Kerry Cox

Artificial officials

shoveling scriptures—

wayward homes
for homesick

daughters.

Crumbling banks

below the floodwaters.

In teenage true-crime

travesties,

the castles

cave in

without majesty.

Wallets

worn empty—

with jailhouse blues

and green with envy.

Starving

in a land of plenty.

The fable

of a fortune

that never met me.

A force-fed,

fogged-up,

front-page fantasy.



Bird-badged bibles,

bound

like blood.

I burned

like a witch,

made of flesh

and wood.

I confessed

no sins.

Bragged

of no good.

Cloaked my crimes

where crows

hide

their food.

The caw

of a conundrum.

Hoodlums

in hoods,

disguising

the seasons,

waiting

in the woods.

A worldwide

war crime.



Committed

in real time.

The soldiers—

still

land mined.

Detonated

D-days

destroying

the timeline.

Sea level

slipping.

The gears

won’t turn.

The huddled masses

on a

one-way return.

While the circus

moves

around—

dusty town clowns

wearing

knockoff crowns.



Spectacles

of speech,

sucking the muck

like a blind

bottom leech.

No news

catapulted

through windows

thrown wide.

No bombshell.

Big spender.

Puffed

full of pride.

A melted parade

the mayor

can’t hide.

A liar’s brigade

leaves

the truth’s

tongue tied.



Disaster—

the weapon.

Where monsters

sleep sound.

Under beds.

Under water.

Under the ground.

An iced-over

incision.

The medicine

made mad.

The preacher’s now

demons.

The good guys

gone bad.

Unremembered

antiheroes

aimlessly

attack.

Take

this freedom—

and never

give it back.

Today’s Mossy Moment The traffic light said go,
but the sky said wait.
Even the ordinary intersections
become sacred under a burning sky.

Understudy . 2 tone teeth, never sleep
in mouths that always dream of meat
Chewing hard
spitting out bones
Ballooning the moon
Till it fits in gods arms

Those famous limbs
That built Rome in a day
Pulled out a rib
and gave Adam
A new name to say

Archangel artifacts
Older than truth
Come back like the haunted
Crumble like youth

Sucked up in spades
The winters old rays
The breathing,
the heaving
The uphill both ways

My veins are a trance
Where iron
and salt dance
In a liquid romance
Called a pulse

The pressure loose and light
Until it’s time to fight or take flight
Or simply disappear
and call it a curse

Fringed feelings faking
The holy wafers still baking
The lepered souls still making
The best of the worst

Argyle answers in books
Made of matches,
burning through bushes
crowned like a cactus
A single star
when the night was the blackest
The chicken says the egg came first

Capitulated calcium
The gums become more numb
Debriefing the teeth
In the land of sleep
Before the cross is hung

Don’t beg to be remembered
I’m an encyclopedic heart
Afraid of the verbs in a bibles black arms
Ventricles blamed for the burst

Time moves different
When you’re living this way
Guilt grows wings and
still limps away
Two tone teeth
With nothing to say
That doesn’t sound
Rehearsed

Song for the Sleepless

All night, barefoot,
the curb obedient,
under bent bones,
sloshed over from drunken dimes,
fizzled away on bright ways to be,
a sparkling vision
to be ethereal.

All night, understood,
barehanded,
praying at traffic,
the noise,
some hymn of machination
we sputtered from mushy mind fields.

All night,
the dreams unroll,
the streetlights grovel
at the gate of hours unwitched,

timetables teaching
the burgeoning lessons of temptation
to tatters of flagged skin,

dancing two-step
under bulging moonlight,
leaking its milky murmurs
into the rests between backbeats.

All night,
the lighter clicks its flamed name,
whispers the blackbird,
buries the blame in unmarked graves,

each eulogy the same,

no mouths left to wander
over a life lived out loud,
accused of ornery apathy,

the crack in the crowd,
the seam in the shroud,

the steeple’s stinging bell sounds—

too early,
too late,
too quiet a warning,
too tempested in fate.

All night,
I’m a quiver,
I’m arrows,
I’m bow,

I’m a target,
a teacup,
a bird’s heart,
a window,

each dream of shatter,
each piercing shot,
each pulse that stutters,
each untangled knot,

a rosary bead counted,
a second hand ticked,
the measure of shadow
morning will miss.

All night,
I’m a shaman.

All night,
I’m awake,

standing guard
for the souls
morning might take.

🌿✨ ONLINE POETRY WORKSHOP ✨🌿

Wild Language: Writing from Instinct, Image, and Place

Inspired by Poemcrazy and The Triggering Town, this workshop is for anyone craving a deeper, stranger, more honest connection to language.

We’ll explore:
🌙 intuitive writing
🔥 vivid imagery
🌊 memory + place
🌿 sensory prompts
✨ unexpected metaphors

No experience required. No pressure to be “good.” Just curiosity, imagination, and the willingness to follow the line where it wants to go.

Some of my favorite prompts from the workshop:
— “My name is…”
— The Museum of Lost Things
— Weather as Emotion
— The House Poem

Come write something alive with us.

Cotton Mouth ..
Now I wish that snake
hadn’t bitten you, that you hadn’t
told me what you really wanted
I’ll keep the time we rode the ferris wheel drunk
and forget your blank eyes
when we kissed.
I wish you hadn’t had to be
rolled up in a carpet, smuggled
onto a boat, that you were the one naked
when room service arrived.
I wish you kept your dignity and
your wisdom, never running off
with a gunshot gr**go into
the night.
in stone, your mouth is so pretty
I imagine our own history differently, how
much we miss our own mothers, someone to brush
our long dark tangled hair. Our laughing
daughters immune to the tides
that kept pulling us under.
but we couldn’t die, plain
in dust. Couldn’t let time take its course,
wouldn’t be looked upon
as wounded, all these mothers of magic
who bore us whole and hovering.
reborn as river, flooding
a new mythology, amongst
our alligators and dark mud
slapping against silvered wood
where we celebrated
our independence
in sideways glances
and scarred stomachs
before separating
into lonely streams.
I still wish that snake
hadn’t bitten you, that you hadn’t
told me what you really wanted
I’ll keep the time we rode the ferris wheel drunk
and forget your blank eyes
when we kissed.