wrapped in rough fabric in slanted light,
hollow, wire frame pressed tight,
beaded spine resting in the space between,
like a bowl-backed mandolin that no longer plays
the music gone still.
soon silent.
only this is no instrument.
he’s a child.
an empty-bellied, innocent child.
a dying child.
his mother there too, eyes closed...
in prayer?
in defeat?
in suspension of disbelief?
the unreal reality of us closing our eyes
to him,
his frail body,
his fledgling hair,
the delicate loops and whorls of his crown --
a fingerprint of our hands-on, hands-off approach to people
in this war
between
the right ways and wrong ways to occupy land
between
the right ways and wrong ways to worship god
between
the right ones and wrong ones to care about
to support
to feed
to lend aid
to weaponize
to fire bomb
to shoot in the street as they try not
to starve
this is a picture of a mother holding her child
not an instrument
of war
please may the war stop.
not the music of this little boy's heart.
I sift through the last-recent pictures of him,
listen to his one remaining voice mail.
Hello, it’s your Dad. I’m doing just great.
No problems whatsoever.
I like hearing that. I suppose now, it’s true.
I’m sure he keeps counsel with his favorite
cold war space race physicists at some marble-
topped table in heaven, the holy trinity in attendance.
His parents and sister there too.
A month before we lost him, he was worried about losing her.
When the time comes, will you drive me to her funeral?
Absolutely I would have, but he didn’t make it.
And she couldn’t make it to his.
This Father’s Day week, I thrilled at the Strawberry Moon
with Mercury, Jupiter, Mars all in tow. Even Venus joined
the party. The night sky is the love language I learned from
my dad. I remember standing barefoot in crabgrass, scarcely
knee-high to a June Bug, constellations wheeling above us,
as he pointed out stars, taught me the planets, conditioned
me to swoon over lunar events.
The moon vanished the weekend we buried him,
slipped away into Earth’s shadow as I facetimed
his twin sisters, one wrapped in the bedsheets she’d
never again leave.
They watch me now as I write, he and my aunt --
a pair of cardinals (if legends hold true) appearing each dawn –
wings a brilliant Mars red, eyes mercurial dark.
I do my best to reassure him.
Hello, it’s your daughter. I’m doing just great.
No problems whatsoever.
Ah, the heady, slow tempo,the sonnet of June --
with summer stretched out in a languorous tune,
her notes sweetly pedaled and perfumed with sighs,
she vows lazy mornings and evenings sublime.
With a go-nowhere-fast song, she’s pool-water chill,
for screen-porch rain listening and napping your fill.
Crack open the book spines, the bottles of wine,
and relish her at-ease, adagio time.
Wake up to slow measures, dipped silver with dew,
as deer tap staccato while tiptoeing through.
At dusk, come the cymbals in lightning bug sets
of quivering selfies that make you forget
next month, bringing emails with pre-planning news,
and all the bleak back-to-school rhythm and blues.
Can you taste the tears
in her black forest torte?
how they clung to her lashes
in long pregnant pauses --
before dropping,
embryonic cysts
blooming bittersweet
in layers?
Or how sometimes her sour
skittles its way into the cherry tarts?
The from-scratch crust, cut and rolled,
pinched and pleated,
thick-clumped with longing
for things not fully formed?
All the tender, tangled
undertones and shortcomings
sifted and stirred into gifts chilling
on the second shelf, stacked
in tins and under domes,
reborn sweet and warm --
her heart served up with
fork and spoon?
*Buttercream Baroness art by Tracy Porter; Porter Art Guild
Seems about right,
this new walking fad comes to light
during the apocalyptic second term
of a cult leader ready to burn
all semblance of normalcy,
of decency, of democracy—
his policy driven by bended knee
to the almighty dollar,
his minions donning loyalty collars,
lapping up his Kool-Aid
praising every tirade,
every military parade,
banishment of any aid,
both foreign and domestic
as they bow and genuflect.
You’ll know them by their
orange passion and flair,
their unabashed disdain -
insane rage - for the sage
value of any initiative,
or presumed derivative,
involving social diversity,
inclusion and equity,
and any sort of empathy.
They silence other voices,
take away choices,
arrest and deport,
rewrite history, report
falsities, deny science,
are completely defiant
of research,
disbelieving the experts
in favor of the perverts
of justice and truth
with their sawtooth
smiles and weaponized wiles.
