Horror is hard to keep playful when the world is tearing itself to shreds. When people are dying, and neighbors are killing each other.

But horror, my dear friends, is my outlet. I don’t know if it is for you too. But to me, it’s become a way to deal with all of the things happening in the world. Sometimes I feel like my artwork actually expresses how I’m feeling, but other times, like this week- the style that comes out entirely side-steps the brutal truths that this week’s poetry speaks of. Frankly, what came out was so playful it surprised me, but I know it’s because I wasn’t ready to look as deep into myself as I need to be.

But enough from me, here’s two poems with battling artwork to help you dive into your psyche for a few minutes as well.

♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦

Jedwabne

Prints from Society6

From Wolfbiter

The Jews of Poland sympathize with your plight
if you listen carefully, the screams of infants impaled
on pitch forks still glisten the needle brown
blades of grass in the north

all in all though, Willard Gaylin
has a point about hatred falling far outside
the tolerance of pathogen and physiological
dysfunction

even if the severed head of Lenin,
with its authoritative, (pitchfork) penetrating
gaze fails to impress your reverence,
the ashes of old Warchol’s barn

will kick up around your knees
the entire dreaded cloud of human
remnant may just blot the arrogant,
unyielding sun from sight

and even that is wholly just
for who deserves to see day
in a world where Ahmed
Greg and Sempa can round

up their Tuesday round of poker
and bloody up the hatchets
as a matter of faith and course?
one pities the Dachshund

pissing itself in panic as an acne’d
teen heart throb ties the knot
above its head and casts
the creature (Walmart bag and all)

into the pond behind Granny’s house
for truth, it’s death was more merciful
than not, wasting and fading
slow, but whole-

unbroken.

Written by David Bradley Bailey (@Dbfuturist42) author of Sutures and Sepultures Vol. 1.

♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦

Pochassic’s haiku have this incredible tendency to tear right through my soul. So, thank you Pochassic, for not allowing your voice to go silent.

Evil needs one thing
Silence gives evil its strength
Will you stay silent?#HorrorHaikuesday

— Pochassic (@Pochassic) July 18, 2016

♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦          ♦

And my question to you is this; how is all of the violence effecting you?

What can we do to help? How can we keep from letting our silence help evil grow?

I start here. Black Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter. Lives matter. You matter.

As the daughter of a soldier, the sister-in-law to a cop, and the friend of people regardless of color every death hurts.