Let the Words

"After the first death, there is no other." Least not for the daughters and sons wrapped gently by earth's cool cocoon Those left near the mounds, gaunt and quiet, return time again, sinful and sorry, angry at the fury of life, the rate at which it burns. Theirs are guilty deaths of continuation, a chalice of blood and fire, sustenance for fornication, vigor and nightly schemes. Yet, here, among grassy Fields and weeping angels, a silent empty penance must be paid. While corpses rot below, they murmur supple hopes and fumble with shadows, knowing deaths To come, least not their own. No, Dylan, your first death was far before the grave. Mourning is a pause and timid acceptance of the many deaths yet to come Least not your own.

Life is a barren field Frozen with snow Rise and wake with the morning frost. Stumble round the money tree. Stare and groan, sigh a fog of breath into the empty air grovel for riches Hobble 'til streams of ice rub your bones. Embrace hypothermic dreams Life is a barren field frozen with snow Where we wander and die, crippled by blind cold pride and fear of mediocrity

Amber lights intoned and churning batteries are charging, flowing electricity on the dreary docks A man talks to his wife in the rain clutching his cell with pasty hands He'd asked me about the boat earlier how much, does it run well Penta, expensive parts, not mine, never taken her out, no not once Pointless dribble like oily rainbows This man talks to his wife in the rain he rocks with the wakes of the passing boats, churning in a hurt and desolation that is sure to come Night grows thin, blankets of mist and fog roll like warm dough over aluminum, fiberglass, and old wooden boats sinking steadily to curious alien shrimp The Madra Delarosa takes him back after begging and pleading have become empty whispers to an ear that's become all hate and malice Deloarosa's red and green running lights are flicked off. She sways and moans quietly accepting the indifference of the coming morning

Trees sway in my mind while I hack and eat away her skin needles litter the floor, green green ferns speckle white light wildly "I am the end," breath pouring over warm peach skin cradled within the nape of her neck Sappho screams into darkness flesh aflame, "A refining fire has made me blind." The Rose of Sharon, a pile of ashes "A kind of beginning," grasp the running river with its weeping willows, "roll with the body taken by the current." Yokes of hunger and need plow spring time fields plump with sin Lilly of the Valley, we kiss and pray upon your luscious leaves. Sappho was a prophet of this avarice.

we'll break the red wagons we rode, screaming down grassy hills, cheap plastic wheels rolling across urban streets Again We'll take spruce boughs and moss, hide in the woods, watching droplets of rain trickle down each others faces Again We'll race breakwater boulders, climb into holes and etch silly odes of love and hate that no one will read Again I'll regret ever wanting to grow older again and again

In determining the evolving application of the 8th Amendment and the constitutionality of the death penalty there seems to be two blatant obvious facts before us. First, there are no mitigating factors of death - there is no reversal, when you are dead you're dead. This is a form of absolutism. The due process of law ends at death. Second, and this seems to be a theme the last two weeks, we all recognize the imperfect Judicial system - there appears to be a wide consensus on this fact. What do you get when you put together an imperfect judicial system with an absolute punishment? Injustice, weather purposeful or not, someone is going to get screwed. Since the re-installment of the death penalty in 1976 over 1,100 individuals have been executed throughout the United States (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/number-executions-state-and-region-1976). Can we, as a rational and democratic society, honesty say that we trust that all of these executions were just? Can we overlook the racial...

Eight, maybe nine, young anyway. dirt and finger nails twilight morning, furnace dying late summer, long days, skin smells of peanut butter and alder leaves Metallic penny tastes, toy airplane, flying silently in hand, pilot child, soaring over silence, breath sleep steady Chipped linoleum, caked mud darting sparrows, grumbling four-wheelers, wispy circles of wind Barefoot grass with dew Let children play in their waking dreams