They blaspheme and defame,
shame and blame the women
among us, denigrate the more-melanined
among us, belittle the neuro-divergent
among us, arrest the daring outspoken
among us, fire those who dare protest
among us, infiltrate the most sensitive
information about us.
Sheep carcasses are strewn
from Wall Street to the White House lawn,
as his followers applaud
the “gets worse before it gets better” lore.
Meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor
get whiplash trying to wrap their heads around
the crumbs tossed to the ground
from the wealthiest of these pockets,
holding onto the promise -- a return to greatness
to antiquatedness, to the adulterated-ness
of a lesser democracy, when liberty wasn’t free
for all of us.
Back to the times and crimes
and political climes
of bleeding women dying in back streets
and strange fruit hanging on southern trees.
But stories like these are lambasted,
then categorically blasted
from statue placards
and archival records,
from websites and libraries
naval academies,
elementary, middle and secondary schools
for everyone must follow his rules
or lose funding or worse
in this insanely alternate universe
we find ourselves in –
as impossible to comprehend
as me finding time to bend
60 minutes of walk time
at 6 in the morning or 6 at night
in my chaotic scene
of kids and work and chasing dreams.
As impossible to believe
as a nation that would take leave
of its senses to follow its leader/redeemer,
who loves wealth and self, is a schemer
a hyperbolic screamer,
a traitor, manipulator,
a tyrant,
aberrant
idiot, and absolute,
insufferable bore.
So Resist this anti-democracy,
anti-christ-like
blaspheming orange aberration,
I challenge you.
Resist him, I beg you.
Resist him – today.
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.
--Yann Martel, Life of Pi
we lug our guts around in our bag of bones
and being
a ticking tangle of purpose and futility,
we seek to make magic of the mincemeat
we’ve been served,
to make art of our existence
before it’s gone too soon
gone to ruin
our dance with life
a composition
ending
in death
where decomposition
takes the final bow
meanwhile, the masters behind
like the masters before
the masters like us
break
bread over the bodies
of work we leave behind,
our dusty rewards raked together
in studied elegies
of the rise and fall
of form and function,
the composition
of the naked ambition
of all who came
and saw
and were conquered
before
begging,
more please my mentors
more please for me.
Hearts as good
as grits and gravy,
passions that run
like over-easy eggs,
my first block class
of seniors
is a heaping helping
of Heaven Help
with a whole lotta
Gotta love ‘em
thrown in too.
Scattered, smothered,
and covered up –
that’s what they keep me –
along with on my toes
and on my No’s,
but oh-so-many
Yes-es, too.
We should all be
this way, their way,
full of pushing ourselves
and our limits,
pouring our magic
into this, our magic hour
in this wild and precious world.
We should all be grabbing our minutes
by the forkfuls, the spoonfuls, the plate and bowl and platterfuls,
with hearts as good as grits and gravy, passions spilling off the edges
like
over-easy
eggs.
Before the grit
and grave
overtake us all.
I’m oh-so-done with the darkness and gloom
so ready to disregard heralds of doom
for greener pastures, sweeter natures
softer scenes and lesser dangers.
But can I, should I, turn away,
pretend it’s not happening every day —
the fabric and flesh of American dreams
aren’t being gutted, torn loose at the seams?
So much vicious carnage, fresh blood every day,
pooling, congealing, while most look away.
I gawk and claw and scream at the trends,
try to wake neighbors, coworkers and friends;
but so few are listening, so lost in their role:
red-blooded Americans losing their soul
to their man and his crony who’s bleeding them dry
of things they would normally never abide:
like liberty, bank accounts, morals, good sense
how long will they sit and forget self defense —
(that right they hang hats on
campaigns on,
their money and more).
How long ‘til it becomes
an ironical right that
the blindly-following right
have hanged themselves —
and every last one of us –
on?
I woke to the shrieks
of blackbirds roving.
Again.
Every day
for the last 20-something,
they’ve picked at anything
trying to wriggle a little life
out of this cold planet —
their raucous beaks slicing
as if the world is on fire,
when in reality,
there’s no way.
It’s blueblack cold and cracked here,
with frosty hearts on full display.
I wanted to say hearts unfrosted, but that would have been wrong.
The White House Valentine, with its chronic anger and bulbous, floating heads, proves that sentiment wrong.
Oh, also sentiment is wrong.
Inefficient. Fraudulent.
Surely a liberal initiative and thus dismantled completely by dodgy, draconian beaks as too woke.
I woke to the shrieks
of blackbirds.
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