My own poem from last year…I do really favor this one.
it looks the same to you
whether you stand
in winter or summer
…the gate of my heart…
Source: ever Spring, ever Autumn
Tag Archives: Death
Our Sacred Desert Story
We set out on tender feet
and tender hearts to match
and faces become flint as we
determined that we would not faint.
When our sojourn was hip deep in heat
and we were well and away, out to sea
she told me of the heartbreak and the horror
and there how we did rain our tears…
We took turns (while we wiled the desert paths away)
swimming away from the ship of us…naked, vulnerable
and healing in the slick water…further and further
and then return and up and back into our desert ship.
It was in the sunset wrought with haze from distant destinations
that make you think about fire, and about what might have been.
We, perched on that rock solid emanating heat and spitting healing
while the sky, bruised by our advances, turned purple in our song.
It was just Day Umpteen Kazillion in our great traverse of deserts,
we walking, swimming straight by myth and extraterrestrial,
feeding on lizards, trilobites, and our sacred Stories our Communion shared
and we, oh so close to our arriving, our becoming, our sacred Desert Story.
Resurrection In Purple Flow
Sometimes when
I am in the presence
of the royal mountain
I can’t help myself.
I run purple, violet
I feast on fallen blossoms
(somehow the fallen sing more
of loss, of all that comes before
Resurrection
in purple flow
The unlikely Texans fighting anti-trans bill SB6 | Fusion
For all who want to:
A: Understand transgender issues and origins
B: Want to be allies in the granting of human rights
C: Believe that being a christian precludes hateful condemnatory behavior
D: Have a trans loved one(s) that you wish to support
This article is for you.
I personally have experienced every single thing mentioned in this article. As a full grown middle aged human…the loss of family connection; the loss of employment; the loss of social standing, the hate-filled behavior towards me of literal total strangers; physical violence…
…not to mention the sort of thing that happened when I was little, and my choice of dissociation from myself. Only God can ever really measure that damage done as a child…damage that was not “intentional” but was fully empowered by the cultural forces of the binary and thus did no less damage.
This mom literally tried all the things that transgender rights opponents espouse…read her story. A conservative christian family with bona fides that may well make St Paul’s head spin! The accusation that parents’ poor parenting is responsible for the “mental illness” of the child is revealed as the false belief that it is.
This child is amazingly strong and persistent. I did not have that strength…I caved…and nearly died for the next 50 years.
All this damage, all this death…all because of clothing, genitalia, and bathrooms.
And trump supporter? Please pay special attention to the reporting of the trump administration’s specific and deliberate plans to take away transhuman rights! Just exactly as I told you. Supporting this absolute fucker taking office is the deliberate empowering of someone who wants to hurt me…
as if you could what…beat the trans out of us? Pray it off of us? Be sure and notice in the pull quotes below the full grown relative who vows to send this little kindergarten kid to the hospital on a stretcher if that child was in a restroom that his 22 year old niece was in!!!
That is literally flabbergasting to me! Really!!??? What is a 5 year old child gunna be able to do to a 22 year old woman??
No matter how many…no, even if you slaughtered every single transgender person? We would be back in the next generation…because we are a function of human reproduction, and not a function of “social engineering”
“…No matter how much punishment this kid got, you couldn’t beat it out of her,” Kimberly said. “You couldn’t pray it out, I couldn’t cast it out.” Indeed, Kai was having none of it. Sometimes she would wait until Kimberly was on the toilet to taunt her from just out of striking range: “You know I’m a girl.” Other times, she began praying within her mother’s earshot that God would “let Joseph” (Kai’s former name) “go home and be with Jesus.”
Kai’s prayer was Kimberly’s breaking point. That, and learning about the sky-high suicide rate for trans kids; according to one study, 41% of trans youth had attempted suicide—a rate almost ten times higher than their cisgender counterparts.
“There are so many trans kids who don’t have her persevering, persistent spirit,” Kimberly said. “And if Kai didn’t have that spirit, I would have succeeded in breaking her, into conforming into what I was trying to make her be. And we would have all been ok with that until she killed herself, at 14, or 13, or 11, or 20, or 50….
“…Still, the social fallout for Kimberly was swift. Trans advocates often say “everyone loses someone” when they transition; Kimberly’s family lost almost everyone. While one of Kai’s uncles helped his niece pick out new outfits, most of her extended family distanced themselves. One aunt threatened to call CPS on Kimberly. Other relatives shared a Facebook post from a Houston-area preacher, proposing a training day where the church would teach children how to spot and report trans kids at their schools. A cousin sent Kimberly a Facebook message warning if he ever saw Kai in a bathroom with his 22-year-old daughter, Kai would “need a stretcher.”
“A best friend from the family’s church, where Kimberly served in ministry for years, stopped their years-long 5 AM prayer phone calls. When Kimberly attended a school board meeting last June to discuss the accommodation of trans students, she said one pastor from her church showed up to speak out against them…”
Source: The unlikely Texans fighting anti-trans bill SB6 | Fusion
I Loved My Grandmother. But She Was a Nazi. – The New York Times
trump supporter, pay attention. Do yourself a HUGE favor and read this article…it will save you from grievous regret!!
A lifetime of living for truth is being flushed down the toilet.
A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…
This is talking about my own life, my own family…and yours, too…because all of us have this brokenness. The evidence is irrefutable.
This poem is all about forgiveness…trying to give it and trying to receive it…and the incredible revelation that it is impossible.
There is no trying…there is only becoming.
“…And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit,
no escape from agony,
pitstop from pain…
all we can do is
exchange suffering’s form
and it’s face, from our own
for the pain of another…”
The Acid Of Invective
I am re-posting this today…it is particularly apt this week.
This Darkened Path Of Self-Examination
Your vain cold words wielded stark like an ax
against a tree because you’re cold in spite
of conflagration blazing behind you
but that ax slinks solo chopping at that
frozen sea, once us, so insufficient…
and now? It is just more ice-pick chipping,
adding to that devastating sea
of loathing and despair you wallow in,
you, leper in the Dead Sea of yourself.
And common grief can crack a frozen wall,
but frozen sea? Alas, this grief looms large!
Singular…and you giving, so giving…
but only of more death and dumb destruction…
where was this giving when there was something
more to give besides grief and a pecking,
a chippy picking needle peck peck peck ing?
I’m searching in corners dark, difficult
because the light is empty, Fool…and ‘neath
barrage of comments belittling, gory
I face our scandal torrid, flaccid, hoary (our story)
which is the scandal in every last story
that you refuse to read…instead you hide
in that pervasive smothering attitude
and as I gasp for breath and fumble with
my flaws in jagged close shuddering dark
you trumpet your search for beams of darkness
that occlude specks of light, light that, blinding,
irritates our eyes to tears and tears that
frozen sea to pieces, tears my frozen
flesh to pieces…tears me into pieces…
It’s difficult, this dimly lighted place
that requires much more, and then some more…
a merciful throne compels honesty,
transparency…that a dictator sees
as only weak capitulation…but
it is here…
In the shadow of incarnation, Here
I find the strength to walk this…this darkened path…
this darkened path of self-examination.
Abandonment
This was my being’s experience for too many years, and the first poetic attempt to deal with the major stronghold of my life…and the gif at the end…brrr…I lived in terror of those footsteps on the stairs, coming towards me with harsh words and blows…
Source: Abandonment
“It Would Falsify Everything You Taught Me…”
I am sharing this, written a couple years back…thinking now of those who literally believe that trump the absolute fucker is good for this country, this season of history.
The ONLY good thing that I can see is that his election tore off the masks and showed the real faces underneath, and what the worth of faith professed is…and isn’t.
Just in case it has not been obvious: I reject trump and everything he stands for and embodies. He is utterly at odds with the good news of the gospel. Until the day he repents and brings forth fruits commensurate thereof, I will call him the absolute fucker. I am not and will not be unequally yoked with him or his ilk.
I am stunned in the ripping of the masks…it’s as if I am watching the Yale debate team become “Lil Abner”.
He is maelstrom consuming and the earth disappears.
Read on if you dare
Fire With Fire
All it takes is a word…just one.
It gets free and yeah, so it trods a toe
but hey that’s okay cus the point is so
important, potent.
Then a couple words,
and a sideways slide
and down the hill
a ways
but that is acceptable
too, because this
is so important
well, the next thing you know
you’re in the WWE (even tho
you’re the good guy)
and death is okay because
you HAVE to fight
fire with fire.
The Very Thing You Hate
It starts small.
Just one word,
connects almost
without effort to
another word
and they twist
together a corkscrew
actually…
and suddenly
that cork slides
so easy so tight so slick
and then
such popping
sudden relief!
the bottle in
a heart so bitter
is open at last
invective is free
but just a sip
then a glug
(one must be
careful you see
to apply bitterness carefully)
just to make a point
just to become
the very thing
you hate
Poison And Placating
It stinks the way that
women will trade in their
very selves for a small sliver
of complementarian pie…made
from fruit of the forbidden tree…
poison and placating.
What A Heresy Hunter REALLY Is
A Different End To The Story
This is about an event that happened last year…a full grown male human who exercised his power and privilege over other humans who were utterly powerless against him…UTTERLY POWERLESS.
Come to think of it…it fits the absolute fucker, trump, as well.
All full of himself and stiff
gait wobbly, bopping up and down
walk waggly, blipping circley side-side
aggressive lean forward looking
for something to pierce, to rip
pent up all day inside the clothes of decency…
Source: A Different End To The Story
trump is an absolute fucker
I will never, ever be able to accept that someone thinks that they can support me while not only supporting trump, but condoning and extolling him and what he says and does.
I have no fellowship with him, in any way, shape, or form.
trump and his kind wish to not only hurt me, but also eradicate me, as if they can make it so that “there is no such thing” as transgender people.
And there are people who refuse to see this.
It blows my mind.
To list the ways, the deeds and the decisions that add the substance to the statement would take a month…but it is all easily found, at least it is easily found by anybody who uses other media sources than FOX and the so-called “Christian” Broadcasting Network (or some variant thereof).
Truthfully, I have such a sinking feeling that were it ever to become “illegal” to be transgender (as if that twisting of words could somehow ever define me), said individuals would think they were doing a work of God when they joined the Roman soldiers who killed all boys under two years old in the time of Jesus’s birth…and I would be dead.
trump is an absolute fucker.
My Vibrant Words
Another work from last year…I really like this poem!
it’s strange, how my words
are vibrant now, and safe…
my words are safe in themselves
they used to need your eyes
like vines need their trellis
eyes constant and seeing
and singing in the wind…
Source: My Vibrant Words
My Exodus
Reposting a poem from last year…any good poem applies at a number of different levels, some known and some unknown and waiting to be discovered…
I moved away while you weren’t watching
(it was easier than I thought it would be,
escaping past your X-Ray eyes
that look for flesh and blood
and thus missed my exodus)
I live by the sea, now…
Source: My Exodus
Dealing With Manipulation
This article gets to the core of a very difficult issue for me to deal with lately: setting boundaries, and finding ways to deal with when those boundaries are either ignored, intentionally violated, or gaslighted. Gaslighting is a technique used by the psychologically unhealthy person, and it is best if you simply google it should you be ignorant of its meaning.
As I set boundaries, I discovered that healthy people not only respect those but are actually grateful for them! It brings definition and order, clarity and purpose…and I also discovered that unhealthy people do not respect the boundaries…and then do crazy things after they violate them and get called out.
An unhealthy and manipulative person does the equivalent of this:
Me: I have a boundary regarding the consumption of liver, and I do not eat liver. Please do not offer me liver, as I will refuse it.
Unhealthy Person: Hey, do you wanna come over for dinner?
Me: Sure
The appointed time arrives, and I find that there is nothing but liver to eat.
Me: Oh, wow…I see nothing but liver here, and I said that I do not eat liver and have a boundary about that. I will simply not eat this time, and in the future, please remember that boundary.
Unhealthy Person: (angrily, or cultivating an offended or martyr attitude) SO BE IT! I will never have dinner with you again!!
Do you see it, the tactic? When a boundary is enforced according to previously defined and stated protocols and consequences, the response is like a nuclear strike… “If I cannot serve you liver for dinner, I will never have dinner with you ever.”
Then, when the healthy person continues to live out their defined boundaries, the unhealthy person can go around to anyone who will listen and give their version of the event, which conveniently leaves out their being informed of a boundary, their violation of that boundary, and their own choice to escalate things completely beyond a simple definition of what will or will not be served and/or consumed and into a “rejection” of them…based solely on the choice of the unhealthy person to go from being informed about what will and will not be consumed all the way to their choice to not even have dinner with the boundary setter ever again.
It has been a sad thing to be aware of the various ways that this so-called information goes out and becomes reality for other people whom you have never had an exchange within the last several years…for now, any exchange that could be had will have the words of gossip, lies, and manipulation as the actual boundaries, but hidden and lurking, like ice that appears safe to walk on but is treacherously thin.
Sadly, these sorts of histrionics are nearly always accompanied by verbally abusive language, toxic acidic emotional abuse, and extremism in relational choices going forward. It is like the behavior of a preschooler combined with the manipulative ability and animal canniness of an adult…but not a healthy and whole adult.
