Posts for 2020 (page 30)

The smell that lingers
The hidden information 
The shame that it’s covering 
The misunderstanding 
The moment of confused compulsion
The helpless conclusion 
The sad joke
The dismissal of…life 
  -of importance of feeling
  -of specific experience
  -of helpless emotion, reeling
  Like a heel on a small skull, pushing and grinding
  the organization fleeing
  replaced with bewilderment 
  a robbery of anger.
How someone decides you’re more threatening, because you make too much sense, you don’t bow enough, you have thoughts of your own. Dangerous to the establishment and the powers that be.

Duck, duck down. Roll under and hide behind the ferns.
Don’t let them see your heroic chin
Stand still and be cut to size
The kind of scrap that builds monuments to power
That heels all men
with blinders and bits
and ciphers the emotion into channels that bend
back upon themselves. 

All slaves, no matter.
All below you, don’t be fooled,
Always worthwhile as something to break
Or chain, starve or disdain. 

All around us are heroes and role models
seemingly assured
and yet blindly we assume they are 
That they must be immune to self-conscious trickery,
to doubt

girl fills all the water bottles and makes potions potions magic girl whose arms petal out like flowers waving for balanced she rides the ripstick girl is six flowers aren’t in her hair yesterday she was called “tomboy” by the neighbor she asked me what does this word mean what does this mean am I not a girl? my partner said to her you can do what you like things aren’t girl or boy or labeled like that do what you like she said yes yes Daddy that’s right maybe boy was jealous of her agile body the way she is obviously stronger though younger she swings on ropes she knows how to braid girl is a circle she’s ever-present like air she turns hot and cold and sometimes she is a calm eye resting in a hammock but mostly she conjures  stormclouds in between her brows lightning from fingertips she’ll dance in the hail with her helmet on she rides ripsticks with her brothers our girl’s another windchime bossy bossy she can tie her own pony, tails the boys, refuses to go the way they lead, our girl grabs a fish by its green open mouth girl digs under rocks to find the juicy worm girl never stop moving even when she’s tired girl the color of apricots girl the color of melons girl the color of foamed milk, girl the color of topsoil, girl the grey of the sky striped through with mica and shine, our girl labels all the rocks and knocks on neighbor’s doors hustles people to buy buy it’ll make you feel better you can rub it when you are stressed my girl’s hair is a nesting place for birds, you know she never combs it she thinks she looks fine and yes she wears her helmet to protect her priceless grey matter she is a little bud she is tender tough, girls elbows and knees roughed from concrete she bleeds she understands her own particular muscle unbloomed yet but she will decide how and when it fills and empties fills and thrusts out new life, she asks all the good questions and I tell her the truth the truth she’s ruthless as roots tripping up the sidewalk she’s old as them too she’s underground she’s listening to worms she sings them songs she’s named each one girl used to tell me stories about owls about babies and bat mommas and fishes with scales like rainbows who go to school and never grow old girl dresses herself and she whispers these questions until her breath gets long and lithe and her eyes half close she wonders how does grass grow? what’s on a dog’s mind? when you die what will I remember you by? girl grown inches overnight with knees knowing the taste of concrete she beats her own tom tom tom with a stick she’s carving to a point what’s the point she knows she is an arrow not yet shot over the cheese-faced moon, she thinks there is a bunny there teasing her, not a man, she’s the girl on the skateboard girl on wheels girl determined to balance, confident and clasping and unclasping, behind her back, her petals, her hands

Summer’s humid air
weighs heavy as man’s misdeeds
hang, knee and bury    

ocean waves don’t wash
man’s hate filled sins from the earth
baked-in evidence    

Yeah for online meets
virus way to freeze faces
and silence heart beats  

For fuck’s sake, STOP!
There is nothing to celebrate.
America is not beautiful.
Liberty and justice for all
is a bold-faced lie.

No more open windows;
            doves call in vain
from telephone wires
            fritzed useless by
storm and progress.
I cannot hear them,
            hermetic and sealed
in this brick room, calling
at spirits who
                        refuse to answer,
long kink of telephone cord
coiled around my wrist,
            receiver a presence
weighting my palm but
unplugged from
            the wall’s dead port.
I am wireless
               or a marionette,
cordless or
            strung, echo or
the echomaker, some shout
            before the cradled phone
falls away, humless.

Taken to support the New Green Deal
and create less gas
But why use word 

when picture has?

(No picture was hosted for this poem)

I feel like I’m down in the muddy side
drinking from the river of fear
the estuary’s mouth
a space grown wide
like some red-blotched wash of negativity
All that has made me feel so heavy
Where do we go from here?

This world has enough fragments
I forgot
I am the shore
This is where the roots are
their tongues heavy with the taste of
desire
possibility
This is how the forest regenerates
Do you remember
wonder?

This is the poem that has been staring at you
I just call it a baptism
The arc of our lives
falling in 3 parts
Some things refuse to unravel
the places you have yet to go
love and memory
you can still drink from a chipped cup

~ Created/modified from lines, phrases, & titles of poems in the LEXPOMO 2019 anthology “If Only They Were Hungrier They Would Swallow Me Whole,” in order of appearance (including title): Amanda Crum, Jude Lally, Jazzy, Christina Joy, T.L. Andry, Sylvia Ahrens, Jazzy, Jennifer (Stricklett) Dobson, Madison Miller, Bianca Bargo, Christina Joy, Rachel Bollman, Rachel, J K Elias, Michelle Knickerbocker, Amanda Holt, A. E. Bryant, Larry Wheeler, Pauletta Hansel, Jazzy, Pat Owen, Shaun Taylor, Heather Dent, Madison Miller, Jay McCoy, Deat.

I would dance with the devil on the head of a pin. 

I would brush his hair.
Smooth the wrinkles from his bed.
Caress his cheeks.

If it would make your life’s journey easier, my child. 

More love and light into my eyes and out of my mouth. More love and light applied like lotion to my children’s dry elbows and jaw lines. More love and light cast out of our open doors and windows. More love and light for the neighborhood, the noonday fireworks displays, the loud engines, the strange dogs in the yard, the waves and gifted skateboards to my son. More love and light into the air to burn away viruses and sandstorms until vaccines arrive and global currents die down. More love and light toward those that feast on hate and shadows, the red-capped humpers of homogeny, the ones who belch smoke and stone walls. More love and light for everyone who needs a torch to guide them. More love and light for everyone. More love and light like a biblical flood, let it swell until it reaches the moon, let it saturate every inch of the earth, let it be the water and the Ark.