Mom-Friend Equity Work (Part 2)
tries and errs;
flickers and flares.
says she’s sorry;
continues to worry.
reads and learns;
takes her turn.
can’t deny when she is to blame;
is a light if not a flame.
tries and errs;
flickers and flares.
says she’s sorry;
continues to worry.
reads and learns;
takes her turn.
can’t deny when she is to blame;
is a light if not a flame.
I try to write a poem that doesn’t rhyme,
but dammit every time these phrases flow,
from where I do not know, and I’ll not
be the one, when asked to dance, to say no.
Bear with my antiquated steps, though
I am light on two left feet, I’ve never let
it bother me, this being obsolete.
To be fair I know it’s rare this day in age,
I too prefer blank verse, and mean
no sacrilege. My acquaintances
all say it’s that I was born too late,
I should have roamed the woods
with Boone and hunted all I ate.
I should have danced the firelight dance
with beating drums and hallow chants.
I should have slept on straw
and saw each night the darkness fall
and count the meter of the sky
as the rhyming stars spun by.
I wish I could neatly pack into suitcases
my sentences soaked in adulthood
and take them back to that sun-filled house,
where the only bad dreams I had were
gone when I woke up. It was the house
where my words were clean as the summer rain I played in.
I still remember the spaces in which I used to hide;
forgive me if I daydream – it was a habit I developed
when I became older, just like my habit of packing away
my sentences into suitcases until
they overflow and stain the carpet.
But these stains are no masterpieces,
the colors dance around until they’re dizzy and forget their places.
I may only be eighteen, but I know what it looks like
when you drink too much
and that’s what I see on my carpet – my dad always mentions
the odor my shoes carry, neatly packed into the laces woven
by sweating, shaking fingers.
Forgive me if I daydream – there’s simply nothing else to do.
Unbeknownst to I
Native Americans label all
our moons:
Strawberry
for June as the wild ones
ripen.
Mirroring Mother Nature
We are Ripe to
Change
against
Injustice & Racism
Delving deep
to make the Shift.
For Kathleen who got me thinking
Wind carried the words into June
And settled this fertile ground
Virgin surface cultivated
Daily by dazzled blooms
I sit back and savor
Their colorful array:
The tow-headed notions
And smoke-smudgy nightmares
Oxblood brainstorms
Pumpkin beliefs
Eggshell revelations
Azure romances
Buttery concepts
Grizzled perceptions
Pyrethrum protests
Wine-coated prayers
What burgundy schemes
And swarthy visions
Saffron sorrows
Damask joys
Scorched earth ideas
Dovish designs
Even the hybrid honey-zaffered articulations
And glaucous terminologies humble
This garden we’ve wild
With lyrical delights