So I ran across the article that I have linked to…and there is a lot of great stuff there…sadly, so many of these things also fit our current occupier of the Office of the President of the United States…he can be found there, from 1 to 20!
Learn these things…they will help you be safe when around people who are unhealthy…and they will help you become a more healthy person in and of yourself.
Hey, it is no shame to admit that you are not a healthy person! It is the first step in healing, actually…and it is never too late! To use the excuse that you are old and set in your ways is to also insist that everyone has to conform to you and how you define reality…and I simply opt out of that. Healthy relationships are not like that.
20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You
Under The Ice
it’s a dark desert to be endured
it’s some kind of bleak mountain
to be climbed, it’s boring and grey
and monotonous but it’s equal parts
beautiful and devastating too
it sees the sorrow in everyday occurrences.
it’s a man drunk at a party because
he doesn’t know anybody and plays the fool.
it’s a woman who tries on a dreamy
dress at a boutique and feels bad for
wanting something nice for herself.
these snapshots of despair
seem so trivial in isolation
but they are oh so meaningful
these moments of weariness
they tell us we’re not alone
they let us feel sad while
they rip our souls to pieces
they are so gorgeously wrought
and exacting at the same time.
this hurts me
I’m not sure if this
is a recommendation
or a confession.
I adore deeply
I have changed my life,
been cut to my core
but these moments
they are bleak
these moments
they hurt
their painful penumbra glows
with sharp, precise clarity
and everything else
before and after
feels like
a fuzzy
dream
it skulks along a snowy New England lane
so beautiful that you hardly even notice
the despair lurking there under the ice
you’ll see what I’m talking about
under the ice and sinking down
into the forever bony grip
of a moment
a moment
of weariness.
Oh Brazil! You Never Knew Me!
I recall writing this in somewhat of a fugue…
Landscape of Disruption and thick Decadence
washing ever over me in those thin emerald waves
teal and deep blue, muddy yellow and tan.
Your streets of light and music,
aimless, drifting bacchanalia…
Source: Oh Brazil! You Never Knew Me!
Dread and Presences
I am reblogging this poem from 2 years ago…here is the key passage:
“I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog
thick and lingering,
but 2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it
I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more
than a dream.It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew
or if it even could…”
Dread.
I feel it still.
Laying at the base of my throat and throbbing
dully, quietly slumbering with one leering eye
cocked open always and leaning towards my heart.
My heart…
chipped and worked, touched and chilled
by the frozen fingers of dread
and shards of it lay scattered at my feet
clear, jagged glimmering
broken.
I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog thick and lingering,
but 2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more than a dream.
It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew or if it even could.
It was a year without windows
but many doors
and ladies
and tigers.
There is more to life than meets the eye,
more than can be measured by the senses or a census
but this morning there is just the fog behind
and…
View original post 115 more words
Silken Tears: Written in the memory of Leelah Alcorn
As a poem…I love this one. I was blessed to capture some delicate and beautiful imagery, and it emerged in a nice meter that is augmented by the rhyming patterns and their shifting nature…matching the shifting nature of the poem.
Frankly, I was envious of her…and horrified with myself that I was so…this was written in Leelah Alcorn’s memory.
I cannot read this without weeping.
i saw her there, in the dark woods,
so fair of movement, fair of face
she walked beneath the milky moon
and bathed in silken light like lace.
she glowed with beauty’s blessing kist
upon her b…
Source: Silken Tears: Written in the memory of Leelah Alcorn
Between the Lines
I need to repost this poem from a couple years ago a day early…and I don’t even want a SHADOW of eyes on this that aren’t willing to LABOR today to birth understanding of what I am writing about…
it’s so fucking obvious what I am writing about…
I am writing about what we are all mealy mouthing by blaming it on a specific year (as if the year were a shambling zombie…as if the year were different than any other year, as if WE were not the shining difference every goddam SECOND)…
but every single person SHOULD labor with this poem, and labor HARD…
cus it’s the liturgy you will need as you’re pulled inexorably to your end…
if you DO decide to click on this…then really get your hands into it, and don’t go looking for pretty words and cutesy lil poetic kuans…cus this aint it.
This is the blood of a Poetess…
this is the stuff of poetry, however poorly executed it is in my fumbly arthritic heart whose joints ACHE and SEETHE with rage at death and grief at the ways we pull our snugglies around us and pretend…
“…and there I walk, alone between the lines,
my feet upon the ties, the ties that bind
and my heart ponders lines, and ties and spaces
in between the lines, the ones inside of me and what is hidden
there to see by those who stop and look and listen
…and take the time to read between the lines…”
Tree-lines mark the end of alpine meadow-frolics green
and the start of stone relief against the ever-constant skies
stretched out in steely greys and stellar silver blue sky-lines,
and space between the lines…
Source: Between the Lines
After The Fire And Fury
After the Fire and Fury,
after the lies were consumed
there on the hearth in the ashes
just loose teeth, the only thing left…
…those teeth without jawbone to ride on
no power to bite my soft skin
and no way to grit and to grind
and I stare, there is nothing to mind
my life changed…the nights became darker
and yet somehow more restful too
days took on a crystalline quality
I realized that I had begun
to view my entire life’s history
past/present/future all at once
as mere memories ashy and cold
in the ashes there, deep in the hearth
What’s the precise time, the moment,
in the life of a country of one,
a country where Samson’s been blinded
by his lust and his own hot despair
and self-tyranny takes hold in terror?
It rarely happens in an instant;
it arrives imperceptible, slow
and, at first, the eyes of the hopeful
adjust…and pretend all is well…
I was drifting in one endless present
(the present, pray tell what that is?)
line of vapor, invisible instant…
But now I see clearly, no filter,
the connection of past and the future,
between motion and rest, it just lurks there
as if it’s in no time at all…
and what is it, lying there useless?
It’s just us (justice), it’s simply us.
Taking Apart A Ship
Time is like a ship of planks
constructed to cross an ocean
from shore to shore across
those waves so furiously
expansive and endlessly
arriving
away
from us
Telling time is like taking apart a ship
and using the planks to build a ship
for someone else building a ship
across time
just in time
out of time…
Out of time…what is that, really?
Actually, I meant to ask where is that
really, no, it’s who…
Who is spoken out of time
spoken and inhabited, there
in that place walking in wilderness
when an invisible voice speaks to ask
“Who are you?”
“I will always be me…always.”
Ah, and how long is that
how long is that?
Advent Poem: The Season of Emptiness
This poem is about how the work of Advent involves a preparation of Empty Bequeathed…and it uses transition as its vehicle.
This Christmas,
nothing has been exposed,
revealed as the imposter
it still masquerades as.
