Category: poetry

White Noise

(Warning: foul language)

Rallies, hired guards,
warnings of revolution
and God knows what

Ambition is a cruel cage

Freak offs, and hitmen,
made-up masculinity
unintelligible banter

Power wields cold chains

Misogyny is not a win
archaic ideations –
not the mark of divinity-

Free the barbed emotions
of Patriarchal walls
unstable…and now…
exposed

Despair is paralysis
a surrender to the lies

Shooter drills no solution

It’s fear that motivates
and righteousness that binds
and in the white noise
of rising awareness

The perpetrators
calmly walk away
Exit strategy preplanned

While we pray
that karma is a bitch
and limp back
to our wasted lives.

(Art my own)

Strawberry Season

Strawberries ripen, their scarlet-red sweetness staining the cheeks of students whose bodies, unripened, rail against the conformity of stiff backed chairs and bolted down desks.  Spring has dared to don the cloak of summer – green emboldened fields trampling over delicate beginnings; and we are splash pad, motorcycle revving, boom box crazy, ready to plunge into the swelter, restless.

Strawberries ripen
Spring’s sweet offerings foretell –
Summer games begin.

(Image my own)

Snake Woman

To lounge
perched oblivious
nature vs domesticity
decision in limbo

I call upon the rains
pray for cleansing
this too-worn skin
eager to shed

I welcome the Divine
sweet messages
of birdsong
serenading

It’s fear that draws me
away from Nature’s charm
a creeping compulsion
that I don’t belong

I am hungry
swallow my prayers whole
wallow in the acidic burn
of betrayal’s ashes

I am greedy in my misery
will stuff myself
with expectation
and forgo pleasure

What am I but baggage?
A burden
locked in my shame

A side show
whose lethargy renders me
incompetent

Illness is a thief
have lost what is sacred
choking on the feathers
of the song that once fed me.

Passion the cloth
that contains me
Time a transformer
if only I surrender

I’ll grow a new skin
confident and fearsome
am I not afterall
reptilian born?

(Art my own)

The Department Store Tower

(Warning: Poem makes reference to child abuse)

She taught me how to stay out of sight
the women who worked the candy counter

Dragged my fourteen-year-legs in beside her
as management brushed past, oblivious

Stick to the aisles and passageways, she said
Make sure you are always busy.

She couldn’t say the words that burned on her tongue:
He’ll follow you into darkened corners of the warehouse
He’ll lock the doors and tell you it’s all your fault

No one talked about what this man did,
five floors beneath the department store opulence
While people shopped, and ate, and bought

The wheels of consumerism, well-oiled
stuffing our consciousness with lies and deceit
the vulnerable confined to shadows and margins

But some of us will never forget
Innocent fragments haunting locked corners
Ensuing rage still railing against the injustice
That puts a pedophile in charge.

(Image my own)

Nested

Nestled in with childhood truths –
secondhand
perspective missing

Nursing a creeping creativity –
insignificant lucidity expanding
measurably hurried

Once social, now retreating
papered over failure
have fallen
frigid waves infiltrating
chronically pained
over and over
contemplating flight
freedom

Voiceless
expressionless
flat
even revelation muted
unmoving

protective boundaries
discussed
now crumbling
underestimated the struggle
the pervasiveness

Consider a militant approach
strident restrictions
nullifying passions
but I am a weaver

open to uncovering
blessings in failure,
compensated by soaring –
grounded yet questing
unsettled

disease is not a repellent for the mind
conjures movement in the sedentary
creatures born of defensiveness

I am motivated to find renewal
dank, moist, lacking flame
in this explosive personal nest.

(Written during my bedbound days, 2017. Edited for this edition. Image my own)