Posts for June 1, 2020 (page 8)

Around our rolling wold,
see slipshod shame
as little more
than coiling shadows slung from wincing kittens,
ears a riveting starling’s song 
                                                       had flattened
for fear of startling starlings;
flat and hapless hulls curt cats must cast
to honor a sterling compact
Bast once brokered
many mangled tales ago
to filigree foibled greaves
these countless clowders pieced
                                                           from patchwork pajamas
with auric, impervious pride
young Bast had knotted
in matagots’ measured scowls—

yet, how the manx and tabby yowl
when dandled should svelte shadows sleave
with shades our sun unspools of a governess,
shades that cherubic children channel
in mummers parades of menageries mincing;
blade of the Brocken Specter raised
as sharp and swift as a corn maze cradles
                                                                              children
still afeard of stalking
                                          shadows soft as
                                                                        murmurous persians—

Having employed, in a plethora of rages,
the F-bomb so many times in texts
that finally I found I’d trained autocorrect
not to substitute DUCKING for what I really meant.
For no, I would never say DUCK IT
or WHAT THE DUCK??? Tonight,
having watched the heavy duty
riot-gear-encased police force
in my hometown, as curfew drew near,
and the tear gas, half an hour early–
having seen, earlier, the boarded up shops
on 4th Street–not as much was burned here
as in Minneapolis, but broken windows,
but graffiti and looting… the voice
of the voiceless, to some extent, but also
perchance the work of right-wing opportunists;
would I not violate my promise to the Multiverse
and cry out: MOTHER DUCK!

Then I think about the library cloister
at Bryn Mawr College, when I was 3, 4, 5:
come spring I would search for Mother Duck
wherever she might be nestling her fuzzy brood;
on lucky days there would be swimming lessons.
Anymore, I repost fuzziness and sweetness
on Facebook, in place of provocative and dire.

But the MOTHER DUCKING MOTHER DUCKERS
they have not charged the DUCKERS who fired
8 times at the sleeping EMT, Breonna Taylor.
MOTHER DUCKING 3rd degree murder for the jerk
who had to have known what he was doing to George Floyd;
and no charges for his cronies. DUCKING DUCK!

We are living in a DUCKED-UP time, for real!
Maybe having unleashed DUCKS today,
in the upcoming days I can watch them swim away
and write something less like just a slice of mind;
I’ll place an add in the local paper: poet wanted
to fulfill lexpomo obligation of one poem per day
throughout the month of June, and,
NO MOTHER DUCKS NEED APPLY!

It is chocolatey, it is warm, brown with white specks, it is Hot Cocoa with marsh-mellows!
“Why do  we only have this treat in the winter?” you ask,
when nobody responds you give up on the attempt of
asking someone and try to figure it out by
yourself.
After a couple minutes of staring into  space you actually start to think about it.
You think “Well why do we have ice cream in the summer?”
Then you notice that it is really just the opposite.
Then you think why is it the opposite?
Then you tell yourself “When it is hot we have something cold. When it is cold we have something hot.”
You wonder “Why is that so?” You’re afraid you will never know. 

When one
player can throw rock
and
paper
and
scissors

and
knees
and
no-knock warrents
and
“return-fire” stray bullets, 

and the other
can’t shape hands with zip-tied wrists

or lifeless ones,

this is not
a game.

numberless trestles,
ally sundry switchback branches 
to extinction

searching 
for pictures
for panorama

following
without breath
without foresight

consuming 
all that is quiet
all that is earth and sky

remembering
ideas that changed us
maps we forgot to bring

witness this 
beneath shadow
of storm struck pine

all your prophets
in stride, agree
don’t follow me.

My daughter talks to me
about social justice
and what it means to be
a black woman in America,
a black woman in Kentucky.
I listen and try to empathize
but I can never understand
the paradigm she lives in
everyday.

My daughter talks to me
about protests and riots,
about police brutality and
the fear of what could happen to her
because of the color of her skin.
And I want to promise
I’ll always protect her,
but I can’t.
So listen with no comforting
words.

My daughter asks me
if she is allowed to protest.
I think of her,
15,
living in a world so hostile
of her existence.
And how the best protection
is change.
And say the only thing I can:
Yes.

I disconnect from thoughts 
Of fear and guilt 
To look in the mirror 
And see that I’m still here
A face worth fighting for

We’re all faces
Worth fighting for

When feet are off the street
And signs are retired to garage
Spaces and basements
Will you fight for the faces
That fade from your feed
And turn into everyday citizens
In need of more than a movement?

i was surely going to freeze to death with all the warmth we wouldn’t share
shaking me at once
making my empty hands go numb
and blue

so we turn the shower on too hot 
and lay on the floor in the steam- 
watch the version of myself that Isn’t 
get too pink in the hot water while
the version of me that Is twists
my hair into a big dry braid
over and over and over again once

once She’s clean
She steps over me, frizzy and damp on the floor,
up and out of the bathroom entirely. 

Prayer circles have ceased.
No passing of the peace.
Fellowship meals and ministry ended.
Will the church remain entombed?
What will be our new normal?
All other ground is sinking sand.

I don’t
want to
write a poem.

I want 
the police
to be abolished. 

Poetry will 
not abolish 
the police.