Category Archives: These Are My People

These Are My People: Shonda

No More Violence

No More Violence


Tyrannical howls encapsulated
Intent on the destruction
Of their mutated version of devotion
personified by shattered glass while
screaming babies witness the impressionistic home
Painted in blood and bruises.
Kill me first! Kill me! Kill me first!
The begging screams for relief
from their suffering
But, fear motivates shelter
in uninhabitable relationships
with violence the language spoken
in vehement protest against their being
broken people with broken lives.

These Are My People: Avi Knight

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There is a crescendo in my tacenda
Where I am normally, to him,
common time and a capella
My cadenza clumsily proceeds without cadence
Without rhythm or beats
My need for espressivo
longs for a nocturne
requires harmony
but instead is a series of operettas
that fall flat in parody
We’ve played off key for so long
That this piece became, not my canon,
But the silence of my sixteenth note,
A dirge with a pianissimo possibile refrain
of Rococo design.

These Are My People: Eva May

28414-Fragile_Broken_Soul________by_zophie
She wasn’t as broken as she thought
She was, instead, held together
With ropes, strings, duct tape, and
band-aids stained with false assumptions about herself.
Her worry laden back wilted her
Against her walking stick that was decorated
With badges of survival; proofs of journey.
The winds shifted into the sunshine’s warmth.
She lifted her fatigued eyes towards the light
Surprised that the path was always there
But had been lost in the weeds of history.
With a change of clothes, a bathing of her Spirit
A back brace of hope, personal strength flooding
She stepped onto the ancient path
The Universe sighed relief for the prodigals return.