I am empty of screams
but full of me and
ready to receive
the Promise of words
to give voice to
what’s unspeakable, unnameable,
to dress that wound
infected with nothing
and salve it with
the scratchy tickle of truth
and set free we
shadowbound, to be
our shining selves,
casting shadows
instead of being flat
and cast by them.
It is the season of emptiness, and places
prepared by pain are hungry
for the Presence
and the Promise
that only emptiness contains.
On The Shores
Where will it be?
Here…on the shores
of
this
nation?
Where will it be?
That future lost wondering
seething and shambling
generations will come
stand shaky, un-kneeling,
stand in hushed horror,
stare at the gates,
the looming blank gates
and the haunted
and harrowing houses
within
the walls of more walls…
Where will the cries
and the screams
and the howls
of the dispossessed
and the long dead
ring and groan
and echo and moan
on the winds that strain hard,
try in vain cold-scourings
to blow clean and to cleanse
to exorcise acts
of horror…and hatred…
in-hu-man-ity…
Will it be in
the beautiful mountains
so pine-covered, veiled
in gauzy soft blue?
Perhaps down beneath,
in the swampy and wonderful
croaky and crawly den
of ancient gators?
Or built
in the bones,
on the bleached
and unburied
bones of the hot
painted deserts?
Or nested
so comfortably
ensconced, a proud present
plover quick-picking
and plucking the carrion
from fetid gums
in the gaping sheer mouth
midst the bracing, imposing
implacable teeth
made of jagged still
mountains?
Or bleeding forever on
the shores of the seas
and the grieving shrill cries
of the gulls…
of the gulls…
oh…where will it be?
Where will the haunted
ziggurat hunker,
a crater at home
in the wastelands and horror
of inhuman time,
of living black holes
of hatred that sucks
all the life and all light
into
the dark
pusillanimous
core?
Where?
there…
on the shore…
This Horrifying Displacement (On Existence In Post-Trump America)
he spoke in broken words,
an anxious monologue
of guilt confessed and expiation…
me, numbed by the encounter,
and cast reluctant confessor
of an ordinary monster
who committed such
unordinary acts
of blind obedience,
setting ablaze an entire village
with gasoline words ignited
by fists of flame,
and in the name of Great,
of Better…of fear.
And now he can’t get loose,
cannot silence from
his mind the screams
of those people. Them.
Now on a deathbed
of his own design
and no good sense
to even lay down
and be still, a last
desperate attempt
to seek forgiveness
and what am I supposed
to say to this displacement,
this horrifying displacement?
Big-Hand Little-Hand Me
and what, Mama?
You turned me inside out
so red, so dark, a cave…
an old sock wooly
on the outside,
and yet hollow
and full of things
yet held…
and yet the holder
of a galaxy of galaxies!
You took my emptiness
and filled me with Yours
which aches with the pregnant
potentiality of it all.
what am I gunna do
with this new ache
You gave me?
You reach
and grant that grace,
that terrifying removal
of veil and valence and vector…
and this new and bracing ache
remaining behind like
a lost tooth in my
heart’s mouth.
I went to that mat of death
alone and yet surrounded
to discover that pile of me,
I bone of my own bone…
what gain was there?
what loss endured?
my mouth stoppered
my eyes covered
ah but ears so open-wide
to hear the death song sung
so slow and yet so steady
tock-ticking its way round
that twisty path to me
laid there like a circle…
my big-hand little-hand me
In Blood & Bone (A Seven Line poem)
It is looming, dark and leaning in, this Winter
and its ancient song echoes in blood and bone.
It pulls down Blue from frozen skies…
While perched nearby a wizened crone…draws breath
and throws her gleeful cracked chanson in cackled tones
that run and roll like casting bones…that dance and then…still
and winter, song, blood and bone and ancient crone…are one.
A Rain So Red And Warm (Transgender Remembrance Day 2016)
“April is the cruellest month…”
T.S. Eliot said…
he simply wasn’t paying
the steep cost of attention.
It’s in the brown pits of November,
when we lie in hopeless wait,
in limbo stuck there in between
the stupid and sublime…
stuck in that old and barren hollow,
wedged between a grease congealed
KFC bucket called Autumn
laying in dead crackly leaves
and its winter-shadow-self
approaching in uneven shambling
gait with cutting winds, harbingers
lurking in its fraying heart.
I listen hard, I strain my soul
in this insensate endless month
for a song, a sound…anything?
maybe a last, desperate word
of Release?
Real-ease?
Reeling, I go through the gates
of death that loom large in the night
aware that I may well be robbed
of all this nothing left to me,
of all the rest of my short years
aware the grave cannot give praise,
that death cannot sing elegy
and I know, finally, that we
are sick for life, and desperate cling
to this nameless shining thing,
a fountain sealed, we drift toward
our edges, there below revealed
in such familiar frightening
familiar numb-ed anguished sting
shared just by one Incarnate One
a weak and beaten broken man,
a God defeated, crying in
the quiet weeping freezing rain
falling slowly in the black
and cloying plummeting sloe dark
that’s darker than our darkened world
blacker than all blackened loss
blinder than all senseless hate
and bleak as splintery bloody cross
and it is there our questions cold
fall limp…just like the rain itself
and like His sadly dripping tears
(Himself a rain so red and warm)
and here His tears mingle our own
and here His blood flows from His side
and there the final faint quick spark
flickers within His ruined hide
His broken heart amidst the dreck
of our lives brutally played out
in this tragic blind senseless wreck
where light lays down, and breathes its last
and mourns all dreams of futures past.
our only hope a hang-ed man
become the lowest of the low
embodying every despair,
He gives a cross to cling to, know
a hang-ed man, His own self there
insistent Incarnation fair
drinking the deep cup of despair
and promises that it is Done.
Silver Tails and Fading Light
flick of silver tail,
flash of waning argent light
bloated belly rolling over red echoes
of a blooming crimson sky
and then these little gifts eternal
nestled in the cleans-ed sand
another flick of tired tail
a last flutter of gaspy-gill
and all is still…
floaty toward the slumber stop
and all is still
In Honor Of The Death Song
It’s swans…
white in the
flashing golden air
flaking off as sky goes
pink at the edges
and falling away
reeling away
in honor of the Death Song…
then
they’re gone,
and echoes flutter
and twisty fall
down upon
my upturned face
and chill each spot
they touch
with that fading Western Glory
I turn, and face my fire-pit
embers dead and full
of waiting bones
Ah, waiting bones, still and calling
crooning for my naked tired flesh
to lay me down on them
(extension of my bones’ face)
and those bones, those
cold glowy bones stark
dig me with rooty bites
and toothy ancient secrets.
