what kept me alive was the hope of the pulse of midnight dancing

Because bread was so difficult to come by 

let alone wine 

I settled myself in for a ritual 

that out of all my catastrophes 

there would emerge the best miracles

when all the gifts wrap around you like cellophane that no one will end up opening

 

You dream of a mad yet loving country between us when my most permanent memories are scorn and blood seeping under my armor from your words and borders

The almosts are the death by a thousand cuts

I've used up all the love inside every emergency and ocean that saw promise in me

You had spirits take the front teeth out of you 

I wish I knew what god could fix it

Steve Harrington finally grew out of the stranger world

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

The grief thief and the police

Could someone please ask the commodore of this ship for some mercy

For some peace

To stop the phantoms and their pleas

Even though I'm not ok

And I've never have been

I want to find the answer, not if there is a cure or an ending

But if this how the light cracks in

I'm not ok. I've never been. Is this how the light cracks in?

Take me to a time when I was young...my bones are frail and as I scramble to figure out my name I feel my mouth fade and teeth bite like the plague

Ours is just a little sorrow in time

It's been a little over twenty years this month since I escaped an inferno. The nightmares appear in times of profound distress. It took me ten years afterward to really process and come to terms, the smoke still in my lungs, parts of the brain still scarred. It took a few more years after this recognition to see some things I couldn't admit and face. Memories of back then are a plague of anger, regret, shame, sadness and disbelief. But then you must forgive yourself. You don't need to forgive those who almost killed you. You can't believe it happened but you have to ultimately go into the daylight with the wounds and go about life because you almost didn't make it, you almost lost the world. So many before you never had a chance to survive and make it out alive.

The branches and branches they climbed and climbed 

didn't have reason to say they were sorry 

nor explain what they dreamed 

(would you have broken them in if they had told you?)

they just had to survive and survive 

a half decade for the ax to sink in 

(did you believe it would outlast you?)

it kept stabbing the arteries of the mind, the heart, the house, the snake, the mistakes 

the branches they have nowhere to climb 

so they only make their way upward to the holes of tattered cosmos 

(would you stop them if you thought they would stay alive?)

Through my mad existence I don’t know if I’ll find a way

I've Always Seen Blue

My shoes crunch under grassland that is textured, broken reeds, and straw. Treading carefully on the soggy patches that bring you to the pond. This is part of my pre-preparation of what and where I will take photos later at night. 

I am cat sitting for two handsome Calico cats. Daaku and Gonzalez. They are well behaved with tension between them over which one gets affection and attention from me first. Half of the deck has been converted into a screened cat enclosure that oversees the backyard and pond. The first night is warm and I sit out immersed listening to the frog chorus. Marina, the house’s owner, said they begin right at the spring equinox after being submerged under the pond for the winter. 

I love and respect nature yet I am skeptical if I could survive the outdoors, with its challenges and mysteries. Marina’s three acres however are easy to navigate. In the twilight and first hour of darkness I decide to do so with a blue flashlight and my phone. I am intentional and on a mission. I have been making images with this blue light since this past December. January was when I became purposeful. 

I feel I stumbled upon something inside and beyond me yet I do not want to get too high on the idea. I don’t want it to be a gimmick. One day I will not need this blue light but for now it has brought me back into starting a new photographic body of work. 

Around 7:20pm I begin my way toward the twisted trees and branches by the reeds. One branch has shaped itself as a looped circle. The sky is still lightish though it will alter shortly. The flashlight marks the circle with a violet shade rather than blue. Yet soon the flashlight will push out a blue glow instead because darkness will descend in the next ten minutes. I balance the phone in one hand and the blue light in the other.

The blue light is cast onto the trees, hitting the bark exposing the age and endurance of cracks and splinters. Unlike in the daylight where the trees seemed weaker, worn and rough with fungi. I had wondered are they slowly dying or in decline? I don’t know much about trees. Perhaps they are just old and have been bidding their time for many years and will be here long after. The thick scales of the bark would not break down without a fight.

The blue is in competition with the sky. Unlike the night, the sky itself dims into a royal blue color. It appears silken and there is a peaceful feeling as I stare upward. This blue sky could absorb everything. Framing this scenery are a cluster of thin branches. I go back and forth photographing the sky as is and trying to see if the blue light adds anything. Besides some flickers it doesn’t do much. I hurry to compose and photograph back and forth and not take for granted either approach because there is only minutes left.

In the daytime on the road where I am staying and its surrounding area, the vibe has been unsettling to me. I can’t figure out why. I google if there were any specific true crime/haunted stories. I find dedicated groups in the Hudson Valley who are into the paranormal so maybe it is not just me. Maybe it will be different when the leaves fill out the trees. 

The blue light sometimes throws a subtle color among the trees, branches, bushes, grass and plants. Other points of direction are stark and glaring, as if an ominous glowing object has been hovering waiting to be discovered. However for me I feel a sense of connection and ease even if some of the imagery is eerie that’s what I am enjoying. I don’t feel afraid out here. I feel a sense of authority and control, while at the same time I give myself over to the whims of the universe like I always do with my art.

I had only used this blue light out around my house and down my street yet I needed to translate it outside these confines, to go beyond my own personal space. I’ve been trying to figure out the world from the last few years of the turmoil. Societally, personally, creatively and politically. Covid shifted me existentially. The political chaos swells in ways I predicated. Government dismantlement. The rush to abolish art. The commands to bring about erasure of information and history. It’s a struggle to not feel society is downturned and dimming. However I have to focus, to survive. To find myself with my art and balance out who and what I am in the world.

In the three acre space of twilight and darkness with this blue glow I do not feel lost. Partly I’m operating like a blood hound picking up the scent of blood in the form of following my instincts, which I have always done photographically. It has never let me down.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

— Mary Oliver

In another life I was a seer awakening and frightening individuals and uprooting their lives. Putting places on the map and being run out of various towns. A person no one could truly get to close to or ever catch. Is that the prophecy?