in sola civitas rosacea

Emily Dickinson quote (flowers by rick j)

"The career of flowers differs from ours only in inaudibleness."

"I feel more reverence as I grow for these mute creatures"

"whose suspense or transport may surpass our own."

—Emily Dickinson 

excerpt from "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond (pictures by rick j)

"What the judge was saying, in essence, was: We all agree that you were poor and scared when you did this violent, hurtful thing, and if you had been allowed to go on working five days a week at Old Country Buffet, refilling soup pots and mopping up frozen yogurt spills, none of us would be here right now. You might have been able to save enough to move to an apartment that was de-leaded and clean in a neighborhood without drug dealers and with safe schools. With time, you may have been able to get Bo-Bo the medical treatment he needs for his seizures, and maybe you could have even started taking night classes to become a nurse, like you always wanted. And, who knows, maybe you could have actually become a nurse, a real nurse with a uniform and everything. Then you could really give your kids a childhood that would look nothing like the one Shortcake gave you. If you did that, you would walk around this cold city with your head held high, and maybe you would eventually come to feel that you were worth something and deserving of a man who could support you other than by lending you his pistol for a stickup or at least one who didn't break down your door and beat you in front of your children. Maybe you would meet someone with a steady job and get married in a small church with Kendal standing proudly up front by the groom and Tembi as the poofy-dressed flower girl and Bo-Bo as the grinning, toddling ring bearer, just like you always dreamed it, and from that day on your groom would introduce you as "my wife." But that's not what happened. What happened was that your hours were cut, and your electricity was about to be shut off, and you and your children were about to thrown out of your home, and you snatched someone's purse as your friend pointed a gun at her face. And if it was poverty that caused this crime, who's to say you won't do it again? Because you were poor then and you are poor now. We all see the underlying cause, we see it every day in this court, but the justice system is no charity, no jobs program, no Housing Authority. If we cannot pull the weed up from the roots, then at least we can cut it low at the stem."

"what force draws us" poem by Melissa Sillitoe-Bocarde

 what force draws us
to this particular day
beneath this one
still wet rainsky,
larger than any imagining?
this room where two hours 
are spent alone and with.

I arrive
tepid, fragile,
wanting heat wanting to be 
surrounded by conversation
not at its center 
wanting porcelain-sized
warmth but no more
enough to half-thaw
choosing one particular 
unassigned table
prepare
today's eucharist:
coffee, bread,
notebook, pen, library book pile.

I search for words,
let strangers' muted
confessions and explanations,
barista-chosen songs
become
anchor

https://melissasillitoe.wordpress.com/

Arthritic Paranoia by Ric Vrana from the chapbook "Brain Screams"

Arthritic Paranoia


Angled sun late morning
through chalice windows.
Quiet house alone.
I'm offering up a sacrifice of pain
for the indulgence of a demanding god.
This would have been my mother's advice
once when arthritis
was only a word on an aspirin bottle.

The body feels itself.  My hand 
over the coffee, interrupts
warm vapor rising
like a fragrant spirit.
Behind me the rigid cold.
Outside is the dripping, glistening world
where death is everywhere
and short life indifferently snuffed.

I'll shake the stiffness soon,
and return to my wooden work,
chastised for now, but 
how long does this go on and 
does it progress toward some end,
preparing my lonely soul for a purgatory
when one day my step
does not clear the predator's jump?

http://ricpoems.blogspot.com/

overstunned by the raygun (ekphrastic poem inspired by The Stunning Rayguns live @ the Firkin Tavern)

they arrived with a peace you had to sign for
first sashay before their breast-stitched felt thunder
ravenous bells rung by deafened priests
refreshed the unbridled scream gallops past
the punk-plunked & plug ugly
this remastered sagittarian trance
arrow pointed at plaid curves
furry crane secured the smallness
between rib & hip bone,
cat summons served to the bun-tied
princess flushed in the dank dark
descent signals overswell
in grammatically incorrect waves
parched seafoam outshrills the whale
song tincture, shrills out
the bloodworm's ejulation
to sow seed over seed
on the other side of leaf
overtumbled, overwet
the overking of the overcloud
bled from blossom throne
to blossom bed, overwashed into
this overrented bumbledom
burnbeaten screeve man, mistaken
for homeless, knabbles the fairy ring
on the side that burns, preaching
protein's bad news in a plasma gown,
overswelled with overawe,
greasy dancers shimmy in the skull
hollow of my ale strangled drug stare,
plinked rays stipulate speed
unfastened her locomotive hair
fled our monument's stumble
up the smoke ramp, corroded wafers
buckle above the slumped,
retrieving fossilized jaws,
overblown on the gull conch
bloodshot before the bared bling
of their wailful eyes plucked
on the tavern's front fuckin' step,
where waiting wept
for departure's wallop
to defer the dirty
scrape of their simian jangle,
waltzing in the place where
they last made sense, receiptless
and unapproved by managers
strangled inside a neon hood
screens flicker with the spectacle of
a corrupted contest, buried in bicker,
so fearless in their boneyard, where
the bread is brick & stacked chimney high
screech tone composed by candlelight
seethes in metallic adoration

http://www.stunningrayguns.com/

birds & flowers (soundtrack by The Institute For Creative Dying

https://theinstituteforcreativedying.bandcamp.com/track/sleeper-cell