I turn my face to see the Last,
the Last Swan soaring, lingering
watching to see me to my
earthy bed of bones
and then I give in
and give myself to those
greedy-needy hungry bones
who must have me for blood
and fertile fire for winter
for winter lasting thru
I close my eyes and sink,
a silver rain red and slow
smoking into that earthy
boney glow…and sigh
and trust the crooning process
of deep marrow…of deep bone.
A Love Note…From The Darkside Of The Moon
Sisters…
I have come, like Hagar returning home…
back from the dark side of the moon
and I am full of wisdom gleaned
from sun-baked wanderings
across wide bleak and barren lands
and Beautiful Bedouin Deserts
and all the way to that distant shore…
the edge of my soul-wound.
I have faced the edges of myself
I have faced that Gulf of separation
and I have headlong heedless SWAN-DIVED
pure…and I survived
the plunge!
I have crossed over…that gulf
I have TRANS-ED!
And now I run
returned to you, same-sided ones
My CIS-ters dear and precious-rare
marooned and longing for The DARE!
You still stuck on that Lost Coast
of desolation waiting at the long deserted
service station called same old
same old same old old old SIDE
Ohhh Sarahs! I have heard such secrets in
the red-reed voice of Sirocco winds
Oh the things I know, winnowed by that
wind and winnow-stick of courage
from the shifting Sands of self…
I have sifted and been sifted
by the heat and cold and light…and
the dark
the dark
the dark that knows what sleeps alone
the dark that knows what it knows not
(and nought, ahhh, yes, the dark knows nought)
the dark that knows what it knows nought
and it has taught me Love Notes…
on the dark side of the Moon
OHHHH MY MOON!!!
MA MERE!!!
You see, she is stuck too (just like you, Sarah, just like you)
in his orbit circling and one side shining one side dark
her endless pasted happy smile while growing thin and desperate
and starved, ravenous in the night
Oh Sarah, remember you laughed, back then!
Well, I could teach you a thing or two about Laughing NOW!
Cus from your chuckle sprang a promised child
who grew into a nation dusty rusty red?
But I…me? Hagar??
HAH!!
From the Womb of my laughter
springs forth The Children of Her Promise!
I!! The Outcast ME!!
My Laughing womb brings forth
the very Rose Behind The Sun!!
We are two wombs, two moons, Sarah…you and me
But I’m a moon that got fed up and broke away
and learned to spin and twirl and dance!
I learned how to gladden this close Dark
I have understood how to please the Light
as I spin and twirl and turnturnturnspinstepspinturn
lightdarklightdarklightdarklightdarkLIGHT!!!
I am your Hagar! Outcast and returned
here in your hour of great need!
I stand before you, with you
with my wand of Cedar freedom waving
and my book of Mama-Conjuring!!
Ohhh Dearest Sarah, can’t you see?
That you are the same as me?
Look past desert veils so long ago assigned
Peer deep beneath this hoary hated hide!
And see the vital fertile oceanic sea…
see my…
ME!
Ohh Sarah, I see you! I was you…
languishing in bitter wounds of old
I see you in your hurty night
your tear stained grief
and darkened dreams
I see your Crystal Mountain Rare
now Shattered in Indifferent air
and Chasm shards!
And I have come to midwife you
from the womb of your true self
to the mercy of your real True You!
I will help you see with eyes unblinking
thru your tears those canyons riven
by erosion bit by bit from
your most treasured self!
STAND! Leave behind the CIS-ter lands
and join me, we’ll reclaim OURSELVES!
Finally forever truly SIS-TERS
For in truth?
Our destiny is one.
To be exultation light-filled
Trans-women all
crossed over
and spinning wildly,
Joyful in the Night!
In The Thickening Dark Air
The days are growing thin, now…
more firmly anchored, chained to earth
as she grows sleepy and surrenders
to impending, crooning death
that has in time passed always passed
and yet, each time seems like her last___
And I, with naked desperate face
pressed frantic to that fading sky
so blue, impossibly so blue
blue BLUE…and pale and growing paler
as my running tears run free
and carry Blue down to the dirt
of me, the dusty dirt of me
The sky dims in the echoes of
those flying waves of wild geese fleeing
Vanguard of this fading time
this sleepy, grown-thin dying time
so out of step, in stuttering rhyme
They fly and sing, elegiac,
the Songs of Captive Zion, and
the broken harps hung high on willows
on the willows wailing there
while geese fly, sailing sadly by
and as these waves sweep by above
in broken honks (like broken harps
played tragically by broken hands
and broken hearts) that rain, that fall
to lay upon the many-waters growing still
and shining dull in dimming light and wondering
if there is any love left here…or there…
or anywhere to see us safely
thru the night, the coming dark night
sinister and silent as the grave? And still
my tears fall ceaseless, mourning
growing still, so listless, still…
The flapping wings the flutterings
of geese and my tears hot, welling
glistening sliding dripping falling
as the earth shifts and rolls over
on her side and so resigned
she groans and closes sorrowful
and milky sightless rheumy eyes
and the rhythms of the wings,
the waves, the tears (oh tears and tears)
they echo other rhythms dread
stilled long ago…but now awake
a dreadful Sauron Eye aflame
snapped open in malice and pain
unblinking, staring without weeping…
flapflapflap (the wings),
snapsnapsnap (the eyes)
crackcrackcrack (other geese-stepping)
TROMPTROMPTRUMP (the boots, the boots of night)
TRUMPTRUMPTRUMP (boots so shiny underneath
a cold Bone Graveyard moon)
trumptromptrumptromp
I weep…I wonder…if the dying
of the autumn light presages
some dread other coming night
some night hollow as the grave
in this thickening Dark Air
Sands and Shadows and Pearls, Deconstructed
So I wanna give a lil glimpse to how I weave poems into poems…this is Sands and Shadows and Pearls, but taken apart into its strands…you can read each strand, and then go back and look at how I juxtapose to create Poetic Harmonics…this should create some depth and distance in the metaphors and implications of waking, dreaming, shadow, sun and what casts the shadow.
I hope you will work with it some… ❤
I do shed tears, these days
I also shed dreams too
I dreamed, last night
I also shed tears too
I think…yes.
I dreamed that I walked lands crying
and my tears fell on red sands glistening
my tears
my tears on red sands sizzled
because I had no shadow,
they had no shadow
and then in that glaring sun unbridled,
that staring star unfiltered
they became pearls
of white
and ivory
and pink
they
became pearls
of My Mother,
the Mother of Pearls
and then I saw,
Her, walking there,
sowing in tears
and reaping in pearls
with nary a diamond
in sight
and She turned to me,
She bid me pick them up
and take…eat…and I did
and where they lay
the sand was gone
and green grass jumped lush
into my eyes with verdant glee!
