This Moment Burns Us Alive

For full poem and image description: https://medium.com/@wdibble/this-moment-burns-us-alive-7fc1ce08f9d0

The Valley

It's my first day on the new job I used to teach. Today I'm doing class photos. Little girls, daughters of the parent volunteers, run in circles around my feet. I'm smiling but it's a facade. Yesterday, seventeen people needlessly had their lives uprooted and destroyed. Today people are telling me it's rude to demand gun control and infringe their rights Fucking rude. Today people are telling me it's they're classmates faults for not knowing of the coming hell. There are too many poems about people being shot but we stand here again. Every year the reaper thanks the NRA for padding their wallet. The reaper gets paid a commission of death. They care not that some of the victims haven't known love or niceness, haven't gotten to see their graduation day or get their first job. The politicians got their wages in private jets and personal gifts. They only pay out in meaningless thoughts and prayers while taking payment from the NRA. We fund death and ignorance instead of saving lives. Every school shooting is our reward for complacency. How many souls do we owe to the gun manufacturers? How many souls to the right to take lives at eight hundred fifty feet per second? How many souls to this worship of death machines while our future bleeds out in front of it's locker because we can't bring ourselves to confront the cause? I go to work scared that something will happen and a shooter will show up. It doesn't matter if their reason is because this school has a high Latino population or because they're just another angry white man. Because the reaper doesn't care. They get their pay and we get our heartbreak Either way we just lose and lose and lose Don't give me this thoughts and prayers bullshit if you aren't willing to help solve it Image Description: A rocky mountain valley. A railroad crosses a small steel bridge in the bottom left corner. Most of the plants are either evergreens or scrub-type plants. There’s a sliver of a stream or river in the right bottom third. A big rocky mountain comes down to meet a dirt road in the left half of the photo. A blue sky with fluffy clouds takes up the top third.

The World Moved On

Image Description: A railroad switch signal is in the foreground. It is old, rusted, and all the lights are broken. In the background, along the bottom third of the photo, are rocky mountains with evergreen trees on them. The top two thirds of the background is taken up by a sky with white clouds in it.

Can We Learn to Look Up?

Image Description: A night landscape. A pair of railroad tracks runs through a grassy field from the bottom of the image to the horizon, about a third of the way up. There are trees on the right in the foreground, and building lights on the horizon. In the sky, there are faint clouds and stars.

The Cacophony Assaulted Our Senses

Image description: Black and white photograph. A very reflective building with an all-glass exterior rises on the left. A concrete building with tall, vertical black windows rises parallel to that on the right. In between the two is a building made up of rows of windows and concrete. A few street lights and other buildings are visible at the bottom of the photo.

Commercial Goods for Commercial Gods

Image Description: Black and white photo of a city street. the sky has mild clouds, and there are cars stopped at a traffic light, facing away. Tall buildings rise on both sides, reflecting each other in the windows. The road is centered, and goes up and over a hill, out of sight.

The Gods Never Went Away, They Became New Idols

Did We Ever See The Sun?

Partial Reflections Are Still Part of a Whole

Image Description: A black and white photo of a building corner, looking upward at it. The windows are all black, and there is a shadow across part of it.

Sleepy Eyelids in Brick Faces

Will You Walk With Me?

She Spread Her Wings to Dry, Preparing to Roost for the Night

The Corn Wasn't Cradled, But We Went Through the Motions All the Same

Maybe Stairs Aren't So Bad

At the End of the Day, We Have Our Legacies

Have I Seen You Before?

Hold My Hand, I'm Self Destructing

When I Danced, It Was Full of Joy

Remember When We Smiled?

Art is Revolution

Every time an artist makes a statement in support of something, there are people who wish artists would do a number of things. "I wish they'd stick to photography." "I wish they'd stick to singing." "Why cant they just write?" I have some terrible news for you. Art is political. Art is and always has been and always will be the window to an artist's soul. Look at their art to see what they value. Look at their lyrics. You want a window into who they are? Look at what drives them. Who or what is their muse? What inspires them to put the pen to paper, brush to canvas, image to sensor, song to recording? Art is political. Art is revolution. And us artists? We'll keep doing what we want, regardless of the demands we stay out of politics.

High Noon

I found the patterns on the side of the Wells Fargo Center in Denver, Colorado, to be absolutely fascinating. The appearances of the building change rapidly throughout the day.

Feeders

Old Fall River Road is a scenic and historic route from Horseshoe Park up to the Alpine Visitor Center. It follows one of the park's original roads, with plenty of hikes and waterfalls on the way up. This is one of the earlier streams just above the road's entrance.

Planes and Mountains

Here along the front range, the rising Rockies tower over the flatness of the plains. There are two extremes here, as the planes abruptly become the mountains, and the weather sometimes reflects that. Above all, however, it is timelessly beautiful.

Strange Prairie Flowers

Growing out of the prairies of Kansas, these flowers stand like sentries, waiting for a future time when they are accepted everywhere.