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)

A Mother’s Grief

(Art my own. The drawing and the poem were in response to a documentary featuring a mother’s loss of her child by suicide. Please listen with care.)

Sorrow lines her edges
in blue-hued shadows
grief’s moss overpowering light

Lines etched erasable
she is fragmented, haunted
pain a persistent noose

She will rally to find order
lend her voice to cause
speak her child’s name

never without a catch –
the once-honeyed moniker
now slicing, heartbreaking

Vanity holds her together
dresses her daily mask
propels forward movement

While rage, and betrayal
roil within – a silent scream
shattering her inner landscape

Strong, they call her, courageous –
all lies, resentment tell hers –
no loss worthy of such praise

She mothers a ghost now,
does her best to nurture a memory
ties her apron strings to prevention

Secretly counts the seconds
till her faith will release her
returning the child to her arms

(Art my own. The drawing and the poem were inspired by a documentary highlighting a mother’s loss of her child by suicide. Please listen with care.)

Ukraine

Planted seeds for prosperity –
images of children frolicking
the delight of yellow horizons
tradition setting our fields ablaze

Till greed came knocking –
brother turning on brother

Rhetoric and lies shrapnel
shattering our dreams

Only the deer frolic now
unwitting participants in
this unprovoked slaughter
land mines defiling landscapes

But seeds are not lost,
nor are the legacy of generations
whose soil has known the red of blood
spirits who cannot be deterred

Independence will remain ours
the land a testimony to our toil
fortitude born of oppression
Ukraine stands proud.

(Image my own. Currently, in Ukraine, most areas have electricity outages, leaving inhabitants with hours of no light or heat in this cold. Any talk of peace is propaganda. The bombing has escalated.)