Category: poems

Charlie Hebdo

~ TW

While we breathe ideas of freedom
and speak those ideas whose time has come to be spoken,
as we journey to our Ithaka’s
assuming we know our path and time and fate,
our lives and words and voices
stand up, stand out, and invite sunlight
into the grey dust and shadows
of what was once unspeakable.
I am Charlie, we are all Charlie,
Allah is appalled.
You will have to shoot us all.
Can you shoot us all?

Jump to safety

~ TW

In our next-to-last dog years *
when ten thousand people
per day are turning sixty
in the hottest year on record,
can we settle the history
of our family stories
make some word parachutes
so we can jump together to safety?

* We can measure the time we have left in the number of dogs we may be able to have – one dog equals about 14 years.