Posted on Leave a comment

the mirror

On January 6, 2021 the United States of America came under attack. This attack did not come from some foreign enemy. This attack did not come from radical Islam. This attack did not come from “antifa”.

This attack was perpetrated by our own homegrown, right-wing, “Christian” radicals.

This attack was enabled by law enforcement.

This attack was an attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States in order to seat a dictator, an attempt directed by that would-be-dictator. This man stood at a podium and told this mob of devotees to march on the capitol and fight.

There was no widespread voter fraud. No ballets were “dumped”. No machines changed votes. The few cases of fraud that have been found were people voting for the would-be-dictator for their dead relatives.

The only reason people believe that there was fraud, that this election was irregular, is because the would-be-dictator told them there was.

This was not a protest asking the government to “please stop killing us for no reason” or to demand justice for vigilantes with badges to be held accountable. This was a base of people who have been continually lied to, regularly riled up in an “us against them” mentality and launched at an institution of the United States because one man wants to be king.

Like all cults, this may have started out as a fringe group of mostly harmless whackos, but the time has come for us to intervene. It’s time to bring in the deprogrammers and rip out the core of this cult before any more Americans are injured or killed.

I am reminded of this poem I wrote all the way back in 1992:

The Mirror

in the maddening chaos
of a wicked, walled-in world
where bigots rule the masses
their hate like flags unfurled
a generation’s genocide
comes off without a hitch
as the hatred born of pain and doubt
climbs to a fevered pitch
building through the centuries
of prejudice and fear
growing in the decades
of trials and treasured tears
the madness swirls and eddies
like the ocean’s tides and waves
feeding like a cancer
on the terror it creates
it seethes beneath the surface
just barely out of sight
waiting for the moment
it can slip into the light
a cold, dark hand, like death itself
slinks slowly from the dark
to reach into the shaded spot
found at a nation’s heart
as daylight dawns, the aftermath
finds a country on its knees
gazing into its history
bared for all the world to see
we sit in utter silence
star in shock at what we see
for the horror in that silence
is the mirror in front of me

As always, I hope you are staying safe and sane, Readers. I love you.

Cover Photo by ElevenPhotographs on Unsplash

Posted on Leave a comment

new beginnings

While Samhain ends the Celtic year and the new one begins, it doesn’t always feel like anything particularly new is happening as November dawns, particularly here in a modern world, where life no longer revolves around the growing seasons. This year, however…this year feels different.

I’m not just talking about an election, which to be fair I am quite happy about. The year 2020 began with me wrapping up work on my next book, and starting the arduous process of finding an agent/publisher.

Writing the book is the easy part.

I suck at self promotion and suffer some serious imposter syndrome at times. But I took the chance and started querying agents. And here, I stress started. I created a list of agents/agencies. I wrote my synopsis. I wrote my blurb. I sent a query. One.

And then I chickened out.

Instead of continuing that work, I started working on the next book. Like I said, writing is the easy part. But Friday morning, while I was working and refreshing election results, that agency sent me an email requesting my manuscript and synopsis. On top of the election results, I really felt like this weekend was the dawn of the new year.

Do we have a lot of work to do (on both counts), yes, we do. We have had four years where progress has been torn down and our nation cut open to display it’s rotten innards, and heavens know that getting an agent to read your book is only the beginning of seeing that book come to be.

We’ve taken a step into a new us, but the work is still to come.

Cover Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash