Category: emotion

An Unrepentant Sky

Image courtesy of shutterstock.com

merge with the unrepentant sky,
learn the truth, the reasons why
suffering and fear and hatred abound,
feeding upon human souls,
destroying what Nature did so elegantly design,
the beauty of humanity
from the inside out--
until we are devils,
our mouths foaming blood-tinged froth
while our claws fill with sinew torn
from our innocent brethren,
who different from us,
are deemed worthy only of hate—
and the earth turns
on its axis of destruction
in an unrepentant sky
as any God that be cries.

The Heart

Image courtesy of sketchfab.com
An odd creature,
powers through a day,
decades, a life.

A four chambered
survivalist beast,
outlasting all fracturing
cracks of grief
when the spirit, will, mind
drift away.

In imitation,
a four chambered thing
beats on and on.

Ink, Time, Books

image courtesy of dreamtime.com
A few minutes every day,
at times, stretching into hours,
I write to you
in this book,
writing words
whispering mysteries
of the winds in the mountains.

At times, my words still,
shifting, settling then sighing
as moonstone white clouds rest,
caressing the tops of mountains.

I have burned hundreds
of ink filled books
over these many years
when disgusted with
the imperfection
of my scribbled pages.
The heat of their fires
never offered much warmth.
Now, I save my scribble filled books
though you may never see them.


Forty-five years,
I have written words to you,
yet you never knew,
and neither did I
until this moment.

A Small Moment

image is my own
Strong, the breeze this evening

bringing the scent of grilling burgers 

from a distant neighbor’s yard.

The sounds of soft sighs issue 

from the dogs at my side.



The hummingbirds perform

an elegant ballet concerning

territorial claims as the symphony

of their brilliant buzzing

makes us all look up.



Stillness—

Then—



A rumble in the distance.

The scent of rain at war

with the scent of grilling burgers

from the neighbor’s yard.

The drops of rain pelt,

driving away 

the smell of grilled meat.

Now, only the scent of rain remains.

The battle won.



Protected under the patio cover,

The dogs and I sigh.

My Mother’s Washboard

image from fineartamerica.com photo by H. Armstrong Roberts
The old washboard

stands in a five dollar flea market tub

with three faded, scratched up tall coke bottles,

a rusted plaid patterned lunch pail,

a red plastic mesh bag filled with used beach toys,

a broken hobby horse some kid rode once 

while yelling, Hi, Ho, Silver! Away!



Among this disregarded dusty junk,

the old washboard looks fragile 

as if the wood surrounding the corrugated steel

might fracture should a woman grasp it

intending to use it to scrub stains

from familial laundry

like my mother did with her’s.



I remember my mother’s washboard

standing in her soaking bucket,

filled with 20 Mule Team Borax, Biz, and hot water,

which stood in the concrete laundry tubs

in the basement of the house.



I remember how her knuckles turned red,

the skin raw looking, as she scrubbed blood

from a blouse, pouring salt from a Morton’s

salt container onto the stain then scrubbing

up and down, up and down on the washboard, 

then dunking the blouse twice 

to see if the stain was gone.

Pour, scrub, scrub, dunk, dunk

pour, scrub, scrub, dunk, dunk

pour, scrub, scrub, dunk, dunk

The pattern, the rhythm, until the stain erased.



I have no soaking bucket, 

no Twenty Mule Team Borax, no Biz,

no washboard

to get my stains out.  

My spray bottle of Oxi Clean Stain Remover 

pales in memory

of my mother’s washboard.



Your Wings

image courtesy of wallpaperabyss.com

Dreams
	fulfilled and abandoned,
	the wistful whimsical ones of fantasy--

Tears
	fallen,
	dried long ago, leaving salt crusts behind,
and those never allowed to fall--
	

The skins of selves I used to be
	the wounded and scarred
	the shrunken down inside her skin
	the sacrificial to survival--



Take these things
I freely give,
adding all 
my wishes
my dreams
my hopes
for you.
Next,
Add all you want,
all you dream,
all you desire,
wish for and hope for
in your life 

Then weave of them a chrysalis 
bout yourself to cushion and protect
as you grow into your own skin.

Leave your chains of fear, 
your yoke of worries
with me.
I will bury them
deep inside my chest.

When you emerge,
your wings wet and beautiful,
you may perch upon
the branch of pride
growing from my soul
to flex and flutter your wings
until dry enough to fly,
beautiful as you have always been,
never to shrink
or curl away 
your wings again.

