Month: December 2019

Old Year

Images of the year
Drift in my mind
Like so many
Snowflakes melting
In a cold rain.
My blood turns icy
With so much frozen regret.

My dog stops.
We’ve reached a crosswalk.
Unlike me, she’s learned
Her lessons well.
But she reminds me
The years of regret are done,
So we walk on since no traffic comes.

The sun peeks out,
Deciding it’s safe,
She comes out all the way
To warm and cheer us.
My dog looks up at me
And seems to smile.

This year will be done.
Yes, soon, this year will be done.

Lilith’s Mantle

from Pinterest

We reject the second mother
you would give us,
reject subjugation
of ripped rib bone,
accept not the pain
from seeking knowledge.

We have borne brutality for the ages,
Silent always,
In churches,
In governments,
In streets,
And in our homes.
Our mouths learned silence,
keeping us, at least, alive.

Oh, we were worthy of protection
As long as we were your possessions:
Your mothers, your daughters,
Your sisters, your wives.
As long as you owned us
And we did as we were told,
We lived, perhaps, unbruised.

But the brave have shown us
Through the ages and now again
They show us another way.
We find our voice,
Too strident for your ears,
But even our whispers
Are too strident for you.

You will mock us,
Vilify us, this we know.
Proudly we wear the mantle
Of the first mother,
Lilith, the one you deemed
An enemy long ago and banished.
Her spirit moves us to speak
Against the men who take
Even our bodies from us.
You may beat us, kill us,
Force us into marriage and childbearing,
Rape us, place weapons into the hands
Of the children we bear,
Weld the chains of slavery upon us,
And laughingly say we asked for it
Should we complain.

Yet after all that and more,
Our submission you will not have.
We will rise like an ocean wave
Wakened by a great quake
Beneath the sea and drown you
With the devastation of your hate.

Soon some of Lilith’s daughters
Will march. Some will wait across
The Earth.

But Lilith’s mantle
Covers us all.
The quake is coming.
The wave will free us all.

Hidden

The things we hide
Even from cloudy light
Of day
Lie curled,
Coiled in the vault
Of soul.

The echo of their hiss
A vibration ignored
By our smiling faces.

Only In the dark hours
Of early morn
Or in moments
Of honest naked prayer,
Do we glance
At the skins
Left in the shedding
Of our sins
Unconfessed

A Word

Remember whispered intimations

In the time before sleep.

Having faced down the hours

Of another day of what must be done,

How long will it take before

Forgetfulness wipes the whispers away

Of well-intentioned comfort

Along with any memory

Of facades presented but to a few

Who knew the truth?

Until then, stumble onward

Facing the intimidation

Of a blank page,

Smash a soul against it.

Read the splatters left

And know time is the matter.

Time, neither too fast, nor too slow

Can it pass before realizing

Nothing really mattered,

But the kindness

In forgetfulness.

Air

Never could breathe
When in your air.

You, your perfume,
Or something in the scent of you
Clogged my nose,
My sinuses,
My bronchial tubes
With fluid like cement,
Leaving me no air
To live on.

Really, suffocation
Never felt so sweet.

You were warmth personified
Like fire you fed on the oxygen
Whenever you wanted,
Wherever you were.
But God, it felt like heaven
To warm myself near your flames.
Until it felt like hell
And I burned in the flames,
Sucking in nothing but smoke.

Now, from the ashes,
I rise and breathe.


Once again,
I know the air.

Nesting Dolls (your last Christmas present 2014)

Broken nesting dolls
Lie in splinters
Emptied of each other.
At their core,
Among the splinters
And dust of months
And years,
There rests
At their center
A small letter
Of seasons and time
And meanings
Within a silver ring.

In the cleaning
Of brokenness,
A small splinter
Works under skin
To be lost
And never found.

Going to the River – M.A. Morris

I am extremely honored to be featured on Braveandreckless.com

Brave & Reckless

She was standing at the ready
To make me say I am wrong.
Like some saint,
I had to pluck out my eyes
To see, to see
The contortionist
She could be with words.

I laid hands upon myself
And am cured of blindness,
Cured of deafness,
And now she hates me.
Since I said,
“Get behind me, Serpent!
That dance of manipulation
No longer mesmerizes me!”

At least my head is not upon a platter,
Being served to her.

Now, I am going to the river.
Doesn’t matter where it is.
Doesn’t matter how far I must walk.
I’ll wear my shoes out
And walk my feet bloody and raw.
I am gonna dunk myself in that river,
Not her stagnate lake.
I won’t care if it’s frozen over.
I’ll dig through the ice with just my fingers.
I’ll baptize myself in icy chunks
Of slush if I must.

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Freedom from Everything I Never Told You – M.A. Morris

I am honored to have this poem featured on Braveandreckless.com

Brave & Reckless

Believe me,
You don’t want to know
Everything I never told you.
No, you don’t want to know.
You’d never admit to it all anyway.
How you slowly drove me a little insane.
A little gaslight there. A little gaslight here.
A bit of manipulation and a little playing with words.
The metronome of your words—

I’ve always liked this
I’ve always liked that
Are you happy?
Are you happy with me?
Are you happy?
Are you happy with me?
Why don’t you act happy?
Why don’t you smile?
Why don’t you act happy?
Why don’t you smile?

Then you listed all the reasons for my unhappiness
And none concerned you or
You and me together or
All the reasons why I walked on eggshells
Around your daily prescribed as needed
Questions about my happiness,
My happiness with you, why I didn’t smile like a fool
Every single time I…

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