I love you, Kevin Allred (from Confessions of a Racist)

I love you so much

All I want to do it spit in your face

You the bad news bear

With a superiority complex

Fabricating morality you lost

When you gave up religion,

Bent on spreading hate

So as to allow us to feel your shame,

Making up plead guilty

To crimes we never committed

But to which you have pleaded

Guilty for us, forcing us

To incriminate our selves

So you can feel less guilty

About who and what you are,

Fair skinned when all you ever wanted

Was to suffer like a black,

Feel the lash of whip across your back

The way Christ did,

But making us carry the cross

While in your classroom,

You played Pilate,

Making sure you washed

The blood off your hands,

Sending your students out

In your own personal version

Of the Children’s Crusade

Feeling guilty over imaginary historic crimes

But not about the ruined lives

You’ve caused in your classroom,

Arrogantly assuming yourself right

When all you need is for someone

To spit in your face

Pickett's Charge (from Confessions of a Racist, a satire)

If you force me to pick a side
It won’t be your side I pick,
I won’t be part of any rat pack
Of bigots in black face
Deluded into waging a war
They have already won,
Tearing down every bit of history
The way Stalin did
Simply because it offends them
And in doing so, shape themselves
Into the very monsters  they
Perceive the rest of us to be
A mindless mob filled with questionable degrees
From institutions that teach them
How to hate; not think,
A mob that mistakenly deludes itself
Into thinking it has moral high ground
The way the Union Army did at Gettysburg,
Leaving the rest of us to pick a side
And live – as Faulkner claimed –
On the very edge of Pickett’s charge,
Knowing we can’t win against such rage,
Yet knowing we have to try.

Lake Scranton (date unknown)

I never walked here with you,

Only with your spirit,

Stirring up the fallen leaves

With each foot fall,

My step echoing your step

From when you came here before

And I before that,

And we both in some other life

Strolling these paths

Perhaps helping to shape them

The way Native Americans did,

Leaving an indelible mark

Inside and outside,

Leaving a trail

We continue to follow,

One foot fall after the other,

Even when we are not together

We really always are,

One unable to walk here

Without the other

Even when each

Of us comes here

At another different time

An eternal union

We cannot escape,

Do not want to escape

Need to continue

In order to survive

The void inside November 01, 2014

Saturday, November 01, 2014

I dress up each time in my mind

A carved out face with fixed smile

I don’t always believe

The sawed teeth of the carving knife

Still evident on each deep slice

A candle lit inside of me

Making my eyes glow

Filling the empty space inside

I hope each time to fill

With something more substantial

To replace the substance removed

Not love or lust, but existence

The day to day of it,

That face that is a real face

The heart that does more than tick

A life that is more than a jack a lantern

Propped up to scare kids

As they come to my door for trick or treat

We living our lives with fixed expressions

Actually believing there is nothing else

When there is always so much more

Out there just beyond our finger tips

Something to fill the void inside

email to Al Sullivan

Astray October 26, 2014

The soft air kissed my cheeks

As I stroll here this cold morning

In late October, the end of season

As haunting as Halloween,

Filled with ghosts and goblins

Of a life I never meant to lead

The misdirection of misplaced steps

We take when we meant to go

In another direction, and yet

No so misguided as we believe

As we are shaken from those

Early morning dreams when we

Imagine the worst and come to realize

That our steps lead us not so much

Astray but rather where

We were meant to be,

And accepting the path

We find ourselves on

Is the hardest part of being alive

And yet, the most fulfilling.

In the silence Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Rain drips down the wooden fence

Leaving dark scars on its face

As the trees lean over waiting to change

This pre-color time of year

When we ache for change to come

Cool air swirling around us

With just enough hint of summer

To remember it

I hear the voice of winter

In the distant rumble of surf

And in the altered sound of traffic

And the sudden quiet

Of end of season brings to the seashore,

These things stand out against

The usually hectic soundscape

So that they seem loud

When they are not,

Our lives are like that,

Loudest in the lulls,

When we can hear ourselves thinking

The way we hear the tick of a clock

Always there, but never obvious

As we search for meaning,

No more nor less than they ever were,

The ghost in the machine

The moving parts

We do not wish to know about

But get consumed with

When all else falls silent.

email to Al Sullivan

Echoes October 25, 2014

History repeats itself inside my head

Like echoes in a canyon

Long after the initial shout

Losing at last what the shout was about

And so we read into what we hear

Imagining what it is we felt

When we let the fell words fall,

And translate that which we thought

We said into what we need said now

Feeling from it what we need to feel,

Not exactly what we felt at the start,

Thinking the whole time

How nothing has changed

When everything always does,

And when we shout again

Our new shout falls on ears

We know might never hear

What is we actually said.

email to Al Sullivan