Save Us

Discharge the gun –
protection a vessel
through which our depths
are undefined…adrift

Fear is a burrower
wears a false crown
births loss
trusts danger

Hearts beg,
amid this trigger-readiness
for a guardian – unafraid
to court this meaningless

Futility unchecked –
to study productive options
unimaginable in the current
state of chaos on repeat.

(Art my own)

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If I Could Only Breathe

So much I want to say,
yet the oppression of opposition
stomps heavily on my airways
cutting off the flow

Daughter of a trans father
mother contemplating MAiD –
embroiled in controversy,
I see only injustice

Cannot fathom the hatred
the railing against books
and glamour, and science,
misappropriation of christianity

How am I supposed to grieve;
take up arms for those I love,
when I am silenced before I speak
judgments cast without a thought?

If I could have a word,
if anyone would listen
I would share, perhaps insight
into the lives of secrets held

Describe how hearts wilt
beneath cruelty of suppression
how torn apart we become
ignorance voiding authenticity

I would tell you of the horrors
that dwelt within our homes
the fear of discovery, of rejection
how ugly it all felt….until

Education offered explanation
and in that opening
we saw potential to climb out
from our shadowy existence

embrace a life in which our love
is neither tainted nor deviant
and tell me please, as I try to listen
how such hopefulness is sin, after all.


(Image my own)


Fences

Look at us building fences
pretending we have differences

Do we not hunger the same
hunt in the same places?

Do we not strive with equal intent
build our nests with the same ferocity?

Forgo passion for survival?
Let us stop pretending

Let down these walls
admit to our vulnerabilities

align our purposes, and
fight a more fearsome foe.

(Fences first appeared here in March, 2018. Image my own)

Texas I Remember

Texas Winter donned a chill
windy days and rainy nights –
funny how I’d forgotten that

I remember coastal waters
the sheer joy of cranes in flight
or Roseated spoonbills feasting

The warm thrill of tortilla soup
and the satisfaction of enchiladas
spices still lingering in my mind

A scrap of Texas memorialized
an endearing image blotting out
the internal, newsworthy, storms.

(Image my own)

No Idea!

Girls are lucky:
just need to find the right man –
looked after for life.
Advice from a teenaged brother.

Right! I yell back,
fifty years later.
It was all a vacation –
raising the children on my own
looking for God in the midst of chaos
partners with wandering eyes
or absent…always absent…
still waiting for that “looking after”

And how did you make out, Dear Brother?
Oh, that’s right…married…
woman with a good job
willing to let you putter in the background

Guess we were both misled.

(No Idea! first appeared here November 2020. Image my own.)