Father’s Day 2019
“Lead us not into temptation”
This rushing madness of the blood
Transcendence
Your brightness makes me weak
In comfort that I was God
Forgive my crying soul
And mere tolerance
The lie of truth in time
The faltering was temptation
Not the reaching
Any understanding of God is ego
Come to him lost
With no gift
And become nothing
Moth to the flame
Blessing of immolation
The sirens call me back
I sort through ashes
And wear them
Like a garment
So many thoughts
swirling around in my head
like the washing machine,
continuously cleaning
a t-shirt faded at the armpits
and paint-splattered shorts,
from the day I wanted to paint my room
but couldn’t complete the project
without sloppy help.
My insides lurch in my throat,
I either binge unnecessarily
or eat nothing at all,
but nothing matters more
then the numbers.
The mirror feeds the brain
as I grow bigger
and bigger,
feeling nothing but
exhaustion
after relying on a prescription
to pull me
from within myself.
As another day goes by
I am left wondering,
who has won?
You pack up
your entire life
just to unpack it
somewhere else –
like therapy,
if therapy
also ran out of tape
and space in the U-Haul.
struck down, like a left hook.
High Lean Rules
Emerald leaves cut
The dank diamond dust into
Perfect patterns of
mistrust.
I flip through social media
half awake, half-eyes closed,
in the comfort of my bed,
images of crying babies,
mothers on knees pleading
with hollow faces
have walked for hundreds of miles
carrying the world’s burden in one arm
and their babies in another,
feet wet with rain and swelling rivers,
homeless, landless, one foot in front of the other,
hard ground sleeping, 100-degree weather,
freezing temperatures in winter,
diarrhea, dysentery, rape, separation,
escaping violence and death,
hundreds, and thousands, and millions of mothers
circulating the globe in displacement
from war;
our wars,
their wars,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Africa, Central America
making their way with children and family
across broken, shattered landscapes
to green pastures and peaceful waters,
refugees seeking safety
only to find themselves in cages.
My friend posts, Doesn’t anyone care anymore?
and my heart sinks, because I know that at a distance
I am overwhelmed and oversaturated with news,
I speed past it on social media, a middle-aged woman
on insulin and heart medication,
a teacher living paycheck to paycheck,
school loans for an eternity,
1st World Problems.
but I do research and write a check
hoping someone will have clean socks to wear,
or water to drink, or shelter from the rain,
all along feeling helpless, and hopeless to help.
There is no emoji left that feeds the burn out
of seeing death flaunt itself in Global cop-out.
Where’s the Women’s March,
pink pussy cat hats sitting in dusty closets?
The Million Man March demanding fathers be fathers?
Where are the churches that cry out
for a fetus’ right to live
when babies are born in squalor and hunger,
dying in make-shift tents?
Then I see Scott Warren, a modern-day Jesus,
imprisoned for giving water to thirsty humans,
and when given a chance to speak at trial
he said, Since I’ve been imprisoned,
88 more bodies have been found in the desert.
In his mind I know he’s thinking,
I could have saved them, I could have saved them,
I could have saved them, 88 more lives gone,
88 more lives who had a right to live.
65.8 million people still wander the earth
from the wreckage of war and violence,
crushed by monster made missiles,
whatever the politics, who can keep up with it?
Homes stand like gaping wounds
of humanity. No place to go back to.
We are all brothers and sisters, a grandmother says,
Humans who want to be treated like humans,
Humans who deserve to love and to thrive,
Humans whose roots are tangled in soil we all call home,
stems and leaves and flowers pushing up into clear blue sky.
Imagine a world
where mothers
are heard.
Even my mother knew very well,
thought we ate in the kitchen,
though we slept in the house,
that we lived in the barn. Ask the cows;
I talked to them more than I did my parents,
and the cows listened. They liked the same music
on the radio, soothing, soulful. Sometimes
just like my parents, they kicked back.
But sometimes they nodded knowingly
and asked very few questions.
We crept into their habitats
to take a peak at camouflaged
bodies; to see buried in the muck
is also hidden beauty, and every
piece of nature has its place.
To observe the power of the
snapper’s jaws, length of his
neck, and strength of his will to
survive; to understand the box
turtle who eats death cap
mushrooms is poisonous itself
because it sequesters their toxins;
and snails who eat lichens can
use their pigments to form
intricate patterns on their shells.
To see up close the darters we
often view as silver glints streaking
across the water, when still, are
ornate rainbows each colorful and
unique, and the wood frog who cries
out from the forest is the color of
sunset with big powerful legs giving
us quite a chase. We see these
fragments of our earth – indicators
of a healthy pond, woodland, stream,
habitat – and we hope by sharing
their secrets we pass on a deep
understanding and love for just
how important they are.
Because I read there is a chance
humans who cannot feel other’s anguish
can bond with small animals, I tell
him about the frogs. How after
the earthquake scientists searched Haiti’s
clouded forests, scoured
native trees & riverbeds; found six
species once believed extinct. Truth is
my sister & I were ashamed of him.
Unforgiving, we retaliated by becoming
unbearable humanitarians. Unitarian.
Quaker. Woodstock dancers. When mother
was dying he was cruel to Ruby,
the caregiver, though she was the one
who guided us. Your Daddy don’t know
what he don’t know, she said of his offhand
biogtry. Today he hisses,
We should have nuked
Hanoi, & I am swept with sadness
watching him hand-load
bullets in his brown lit garage.
Hope Springs United Methodist wants
him to sponsor a little girl from Port-au-Prince,
but Daddy believes the quake was a sham,
a media conspiracy. I can only
return to the button-sized frogs
& on his steel workbench, slip
a magazine picture of the burrowing
orange frog with black eyes & an image
of Mozart because of the two notes
she sings at dawn & dusk. He switches
off the ammo loader, skims
the captions & murmurs,
When I was a boy I kept
a Spring Peeper in a Ball jar,
named him Clark Kent. I want
to believe we are healing,
as he reverts to the task
at hand & begins again to cap
the slick, shiny bullets.
