Gayle J. Greenlea

Hope your weather improves soon! It’s Summer with ridiculous humidity here in Australia, climbing as high as 90% some days. I commiserate! But I think humid cold is worse. 🥶 Wishing you relief and comfort.

Prayer When you trample glass underfoot like broken mirrors, remember the jackboot stomping kristal. Do not look away from the million, million eyes staring up at you. Let them burn memory into your timid heart until you swell with courage to speak — to mean the words, “Never again.” The shattered window, the cries as neighbors are dragged from cars, homes, workplaces, worship spaces: hear them. Rend the air with the shrill warning of whistles. Pulverize secrecy with mobile phones. Our weapons are small, but spined and quilled, powered by the ferocity of love. Our rage rises like righteous smoke, a prayer to vanquish madness. – Gayle J. Greenlea

#vss365 #timid #poetry #resist

No Kings Plant your feet firmly in the dreamy ground of protest. Show your mettle with grand shenanigans: a naked bike marathon down ICE-lined streets; a dance party with inflatable unicorns, lobsters, frogs; a riot of trees blooming with box fans, blowing off pepper balls. Play bagpipes on a unicycle in a Darth Vader mask. Lob sandwiches with extra Mayo or wear them like headphones. Fight fire with whimsy. Open fearless lungs to the sky like Jesse Jackson and yell, “I Am Somebody!” Remind them often. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice… and secure the Blessings of Liberty”… decry tyranny. Grand shenanigans stop tanks and tyrants. The Dream is not dead. It lives in marching feet, the peaceful occupation of lunch counters, tea dumped in a harbor. – Gayle J. Greenlea

Hello, Poets. Spilling some ink for #inkMine. #poetry #NoKings #Resist

Thanks so much for your lovely words, Bethany. I need to tighten this up to see if I can get it down to an acceptable length and put some more work in on metaphors, but it’s a start. Very grateful for your reading and responding! 💜

“people can turn into weather”!

Great poem, Daniel. Really love “moving around… / touching places he should not” and that beautiful banger of a last verse, “write his words / on the back of leaves”.

#vss365

nostalgia is ache
a prison of the mind

we are hard-wired to be
miserable
through our knowing

the ancients knew it, and offered
symbols into the flowing river

to let go of what
we carry;
what we perceive to be our
ultimate reality.

.Anant

#vss365

“Where touch is ghost orchids and weeping / blue moons”. Beautiful, Bethany.

Apology My friends with black skin, I stand before you in my white ache, ashamed that chains of history thunderclap in your chests. I am soul-heavy for the ways my people betrayed you, exploited you, beat you, lynched you; wound you, still, with our words, actions, omissions; when we fail you as lawless cops savage black bodies, because racism burns like crosses under redneck skin; when they pull you over because they can, when they arrest you in your own neighborhoods and on your front lawns because, they say, you don’t belong. I am sorry my white skin is accomplice to institutions that harm you, halt your economic progress and access to the American dream: Tulsa burned to the ground with your successes; opportunity turned to ash, housing denied. I see your pride despite colossal obstacles strewn in your path, despite the pain and hatred we’ve heaped upon you. Your blood bears the beauty and resilience of the African continent: acacia-scented savannas and wetlands, veined rivers, wilded with sage. You’ve sown your strength into the foundations of America. You are backbone, conscience, wisdom. Shame on us when we forget. I am sorry for every black man who languishes in prison, every child crushed by adults who can’t see past melanin, who treat her like a criminal, who criticize his hair, who throw them out of school for minor infractions because whiteness fears black perseverance. You are survivors, indefatigable. You belong. I celebrate with you when another glass ceiling is broken, and you rise, like leaven in rich multigrain bread. I am sorry we did not welcome you as equals, yin to our yang, inseparable, free. We the People are incomplete, as long as a single link of your chains remain. I will remember, and I will work by your side to be a nation that deserves you. I will sing your anthems, if you let me, and together, we will shoulder the sky. – Gayle J. Greenlea

For Black History Month, I cannot write about black sisters and brothers. Their voices are theirs and it’s crucial to hear them. But I can write as a white woman with mixed heritage. Please forgive the length. There’s a lot to apologize for. #vss365 #ache #poetry

Seer Blow on the bones and roll them. First, warm them in your hands. Let them feel the sultry cadence of blood fluming through tributaries, homing to soft caverns of the heart. Let them sprout feathers to ferry them into the spirit world. Enliven them with your own energy. Open your hands, gently. Release them on currents of breath and let them fly. They will land in a sonorous clatter. Their message is a map, a poem for you to decipher. – Gayle J. Greenlea

#vss365 #bones #poetry

Stream of Unconsciousness After ‘Not I’, Samuel Beckett constant flux ─ breathless febrile jabbering ─ noise taste fear spitting viper ─ hardly a breath there’s confession but who’s talking storytalking ─ dreamtalking monochrome orphan of hunger repulsion ─ breaking through betrayal whispering ─ detached bitter Id transgression falling from a cliff edge somewhere deep in the psyche © Glenn Barker February 2026

...and I thought this prompt was beyond me. A late clarity of mind saved the morning for #PoemsAbout #Mouths.

I'll get back to you later today...

