It’s an illusion of the psyche,
which is the emotion
and which is the shadow side.
Some days I have your love tucked carefully away,
tasked only with shielding it from sporadic pickpockets of doubt
Other times I am marching head-on through foolish delusion
draped in a rainbow-hued fog of denial.
I’m in either way;
sun or shade
my soul knows
no other light but yours.
6/17/26
Matriarch Thought
We begin to die when
we decide to live, so go ahead and
use up your Vitamin A and serotonin…
wise, ancient, Mother Willows are hot. Drooping
brows and breasts are a gift from an honest wearing of gravity.
Guru Thought
We need to drink the fermentation of
our possibilities before
passing go, collecting $200, and beginning our time
of change. Yogurt is good for you,
even when it’s plain.
Excalibur Thought
We are allowed to sit down, as long as we
stand up, hearing the whispered base of
what our Foredaddies meant when they pointed
fingers and declared that any of us
seeing stars and sharing striped air
must pick up the heaviness of domestic peace by
reading and polling before allowing
a stranger to most of us
decide who among us
must settle for off-brand, 1-ply TP or
wipe up with an unsafe, septic clogging, white flag
often used during times of bless-ed soiled surrender.
Warning: This is an example of poetry inspired by a group of women, talking on Zoom about the weather. No juju, star charts, or Red Dye were used in the making of this art.
To the gates!” the man cried,
“to the gates—onward—at the nigh!”
Tell me; should men who’d die
have halted, dared to ask him why?
“To the fore, in the breach,
go and fight for your loves, your mates!
For your homes all and each,
and for your Katherines and Kates!”
So onward, forward went our horde
to the fore, to the gates,
through the gates we went and toward
our soon-lates and our hates.
Rivulets of newly fallen water run over soil
now drenched as the rain pours down, traces
of their tracks filling with slushy mud that
gathers and moves as one mass toward rivers
soon overflowing until they can hold no more.
The rain pours down, pushing against banks
That founder to the point of collapse.
The mucky mire washes over highways and
into fields, gathering more slop as it compels
everything in its path into a churning wall of
destruction moving forward as the rain pours
down, turning all into a wreckage of concrete
wedges smashing into broken houses and trees
bobbing over ravaged cars and bodies.
While floods have always been with us, we have
not always been so disconnected that we barely
notice the earth’s cycles are beset with spasms
of too much or not enough. Let us walk outside,
reach out our hands to feel the air and the earth,
look up at the stars, and breath in our awareness
of such overwhelming abundance.
the voice of the wurlitzer
came sugared through the salt
and the cotton-candy clouds
dragged their pink skirts
over the shore
where no ship ever docked
gold glinted
off the brass wotsit
at the center of everything
as if the whole world
had one bright pin
holding it down
the horses rose and fell
and rose
with their wooden throats open
and the painted swan
went nowhere beautifully
we passed it again
and again
passed the terns
the locked arcade
the tide
we passed the version of me
who got everything she ever wanted
she was standing there
in her favorite shades
under the striped awning
just watching me
go round
The thing
about retirement
is that staring
at the horizon
can make you
hallucinate
after a lifetime of
cautiously watching your feet
on the rock-strewn path of life
to avoid a washout;
The truth
is that cautious attention
to your footing can be
just as ill-fated
as ignoring it altogether because you might
miss the adventures
waiting on the overlooked sidepath
or the glorious waterfall to your left
just because you thought those wet rocks were
too risky to venture;
The fact
is that the horizon can take you off cliffs and
into box canyons where a flash flood
might drown you but
sometimes that delicious and
glorious mirage of palm trees
shading cool pools of water
might be worth
the thirst of the burning sun
and the scorpion’s sting.
Three weeks had gone by
by the time I was forced to click
my little red heels together.
I was swept off my feet by a
Blue Collar Quilty of sorts.
He rolled me White Owls.
He kissed
my fingers
one by one.
He dropped the cherry of
his cigarette on my wrist
and spent the rest
of the night apologizing
between my legs.
My mother says he is malignant.
She has the records to prove it.
Two years probabtion. 8 months in rehab.
3 arrest records. An EPO.
A friend in DV court
that remembers her name.
Her face. Her tears.
The broken glass door and
the smell of burnt popcorn on tinfoil.
I am thrown to the wolves. Nobody to tell.
Every mouth filled with judgment.
I have nothing substantial to say.
I will burn in this labyrinth.
If there is a justice higher
than that of man, I will be
judged by Him.
