Jim Skiff Poetry

05/25/2026

Eternal Dream of Freedom

The dream of freedom cannot die.
It cannot be erased or defeated.
It is home to the Hearts of All who lie
In the graves of the undefeated.
Those who offer their lives in sacrifice
Can never be abandoned or defamed.
Medgar Evers and Hector Gonsolves,
We remember and honor their names.
Jennifer Cannon and Jeannie Leavitt,
The Codetalkers and Tuskegee Airmen.
You may purge their ranks from your databanks,
Their memory will not be forsaken.
Each gender, creed and race sleeps in this place,
Joined in the Eternal Dream of Freedom.

Jim Skiff
c2025 Rooted: Poems to Inspire, Heal and Empower

05/24/2026

We continue to subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of $760 billion annually. Why not subsidize sustainable fuels that are clean and will improve air and soil quality?

Stop fracking start farming the answer is clear.
Gas will be cheaper no need to despair!
H**p can do everything oil can do
H**p plastic is biodegradeable too!
It strengthens the soil and cleans the air
It grows quickly requiring little care
Mr. Ford built a car made of plastic and steel
Entirely made out of h**p from his field
He drove it around in 1942
I know it sounds crazy, I swear it is true!
The oil companies said please park this car
We are doing just fine the way that things are
When they tell you we have to keep fracking
Their veracity truly is lacking
In six months we could all retrofit
Save the world by planting some h**p!

Jim Skiff
Rooted:Poems to Inspire, Heal and Empower
c2025

05/21/2026

In response to a post from my poet/friend, Paul D Brown a repost of a sonnet that won recognition from a wonderful group, Inspiring Artists. The subject is social media cons.

Cryptonite

A lovely lady sends a friend request.
She tells you that you're different from the rest.
You've touched her soul, and it doesn't matter.
Half your age, her words begin to flatter
She strokes your ego, harder to resist;
Her words, seductive, softer than a kiss
In her Ferrari, within her marbled bath,
Opulent suggestions, luxuriance
Promises inherent, in each longing look,
Perfectly posed, each selfie that she took.
Her Uncle taught her, after Father died
Blockchain investment in the Bitcoin mine
Iota tangle, hybrid of delight,
Dangling the apple of Cryptonite.

Jim Skiff
c2025

05/14/2026

Major Trigger Warning
Dark and Graphic

The Calumny

I recall the bandages
Guaze wrapping my arms and legs
Forbidden to touch the trees
No matter how I begged
Young flesh oozing, open sores blooming
Eczema consuming my skin
With never ending fire, as though
Someone roasted me quite slow
Red meat visible just below
Crevasses split down to the bone
Holding my hands for brief relief
Beneath the scalding water
As hot as I can stand before
I screamed I can not take any more!

Years later, I go to bed healthy
And wake up with a wheeze
Coughing, sneezing violently
Sudden pneumonia fills a lung
With fluid, hospitals, oxygen
Convalesce at home, I'm numb
Draw, write, dream, it comes
Three times a year, for four, it seemed
To pass until, at sixty eight
I dreamed I was tied to a stake

The pain was fierce as the flames were fanned
With a bellows pumped by a Clergyman
His hat was yellow, shaped like a beak
Latin was chanted to a solemn drumbeat
I laughed, as I was finally free
Though my lungs were filled with Calumny
The ash and smoke led me to choke
And I awoke as a white haired man
In a foreign land, just beginning to understand
The memory of what was done to me
And Pneumonia once again

Perhaps our dreams are portals
To the lives we lived before
Or memories from the other side
Imprinted on our flesh and lives
I pray this nightmare now will die
Nor sear my soul forevermore.

Jim Skiff
c2026

Art: Man Being Burned at the Stake
Daniel Nicholas Chowdowrecki

04/23/2026

Weird S**t Happens

My wife arose this morning and noticed the remote.
It lay upon the ottoman she wished to rest her feet Upon, while sipping on her coffee as was her daily Wont. She picked it up and placed it on the stand Beneath the television. Meanwhile I was in the kitchen
Dealing with the dinner dishes. I walked away from Where I left a large pan on a cutting board. The pan
Contained the last remains of chicken stir fry and lo Mein. And while my back was turned toward the skillet And the cutting board, they hurled themselves across The floor and stained it with orange sauce du jour, as Though a hand had flung the pan across the room. I Cleaned it up with towel and broom and mopped the Scene with Mr. Clean, then walked into the living room.

Wow! That was strange I then exclaimed, as bending Down I flipped the switch upon the power strip with Which I turned the TV off last night because I couldn't
Find the remote again! You silly man, she laughed, and Then, said it twas on the ottoman, she chuckled as she Smiled, you're blind and if you would but look behind
You'd find it underneath the screen. I turned and Scanned The TV stand. With both my hands I felt and Checked And though she led me to expect I'd find it There, it now was gone, again. That's weird, she said, I'm sure I put it There, she stood, and frowning, shook Her head. Says I last night I searched high and low, Even under the couch pillow. And harboring an odd Suspicion, I lifted The offending cushion. Behold! Somehow the elusive device had vanished right before Her eyes, and Manifested underneath the couches' Cushion with Complete and utter lack of logically Defiant tact. Q***r interdimensional quantum twisting World Changing reality shifting remote and pan Collaboration causing curious consternation.

