Any other way

Forget and forgive

Not the other way

Forward

Better to apologize

than ask for

Permission

Make sense

Of a million censors

One raises 

Voices

But acts alone.

There was a time 

of day

that just felt right

Now

is a different Time.

The sun sets

the sun rises

all the Same.

Image of Artwork credited by (Scan by NYPL), 'Sunrise or Sunset on Lake Champlain, NY' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Stages of Petrification

 Out of our cradle

endlessly rocking

so soothing to suck and swing,

we be, Wives to the House

we working women

with clean fingernails.

Rural and dirty, illiterate, failed to be-

come organized and erected,

built and projected by chart.

Fortunate: Educate the ‘poor’,

Entitle the ‘rich’ by degrees and adding zeros

we carry on, pound for pound.

In War

Peace. Conflict. Stability. Conflict.

War, Again. The sequel.

Work harder, work longer, work smarter, weave your

World Wide Webs

Catch the drift and save it for later.

Faith

Science

Tradition

Armed men have arrested the development

of reach, nucleic re-armament fires up

and we women make mud pies

with what we have.

Grow food, “make” food, “buy” food

and storage for later.

Trees to homes to paper planes,

Origamic Plastic Pyramids

surmounting slag on landfill,

a slippery slope, a slide-show.

Bare feet babies scramble to fill shoes

made from recycled tires

and the miles

felt without insoles.

It is too late to change courses.

Adapt. Improve. De(con)struct. It was all made

for you

to find a swing of things, how high

may be gotten before

going all the way around

giving blood

blisters from holding our chains

too tight.

Image of photo By Nikater (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Petrified Forest.

Thirteen ways of holding one's breath

I

Thru metamorphosis, emergence of

butterflies and frogs, spread and span

red cheeks, the gymnastic belly below

sticks it with

loins lurching

in love

untold dreams discontent 

unwonted wishes, woos and woes,

it comes and grows

infectious.

II

Heavy is the moment-

He is gone,

gone, gone, gone

Gone.

Generations gone by 

that beget her, 

forget her, the family moves on.

A casket, a Triscuit, 

another he dropped it,

and I put it in my pocket.

It is still there, in my jacket,

old as it is, new every time.

He was…

III

The spider, the car trouble, the anger,

the appliances, the curses,

the denial of utterance

which makes it so

makes it so,

laughable

as a bad day, a bad life, a stroke

of bad luck, 

against the odds

I would survive,

still born

dead. 

IV

All in. Cleared the accounts.

It has to happen now. 

It will be, what will be, it will,

still there remains 

doubt in the dregs.

V
Remind me:

You were never about you

were about them never being 

about you being you, or just you

and not them. They needed you

to be. You knew them before you

knew you were just being 

about them needing you needing 

them to be about being themselves and

not you being yourself to be by 

themselves, not you, being by yourself,

which would mean the end of you,
remember-

VI

Sow seeds are the things with feathers.

No, germination was more gentle.

Like television, what harm? What’s on? 

That’s always on.

And on lines, tapped for groundwater, mineral

rights and tracking cookie crumb trails,

I was being watched. 

I was being stalked, like prey, today.

A seed has been sown.

Murder,

she wrote, consumed him 

of her. 

VII

The same thing is

The same thing is

not 

the same thing is 

the same thing in

sanity.

VIII

Poison is in the food

poison is in the fear,

the body shrivels

the body resists

itself

healing.

IX

What has been done? What did you do?

About that-

Excuse us, excuses us,

in liberty, for just us,

to wait and seek happiness

coining it as pursuit

of private pleasures and 

philanthropic altruism,

we donate dirigible good

deeds, after our needs

have been met 

and mingled with resistance.

X

Go. I will 

meet you 

over

there.

XI

The next phase of the moon that wanes

knows how the shadows will fall 

before the darkness sets us in place.

XII

From inside the cave, gasping for air,

before light, 

unafraid of the burn, the yearning to yell

grips the mouthless beast 

hidden herself and longs to fill her lungs

with sound of feeling and exhale 

the pungent stench of death that goes

unheard,

the beast falls and the volcano erupts

with more of itself. 

XIII

If the sky holds you,

you will be carried

the rest 

of the Way.  

Inspired by Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

Painting By Alexander Mann (1853–1908) (oil on canvas) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

To sing the Plague song

Too thin to help now,
with your lacy veil
a white sinew
you see through
the darkest of times.
It is clear
little can be done
to make it any lighter.

Two threads easily slip
through your shining armor.
The stars know they are the
pommel, the knot at the end.

To ashes, all that remains
can only be folded back in,
the way the body blocks,
and a shadow cast.

Only to catch
a crescent moon.

One twisted wick will
melt the whole ball of wax.



Painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Hide & Seek

Depending upon your (pre)position
you know something has been missing
never there before perhaps,
up to your pointed laser view.
Also, suspect,
a break was needed,
new as and empty as the day sky,
open to be filled again
with dark matter.
The wax melts still
and cools our jets yet
taking it all in
was never personal.
Decay, as they say, as decay
is only natural.
You see how the light dissipates thin and wide,
they called them rays,
and they were good
enough for day.
The dark side always creeps away,
conserving potential, greater than the sun
only to begin again
scratching and digging out of the grave
new world.




Photo By Yellowstone National Park from Yellowstone NP, USA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Me, me, me, me

Is it fair to wonder
when I can be the me
I see,
when I think of who
I want to be-
come from where I stand
now-
it looks far as never
and if I am ever as close
as I am now,
I wonder if I will notice
the fair resemblance
to my former self-
or will I wish
to go on
wondering who
the next me will be?



Image of painting by Léon Perrault, c. 1868 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.