Posts for June 30, 2025 (page 6)

Blindfolded with a tube of blood. 
I tried to glue the seemingly broken pieces back together. 
It made me sick to my stomach. 

Pale as the moon in the night sky, 
with my heart burned by the afternoon sun. 
Dehydrated and slowly dying,  
thinking things would never change for the better. 

22 months  
95 weeks 
669 days 
Time teaches you valuable lessons. 

I stopped waiting for you. 

The funny thing about damaged people, 
is that you love them even more knowing they’re not perfect.
My beautiful China doll never broke,
he was only picking up some glue to repair himself. 

I recovered, and so did he.

Science says it takes about 200 hours
Being together with someone
To become a true friend

Some books are hard to let go
Friends left on a shelf
For so many years

Old shoes have served so well
Walking companions weathered through time
Yet their tongues cannot talk

Reach out to another
At any store
In line at the P.O.

In a minute or two
One common theme
Makes an instant 200 hour friend

Many thanks to all my new and yet to be new friends on Lexpomo. This is such a great place to be… and craft our written work. Keep the candle lit and take care all!

Strong   

as a full-grown bull
no flaccid flesh only bulge
through loose fitting pants & t-shirts

spoons and fork handles bend
when he touches them even tines bow
like I do to keep things smooth

he bends over in the garden
pulls weeds yet never bends
to pick up a mess on an indoor floor

unyielding to wishful begs
to quit maligning utensils
I hide a few for me to use

but if I forget he’ll make sure
I know he used my fork and spoon
by bending them too

Thick, low
lines of
cumulus clouds
migrate north,
each billow
at a
steady pace.
Thicker white
above remains
still, calm— 
like our
June days,
varying forecasts
across our
bluegrass state.
We now
continue on
into hopeful
goldenrod tomorrows,
to join
together again
next time.
Til then,
we bid
one another
a fond
adieu.

I think I was made
created only to take
care of all others

I meant to play

With words each day

Organizing them with rhyme and line

I meant to enter

A poem each day

Carefully typing and spacing

Instead I played

Riding horses in Wyoming

Driving there and back between the lines

Instead I connected

With family and friends

Who live in different places and spaces

Instead my life

Became the poem

That reflects my time and my rhythm

I’m eight,

and this may be my favorite number,

I think to myself.

My maternal grandma knocks

on the door of the bathroom,

“Sweetie, come along; we’ll be late.”

At twenty-eight,

I became a naturalized US citizen.

Eight months later

my mom received her green card.

After eight weeks of planning and packing,

to visit my sweet nana in the upcoming summer,

it will be nearly eighteen years

for mom since she last saw her mother…

But then, we receive the news:

“Your grandma has passed away; I’m sorry.”

I freeze.

Everything grows unmoving and quiet,

like the Dead Sea, in which

I was floating only last year

at this time of the year.

After a moment of quiet stillness,

the salty tears come pouring out of my eyes,

enough to form two more seas.

Eight is now my least favorite number.

Anything can be holy when you believe nothing is. Anyone can be a saint when you dream only of devils. Did you know they built an entire city on top of decay and pretended it was a resurrection? The city is a lighthouse, but the lighthouse keeper is a liar. Pilgrims follow the beacon like moths to a flame. When they sing their songs they spit on their neighbors. At dinner, they pass on the wine. It’s not red enough. Mary once had a premonition, but nobody believed her until it came true. By then, it was too late. I went into the confessional and heard my own voice on the other side. I don’t know if that means I’m forgiven or not. Michaelangelo painted for four years straight just for people to look past the focal point. Someone told me he painted while he was upside down. They killed Peter upside down, you know. All the blood rushed to his head. They took John’s. No one knows what happened to the eyes. And somehow, they can make anyone a believer in any cathedral if you would just look up.

When I was 3 ~ I wished I’d wear the crown so when Aunty and I went on stage I’d be the little girl with all the glitter . . . 

When I was 4 ~ I wished everyone happiness especially my Fairy Godmother . . . I wished for a sister and she came . . .

When I was 8 ~ I wished I wouldn’t die because of all the great big welts that were covering my body, closing my eyes, making it hard to breathe . . . I wanted to walk myself to the potty . . . I wanted to go out and play with all the other kids I heard playing outside my darkened window . . .

When I was 10 ~ I wished so very hard to get my own piano, learn how to read sheet music like I read my Nancy Drew mysteries . . . play with both hands . . . sing old time torch songs . . . and play hard classical pieces . . . to fill our small duplex with lots of song . . . And I wished to give my very tired truck-driving father something to look forward to after his 12-hour days . . . so my little sister and I sang and danced in our Show Time skits . . .  

When I was 12 ~ I wished to be a synchronized swimmer . . . be on a swim team . . . wear pretty costumes . . . do underwater stunts . . . dive off the high dive . . . dance to the music of 76 Trombones & Waltz of the Snowflakes . . . glide like a swan on the water and smile like Esther Williams with painted on make-up . . .

When I was 18 ~ I was the girl who got the banner and the crown . . . and wore the title for a year . . .

When I was 42 ~ I wished with all my friends and family at my Great Big Happy Birthday Party we prayed with whole heart & soul that my past year of chemo, radiation & surgery had successfully eradicated the breast cancer and finally I was free to walk forward to love and serve . . .  

I am grateful this wish has come true . . . granted the privilege to light 75 candles this past June in the middle of my LexPoMo journey . . . thank you fellow poets for fueling my forward dance . . .!

  “…deregulation would drive “a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” –EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin; as quoted in the New York Times, May 24, 2025, on the gutting of power plant regulations  

* * *

I sing from my hymnal of data points
collected high atop Mauna Loa
lonely high notes burned clean of hope
spiraling, they scald my throat              

                            [and still: I believe]
  

My faith is evidence-based
it warms me like heat warnings
wilting Alaska in June;
it stings my eyes like orange-brown
clouds of wildfire smoke
rolling across Iowa              

                           [I weep and I believe]


My prayer book bids me 

Do not pollute the land where you are  

My prayer book chides me
Do not defile the land where you live              

                           [so long as I believe, I shall not be lost]
  

My religious mission, to listen 
to the birds of the sky (even as the sky empties)  
and to witness the fish perishing in hotter seas
(oceans heating, coral reefs bleaching)              

                           [I believe and I weep]   

My morning prayer: may seeds
of weedy sense be rooted
in the soil beneath us all—even
those most greedily deluded              

                           [somehow, I believe]    

The time has come (as Matthew forewarned) to beware 

false prophets, who come dressed in sheep’s clothing 

but inwardly are ravenous wolves—

hungry ghosts, I call them       
                          [their daggers cannot touch me, so long as I believe]