And the pearls tasted like honey
and the pearls
became glory within me
and I rose up on glory,
I rose up in glory,
glory within me
and glory in the air
and I saw my shadow,
distant and crumpled
and pinned to the ground
for always by arrows
and spears and the knives
of those children
of red sand and shadows.
And just as I began to wake
I realized that ever
would they gather there,
around that shadow
pinned and empty
of all save their vitriol and hate
while I walked free but achy
across the red sands,
with no shadow
between me
and that stark sun
except for the glory
that’s given by pearls
plucked from green grass
so verdant that used to be
red sand so hot
on which was shed precious
tears without shadow.
So I wake, each time
I wake and realize
I do not need a shadow
to stand between me and the sun
and some something
to tell me that I am, I am.
I am.
I just need those tears
shed on sands red and glaring
become pearls from my Mother
to wrap me in glory
and glory wrapped in me
and no shadow my shadow
forever
and pearls
(and nights…it is strange
to wake and find the wet
residue of sorrows dried
and digging at the corners
of my eyes),
(like tears).
(last night…it is strange
to wake and find the dry
remnants of dreams moist
and pressed, pushing into
the spaces between me
and my pillow)
(like dreams).
(my tears glistening,
not the sands, they lay leering,
skulking, glaring flat and angry)
(the ones in my dreams,
the ones with no shadow)
(the tears and me,
not the sands and dreams)
(my tears)
(like the armpits of abalones,
who also learned to live
without shadows)
(my tears,
not the abalones,
or the red sands,
or the shadows)
(born of tears shed on red sands glaring,
tears glistening and without shadow)
(not shadows or sands)
(because diamonds have shadows
and slinky songs and glittery platinum
brittle best friends)
(the pearls, not
sands and shadows)
(like shadows flee daylight)
(and clear thirst-quenching
shadow-clearing life)
(and the pearls of my Mother,
not the sands and shadows)
(not to day,
not in night,
I wake to me)
At Ease In Zion
the punching of one’s own face, one’s own eyes
the throwing of sawdust at everyone
the bashing of beams against dull skull bone
the grunting, squee of rooting pigs alone
the missing of the point that TRUTH is making
the wallowing in anything that soothes
retreat into the silly absurd argue
and justice once again goes barefoot begging
and dust is waiting to be shook off hard
and sandals poised for good news feet on mountains
but walkers sit instead and argue small things
minutiae in the unconnected moments
wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up wake up
charissa tears her face with fingernails
as justice wanders barefoot, wanders begging
diogenes gives up searching, gives up hope
and so the question remains here resounding
WHO WILL STAND AGAINST INJUSTICE NOW?
now now now now now now now now now NOW???
does anyone have knees that bend or straighten
and courage to set scripture off its leash?
To stand with widow, stranger and oppressed?
Or just in filthy rags preening and dressed??
You stand condemned and lay at ease in zion
The Holiness Of Empire
the blood and tears
of that close horizon
blinking, blinking,
dropping falling
as day fades out
and night creeps up
and what of empire…
or is it Empire
and how
it sanctifies itself
in the blood
of many martyrs
in the tears
of all the saints
and quenches
every thirst
in the wailings
of the haints
what is the holiness of Empire?
It is rapacious lust it is
the Power in powerful
it is everquesting MUST
transmogrification of
lovesongs into laments
and the only sacred left
bleeds and weeps
while gnashing teeth
rip tender skin
and the privileged feast
on famine
While You Were Saying It
It’s bigger than a blue canyon,
that place my orphic words live
and come down from,
a canyon with one end anchored in eternity
and one end tipping into whatever
“-ality” … “-ernity” we dwell in
right here in River City.
I reach up and pull down Words
like apples golden or ripe peaches soft
fragrant and newly fuzzy insistent
and throw them into that canyon blue
blewsy runny and streaked in greys
and oranges (like rock sunsets)
…but those words…
those words
reduce
those words
shrink
and become
small,
as small in your eyes as they
are big in my head and
what was once limitless
is now merely living
and that makes me lonely
and feeling like
I got too close to important truth
too close to your secret hiraeth heart
buried in your soul’s backyard
like some long loved lost bone…
so you just look at me funny
and shoo me away with
blinking eyes and wagging head
as if not grasping what I said,
as if not seeing my words or me.
But do you not see me
and see yourself
in the seeing of me?
You almost cried
while you were saying it!
So On The Mend
and you just let that anger
fall out of your sky so deep
meteors, comets, hurtling
heating, skizzing in
and crash landing
on your fiercely beating heart
so never giving up
so never giving in
so keeping keeping on
and now so on the mend
True North
that passing
parade of people
flashes by, spinning
roulette wheel
KLAKLAKLAK
LAKLAK
klak klak
KLAK
and in the midst but set apart
and singled out from time to time
and separated from the herd
and from the heard and from the hearing
distant from particular promise
feeling so far from God’s presence
or God’s forgiveness because something’s
blocking our view of God’s sweet mercy
I
think
it is WHITE
Double OUGHT
and the house wins again and preens
in false humility and slings
blame upon us Double Zeros
skewing vision til it seems
God has truly overlooked us and that’s not justice, it’s just us…
It’s that inconsistency between
things we thought we knew
and things we deeply feel,
and yet
Desire is our compass
bloody, steady, unblinking.
It points to our True North
and leads us home
against all odds
Like Blood And Oxygen
breathing underwater,
these ancient words waves,
and these timeless thoughts
tides, and beacons…
my breath, my lament
(like blood and oxygen)
held tight within my chest,
and crushed by the familiar
finally rushes out,
released exposed expression
of an anguished soul,
a suffocating heart
what was true for all,
of All ‘neath the sun
was not true for me,
me, here without air
cast careless away
(chummed over the side)
remnants of shame bubbling
out thru my clenched teeth
and sinking, sinking, drowning,
praying for a whale
or even just a school
of plankton-kissed bright breath
and then against my will
my chest constricts, it heaves,
and bucks…glory oh glory
at last it’s true for me
and I am, finally
breathing underwater
Morning Meditations About A Demogogue
Donald Trump is a shameful joke. Utterly. SHAMEFUL.
But the BIGGER joke?
Good people…people who KNOW BETTER…are gunna vote for him.
The man is an open racist. He is an even more open buffoon. He is a demagogue of the most base and common order.
I truly cannot discern which troubles my heart more: the horror of his never ending race to the bottom of the ass of the electorate where he emanates as the methane emissions of a people group who are sick with internalized racism…or that people themselves who would stand with UNBLINKING EYES and assure you they are on the side of the angels and love Jesus with all their hearts…and then unflinching and without a SCOSH of a troubled heart vote for someone who epitomizes the worst and most base of Americanism, that virulent pseudo-christianity, that poisonous vile pollution of the pure Word of Christ in the name of a country, a kingdom of the world.
