To Murder a Poet

Posted on January 8, 2026

Dedicated to Renee Nicole Good, murdered by ICE on January 7th, 2026

What happens when a warrior is slain?

Witnesses left in tears

shock

pain

screaming, “What have you done?”

In death

that warrior emerges from behind the cloak of brutality.

Her words flow freely now,

unstoppable

no longer bound by tyranny.

She becomes mythological verse.

Her words rise from blood-soaked dust––

becoming oxygen

breathed in by her comrades in humanity.

When a warrior is slaughtered, she becomes a martyr.

That martyred poet

becomes a poem––

Sorrow wept into a gentle wind

spoken by devotees

that quiet wind becomes a tempest.

You can’t stop poetry

it whispers

sings to the rising sun

howls at the moon.

The warrior turned martyr––

Poet who becomes a poem

is now an unstoppable invisible force.

She turns her ghostly face to the perpetrators

points her spectral finger,

and says,

“See what they have done.”

And those words

like soul-rotting guilt

will float along the breeze

heavy

until they land on the intended one.

…. See what they have done.

Rest in peace, Renee. Rest in peace.