Posts for June 14, 2020 (page 5)

Category
Poem

Stridulation

                    “Music is a language that doesn’t speak.     
                     in particular words.  It speaks in emotions,
                     and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.” 
                                                                   –      Keith Richards  

Which is louder?  The presence or absence
of sound, of music, of susurrating vibration,
piece against piece seeking balance?

Summer nights, cricket swarms sing Parnassus
from outside—my insides ululation…
beauty was louder.  But presence or absence,

I’m thrumming, wishing we’d somehow been glabrous,
forgotten follicles now seeking connection,
part against part in imbalance,

the rites and the rituals, once sabbaths,
the haints and the haunts of affection.
Which was louder? Your presence or absence

on winter nights, fireplace reenactments
where one tiny insect (an abjection)
was piece without peace and imbalance—

whether wing or appendage, so scabrous,
the tremoring of the body was abstraction…
what is louder? My absence or that presence?

those sheets and that mattress misalliance
of memories meandering dereliction;
part against part, the imbalance:

What you were, what I was, became claxons—
a deafening drought of inflection
which is louder and present in absence
of peace–broken pieces with no balance.


Category
Poem

A Lesson in Possibilities (Cento)

Seed Across Snow
And Luckier
The Apricot and the Moon
Night Ladder
To Those Who Were Our First Gods
Imaginary Vessels

Witness
Light into Bodies
The Girl with Bees in Her Hair
Incandescent
Tangle

How to Enter the River
Solitary Spin
Blue Etiquette
The Shortest Distance

~ Created from titles of chapbooks and collections, in order of appearance (including title): Paula J. Lambert, Kathleen Driskell, Leatha Kendrick, Cathryn Essinger, Lois P. Jones, Nickole Brown, Paisley Rekdal, Jeanie Thompson, Nancy Chen Long, Eleanor Wilner, Linda Parsons, Pauletta Hansel, Jeanie Thompson, Barbara Sabol, Kathleen Driskell, Kathleen Thompson.


Category
Poem

Statues

Statues are for honor
Statutes are for respect
Not for racists
Racists are for history books
And history books should
Portray them as evil
Not upstanding “Southern Gentlemen”
History books are for truth
Not “We’d better not put that in”


Category
Poem

threesome with a memory

tell me
that my
tongue
tastes
just like a
memory–
that this
is just a 
threesome
with a 
ghost.
i am
here
to help
so does your
head 
feel high like
home yet?
gorging
on your words.
and i am
gone
again.


Category
Poem

Ruminating in Three Parts

                                                              
Part I
Words
Power
Used for Good  
Misused for Harm
Elevating One
Over Other Persons
Selecting some Difference
That has no real Meaning
So to Diminish
To Belittle
To Remove
Power
Life

Part II 
Word
Of God
Used for Good
Misused for Harm
Elevating Some
Over other Beliefs
Favoring one Translation
As the literal Truth
So to Belittle
To Diminish
To Banish
Remove
Life

Part III
Words
Of Peace
Give Support
To those Hurting
Making some Aware
Perhaps for the first Time
That their Experiences
Do not reflect the Truth
For all Citizens
That Hate Affects
Daily Acts
Freedom
Life


Category
Poem

Dr. Jekyl and Mrs. Hyde

Sometimes I get turned sideways

                                                                    And my head becomes a muddle

ferrets scramble around inside me

all of my music is out of tune

other days                                  for no clearly defined reason

all possibilities are                                 open to me

I could scale a rainbow

                                            could ride Secretariat right into the wreath of roses with ease

I distinctly perceive my countless blessings

                                                                                     my unearned gifts

                                                                              and reveal in gratitude


Category
Poem

Blurred Utopia

My eyes flutter open.  I sit up with a gasp!  It’s beautiful!  The light yellow tinted room is everything I’ve always wanted.  A retreat.  An oasis. 

Big brass bed.  Antique, of course.  The quilt, obviously hand sewn.  Heavy and comforting.  The room is bright.  Two windows.  I can see the tree outside, big green leaves.   A book on the nightstand, long bookmark tucked inside.  A rocking chair nestled into the corner of the room.  Worn lap blanket tossed over the back.  Tall, clear vase of daisies on the dresser smiling back at me.  

