Category: current affairs

The History Lesson (haibun)

“Why do we have to learn about something that doesn’t effect us?” the small, blonde student asked me. “I mean, it was ages ago, and not even in our country.”

She might as well have run me through the heart with a stake, the pain of her words struck me so deeply.  I considered her:  an average student, indulged, youngest child, modestly dressed, like many of her age. Disinterested.

Because without our awareness, and interference, history repeats itself, I wanted to say.  Because nothing that happens in the world happens in isolation; we are not immune. Because ignorance makes victims of us all.

Instead, I sent the class home with an assignment:  ask questions, call your grandparents, find someone who remembers, and be prepared to share what you have discovered.

History foretells –
casts eerie shadows over
disregard’s future.

(Reposting The History Lesson as it remains pertinent. Photo collage my own)

Repression is Not an Option

This divide is but an illusion
glass partitions fallible

We drink from the same source
our assigned task reverential

Denial has limits…
the beast swells…
writhes in churning waters

We are fearful
because power feeds off fear –
Eden’s serpent reincarnated

Round up your loyalties
your petty contrivances
and prepare

Patriarchy engorged
 on misogynistic agendas
force feeds archaic notions

Subdues
constricts
silences
disembodies the feminine –

We have been here before, women
and we are Eve –
not born of man’s weakness
but in response to it!

She-power
intuits
channels
transforms

We are the beast
wombs pulsing
curves thrashing
our collective hearts
life affirming

Let us shatter glass illusions
hold our sisters, mothers, children
in heart-centered conviction

align our voices
stand firm
and channel this righteous rage
into empowered revelation.

(Art mine with an AI boost)

Oh, Fences

There, beyond the fence lines
amid the birch and firs
I find my breath

Does graze, and fawns skip
as if they are children
chasing butterflies

An abundance of harmony,
ego leads me to believe,
but it is only denial

The bulldozer snorts
and rumbles into view,
deer and I lifting heads

Tails raised, the four-legged scatter,
hide themselves within the brush –
Is such shelter adequate? I wonder

Human demand eroding the green –
We talk about living minimally –
fail to consider God’s creatures

Whose very existence shrinks
within the confines
of expanding fences.

(Image my own)

Post-Celebration Pause

A wrapping paper remnant
glimmers beside sofa leg

Uneaten chocolates and
sugar cookie delights tempt

The chorus of voices
fades into mind’s recesses

The fullness of the day
tucked warmly within

The advantage of age
is the ability to imbibe
in the post-celebration pause.

(Wishing everyone the warmest of pauses this holiday season.)





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)

Lorraine

Remember how we fought
at four and five –
over whose turn it was
to push the baby buggy?

Your Campbell soup baby face
locks curlier than mine;  
eyes a brighter sparkle

How you withdrew from me with age
ashamed your mother was an alcoholic –
I did not care, carried my own secrets

How you chose drugs to cope,
while I went straight – the line
too wide to cross, it seemed.

You were my roots, dear friend
the rock I needed to ground me
Life, back then, never easy

Secrets tore us apart – projections
of judgments never actualized
somehow, I never measured up

I see you now, shrouded in the mist
of my own grief, understand that your turmoil
ran deeper than I had known, and one day

when we meet in Heaven,
I will embrace the whole you
and we will laugh at how secrets

whose very disclosure would have solidified us
kept us more and more distant – so little
did we know of love at the time.

(Lorraine died at the age of 26 – complications from drug use. After her death, I learned that she was a lesbian, a secret that she thought she could not share with me at the time. She had not known that I would not have judged her. Sadly, we never had the chance. I loved her so.)