I didn't want to lose and I didn't want to bargain

I didn't want to try again

so I padlocked the box and I returned it

Mr. Rogers is On Neighborhood Patrol Watch

 

Mister, may I call you mister? 

‘Fellow I’m your neighbor Roger, what’s troubling your trembling? I won’t question. I’ll just listen to your troubles and the pulse of your vibrato.’

Roger they are killing the helpers

life here isn’t in disguise anymore

they murdered two angels 

a poet and a healer 

they are desperate to deflect they cry:

‘a state terrorist, harming our brave armed men!’ 

‘a state terrorist, who didn’t even salute those red and white and blue angry eyes!'

Roger I’ll be honest this seems familiar in my recent intake of life afar

the pattern of Gaza

sledgehammering and massacring the lives and loves of doctors, 

students, artists, bakers, tea makers, 

booksellers, EMTs, family archivists 

an International assembly (yes really) 

claimed no helpers or angels existed in the strip 

a land without people before the chosen they labeled

luckily because of the 21st century people saw right through their claims

who did they think they were fooling when they said  

that humanity is not among mothers, fathers, aunts and children 

grandparents, olives, texts, soap, makeshift kitchens, 

prayers, cats, hummus and Jesus draped in gauze

Roger these weren’t normal reactionaries spewing this

they despise the masked men as long as they are American 

they contradict love and borders and nationality and familiarity 

Roger I think as I speak this, they may come for me

they are patrolling speech because they want impunity to not grieve 

they’d rather steal and gather skin and organs like crops

then ask their own heart beat for empathy for Palestinians

and eventually here the pattern will be completed  

warehoused immigrants to harvest the hard harvests to come

and supply tissue and biologies 

erasing lineages is the conquerors lust fulfillment 

come first for the residents who do not claim occupied

the obsessed with possession of Palestine 

I cannot in my heart recognize

those slandered, their so called backward lives that they accuse: 

‘They are here to steal our standing, our souls, our patriotism, 

rewrite our borders, OURS’

Roger does this sound familiar? 

They’re claiming birthright and nationalist rallies? 

like the recent descents of the US democracy events 

fifty percent closed their eyes to 

and the other fifty spilt fighting themselves as rats in shoes on a sinking ship

Charlottesville, the capital on the 6th

they won Roger they did

why did no one halt these marches 

expose the architects of the coup 

that transformed in stardom and legislation

Mister among us are there collaborators? 

How else can a modern holocaust get funded?

artists and nurses of the highest spiritual order do not die 

for other writers and doctors to be exterminated 

borders mapped as weapons to be cut off and quartered 

the people who claim the holy land 

and the people who claim the greatest in terrain both as birthrights

wear and divide the same cloth

are the same tattered coin

the same tired mirror Roger 

how do I live without the camouflage holding on anymore?

‘Fellow friend, do not tremble or get stuck in frightened vibrato. 

You must love and bear witness and hold those exposed delicate and tearful. 

Whether passed, whether bleeding, whether alive. 

We mourn, we break, we love, we remember. We’re tender, we survive.’

I looked at all those alternative lives like a gift horse in the jawline

that ran out of time and got taken out back to be shot

but it escaped it’s captors like a landslide 

it hangs around a meadow of vines, willows 

soft clouds and beaming grass 

grief is not like death because it just keeps going

After five days 

a low night 

a faithless light 

I dreamt of your return 

You had spirits take the front teeth out of you 

I wish I knew what god could fix it

I spend most of the time at the far side of the windowless room 

near where I put a hole through a needle that lead back to the moon

If you could have hit me with gold and hallowed dust 

the pain would have seen me through enough 

they caught me in this light one day 

told me to no longer move

I have remained a thousand lives this way

somewhere in the past I was pulled onto the ground of snow with blood coming out and said 'can you believe I made it?' with no one around

Renee Good, Jan. 8, 2026. As a poet I think you would have understood

 

they crushed a human, a woman, a mother's head puncturing it open with the same worshipped shell and handle that hangs over the head of every citizen who wants to live

point blank declaring ‘she was nothing at all, after all’

when you question and are clear eyed about authority

 you are labeled at the propagandist media meeting hall ‘nothing at all’

gator masked life-is-at my-last-chance watched her crashed car

the citizen paramedics threatened with ‘you’re next!’

the usual audience on the 21^st century apocalyptic apps applause as usual

as usual as big comedy

as heartful filled laughter as thunderous applause ‘she was nothing after all’

the crowned antichrist narrates that the aspiring serial killers of the borderlands were running and demanding their life 

he commands ‘Be proud! Stand! Fight! My little solider vermin I hate you all but remember to pay me with crypto for your loyalty :)

Laughter and Applause!

‘Yes, our daddy! Our king! My face is crying for your sword, it is sparkling!’

‘Yes, tread on me!’

‘No, me first!’

‘Please sir continue treading on all our fellow citizens’

‘We your peasants remember like clockwork to grip and grit tight our favorite constitutional right, the shell and handle that hangs over the head of every citizen who wants to live, but who cares about them only god forgives, father’

The networks wire the script

do not stand and do not forgive mothers who chose not to worship the authoritative father and husband  if they don’t get back into the casket of the kitchen

plead for at least a third child to be screamed into life from a virginal bed

and heaven forbid the forgiveness and humanity of an artist?

A bible paper mâché contortionist?

 ‘God she asked for it’

 ‘Grok put fentanyl in her hand and her in a bikini and a knee on her neck that will smoke those rats out to protest that and then we can light them up!’

 ‘Light them ICE Light them!’

Laughter

Applause

Conservative script phantom writers and boardmen agree ‘she was nothing at all’

The demonic screed of a loveless jigsaw morals and face, who mouthfucks and vacuums the anti-Christ, a stammering hammered piggy squealing ‘LIVES DON’T MATTER!!!!’

don’t forget the liberal hit list death squad account parroting and morse coding ‘kill, kill, dox, dox, die, die’ LLIK MEHT LLA

mourn the blood and psyches that were scrabbled because they couldn’t deal with questions and discomfort that world they left it all behind

they are hypnotized awake appearing as any other day smiling among us thinking ‘lives don’t’ matter at all’

‘llik mhet lla’

‘it’s a shame she died but she shouldn’t have been there anyway, you look at the police the wrong way you got to pay’

All our citizens and lives held hostage for a worshipped border held together by a handle and a shell

If I had known how long I would take I would have changed

 

 

 

You can't break the loop of thirty years. You have been marked. You may have resurrected yourself but somewhere you have died those thirty years prior and you will never leave that reality. You are forever in room of suspension. There is no address, no phone, no outside knowledge of this room to anyone else. Your secret. Your curse. Life goes and you grow and age and seasons come and disappear and deep inside while you have hoped patiently waiting it's your turn finally, but now you realize this has all been decided those thirty years ago.