink
From the cup of Today, the cup of Awakening.

Sing the Song of Glory:
Ow!  Hot.  Black as tar.  More please.

- Jack Holder

Random Poetry Drizzle: You Will Fail

I will never be Good Enough.

The cold grips at my heart, my stomach,
Steals my breath as it steels my fear
Into Ice, frozen in perpetuum.
I am locked away, and alone.

But warmth comes not from within
Alone, and the hearths without can heat
The heart once lost to frost.

The heart drinks in this ice melt,
And grows strong.  It is toughened by the long winter,
No longer lost on paths of ice and snow.
It has been that way before.

Tomorrow I will learn from today's chill,
Not content to simply stave off cold bones
And Icy veins.
There is more to life than Shivering.

I will Never be Good Enough.  But I will Change Minds.

- Jack Holder

Random Poetry Drizzle: Night Mourning

In night there is Mourning.
Thrice it spins through the air
And settles in joy here.
Let me describe it.

Loss of profound nothing,
Feel the weight of obscure
Pain, what we can't describe
Since it never occurred.

As the lights flicker on
The mind turns inside out
Discovering a lack
Of new paths to turn.

Sleep comes. Sleep goes. Sleep hides.
Where do we go from here?
Right where we were going.
Tomorrow's better.

-Jack Holder

December 2014

Would You Frisk Me?

To whom it may concern,
I don't know what happens in Ferguson, Missouri.  I don't know what's happening in Los Angeles, or El Paso, or Miami, or New York City, or anywhere else that this may happen.  I just want everyone to look at this picture.
It's me.  I'm a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant who can trace his lineage back to the Mayflower.  If you would stop me on the block for walking, then Darren Wilson was right and proper.  But if you would never think I had committed a crime simply because I was walking, then Michael Brown should be alive now.  He was profiled for being black, and young, and obviously guilty of something.
Please don't let this double-standard remain.  Don't let me walk away and he remain to be frisked.  Please don't let this stand.