12 Monday Aug 2024
Driving along
and a sudden elevator drop in my chest.
Riding that familiar riversong of sadness a moment,
I understand–ah–
my old, precious friend
is holding a conversation I’ve heard countless times.
Now I can recognize her disguise.
Funny mask, dear one,
but a confusion belies those heavy, tearful eyes.
Stress, strain, the much too muchness of things
brings you here.
Rest, love.
Hide in your cubby hole and come out
whenever you would like to sniff
the riotous wind again.
24 Monday Apr 2023
When touched, woman’s nipples are not to pucker inward,
When touched, woman’s soft cave is not to dry and contract,
When touched, her heart is not to hide away while
her clothes are removed.
When touched.
This earth, this fertile woman
bringing all life, creating
breathing pulsing offering–
always offering–
She is not meant
to be gashed stripped clawed mined
TAKEN
.
When touched, we women
are to be held, to be sung to, to be danced with,
our laughter our moisture rising
to swaddle and bathe the world.
Sing to us, allow us, see, listen to, wait for and
welcome us…
Let our own hands guide you.
When touched,
above all
be gentle.
20 Thursday Apr 2023
Troubled by this cultural grab for legacy
that older people writing books and making speeches and
facing death
fixate upon,
the strange ego javelin
aimed towards making a lasting mark–
with their initials starkly upon it–
I pull my head out of my own ass and look
at a simple and wondrous case in point,
the early spring burst of a small crabapple tree:
With first new leaves gathering food of the sun,
and deep pink buds tucked between pale open blooms
offering food to the bees in pollination’s blessed exchange,
not a cell in that tree requires recognition
or hungers in desperation to be remembered
once it’s gone.
She is born, feeds, is fed, shelters, shades, and grows,
creates new life, diminishes, and becomes earth.
That is thanks enough,
perfection enough,
selfness enough.
Enough.
Like songs of sparrows sputtering in wing flutter
all about the garden,
this gift and given
of spirit to form back to spirit,
in this, how can we forget
no loop of the Divine
could ever
go wrong?
06 Friday May 2022
What kind of oppression is this
for women to hate their own bodies into submission?
To tuck, flatten, cut, shape, build, color,
paint, starve, carve, feed, hide, cover, sculpt
and bind
such unique beauty and presence
to conform to something else?
For someone else?
Many are even convinced they do it
for themselves.
What, and whom, does it serve?
How long have we lied to,
hated, pushed away, contrived
and disappeared ourselves?
It goes beyond gender.
(Choose any system and look at how
we’ve turned it against ourselves.)
Ever noticed a peacock, tiger, or,
hell, a goat
do the same?
How ridiculous.
And cruel.
To what god have we bowed
when discarding the body we have been given,
one never to be created twice–not ever to be seen again–
to be wanted? appreciated? included?
Ohhhh let’s gather another tribe instead,
shake ourselves loose from those heavy chains
clamped on our wrists so long ago
we couldn’t possibly remember.
24 Friday Apr 2020
When the worst in you climbs out
pale and slick from a basement of your own making
do you cower and freeze?
Do you move fast as distraction will whip you
toward anything,
anything at all but that?
Do you block the acquaintance with projects-type
fast, cheap, ugly construction,
forcing it into another, though now above ground,
prison?
Who are you in your fullness?
What do you do with the wretched creature who is, also,
you?
What if you stop your steps away from the intolerable,
turn in your terror,
and place a crown on that wretched head?
Even if, at first, it is made of paper
and sags a little.
Because one of gold has yet to be forged.
What would the welcoming of one forced down,
forced out and away,
move like?
At the start,
even a whispered hello
will do.
Until you can both bow
to the darkness in light and soften
toward light
in the dark.
Free.
07 Saturday May 2016
In the dark unfolding familiar
and friendless place
where place began,
a necessary and
deceptive
seed was planted.
Nourishing form, forgetting spirit,
growing grew and suckers spread.
A viral overload threatened.
Silently
soil
fed
resistance.
Until…
One day,
she runs.
From sick enclosure out into night,
thinly covered,
taking nothing, no shoes,
she bolts in a snap of a now! beyond
hallways, doors, gates,
with pounding heart, searchlight eyes, flying hair,
bare feet slapping pavement,
escaping by back ways known
intimately as the corners of her old room.
Rushing behind houses, through hedges,
ducking limbs, all chance of observance
and grabbing dominion.
Outside the limits,
with no objects to keep her,
by her own deliverance
she finds
her true way Home.
29 Tuesday Mar 2016
your Beauty
She’s an inner star.
Her light
dims
with attempts to purchase.
Put away the credit card.
Remember who you are.
16 Wednesday Mar 2016
Knowing,
that precious illusion,
needles and digs
until
a gasp can puncture
and
welcome
Unknown
back into the dance
26 Friday Feb 2016
I close my eyes
so thought and word can find each other.
I close my eyes
so they won’t.
I close my eyes
to let the other bump up beside,
within,
and bring somatic waves
to crescent-cove silence,
washed sandy moons
of sheer cliff and no access trails
beyond verbal traffic
technology buzz
storyboard flash of decided outcomes.
I close my eyes
to find you.
Through darkness
with palms open,
toes bare,
mind still
in offering,
Thank you for meeting me here,
ceaselessly.
28 Thursday Jan 2016
in darkness
we may reach out for another
yet none but ourselves can reach in
to touch the loneliest trembling parts
asking
to be remembered
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 