These barriers –
iced over sentiments
barbed-wire wounds –
How do we reconcile
when questions
resist answers?
What remains
to be solved?
I retreat into misery
Should never have allowed
heart to even hope –
Belle, you torture me so.
(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own.)
Brazen with whiteness
four toads
exerted presence
cuffed and killed a man
“I can’t breathe.”
On the front lawn
of America
stripped of empathy
the leader knelt
Not in prayer –
reverence burns his lips –
he knelt with authority
or his version, venomous
Three looked on
ignored pleas
gloated in the horror
of life’s final gasp
Humanity’s blood
now cold
unleashing a scream
a primal, reptilian rage
The offspring
of oppression
and hate
uncoiling
Like snakes
nest disturbed
rising against injustice
burning down the walls
As The Man weaves
his tale of dissonance
casting lines of division
few listen..
Black Lives Matter
drowns the rhetoric
the breakthrough is complete
we can no longer look away.
(For George Floyd and all the others murdered senselessly at the hands of those commissioned to protect. Submitted to Reena’s Exploration challenge: breakthrough. Image my own.)
Anticipate salvation –
the stork master
spews cryptic babble
Is there hope to be had?
Don’t speak forked-tongue
cannot decipher the yarn
Suspect time alone holds truth
experience will betray the lies
integrity winning out in the end.
(Image mine)
Travel East
in search of self
Half family extends
unexpected warmth
Is my identity here
with stranger-brothers?
I contemplate pausing
surrendering to other
But this is sleep-walking
the distance still remains
Journey has no end
till soul has purpose
and wisdom relieves
the wounded child.
(Submitted for Eugi’s Causerie weekly prompt:identity. Image shows an old house with wrap around porch in monotone. From my personal collection.)
Formation of swans
blaring advance, lift my lens
spectacle captured
ennui momentarily
broken – contemplate message.
(Tuesdays I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. This time, it’s a tanka. Image my own.)
Travel is the ask,
so many questions – answers
just fragments of truth.
(Seeker first appeared here January of 2109. I resubmit it here for Reena’s Exploration Challenge #143: featured image.)
Inessential am I
ghost of a woman
burden avoidance
Imperfect am I
each flaw a step
towards deepening blue
And yet, I exist
purpose unknown
shadow dancing.
(Image: Self-portrait)
Ego fiercely defends
status quo, perceives
movement as predator
Soul craves peace,
provoked by the illusion
division the public glide
How do we manage
when progress, stripped bare
displaces understanding?
Alone, I cycle through
these observations
encounter jammed passages
Dismayed by deviancy
messages aimed to exploit
the vulnerable naked and blind.
(For Eugi’s Causerie weekly prompt: observation. Image my own.)
Strains of “Desperado”
float through my mind
as images of the plague
assault me- this new life
too much, future unforeseeable
caught in a dystopian novel.
(Tuesdays I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own.)
Artistic sensibility
hungered by the exquisite
craves expression
The critic guffaws
decries creativity
starves the impulse
Who unleashed
such nonsense,
such magical thinking!
To think beauty
once espied
can be replicated
and by such an amateur
the unskilled hand
an unworthy representative.
But the artist, unleashed
knows only magic –
this genie will not be rebottled.
(Thank you to Reena’s Explorationchallenge, whose prompt line is: The genie is not getting back in the bottle.  Art work my own – self-critiqued and found lacking, thank you.)
One Woman's Quest 