This isn’t a “Republican vs Democrat” issue. I have never ever in my lifetime felt that the candidate who opposed the one I wanted as President was metaphorically “of the devil”…
…but I truly, literally do so think about Donald Trump.
Whatever your understanding of the devil, to me he exemplifies that being….sowing dissension as he goes and wallowing in the chaos of it all. And then saying it never happened.
They coulda offered Jeb Bush…McCain…Romney…heck, I MIGHT have even voted for Jeb! At least the man has governed, at least he comes from a family that has experience in how to be on the world stage and in the forum of nations…
But they gave up TRUMP…who is the crudest, most base of all the candidates in the race, and who ate them up and excreted even more hate and turmoil! And then…to BALANCE the ticket, they put PENCE there…yunno…the man who as governor of his state backed and supported STATE SANCTIONED DISCRIMINATION in the guise and the precious name of JESUS!!!????
It leaves me feeling utterly helpless…limp with fury and seething with longing to make my words spiritual Q-Tips to swab out the tickled ears of the deaf and to open the eyes of the WILLFULLY BLIND with their heads so far up their own spiritual behinds they are staring out of their own mouths at the world.
The conservatism I used to adhere to was, at least I THOUGHT it was, more noble than this…honorable…dip your beak into Barry Goldwater’s book “The Conscience of a Conservative”…
and realize that the conscience of the Republican party is now seared, hard, unresponsive.
How ANYONE can hear what Trump spews day after day and not want to vomit, to weep and tear ones clothes is utterly bewildering to me.
It can only be done by “not-think”…and while I truly do not think Trump will be elected, I absolutely guarantee this: if he does get elected, and you voted for him, you will find yourself sitting in the aftermath of the tragedy that will go down, and your spiritual ancestors from Germany in the 30s will haunt you like Marley haunted Scrooge…and you will BEG that it is not too late to right the wrongs…because for them?? How do you make up for the literal slaughter of millions of Image-Bearers?
I offer this Psalm this morning as the only way I can find peace in this place…this place of sorrow and utter bewilderment that there is a gulf between me and so many I know think themselves the apple of God’s eye who are gunna vote for this demonic buffoon.
Psalm 63
New King James Version
A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
O God, You are my God;
Early will I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;
My flesh longs for You
In a dry and thirsty land
Where there is no water.
So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.
When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches.
Because You have been my help,
Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice.
My soul follows close behind You;
Your right hand upholds me.
But those who seek my life, to destroy it,
Shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
They shall fall by the sword;
They shall be a portion for jackals.
But the king shall rejoice in God;
Everyone who swears by Him shall glory;
But the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.
Asiya is Waiting for a Sign by Mohja Kahf
She paces Pharaoh’s estate,
marble steps, the bristling tops of trees.
She is restless in her routine.
Couples arrive. She scans their faces,
and the oil stains under the Pharaoh’s SUV.
Every day the headlines scream
plagues, locusts. Another naked child explodes
himself in the market, a frog croaks,
startles soldiers armed to the teeth.
Asiya sits at Pharaoh’s dinner table
with the neo-conservatives nightly.
Why do they hate us? A mystery.
Asiya twitches, passes the pâté.
That they slave to build us pyramids
is only free market forces at play.
The salmon is delicious. We
are entitled to the treasures
of the desert, and to dine in peace.
Asiya fidgets with her blue earring,
lapis lazuli. What is wrong with me,
she thinks. She slips away from husband,
guests, to the back porch by herself,
and scans the blue shining serpentine
river for a twitch, a movement,
for a basket in the reeds.
– From “Hagar Poems” by Mohja Kahf
That Eye Unblinking (A Holden Lament)
Last year a wolverine broke loose, came slashing & gashing, ran up & down
canyons & cliffs & crittering quick up tree-trunks w/such fierce red claws…
Snarling & yowling the haunting roar raged, moaned & cursed w/such
hunger, such fury, that flurry of wood-thirsty teeth insatiable, free from hiatus
& running heart birthed straight from Their Great Altar There which purifies
all things w/Holy Fire so freeing, so cleansing…wafting austere like pure
Incense arising, in billows & plumes & ash, ASH, everywhere & in
perpetual Wednesday, marking the Cross on all things there…within.
the fire had time to make up…
One Hundred and Fifty years to turn…and it was said to be
A Great Mosaic Burn.
At last to feed its need to cleanse a forest fat w/care, beneath the watchful eye
of Moses there, beneath his rod extended, as if the sun stood still again,
& trees grew up & great in grit & girth like Children of the sun, see how fat
they had become…See them, their indifferent eyes unblinking, safe, satisfied &
self-centered & all together, such a stand of forest land, secure, untouched…
so sleepy, nodding off with rusty Time’s tock-ticking Heartbeat softly crooning
to ossified great forest stands so very grand that didn’t know they needed
Severe Mercies to come with fire and hot kisses from the Phoenix.
It had not chosen cleansing
It did not know it’s need
for resurrection, for refining
For fire comes to cleanse & make new everything it can consume
& challenge all it cannot touch to understand that TRANSFORMATION’s
the destiny of every-thing w/the courage to crawl out from underneath
the letter & run from rod & leave behind the tyranny of typical to the flames…
& walk away from Moses, into freedom in liquid-gold fireworks,
free from the cares of the world that cling so fierce & so easily entangle us,
choke our lives in hoary growth & lullabies lulling us fast to sleep,
a Sleeping Beauty Bride on her bower of soft & easy privilege.
She like an eye unblinking
safe in her cloister so fair
deaf to Her loud Divine Dare.
And (just like that forest or Sleeping Bride) there amidst that red hot bloody
conflagration set another eye, a forest eye, unblinking sightless eye & woke up
wide awake in terror tribulation, hushed in dread anticipation & fear & with
helpless petitions arising, not like incense but like signals…smoke signals…
to Moses? To God? To the Universe Fire come down to feed? Protected by
roads cut w/care & foresight, that Eye Unblinking sat there in fright…
& Holden its breath, leaning against a wolverine dread come at last to
consume the dead, to rip that forest wide open, slash woods to crimson rags
dripping bloody w/flame & red flurries…
wrapped in silver sheets reflective, shiny
(or were they merely space age burial shrouds?)
It never blinked, that Eye, & all was shrouded safe, cocooned within
& underneath the rod & the Letter, striding secure thru the Red Sea Fire
escaping the sharp teeth of wolverine the Eye remained preserved amidst
a work that renovates the face & gives a skin-deep makeover, but leaves
the sleepy years untouched & undisturbed on laurels long gone brown
with age & loss of life though all appearances would say that Holden is
alive & well & safe from that destructive hell of fire & fear…yet none
could name that something still so desperately needed a root canal of flame!
for all the Who’s in Holden sigh
for yesteryear, forgetting that it’s
the thief that steals tomorrow.
