Linda M. Crate

maybe they’ll give me apologies

you wanted every knee
to bow before you,
didn’t like that i threw a sword
proving you could bleed;

you made yourself a god
when you were nothing more
than a mere man and i wanted them to
know just who they worshipped—

& to my immense surprise
most of them still supported you,

but one day your masks will be
shattered and they’ll be forced to
look into the light and see you for
everything you are and they will see
you sewed yourself into a constellation
that never existed and every sun
and moon you devoured to shine will
burst open in your gut and you will be
revealed to be a nightmare and a monster
to all who praised you as a hero;

and i will be there with a glass of champagne—

maybe they’ll give me enough apologies
i can start a collection plate.

embers of their past

darkness can be a friend,
because she doesn’t demand
smiles like the sun pouring
down screaming of his brilliance;

darkness can be a friend because
she is not wicked simply because she
is quieter than the day—

but some people have a problem
sitting with their silence,

i have always known there was magic in
the night;
once the moon beckoned me to her to dance
in the dew covered grass and so i did—

darkness can be a friend and some of those
who carry light aren’t angels but demons waiting
to burn you on the embers of their past.

rainbows are full of light

i remember him
even still,
i was in high school when
they bullied the openly gay boy
so badly that he thought his
only choice was to take his own life;

told everyone i was straighter than
an arrow even though i never really
knew what that meant and it wasn’t true—

i was already bullied and i told myself
that i was going to live, that i wanted to live;

never really understood the hatred of
people who were different
than what you believed they should be—

so many different faiths and cultures and customs,
why should you be concerned with who is in love?

as long as they’re being treated well,
loved properly, and have mutual respect
and understanding;
then what should you care?

love is love,
and rainbows are full of light.

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Linda M. Crate’s poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press – June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon – January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017),  splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), Follow the Black Raven (Alien Buddha Publishing, July 2021), Unleashing the Archers (Guerilla Genesis Press, August 2021), and Hecate’s Child (Alien Buddha Publishing, November 2021) and three micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018), moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020), and & so I believe (Origami Poems Project, April 2021). She is also the author of the novella Mates (Alien Buddha Publishing, March 2022).