@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
#PoetsOnBluesky

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) tells reporters the Epstein files contain allegations that President Trump raped and threatened to kill children.

Pleasure, Jen.

Beautiful, Jen.

Single frame. Title: “[redacted]” A line of early teen? girls looking at the viewer. Behind them, silhouettes of four generic men, some with hand on shoulders of the girls, which have been through six iterations of redaction to satisfy the newspaper’s lawyers that none are identifiable.

A heavily redacted cartoon.
My @smh cartoon.

Two graves “in the hills outside the Zorro”, two girls discarded in foreign soil, Eyes Wide Shut; Pain, written in soft tissue, seeks solace in decay. Zorro Ranch masks skinwalkers with glowing eyes who hide their faces behind clay, mimic human cries, ferry prey to luxury dungeons on Boeing wings; disguise unspeakable acts in ritual magic, dark as the Vantablack forest. Death masquerades as play for those with power and too much time, whose wealth inoculates them from mercy, whose bodies are weapons trained on the vulnerable. Trauma is not silenced in the grave. The dead do not rest easy. They are medicine bags stirring roots and soil. If you’re quiet, you may hear their voices rustling on the wind. – Gayle J. Greenlea

#vss365 #pain #EpsteinFiles

Trigger warning: CSA

Trump’s ICE Agents Arrested Don Lemon. Then the Story Got Even Darker. Trump has been raging about the former CNN journalist. Attorney General Pam Bondi just had him arrested, a move one legal expert slammed as “highly irregular.”

Trump's arrest of Don Lemon shows that his "pivot" is an utter farce. As legal experts tell me, this looks appallingly corrupt. Indeed, it's likely this is all about sending a message that Trump isn't deescalating in the slightest.

New piece with fresh details here:
newrepublic.com/article/2059...

The simply devastating line from @joaquincastrotx.bsky.social’s visit with Liam Ramos and his dad in Dilley where many children just like him are being held:

“Liam also asked where his bookbag and his bunny hat are.” - Adrian Carrasquillo

Why a Scared 5-Year-Old Boy Shook Our National Conscience What the image of Liam Ramos, grabbed in Minnesota and thrown in detention in Texas, means for our democracy.

NEW from me: Liam Ramos should bring the Trump administration to its knees

www.thebulwark.com/p/liam-ramos... via @thebulwark.com

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Lyric Video) YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

#Springsteen comes through with the iconic song of this regime's reign of terror. Thank you, Bruce. Please share #Minneapolis #ReneeGood #AlexPretti #ICE #ICEOUT #DHS
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDaP...

Cold Front Drones thrum, churning air, propwash protesters on the ground. Whistles brittle, flashbangs funnel shockwave, heat, swelling cloud. Voices cantillate: “Shame, shame.” ICE thugs drag witnesses facedown through snow, violently throw an old woman down a hill. Protectors run to help. “We will crush ICE, we are taking back our rights.” “Love, not hate, makes America great.” Sonic cannons beam screeching hell. Tear gas burns. – Gayle J. Greenlea

Thanks to @blsamaddar.bsky.social for today’s #vss365 poetry prompt: #thrum

Thanks so much, Bethany. Your prompts are clearly inspiring!

Crying Wolf Truth wanes. Lies are wolves hounding the sheep, snaveling them into the woods one by one. A boy cries, filling heads with alternative facts until wits are consumed by wool. No one believes. The Alpha wolfs down the flock. – Gayle J. Greenlea

Many thanks to @blsamaddar.bsky.social for the #vss365 poetry prompt, #wane.

Beautiful.

The cusp is a crossing, a state of in-between; like a river dividing two kingdoms, or an infinitesimal sliver of moonlight slicing through cloud. It’s the bleeding edge of something radically different: the event horizon on the rim of a black hole, strange as wave-particle duality and superposition. Is the cat alive or dead? Is it fascism yet? – Gayle J. Greenlea

Gratitude to @blsamaddar for the #vss365 poetry prompt, #cusp

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - Official Trailer YouTube video by Madman Films

https://youtu.be/EmIQFcPXLXA?si=-FGS6s2bkkrnRC6E

Unmoored Open seas, beyond a smudge of shore, is our found plotted-position but we must always sail further and trade for more. The world does not owe us easy berth: we bob and ride the daily swells ever unmoored, weathered alone, till a grasped rope of low half-seen stars guides us magically into our suddenly recognised awaited port.

Hullo #vss365 and to #unmoored

winter blues
drifting aimlessly in cold
unmoored politics

#vss365 #unmoor

Cataclysm Gravitational waves emanate from the rupture. The center cannot hold. A golden escalator delivered our destruction: a neutron star colliding with our own. We are unmoored, roots torn, mortared and pestled to cosmic dust. We drift, disconnected particles between polar extremes. Nuance and subtlety buckle like a paved-over rose garden, dined on by tuxedoed billionaires. History, pocked by revisions, is a playground for strongmen crowning themselves in laurels. Morality, composted by radioactive decay, is a black hole of corruption. Meaning, a Firebird — dark and songless, beak a diamond stylus stuck in a vinyl groove — caged in a temporal whorl. Courage is lifting the needle, composing a new song. – Gayle J. Greenlea

Gratitude to @blsamaddar for the #vss365 poetry prompt, #unmoored.