file closed

first, you call them something else.
something small enough to hold in the mouth,
spit out without a second thought-
vermin, plague, infestation.

then, you count them.
not as people, but as weight,
as numbers against the good ones,
as shadows stretching too long
across your clean streets.

next, you make them illegal.
not their actions, but their breath,
the way they exist
without permission.

then, you take their words.
cut their tongues to fit your mouth,
strike their names from the pages,
rewrite the past until they were never here.

you take their names,
give them numbers,
give them cages,
give them silence.

you teach the people to hate.
and if they learn well enough,
the rest is just paperwork.

— Earl David Freeland

---

Chaos Gremlin

There’s a little beast in my ribs.
I tell it no, it takes that as a suggestion.
I tell it later, it hears never
and immediately starts gnawing.

It chews the edges off minutes,
spits half-finished tasks
like cherry pits onto the floor,
flips my focus inside-out,
punches holes in my deadlines.

Sometimes it whispers,
but not when I need it to.
Mostly it shouts in bright red font,
shiny with urgency,
even when nothing is burning.

(It lies about that too.)

I tried to lock it in a planner once.
It licked the ink off the page.
Turned my to-do list into a ransom note.
We have your focus.
Do not attempt to concentrate.

So I set a trap with a perfect schedule.
It chewed a hole straight through my hours,
left a jagged rip where Tuesday used to be.

Now I just let it ride shotgun,
let it scatter my thoughts like dice,
let it scribble ideas sideways,
because sometimes—just sometimes—
it drops something brilliant,
something sharp and burning,
something I couldn’t have found without it.

I hate it.
I hope it never leaves.

— Earl David Freeland