Imagine

If we could lift understanding
to indigenous teachings
expand our love
to earth, sky, and sea
Make personal gain taboo
and Ancients a weigh point

If we could witness the mountains
slow floating across the sky
and touch the dolphin’s soul
anxiously swimming
where tuna are netted

Would we cower at our insignificance
or move forward, learning to accept
that all of life is deeply woven
into the fabric of our collective hopes.

(Image my own)

Dear Child

I know a little girl,
whose hair in ringlets
falls, unkempt from lack
of brushing; who stands
when she should be sitting;
who laughs with defiance when
challenged, her dark eyes gleaming
with mischief; who holds her chin up
high and stamps her feet, arms folded
in protest when she does not get her way.

I see that little girl,
have watched her play,
with a wild imagination,
and a fearless temperament;
have watched her climb a tree,
scrap with any bully, and dare to
venture on her own; have witnessed
her alone times, hidden and obscured,
watched as she cried unheeded, buried
herself in books, drawing, and future dreams.

I feel that little girl,
who wears such a brave
exterior to mask her inner
fears; who bears a burden of
responsibility to carry the weight
of those around her;  who believes
she has the power to make her mother
cry, to cause her father’s violence, to save
her sisters from pain; who feels the punishment
of her situation and ascribes it to unworthiness.

I love that little girl,
whose mind is always
churning, who prays to a
god she’s never seen, and
makes wishes on rainbows;
who longs to make a difference,
and refuses to believe that suffering
is all there is; who devotes herself to
being a better person, and hopes one day
that she’ll finally feel at peace in the world.

I hold that little girl,
warm within my heart,
listen to her fears, hear
her heart’s longing;  praise
her courageous efforts, appease
her doubts, offer condolences for
losses, encouragement for change,
forgive her of her burdens; allay her
misperceptions, reassure her worth,
promise to never let her go: she is me.

Re-de-fine-d

Ask me how I’m doing
and I’ll say “fine”, not
because I’m actually fine,
but because “fine” is the only
socially acceptable response.

If I said that I have been lying
here, for three hours now,
willing my body to move,
that would elicit unsolicited
advice and tarnish my “fine”.

I’d berate myself for breaking
my promise not to moan,
knowing that complaining
provokes a compulsive need
to fix, which just infuriates me

Because my concept of trying –
which is defined by getting dressed
each day – does not match trying
every new therapy, drug, exercise
offered by well-meaning but clueless

others, who may experience fatigue
at times, but have no understanding
of what is is to be exhausted after
something as simple as bathing,
let alone debating what I haven’t tried.

So, ask me how I’m feeling, and
I’ll say “fine” and we move on
to the weather, or the latest
movie must-see, and I can bask
in the warmth of the contact

carry the conversation into the
void of the rest of my day, smile
to think that I still have friends
who accept my “fine” even though
they know I am anything but…

(Art my own)

Crisis

How did undocumented –
a civil infraction –
reduce people to ‘bodies’?

And how did empathy –
observation and support –
merit death by gunshot?

When we stretch for explanations –
to fit the violent rhetoric –
are we too not complicit in crime?

Red, blue, it’s all intolerable –
the global stage is watching –
a nation in rapid decline.

“He’ll burn it all down,”
we’d been warned –
prophetic at that.

The terror escalates,
the system no longer works,
people are uprising to stunned silence

Where is the hand of justice,
governance for and of the people,
a nation for all….gone?

Greed drives this destructive machine.
Cut off the source of fuel, methinks –
if power is to act out empathy.

Poet’s Quandry

If
I were
to write
every day
for one
hundred days,
would my soul
be purged of
this malaise;
is it a thing
to be dredged,
dragged up –
twisted
and tied
like tattered
bed sheets
knotted
together;
is there
a remedy
for this
scourge;
or is this
an inherent
restlessness,
a fiery blue
spark of eternal
angst igniting
passion – a call
to write?

(Originally posted February, 2017. Image my own)

Expectations

Expectations artificial
living in an urban jungle
longing for nature’s calm –

time moves too swiftly
barely register
let alone participate

We are guests in our own
expectation’s dysfunction
licensed for depression

a smorgasbord for abuse
intentions mislaid,
disappointment unavoidable

The ego pretends to be open
but she’s an actress off cue
playing out a sentence –

condemned to basics
praying to escape
this dystopian malfunction.

(Image my own)