I don’t just love you—
I tune to you,
like moonlight learning the language of tide,
like a room going quiet
so one soft note can rise.
Your laugh is the rhythm
my restless heart obeys.
Your name is a chord
my whole life wants to play.
When the world comes in loud,
you don’t fight it—
you bring it into balance,
turning sharp edges into music,
turning “almost” into home.
THE BOOK OF SOFT MAGIC is love, nature, kindness, and quiet wonder in poems.The algorithms know us better now than we
Know our own neighbors through the manufactured walls,
While climate refugees crowd embassy halls
And currencies collapse in bytes set free.
The old order frays—no center left to hold—
As water wars replace the oil campaigns,
And AI harvests data like acid rains
That corrode what democracy we sold.
Yet somewhere gardens grow on rooftops still,
And strangers share their bread when systems fail,
The young build networks that the old can’t kill,
And truth persists beneath the sponsored tale.
We stand at crossroads, weary, halfway through—
Part dystopia, part dream we might renew.
The country wakes with its jaw clenched,
teeth grinding the news into dust.
Every morning feels like standing on a fault line
pretending the tremor is just imagination.
We were told this was sturdy—
checks, balances, flags stitched with certainty—
but the seams are showing now,
and everyone can feel the draft.
Law bends like heated metal.
Words like *order* and *safety*
are passed hand to hand
until no one remembers
who they were meant to protect.
Continue reading “Breaking Point — A Poem”
The one I knew smelled like cut grass and pennies,
like library books and rain on hot sidewalks,
where disagreement still shook hands afterward
and the flag wasn’t a weapon, just a promise—
creased, imperfect, but meant to cover everyone.
I remember neighbors, not sides.
Porches, not platforms.
Arguments that ended with pie.
Now the air hums with static,
everyone shouting through glass,
truth dressed up like opinion,
cruelty calling itself courage
and getting a standing ovation.
The streets feel tighter.
The words feel sharper.
The future feels pay-per-view.
Somewhere along the way
we started confusing power with volume,
wealth with worth,
and winning with being right.
I still believe in the bones of this place—
the stubborn hope,
the quiet kindness that doesn’t trend,
the people who keep planting gardens
in scorched soil anyway.
But this version?
This one feels like a house with familiar walls
and unfamiliar rules,
where the lights are on
and the soul keeps flickering.
I’m not done believing.
I’m just grieving
the country that raised me
and wondering—softly, stubbornly—
if it remembers me too.
I’m so tired of the same old show—
the velvet podium, the practiced grin,
the flag-pin shining like a “trust me”
stuck into a suit built for leaving early.
I’m angry in the way a kettle is angry—
not loud at first, just constant,
just pressure you can’t pray away,
just heat from being ignored on purpose.
Because people are hurting in plain sight.
Rent eats paychecks like it’s sport.
Grocery aisles feel like a dare.
Medicine is a luxury brand.
And the ones with the levers—
the ones with the votes, the vetoes, the committees,
the endless cameras and catered lunches—
they sit back like this is weather.
Like it’s unfortunate.
Like they’re not the ones
holding the matchbook.
They don’t put out fires.
They fan the flames—
for clicks, for donors, for party points,
for a seat at the table
where “public service” means
serving themselves first,
and calling it strategy.
They turn suffering into a talking point,
then sell the cure in campaign emails
while they keep the disease profitable.
They argue over language
while people lose homes.
They perform outrage
while corporations write the script.
They call it “gridlock”
like it’s a natural phenomenon,
not a choice made in expensive rooms
with doors that lock from the inside.
I’m furious at how they normalize it.
How they make cruelty look like policy.
How they treat the country like a casino
and the rest of us like loose change
under a rigged machine.
I want to shake the marble buildings
until all the excuses fall out.
I want a government that acts like
a neighbor who hears you crying through the wall
and comes over with tools,
not a camera crew.
Because this isn’t abstract.
This is a nation of tired eyes
and clenched jaws
and hearts trying to stay soft
in a world that keeps asking them
to harden into survival.
Not because I hate my country,
but because I love the people in it
more than I love the performance.
And if the powerful keep fanning flames
for their own warmth,
they shouldn’t be surprised
when the rest of us learn
to carry water,
to build something fire can’t eat,
to remember that democracy
isn’t a show you watch—
A faded rose from days gone by
Lay within the pages of her favorite book.
Tear drops stain the weathered paper
Memories of a past long since gone.
She softly whispers “I miss you “.
As her fingers slowly trace
The letters on the marble stone.
A faint smile on her face.
Rising to her feet at last,
She turns as though to leave.
The ritual complete once more,
Her heart and soul deplete.
The book she has, to remember all
The days and nights they had.
“Someday, my love”, she thinks to herself
“I will love you again, then.”
Until that day, I shall forever
Perform this ritual for thee.
May Freya watch over and protect,
And guide us until again we meet.
— Michelle Hoffmann (In Through The Out Door: Poetry Book)
Pour me another,
Demands the beast.
Until the daylight breaks over the horizon,
I shall stay here For a while at least.
And so the bartender,
With flourish and grace,
Decants the next chalice
And sets it out to drink.
The beast downs the brew,
Then bows his head twice.
I thank you so kindly
The day has been long, So too the night.
Where are you going?
The bartend inquired,
It must not be far,
For this is the last station
For many a mile.
The beasts answer was muted,
For he did not want to be heard
By the other patrons—
Which were now two or three.
I’m going to nowhere,
See that’s where I’m from.
It’s a mile past never,
and a left turn at none.
Just then a great roar
Erupted outside,
When the bartender
Looked back at the table,
The beast was no longer there.
He had resumed his journey.
I keep rereading the last line,
like it’s a door I can still open
if I touch the handle the right way.
A sentence.
A smile in punctuation.
A normal goodbye that wasn’t a goodbye.
At first it’s small,
almost polite.
A pause that could mean busy, tired, distracted,
anything that doesn’t bruise.
So I become generous.
I rewrite your silence into excuses,
build you a life where you’re simply
caught up in the weather of your days. Continue reading “Ghosted: A Poem of Heartache”
Purchase Art