Jim Skiff
4/23/26

04/19/2026

Sunday Sonnet

Passing Through

How many opportunities arise
Within the measured span of days we're living,
To have an impact on another's life
And pass along the gifts we have been given?
How many times, we fail to understand
That what we get, we're meant to give away.
For what we try to keep, can never stay.
It slips between our fingers like the wind.
We are but membranes, carefully designed
To take just what we need and nothing more,
And what we are unable to absorb,
We are meant to redistribute to the poor.
After all, like water, air and truth,
Each one of us is only passing through.

Jim Skiff
4/19/26

04/17/2026

Living Legacy

All of us are immigrant's descendants.
Long before the indigenous arrived,
North America had no humans,
Giant Bison, Bear and Beaver, lived and thrived.

For Millennium, First People wandered freely;
Following the Seasons of the Sun,
Across the land bridge from Siberia;
The first wave of immigration had begun.

Civilization rose and fell in the Americas,
Long before the Europeans learned to sail;
Olmec, Aztec, Mayan, Teotihuacan,
Mississippian, Hohokan and Cheyenne.

The first colonists from Europe were all convicts,
50,000 from Great Britian's emptied jails.
Choose "transportation" to the colonies or hanging;
They would always pick the former, without fail.

Slaves and indentured servants were the next wave;
To work plantations for the textile industry.
Famine drove the Irish by the thousands,
Their labor laid the rails from sea to shining sea.

The Polish, French and German by the millions,
Fled civil war and violent anarchy.
They labored and they died in mill and factory,
Forging iron and steel for the War Economy.

Displaced persons from Europe and from Asia,
Pulsed in waves through Ellis Island by the score.
Angel Island was the West Coast point of entry,
For the millions who arrived after the War.

Mexicans came Northward with the harvest;
They did the work, the other's wouldn't do.
Blood, sweat and tears, to feed the growing nation,
Migrant workers picked our vegetables and fruit.

The next great wave is at our Southern border;
Fleeing Fascist governments and hate;
Nine million jobs are open in our country,
Businesses are forced to liquidate.

This land has always been a refuge,
For All who seek asylum, peace and grace.
America is still the greatest nation.
Our citizens are bred from every race.

This is our great strength and our true promise.
Diversity, our advantage, clear and true.
Let us all rise together as a nation,
To solve the problems that are facing me and you.

Reject the fearful words of deep division.
Embrace the suffering of the entire Human Race.
Our ancestors remind us we are kindred,
Passing swiftly through this wild and lonely place.

Our land is greater than the sum of all our difference
Our faith is stronger than what divides our hearts.
The dream of hope and opportunity has called us.
The living legacy, Democracy imparts.

Jim Skiff
c2025 from Rooted: Poems to Inspire, Heal and Empower

04/08/2026

April is National Poetry Month. If you believe in the value and relevance of poetry, why not support a poet this month by purchasing their work? Here are some excellent suggestions from a few of my friends which can be ordered on Amazon Books:

Circus of Circles by Aoife Cunningham
Men Unlike Others by Johnny Francis Wolf ( Johnny Wolf )
Rooted by Jim Skiff
and Pantheon by Nicholas Cippollini . Nicholas is the son of my dear friend Carrie Estrada Cipollini
I know many of my poetry friends also have books available which I haven't purchased yet. If that is you, please add your book in the comments.

04/06/2026

My Quintessential Rest

Maybe when I'm dead my poems will live
A life all of their own apart from me.
Perhaps they'll rent a villa by the sea
And take up with a woman half their age.

Or, maybe catch a train to Marrakesh
And wander through the Jemaa el-Fina.
Smoking kif with the locals in Chefchaoen
Sampling blonde savonettes of hash.

My poetry may backpack to Mt. Shasta
Hang with Lemurians in Pluto's Cave
Or hike Mt. Kailish to the Drolma La
With the monks in Zutulpuk my poems may pray.

Perhaps my words will find a home in Paris
At the Abbey Bookshop perched upon a shelf
To be purchased by a lonely Versailles heiress
Who Will weep for me alone and noone else.

My verse may traverse the Andes Mountains
To Machu Pichu Cotopaxi and Pisac.
Get wasted with las chicas in Mendoza,
My sonnets probably won't make it back.

More likely, though, my poems will retire
To the notebook that I keep upon my desk.
Where, eternally, my dreams they will inspire
And illuminate my quintessential rest.

Jim Skiff
4/6/26

Photo: Laguna Humantay

03/24/2026

Perhaps another song is in order

Rogue waves were dismissed as nonsense for centuries, until New Year's Day in 1995. Their counterpart – rogue holes – were only proved real in 2012.