Language is leaving us clues
that we are absolutely ridiculous.

“Awful”
once meant
full of awe.

Imagine standing
before a mountain range,
overcome with wonder,

and declaring:

how awful!

Or “inflammable,”
seems like it should be clear. 

But it’s not.

I think about this often:
how names and meanings

drift apart.

How a thing can spend centuries
wearing the wrong face.

How easily we accept it.

Perhaps every word
eventually becomes a stranger

to itself.

A sound wandering further
from its origin

with every passing mouth.

And perhaps people
are no different.

We spend years
being mistaken for our names.
Our titles.
Our reputations.

Until one day

someone learns

what we actually mean.

Not what we sound like.
Not what we suggest.
Not what history
has done to us.

But what we are.

And what a gift
to know
how little
we know.

How awful.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Blind Leading the Blind (1568)

“It all started with an execution” –  Philip McCouat, “Bruegel’s The Blind Leading the Blind: Perception and Blindness in the 16th Century“, Journal of Art in Society

A parable 
no need for subtlety
Nothing we
did not choose to be
defiles us

no matter what
we perceive
no Earthly element
capable of clean
will wash away
malice or greed
Even if
Your hands were clean

“blasphemy!” say supercilities
“My paradigm agrees with me.”
“These civil hands, still unclean
Demand you abegnate your mutiny
to my perfect perfidy
Now recite these hymns after me
follow these unyielding harmonies!”
   
Then we all fall down
    1. 2. 3.

Purity
    is a hydra

still demanding demonstration
still commanding compliance
still requiring ritual

Pragmatism of empathy
    be damned

Summer rain-
bow tie the knot-
less is more to love
birds of a feather flock
together forever yours truly
sorry for the wait-
list of possibilities are
endless summer.

It’s Sunday.  Our home smells of pork
slow roasting for dinner.
In the early afternoon after church
we’ll sit in the dining room to slice it.

No.  That’s not true.

It is Sunday and throughout our home
the aroma of dinner waits.  Only my husband
and I will share the meal.
And he does not go to church. 

I do. 

I was never part of a Sabbath tableau.
Mom and I went to church early, headed
to Sidney’s Cafe as soon as Monsignor dismissed
us with, Ite, Missa est.

Deo Gratias.

Mom directed dining room traffic. 
From the age of 10 I worked
the cash register 
on the busiest day of the week. 

Food was everywhere.

Plates of bacon and eggs.  Heavy platters
of fried chicken, prime rib
(Dad’s Sunday specialty),
an occasional order of chow mein. 

Sunday life.

Dad cooked from early morning
until 7 PM closing
when we finally sat, said Grace.
Our customers feasted first.

.

The wallpaper
in every corner
of my mind
bears your name.

When did you move in?

My plan
was to keep you
as a fun distraction
while I packed up my life,
tore it apart,
and built another
somewhere else.

Then you ruined
everything I had planned.

I miss you
all the way from Norway
to Italy.

If only I could forget you.

Tell me
what you’re thinking.
Let me get lost
in you.

I don’t know
what to do.

Her face tipped to the sky, shut eyes and a smile of resolute warmth.
Her dark skin felt and celebrated by the sun,
legs crossed on the sandy shores, hips indent the soft floor.
Lips parted to voice her name, one that clicks on her tongue, one engraved
in the sand but never washed away—not by the Dutch,
or the British, or the French. She sits at the edge of Gamtoos River,
the place of her birth, where the water first embraced her.
A deep breath in and salt pushed in from the ocean hits her nose,
settles her, and at once tears stream down her face.
Her face wet, but lacking shame. Ears
rapt by the steady drum beat of commemoration.
She cries for her fiance, whose blood stains dry up
and choke out the match lock musket. For the baby she bore,
not long before it crawled back into her womb and shriveled.
For her father, whose scent lingered like his skin glistened,
for under the kiss of the heat he guided cattle, slow and deliberate and sweet.
Despite his incessant stench she often nuzzled into him,
sniffed his bare chest. Now her nose does not recall,
her tears strike the river, meet in communion to honor his silent fall.
Tears for her mother whose face is but a distant memory, who only cradled her babe until she turned two or three.
She weeps and
at the back of her throat sings a persistent roar.
Her grief shall not be ignored, it sweeps across
To distant shores.

The evil supervillain
created a cloned and devious
very evil henchman
to do all of the very evil things
that the evil supervillain
once paid non-clone henchmen
to do.
Move the chairs and set the trap
try to punch the superhero
and fall down when he punches back
set more traps and move more chairs
stand here and pull this string
distract him while I steal
that priceless diamond ring.
The cloned evil henchman did all these things
without a paystub and without a complaint
because he thought like the evil supervillain
and reasoned like the evil supervillain.
And then a day came
when the evil supervillain gave the order
to move some chairs and set some traps
and the cloned evil henchman
ate him.

I have a reoccurring nightmare 
A reoccurring nightmare 
A reoccurring nightmare. 
It goes this way: 
The shadows
Cast by the world as the sun sets
Move from their places.
They creep and seep into my skin. 
I know I’m dreaming,
But I can’t wake up. 

I have a reoccurring nightmare
A reoccurring nightmare 
A reoccurring nightmare.
I think it goes this way: 
The sun 
No matter how sorrowfully I beg it
Won’t stay up in the sky any longer. 
The night 
Does not delay.
It does not delay for me. 
The darkening sky crumbles 
And crashes down on my head. 
I know I’m dreaming,
But I can’t wake up.

I have a reoccurring nightmare
A reoccurring nightmare
A reoccuring nightmare.
I don’t remember much of it in the morning. 
The only thing that follows me into day
Is a cold terror. 
I’m not afraid of the shadows, but of dreaming
Of the moments when I know I’m dreaming.
I know I’m dreaming,
But I can’t wake up. 

Rain patters out large
round the catface shapes
of the poplar leaves

a snake plant  waits
slitherless green
on the livingroom mantlepiece
next to the petrified hunk of tree
Uncle Vince once gave John

Who gives a care 
now that the squirrels
and even the owls
are hidden?

All this live-long night
there’s rain rhythms
for me to sleep by

did you like your whiskey neat,
or was it moonshine that you favored?
Somehow, I imagine storebought,

and not because the only story I ever heard
about you, growing up, is how you’d slither back
into your parents’ home and to my father’s room

to rob his piggybank to fund your drink.
To think that’s all I know of you, grandfather.
To think that’s all of you your namesake told us.

You weren’t a young man, Grandfather.
The cusp of thirty when he was born,
a few months past when his mother died.

Was it grief that sent you to the bottle?
Somehow, I imagine not.

How does it feel, Grandfather, to be
the villain in your own family’s tales?
Is there an argument for your defense?

I’m here, and though my father held
his grudge close to his heart until that heart
grew tired and faltered into silence,

it’s not too late to soften mine toward you.
Tell me what wounding left you indifferent
to the boy you fathered. Tell me you tried

and failed and tried again. I’ve heard
forgiveness is a gift, but mostly to the one
who offers it. I’m still waiting, grandfather,

here with a pen in hand, a blank page
ready for your words.