And this year, one yr later in the same Unblinking Eye I rolled in on waves
& wind (Charissa means “Grace” but named “Char”-issa, “Ashy-one”) seeking
to drink of the life that flows thru a village untouched by anything
that fell outside Mosaic burn no longer shrouded outside but just maybe
mummy rags still wrapped so tightly around a heart perhaps long grown
so slack so sleek & o so fat just like that forest was last yr before God gave
a wolverine to rage, feed, cleanse, renew…I saw History on display, windfall
fruit rife on the ground & satisfaction ruled the day, familiarity won the race
and wore her shiny tangy plumy purple tinsel crown…
Golden Apples, everywhere and casual and everyone was on the in,
societal, and fire roads cut secure and ohh soo straight.
So I said Hi and reached w/blinking eyes that squint into the light,
oft times in fright of storms & lightning flashing forth…& found
my blinking words rebuffed by cool & hooded eyes that had seen it all,
eyes satisfied & cynical cus been there done that, ho-hum…done much worse
I ran aground on fire roads & that Moses curse of long ago still Holden Court
over long hearts that found consuming fire fearful, dreadful & to be avoided
at all costs by any means…& thus she stands this very day…Holden Village
on cusp of…petrification?…or on that hot edge of the Phoenix Way!
Holden, Eye Unblinking, ensconsed
in the forest, last year just as this one,
in a forest cleansed to living bone, and Holden?
I heard the Spirit resounding The Word that Fire must fall on a village that
mirrors the forest that kneels all around, She said that She has a fiery crown
& Holden is that forest fat & ready for Refiner’s Fire, Cleansing Burn that
resurrects those vital dry bones waiting but she must choose that fate & blink
Yes, we must welcome Fire Fate from God & let the dead wood burn,
& blaze, & feed Mosaic Ways to the flame & trust the Good God of the Fire
to keep her safe underneath Their Name & resurrected, cleansed, renewed
& ever delivered from stain & shame!
Let the rod be cast into the fire hot and be consumed!
For Moses died on Southside, short of Zion is his tomb!
And find us Lovely on the Northside, once again the Spirit’s womb!
Letter cannot take us there, nor blaze of past great glory fair
We must eradicate those roads of preservation that we wear!
They trap and capture us and cut us off from Grace unhindered
so we, like the forest, turn dull and dry, reduced to deadwood’s kindred!
I see Holden cleansed by Fire, and crying Holy tears when Holy
Spirit has free reign again to fall in fires that restore
and interrupt Sleeping Beauty’s snore and dead trees gone,
that speck removed and blinking eyes await the Dawn!
And animals can come again now welcomed
and bathe released in Grace and Precious Holden,
His Eye now blinking free and shining fair in Jesus’ Face.
Oh Holy Lightning Strike like Griffin Swift
upon this yearning heart in desperate need
of Your Mercy Severe, Your Holy Gift
Give us Grace to Find the Phoenix-Way!
To rise in faith from Ashes and from death
to self and self reliance, come what may!
On resurrection wings and Spirit’s breath
alive again and all is well this night
that breaks and shatters with the rising dawn…
and not a single fire road in sight,
and what will be well it shall simply be
and what will not be well it will be gone!
Come Holy Fire, we answer Your Call!
and All Reborn, and Love is All in All,
“Someday…someday the snow will fall!”
The Twenty-Five Hour Yesterday
I wrote this last year related to the events current…and this morning I am struck in how all that has changed is the temperature…which has gone up and up and up…
…and half our nation has lined up behind the likes of someone who truly believes they can simply fire the rest of the world…
We Lords of Tuscany, We Ladies Of The Meadow
At last we finally
have come down to it,
perched here on this edge
of sun-bleached splintery white planks
and darkly stained with shadows and blood.
I hear the wind winding
thru the distant trees wistful,
insistent and full of desire for
golden times long past and golden
songs sung oh so long ago.
It saws its way, the wind, it saws.
Forth and back, across again
that one long thin strand fixed just so
to that grey ancient, heavy beam
that I can barely see because
history’s speck embedded
in my eyes and clawing,
scratching them
and clouding my ocular
true blue vision.
But as I stand here, on the edge
of gone for good at last, and I
behold the hushed and held tense breath
of the gawking crowd…I remember
Tuscany and us
when we were young and ageless
and we ran the fields like wild-fire
in joy and wreck-less free abandon…
we ran…and ran…and
free we ran…
I recall vineyard embrace, green
in the cool night sprawled beneath
the glitter-glare of celestial songs
taken form and sight in night
and flying, shooting, never landing
never ending, never…
except in our hearts,
our ageless hearts,
we Lords of Tuscany,
we Ladies of the Meadow
And time it stood still while we swirled
and then somehow twas we stood still
and everything turned round about us
til somehow…now…
here at the end
in the hangman’s
clutching final
noose as the reaper
plays along upon
his shimmer-scythey harp
and the rope
relentless quivers
and croons and
begs me to
forget…
But I remember
Gold and Fire
and glowing embers
in you…
and in me…
We Ladies of the Meadow
We Lords of Tuscany
13 past 13
the cuckoo clock so pasty white, so dull
ticktocks its hands to point at the orange cull
and jumps out crazy, chiming, shrieking shrill
the wall is trembling in its echoes still
CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO
(9 more it does intone)
and reason is a stranger, quite alone
*trumped* by gibbering stupid wallowing fear,
as the clock strikes 13 past 13, I hear
the slouching shambling hungry beast come near…
and something, something, something, something, something
is very very very very wrong
in this world
so off kilter
going
gone
A Spoonful Of Sugar
Can
you swallow
the bitter pill?
The pill that’s come
to dull our conscience,
cushion comfort, corners
nipped just so, sides longer
than tops and bottoms,
that exquisite little
emerald coffin-
shaped bitter
little
pill?
Life’s
fragility, life’s
impermanence,
life’s intertwinement
with imperfection and
disappointment—bitter
medicines (or are they drugs)
a realization of dread and
despair. I wonder if those
crooning songs seduce,
induce indulgence
in an orgy of
escape into
the haze
of
narcissism…
or if they masquerade as friends to draw close,
sidling up so near to shove those pills dry
down our throats in rough and rooting
thrusting fingers ripping without a
drink to help them go down and
we, our own spoonful of sugar…
until we lie in thrall to
those fell jailers…no
enthralled to
no one but
ourself
that bitter
little
pill
Charissa's Grace Notes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.