Category: culture

Poets

Write to enlighten –
words are keys,
phrases fodder

We are conductors,
orchestrating ideas
penning odes to life.

(Poets first appeared January 20. Image my own)

Disillusionment

What is the fallout of oppression –
misinformation ignoring collective needs?

Focus on we, as if we is me, and
they are the reason our attempts fail

Assertiveness has no hold
when obligations are cheapened

And time/ history is ignored
for a feel-good moment now. 

How does one decipher the nonsense
weed through the flimsy constructs

And realign with a vision –
powered by love for all?

(Image my own)

Intangibles

Mother followed all the trends –
Scarsdale and grapefruit diets,
minis and maxis,
platforms and pumps –
reaching for an ideal
my child’s mind
could not comprehend

Father dreamt of a voice makeover
had flown his ancestral roots
in search of…what?
I did not know

I learned that men
were to be pleased,
and compassion
was a woman’s role
and it was folly to hazard
confrontation when alcohol
was in the mix,

Intangible as life was
I deduced that secrets –
the avoidance of scandal –
rendered women ineffective

and by the very circumstance
of my birth, I was tainted,
weighted by shame
destined to endure
pain as love
invested in
my worthlessness

Except life is evolution
and rage emerges
from oppression
and conviction
smashes the impotence
of ideals, embraces
the abstracts
of fluidities,

and merging out of shame
I see that struggle
is opportunity

and that rewriting legacies
is an honourable goal
and I do have power
in any given moment…

only wish
I had known it
sooner.

(Art my own)

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)

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)