I swing my legs to the side of the bed.  Feet dropping to feel the deep pile in the throw rug below.  Hardwood floors cool under my feet as I make my way to the window.  I want to throw the panes open and feel the breeze in my hair. It is then that I realize, this is no ordinary window.  Just a painting, there on the sunshine colored wall.  Both windows merely a vision of what could be. 

I make my way to the door.  Pull hard on the large, iron doorknob.  Locked.  I pull, I tug, I rattle the knob.  I yell,  hello, hello, hello.  The air responds with a quiet rush of fear.  

This is not my sanctuary.  I am trapped in a mirage of my nirvana.  This is someone else’s dreamscape.  Someone else’s promised land.   

I am merely a bird in a beautiful cage.  Waiting for the door to open.  Wondering, how the hell did I get here.


Category
Poem

Pantoum for Niobe

Niobe cried for her murdered children–
sons and daughters she adored shot down
with arrows from jealous and vengeful gods.
Her grief turned her to weeping stone.

Adored sons and daughters shot down,
like Rayshard Brooks and Breonna Taylor.
Grief replaces weeping hearts with stones
unmoved by excuses and further investigations.

Like David McAtee and Michael Brown,
Niobe’s children lay unburied for days,
unmoved because of autopsies and investigations,
prolonging the suffering of their families.

Black mothers’ children lay dead and defiled,
to punish them somehow for their pride,
an abuse meant to compound the suffering of families
like those of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice.

Mothers and fathers feel pride in their children,
finding them beautiful and without equal.
So, too, Auhmad Arbery and Charleena Lyles
were black and promising and strong.

Beautiful and loved but judged unequal–
A Titan’s children pierced the hearts of Niobe’s with arrows,
slaying the many and promising and strong.
Niobe was transformed into a weeping mountain.

Arrows pierced the hearts of her children,
their blood caking the dust on the ground.
What other form could she take but a mountain
of stone rived over centuries by tears?

The blood of Tamir Rice and Addie Mae Collins cakes the dust from the ground
into rocks now clenched in fists and hurled back
with stones plucked from hearts, made from centuries of tears
wept for Emmit Till and Henry Smith and Mary Turner.

Raised fists and arms strengthen with each rock hurled back
at injustice and evil that murdered Amadou Diallo and
Walter Scott and Freddie Gray and Philando Castile.
Stones amassed into a mountain, made from centuries of tears

that Niobe first cried for her murdered children.


Category
Poem

I’m appointed secretary of mourning

Chauffer of ashes
Recorder of last rites
Assistant Director of Ceremony

For our quartet
(You, me, your daughter, your niece)
For our private assembly to remember

Your parents.  After 65,000 days
They left this earth 11 orbits apart
The space between them a baby’s breath

Their departure has been months now,
Since the portal of the pandemic:
Nothing allowed, no send off for loved ones

No Mass, no funeral gathering, no meal
Together, no tall tales told.  Today your
Revolt is complete and our little group

Breaks bread, scatters flowers – the brightest
Kind, turns the hourglass, places their portrait
On our makeshift altar. We call out their names,

Call out the joy of their lives 


Category
Poem

I HAVE OFTEN WONDERED, PART II

If they had plumbing inside the Trojan Horse
If Hollywood is already planning another remake of A STAR IS BORN
If Leona Helmsley was planning a return trip to Lexington to see the Horse Park
If Esperanto is the universal language because nobody speaks it
How your ex celebrates your anniversary
If “Mene mene tekel upharsin” actually means the same thing as “Klaatu barada nikto”
If seniors going to the Early Bird Special dinner are really there for a late lunch
How many people were disappointed their first time eating Grape Nuts–no grapes, no nuts
If you’re getting a good deal paying the regular price for a movie within a movie
If a banana is ever really just a banana
If life is really a caberet
If Barry Manilow really wrote the very first song
And finally, if Hell really fits into a handbasket.