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To Silence My Mind without Silencing Myself - poem of parenting in the 2020's

To silence my mind without silencing myself is the single greatest desire. Suffice it to say it is difficult to put fingers to keys when the dishes are towered in kitchen sink, and laundry festers in hampers. How excessive hope that the plot will get easier to figure out when it only gets. more complicated. When you want to solve the gun problem, the healthcare problem, but you can’t even solve your head problems. When your baby looks up with those oak-colored eyes and you can’t persist in that moment to soak in the life that you helped give because you wonder so far ahead. Wanting to get it right, so you read books about discipline to avoid being spanked and berated the way you were, how to excel in language accusation, or how not to be a misogynist, and avoid lesson of toxic masculinity. But you know its not all in your hands. To silence the mind from conjuring up chaos that is the abundance of life itself. The unknown cosmic lottery we are all playing. How you want to type out a sto...
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Poems Inspired by Spring Awakening (the musical) as told by Moritz's Angel

Below is a link to the poems inspired by the musical Spring Awakening. Link to PDF of Collection I played Moritz in the 2019 production at Muskegon Community College. The casting surprised me, I loved the show, and I had recently graduated from MCC in 2017. In the couple years between I had some highs and lows, and some desperately awful lows where I had a mental breakdown and seriously considered killing myself on two separate occasions. I wasn't that low when I got cast in the show but I also wasn't that far removed from the knowledge that I descended in my depression and self-loathing that deeply. For those who don't know Moritz tragically takes his own life after the institutions including family, school and religion all fail him. He takes his failing upon himself. This poetry collection is set up by the order of importance of character's to Moritz himself. His fellow classmates, and peers are shown based on clues from the lyrics of the show both seen and unseen by ...
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Spot the Difference - a narrative poem of reality. trigger warnings.

Spot the Difference TW: SA, graphic imagery   A man molested a twelve-year-                   old boy at our church campout. I saw same man,                   years later bring a high-school                   boy a rose, after a                   theater show. The man had gone to jail, like seven years. After got out of jail popped back up in college                   theater as the favorite of fresh out of high school                   boys who admire...
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Writing for Writers or When Workshops Kill - a poem from undergrad

Writing for Writers or When Workshops Kill Go ahead and bleed all over the paper but then squeegee it up into a nice straight line and then, why not, just for shits and giggles,  arrange the splatter pattern into a nice dot-dot-dot. A little messy, take a rag that you’ve used before and smother the life until it smears the page in more neutered shapes. I’ll hold my hand over your mouth. You can breathe, barely. The point is not to kill, but to appreciate.  Life is the hardest way to contemplate this mess you’ve made. Sure, you are getting light headed, a clouded fade in the eyes, but stop making excuses of absent explanations for why you bled so profusely. I invited you to bleed on the paper, but you made a mess on the walls.
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Why We Leave: a memoir of why I left the Assemblies of God church

Why We Leave:  a memoir of losing faith (a work in progress, written about a year ago. I don't usually do nonfiction but this seemed the only thing I felt strongly to write about my personal history) this is not a complete work, but I think the passage is strong enough to stand on its own, and my lead in into the book. I think I will eventually write this, but its not my top priority right this second.   Preface: It doesn’t happen immediately. There seems to be an illusion that some outside force grabbed hold of you and pulled you from the righteous path. Seldom is anyone willing to look inward. But no one is more responsible for the exodus from the church than the church itself.   There’s an abundance of people who tell you that your faith is not in people but in God, that leaving because of people is wrong. In fact, this was the topic of one of my pastor’s sermons in the thirteen years I spent at his median sized church in the West Michigan countryside. This messag...
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Weapons: A Chronologically Disjointed Horror

It's been sometime since I've done any full assessment of a film, a critique or rating or otherwise. It is something that I have always wanted to return to, so I will attempt such a critical narrative analysis here, and. hopefully in the future as well. I've really been looking forward to doing a deep dive into Eddington which was my favorite film of 2025. *SPOILER HEAVY* If you want more of the analysis and not a plot breakdown skip down to ANALYSIS and THEME at the bottom. Weapons: A Chronologically Disjointed Horror The PLOT: T he first thing we are told, we are told through narration. We are given the facts as they are about the classroom worth of kids that walked out of their homes at the same time, and have yet to return home. The narration allows us to jump right into the meat of the story, it isn't concerned with recreating this event in full, and sidesteps using it as its opening Act. Other films may have chosen to open with the day in the life of the teacher, ...
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These Strangers - a flash fiction

These Strangers Peter relaxed his palm so that the little critter shyly ascended. It was only a year old, the hedgehog not Peter who was in fact thirty-three years old and left to tend to the creature after his ex-girlfriend dumped him and her. He lifted the hedgehog so that he could see her pointed nose aiming at his eye like an arrow, and see her black little eyes soft and tender in contrast to the gruff spiked exterior. It took some getting used to. Anna had bought it on a whim, called it Leroy after some internet meme, Peter was half listening. He hated the name, the hedgehog was a female and Leroy was traditionally not a female name. That didn't really matter, the hedgehog didn't mind, or at least. no one ever asked the hedgehog's opinion. He slowly moved the index finger of his free hand closer to the creatures nose, and she sniffed, her entire proboscis nodding feverishly as it did so. They were learning each other, hedgehog and human. Learning that the world isn...
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