Jaci Turner

So I return to quieter ground,
Where meanings gather, slowly found.
Where time, not volume, has its say,
And light arrives in its own way.

I only pause when language goes
Beyond what patient record shows.

Some truths take time — in ink and file,
Through patient stacks and measured trial.
They do not turn at someone’s say,
Nor close because we wish away.

When Words Arrive Too Soon
by Jaci Turner

They say the word as if it’s done,
As if a verdict has been won.
“Exonerated.” Clear and bright,
Spoken before the fullest light.

It isn’t truth that gives me pause,
Nor careful weighing under laws.

🧵

But now we know. The spell is gone.
The name exposed, the veil withdrawn.
Let’s build again on clearer ground,
Where truth is held, and lies unbound.

And yet, how strange the lexicon,
That named the game before it won.
A surname born for masks and schemes,
A smirk inside our civic dreams.

What are the odds a name would be
The mirror of hypocrisy?
As if the script had long been cast,
A warning buried in the past.

He carved a crown from doubt and spin,
A paper throne too worn to win.

He calls it fake when truth appears,
Then floods the zone with doubt and fears.
With every post, the story bends,
Till trust collapses, truth unends.

Trumped Up
by Jaci Turner

His name a boast, a brand, a bluff
But listen close, it says enough.
A word that means “deceit, pretend,”
A signal flaring to the end.

Trumped up charges, fiction fed,
Inflated wins, truths left for dead.

🧵

It waits for someone not to turn,
To feel the thing that doesn’t burn.

The language cools what once was skin;
The ache is edited to win.

We learn to watch without a flinch,
To measure loss by inch on inch.
The story settles, clean and tight —
No room left in it for the night.

And somewhere just beyond the glare,
A pulse still moves beneath the air.

When Empathy Falters
by Jaci Turner

When empathy slips out of frame,
A life contracts to fit a claim.
The footage loops; the voices rise.
We trade in angles, not in eyes.

A mother’s grief becomes a trend.
A child is cited to defend.

🧵

She wasn’t crying in the corner of my mind,
She stood there straight, composed, almost resigned.
Resolved — the word that fits the child I see,
Who quietly decided, “This is how it will be.”

But I grow quieter as I see
How fear defends duplicity.
And still I choose a steadier art:
To guard the law — and guard the heart.

For power held in open light
Needs neither shadow nor the night.
And hope survives, though thin and small,
Where truth is practiced — most of all.

The vote cast twice with steady hand,
Then eyes that scan the silent stand.

They fear that others, given reign,
Would deal the very selfsame pain —
As if the wounded, given voice,
Would answer harm with equal choice.

Tired Clarity
by Jaci Turner

They warn of tyrants, shout control,
As if a crown could cleanse the soul.
They pound the desk for law and right,
Then dim the rules when out of sight.

I’ve seen the practiced, careful pause,
The speech on truth that earns applause.

🧵

So I watch—
not with fury,
but with attention.

Because democracy survives
not only through outrage,
but through those who refuse to look away
and refuse to rush to judgment.

The danger isn’t that power misbehaves.
History taught us that long ago.
The danger is when no one interrupts it,
when silence becomes habit.

Still, I believe in the pause.
In truth laid out slowly.
In daylight keeping records.

In Broad Daylight
by Jaci Turner

It isn’t the darkness that frightens me.
We’ve always known how to name the dark.

It’s what’s done
with the lights on—
voices calm,
papers signed,
as if harm were just another administrative act.

🧵

Is there still a constituency inside the Republican Party that values the Constitution more than a man?

Spin can keep you airborne for a while.
Eventually, gravity wins.

Why are all of the Republicans in congress so quiet right now?

If the Epstein files hadn’t been promised—repeatedly—as a show of truth and accountability, delay wouldn’t look like evasion.

When loyalty outranks the law,
The rule becomes who’s with us now.
And once that logic takes the stage,
Democracy is held hostage.

Step out of line, you earn a name,
A word to shame, a mark of blame.
You’re not “uncertain,” not “between,”
You’re helping those you’re told to mean.

On one side, doubt is treason’s sign,
A purity line drawn in time.
On the other, disagreement stands
As difference, not contraband.

Loyalty Test
by Jaci Turner

They don’t ask what’s right or what is true,
They ask whose side you’re loyal to.
A question raised, a doubt expressed,
Is measured not by facts, but by a test.

🧵

Hope lives in the noticing.
In the refusal to confuse calm with health.
In remembering why the guardrails existed
before the road began to curve.

Hope is not belief.
Hope is insistence.

when they promise respect for the law
rather than building walls
they cannot climb.

But it doesn’t disappear all at once.

It pauses—
waiting to see if anyone notices
that pressure has replaced choice,
that power has begun to negotiate with itself,
that silence is being called stability.

It fails when money learns a second language,
when donations sound like access
and loyalty sounds like protection,
and no one calls it bribery
because it isn’t written down.

It fails when leaders ask for trust
instead of restraint,

when “independent” becomes a word
we say instead of something we prove.

It fails when markets stop responding to demand
and start responding to fear—
when companies don’t ask what makes sense,
but what keeps us safe.

Guardrails
by Jaci Turner

Democracy doesn’t fail
because someone breaks the law.
It fails when the law is still there
but no longer heavier than power.

It fails when enforcement learns to look up
before it looks at the facts,

🧵

When companies fear government pressure more than market forces, that’s not capitalism.
When law bends to loyalty, that’s not democracy.

Hope lives in still naming the difference.

but the courage
that once kept
the light steady
on its face.