Morning Coffee

video is my own (this little one ventures closer every morning)
the coolness of morning enters

it drifts into the veins

chills feeling for a time—

when the hummingbird perches

to drink the fresh sugar water

I made for her that morning,

I smile.

Hair part II: Untamed and Ugly

courtesy of CFR.org
courtesy of radio free europe
courtesy of Reuters
courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald
by Curtis Ray Benally courtesy of Rollingstone.com
I grasp this beast of kinky

curls that sits upon my head,

attempting to tame it into submission.

First, the wire brush stretching strands

straight as concentrated hot air

dry the water from the beast.

Slowly the taming comes.

Finally dry, frizz left there,

making me aware who the boss really is. 



I break out my next weapon 

against this frizzy beast:

The flat iron.

And while it heats,

I tune the speakers to a podcast

about the missing women of Juarez.

Sectioning my beast hair as I listen

about women missing,

women found dead,

women to whom no one paid attention 

because 

they were

women, girls

because

they were

brown

because 

they were

poor

women, girls

brown

poor—

The things 

that do not grab attention

that fade away in the media

easy to say of these—

They ran away.

They ran away with a boyfriend.

Oh, she’s a drug addict.  Who knows where she went?



And on I go to straighten another section

Of hair with my hot flat iron.

My beast neatly tamed.

I think it would be easier to braid my hair into rows.

Decorating the braids with small beads,

a bead for each missing woman,

a bead for each murdered woman,

a bead for each missing, murdered, indigenous woman of color

in this land, across the globe.

Each tiny bead 

with a name microscopically etched

and then braided into my hair

as beads of grief,

a bead for each woman, each girl—

If I could then even lift

my bead heavy head

like the mothers who carry

sandbags of grief searching

the world for daughters

gone missing—

what could I, one person, do?



The world spins on.

Despite the burden of beads,

these beads braided

into the fabric of motherhood

across the globe

for girls gone missing,

girls glanced at, ignored 

by a society that sends up invisible prayers

then turns forgetting what it deems valueless,

girls marked by the violence of poverty,





Then I think of 22 year old, Mahsa Amini.

dead in the twisted irony

of morality police custody for a hijab violation.

I should shave my head in solidarity 

with the women of Iran 

who protest.

But what could I, one person, do?



Would beads or a shaved head here make a difference?

Would anyone know the meaning?  

My neck cannot bear the weight of braids with beads enough for each woman.

My bald head would not be understood as sign of solidarity.



So I send out my chicken scratches of a poem

into the world, and I choose to leave it as it is, 

Untamed and ugly.



Hair (Part One)

Image courtesy of Healthline.com

Women, we are tortured by our hair.

It is never what we want.

It never obeys our desires.

A mischievous heathen, 

it laughs at our attempts

to bend it to our will.

We grow it, cut it, dye it,

curl it, straighten it, 

treat it with carcinogenic chemicals

to beat the mischief making 

blasphemer into submission.

All the while, it laughs at us

as our enemies, humidity and wind,

destroy in seconds the cooperation 

we thought we’d earned 

with our torturous machinations.



Hair:

Too thin,

Too thick,

Too curly,

Too unruly,

Too straight,

Too limp,

Too frizzy,

And the color—

Too…too…too…too-too little 

and too-too much of everything—

Never exactly as it should be.

It will not follow our will.

Pull it into a ponytail.

Shove it under a baseball cap or a sun hat.

Why don’t we just shave our heads

And let it be done?





This woman’s crowning glory,

a temptation enough to make angels fall

from the heights of heaven at the sight it,

necessitates head coverings and wigs for women,

according to some.

After all, who wants it to rain angels

into the streets of the world?

That’s a sight I wouldn’t mind seeing

since I’ve got questions for those angels.

For one, why do women have to help angels

control such lusty impulses?

But I digress as I begin my morning battle

with my own head of hair.


















Seeking

image courtesy of WP library 
I fled from days

of standing under your patchwork roof

offering no protection from the rain,

least of all my own rain pouring out of me,

threatening always to drown in its leave taking.



So I learned to float, flowing along the curves

others presented in my efforts to find

time, love, home, 

the back roads where berry bushes 

grow in abundance.

Yet I never tasted,

never picked any berries,

fresh off the branches.

Instead, I always found

the snakes hidden, lying in wait

beneath the berry bushes,

for the seeking,

and I, always bitten,

never learned my lessons

of serpents who lay in wait,

or the lessons of Eve,

I still sought,

in spite of the venom,

in spite of the bites—



I found the rains pouring out of me

once again

to travel on 

seeking