Author | Lightnews

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Aug 2

I've been taking a picture straight up at the sky every morning when I walk the dog for over 4 months. It's become a lovely ritual & I love seeing the patterns over time (like the sky is much bluer in April & you can the wildfire smoke effect in June). #naturelover #mindfulness #photoprompt #skies

2 1 25

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Aug 2

#poetry #readersky #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #bpd #mentalhealth #mentalillness #mooddisorder #bipolar #recovery

2 10

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 26

#blueskypoets #poetry #poetrycommunity #CronesOfAnarchy #CoA #mindfulness #naturelover

4

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 20

Watching videos of #gabbypetito I remember that feeling.
To anyone still living this -- reach out for help, make a safety plan, and get away.

#poetry #survivor #domesticviolence #awareness #readersky #DomesticViolence #Abuse #DomesticAbuse #DVSupport #Narcissist #Gaslighting

1

Reposted by Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)

Salem Islas-Madlo (ella/she/her) @deepsouldiver.bsky.social · Jul 20

today
I woke up
and decided
to dress in
stillness

#tanka #poetry

5 23

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 13

1

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 12

#SenseWrds 94

I've declared today a couch day
To rest my injured hip or heart
(Also injured, but whose isn't?)
But still I am at my desk, peering down
At the weathered road
That I love for its emptiness
And still I hear my grandmothers:
No rest. Just guilt. Do more.
I bear the sin of stillness.

Sense Words @sensewords.bsky.social · Jul 11

Prompt 94

Lazy
Street
Whispers

Do Not use the prompt words in your piece. Please use #SenseWrds so I can find your writing, and include the prompt number. Also remember that I ask for no combo prompts here. Message me if you have more questions on how this prompt works. Happy writing! ~M 🙏🏻

1 3 4

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 10

From Flower Girls (Floral Feminist Poems)

This activity was funded in part with a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council made possible by the voters of Minnesota, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.
#blueskypoets #poetry #foraging #wildfoods #rewild

3

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 9

Reposted by Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · Jul 9

ICYMI: In last week's CMD episode we debunked the New York Times' podcast about gender affirming care for trans youth. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCrL...

We Debunked the New York Times Anti-Trans Podcast (ft. Sandy Allen)

YouTube video by Cancel Me, Daddy - Media & Politics Podcast

www.youtube.com

1 29 93

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 8

One of the pieces in Flower Girls (Floral Feminist Poems & Artwork). I did the art for this one, freehand with a mouse, which is surprisingly difficult. ;) afflink: amzn.to/4ez3Las

Image description -- freehand drawing of an iris with leaves like serrated knives and dark droplets at the top of them, on a purple watercolor background.

Text:

Grandma Iris

She had words like broadswords,
So jagged and unbending
For someone who carried
Such delicate beauty.
All my life she took turns
Stabbing and forgiving me.

~ Alicia Bayer
@crazybrokenthing

(Artwork in this piece by Alicia Bayer)

** This activity is funded in part with a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council made possible by the voters of Minnesota, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

2

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 6

#selfcare #mindfulness #dumpsterfire #keepongoing

1

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 6

It has never been about anything but hate and scapegoating.

MikeM3 @mikeg80.bsky.social · Jul 6

1 1

Reposted by Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)

South Dakota Department of Propaganda @southdakota.bsky.social · Jul 6

ICE are terrorists and traitors to the constitution.

A group of young children stands inside a secured room with their backs turned. Their hands are cuffed behind them and they stand near a closed metal door. One child wears a striped shirt, another carries a small backpack. A uniformed officer in a dark cap and jacket stands nearby watching them.

5 8

Reposted by Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)

Rebecca Cooke @rebeccaforwi.bsky.social · Jun 16

I grew up in a working-class family. I’m running for Congress by day and waiting tables by night. I know what working families need because I’ve lived it — and I’ll fight for policies that work for us, not the wealthy and well-connected.

7 89 440

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 4

#blueskypoets #poetry #poetrycommunity #LetThemEatCake #RiseUp #SpeakOut #DoSomething #BlueCrew #CronesOfAnarchy #CoA #NotMyPresident #EatTheRich #SocialJustice

3 9

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jul 3

1

Reposted by Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)

George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · Jun 30

They plan to roll back green energy investments. That will spike our utility bills while warming our planet. A double hit only the GOP could conjure.

300 2.9K 8.3K

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jun 30

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jun 27

🦊 Written this week.....

#WomensPoetry #WomensWriting #blueskypoets #poetry #poetrycommunity

6

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jun 27

Love the start of this one and "useless sack." :)

1 1

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jun 26

Love this!

1

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jun 26

My mother & aunts had a complicated relationship with religion, partly because of time they spent in a Catholic orphanage in the 1940's.

From Crazy Broken Thing (Poems from the Attic Book 1) (afflink: amzn.to/4l4j7GC)

#WomensPoetry #WomensWriting #blueskypoets #atheism #poetry #poetrycommunity

My mother and her sisters had a very complicated relationship with religion, in part because of time they spent in an abusive Catholic orphanage in the 1940's after my aunt was in a terrible accident. I wrote this poem years ago about my Aunt Leslie and the ways all three girls responded to the abuse they survived there.
From Crazy Broken Thing in the Poems from the Attic series (afflink: https://amzn.to/4l4j7GC)

THE ENTRANCE OF GOD
When she was a girl, my Aunt Leslie sat
straight down on a wrought-iron spike.
The forbidden church and the angry priest
become nothing. She woke to white,
to her two sisters packed away
in a Catholic orphanage, to her mother
pulling her hair out, one blade at a time, crying
I cannot be a mother, to her mother
with no man to stitch her up, sending
the stitched-up Leslie
to the orphanage too.
And for some months the three girls sat
with the nuns, with the orphans, with God
sending them to bed with no supper.
My Aunt Linda had God beaten into her.
My mother had God beaten out of her.
And Leslie, poor Leslie, just sat
among the black and the white--
with the nuns, with the prayers, with a wrought-iron hole
through which God came and went.
~Alicia Bayer
@CrazyBrokenThing

6

Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry) @crazybrokenthing.bsky.social · Jun 26

Wonderful poem. That keeps me going, too. <3

Reposted by Crazy Broken Thing (Alicia Bayer Poetry)

Jen Gennari @jengennari.bsky.social · Jun 18

This makes me weep. "Hortman told MinnPost she decided when she was 10 years old she would be the first female president, while watching the 1980 presidential campaign." #melissahortman #feminism

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Tough, whip-smart and selfless: Melissa Hortman, ‘singular force for democracy’, remembered

Colleagues speak of Hortman’s legislative accomplishments, a ‘steely negotiator’ who went into politics ‘to do something, not to be something’

www.theguardian.com

3 10