Twisted

30 Sunday Apr 2023

Posted by in beauty, break out, change, generations, learning, light, pain, poems, poetry

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Had I never entered this country

dark magic would have remained part

of fairy tales.

But tales are born of happenings,

not purely imagination.

What can be directed towards light can also

be twisted black.

Centuries of pain does that

to people’s souls,

leading them to avenge this blessed world.

Living amongst the workings,

talk will be talk, suspicion

suspicion,

and yet what I’ve seen

turns firm ground to putty.

You’d best not leave any hair behind.

Still, the cruelty that fuels and fires does,

in the end, destroy

those who’ve let ghosts poison them.

And the original curse

rolling through the generations lives on

until someone down the line breaks it

by gathering up their own light.

Plum blossoms

29 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by in community, poems, poetry

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Butterfly sipping on plum blossoms,

pink singing tree crowned

with a cloud of happy bees.

This morning,

an inch of powdery snow,

this afternoon,

sun has melted it in blue.

Spring loves its wild swings.

Two girls

28 Friday Apr 2023

Posted by in poems, poetry

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Two girls

walk a small street in balmy late afternoon,

past nice houses,

down a line echoing the coastline,

ocean sand steps away.

They stop on a mounded grassy spot,

at muffled edge of sun and tree shadows,

to sit.

And where, while being girls,

have they chosen

to park their behinds and stare

but directly across from the wide concrete stairs

leading up to the boys’ army and navy academy.

To watch and wait.

One girl, daughter of another daughter

molested by her own father,

later becomes a stripper,

breasts hugely augmented,

spending her nights being watched.

The other, also daughter of a daughter

molested the same way,

runs into the arms of men twenty-plus years

older,

never wondering why.

Two girls deliver themselves,

prey to predators.

This

is a common story.

Crying to stop

27 Thursday Apr 2023

Posted by in history, pain, poems, poetry

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Crying

to stop the dread,

‘Please don’t make me go.’

Crying to be heard,

‘Don’t make me go.’

She pauses. (Thankfully.)

My small body leans, limp,

into hers. Hers sits now

on couch spine, hands around me.

Before us, the hall yawns toward stern front door.

‘Please can I stay home today?’

Another shudder,

more tears.

In my growing self I know

what school takes, what it gives away

as if useless and bad.

But.

I was marched out to face again

what I hated,

and these many years later I know–

had my little heart been heard

that day my life would have changed.

Into the arms

27 Thursday Apr 2023

Posted by in approaching, becoming, change, poems, poetry, welcoming

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Shaving my head on the mesa,

white sun rising behind juniper hills,

I became myself again.

I did not know I’d been gone.

With each new song of bird, new ray of light

and dropping hair,

freedom lifted, heaviness fell.

I did not know I’d been gone.

Voicing thanks to Sun

and all goodness that surrounds,

I also fell,

fell fully into the arms of Spirit.

Talk, talk, talk

26 Wednesday Apr 2023

Posted by in listen, Love, poems, poetry, presence, silence, slow, song, sound

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While endless talk,

noise of commercialism, opinion,

celebrity,

fills too many spaces,

when chatter closer to home gets

incessant

remember

that is sound of a disturbed heart.

And we’ve far, far too many of those.

Step silently back

and recall what tender talk,

a creek rolling through, touching

sides, stones, roots

speaks of–

its landscape of blood, tissue and bone–

that which sustains, holds and guides it

along the journey.

When the child enters, or one of the countless

yet to be heard,

please,

listen.

Robins do not sing

for nothing.

Spring storm

25 Tuesday Apr 2023

Posted by in change, motion, nature, poems, poetry

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A wall of slow spiraling cloud,

a great grey hand,

comes in low against the skin of the earth

swallowing the mesa,

sky, and all that proceeds it–

the West has sent its claim for the mountain.

And as first rain drops heavy and loud,

smell of December bursts full into the air,

only here, here artemisia sings strongest

not in early clutch of winter

but, like now,

in spring.

I drink desert storm

and laugh at the strangeness of time,

dusting of snow on far hills while

a flowering plum turns pink.

Three

24 Monday Apr 2023

Posted by in change, land, poems, poetry

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Three jackrabbits chase each other

round and round in circles,

three butterflies spiral together

low to high,

three parcels on my doorstep

wind, sunshine and shadow,

half a breath from where coyote trots by.

No holding the movement, we break open

to change.

Clouds scoot over a mountain in the north,

I follow their calling

back to the land of bone. Back

to a land of three.

When touched

24 Monday Apr 2023

Posted by in Love, lovers, loving, naked, pain, poems, poetry, prayer

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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.