Poetry by Scott Ferry

     Tero Karppinen CC




thank god i have all of you

and my honest wife my passionate daughter my giggling son / so many times i am utterly disappointed in people who are cruel who exploit manipulate or strangle others for a fleeting surge of power which fades as their fear of powerlessness swallows them again / right now people are being killed for profit / children bleeding or starving in the street so some clean person far away can have another yacht / it has been this way for thousands of years and our history has made it a song which somehow binds us blames us then absolves us

we speak in our religions of how to pray how to be holy in this slurry of maggots / how to teach our children to be gentle even when hurt and to keep their light as their peers and adults betray 
them each in time / i come back to my family whom i can help stay human by a continual forgiveness / but i am so tired so tired of the ones who were maimed so badly that all they can do is harm others / their language stages of wounding

my language is breaking but i have to keep saying that god is real / that love is the only word which can make us safe / the only word which i can say to all of you who are trying / who are also losing your tongues in the effort of repeating this summons / this reanimation / this frankensteining our blistered masks out of the fires

i love you who try to love / my family and my embattled extended family / keep this under your burnt pillow / a love letter / a promise to stay soft and purr inside your armor

to feed those whom you protect

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Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His most recent book is a collaboration with Daniel McGinn titled Fill Me With Birds on Meat for Tea Press. His tenth book of poetry, Sapphires on the Graves, is upcoming from Glass Lyre Press in early Summer 2024. More can be found at ferrypoetry.com.