Category: metaphor

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

Like Old Photographs

Image courtesy of expertphotography.com
If only life could be lived 

in shades of black and white

like those in old photographs

where shades of sepia 

and the spectrum of white to black blur 

edges, cracks, crags,

definitions, delineations

to softened

airbrushed edits

of reality

leaving me able to fall

from the greatest of heights 

to land softly

upon a loosely inflated mattress

no bruising, no bone breaking, 

no soul shattering hard surface landings

in a life lived in shades of black and white

and sepia 

where the sharp edged colors of harness

wash away.

Prism






Image is my own





washed clean





in orange sunsets





drenched by





lavender sunrises





so the dust





and the grime





can no longer





cling inside or out





of a me





freed, freed





of all of you





I am the prism





of beauty





I always was





yet never was





with you





 

	


	
	






	
	

		
Freed
	


	

		

Image courtesy of http://www.allthatsinteresting.com





As a child,
I survived the explosion of dreams
that left hot greasy remnants
dripping down the four-inch squares
of avocado green ceramic tiles,
marring their mirror like shine.

As a grown woman,
I survived the eruption of dreams
that poured down an encasement of hot ash
over all of life’s plans in the moment of diagnosis,
leaving monumental statues of grief.

Thus, I chose to live
where silence drones,
a rumble in the ears.
Nothing left--
a hole, a void
made by echoes
of desires held long ago.

So, I have taken a corn broom
to dance with me
in time to music
only I can hear
to sweep away the dust, the cobwebs,
the fuss of other’s opinions and ideas
of me, my doings, my words.
Yes, from my words,
I shake loose all the years of dust,
the years of ash, the years of grease.
All words, oh, so many words
I never loosed upon the air
to float free upon the winds,
tumbling away, up, around,
then returning once more
to spring up as wildflowers
when things turn to green.

I begin to loose them now,
freed to scatter where they will,
root, spring up where they
find a place to rest.



	


	
	






	
	

		
Time of Year
	


	

		









It is the time
of grey skies
and dead brown grass
along the roadsides.
The time when the trees
are seen shivering,
their limbs quivering in their nakedness.
When even many of the evergreens drip down
brown, bloodied from the lethal knife wounds
of a sharpened frenzied freeze
as they sag into their deaths.
Yes, it is that time of year
when I yearn
for the green of spring,
for limbs to wrap myself within,
for a renewal of promises
I once longed to make.
The time of year
when I empty forty years
of myself.


	


	
	






	
	

		
The Dirt of Chimayo
	


	

		

Image is my own





As if you erupted
from an eternal spring,
an immortal thing,
I gave you away
when last I prayed
here at Chimayo.
When kneeling
I scooped the healing dirt
as I spoke silent prayers of thanks
for my heart bravely facing
shocks of resuscitation
after years spent
barely beating
in stuttering grief.

Upon return today,
I kneel to scoop
the healing dirt,
asking in silent prayer
a blessing of forgiveness
for giving you away
too easily—
thus, killing you,
bleeding you of all hope,
beyond resurrection,
beyond resuscitation.

In the dirt of Chimayo,
this healing earth,
from this place of faith,
sifted through my hands,
I bury you, a mortal thing,
I gave away too easily
to an undeserving faith,
in this dirt of Chimayo.


	


	
	






	
	

		
The Body of Christmas
	


	

		










Image courtesy of Patch.com





The body of this day scribed





in the giving of joy,





sacramental life found





in a bowl full of jelly





shaken by the deep belly laugh





of a white bearded fat man,





remember the truth meant





to be kept in the day,





so, turn in mind





to those who cannot share





in the giving abundance–





thus, are paid in the blessings





of holy lip service, the emptied garbage





to fill the landscape with





glittering wrappings of the day’s





leavings to leave a day





of a soulful mask searching for a soul





it lost long ago





in eternal hungering for fulfillment





never filled with ever more consumed.

	


	
	






	
	

		
Ghost Marks
	


	

		






Image courtesy of depositphotos.com










Before
morning,
she wakes,
adrift
still
in half-remembered dreams,
dirtied by ghost footprints 
upon the waking
to muddy tread marks ever present,
no matter the hours spent in scrubbing—
the marks indelible—
tattoos of mud.
Leave her to the simple tasks of morning,
to her daily reckoning,
preparations of covers and cases required,
all the hiding away,
layering as if for winter,
this bandaging of tender spots.








	


	
	






	
	

		
Tightrope
	


	

		

(Maria Spelterini crossing the Niagara gorge on a tightrope, 1876)
Image courtesy of 
i.imgur.com





 







Since I drove right by it 

on my GPS selected route

on my way to dinner 

with friends,

I had to stop:



Here now— pulled over, paying reverence,

to time, youth, innocence, tragedy

When we loved each other 

in this home we made together.

 

Here— this moment of reverence paid

unlocks the door of a room 

where you are kept 

preserved in perfection,

untainted by guilt

by tragedy 

by the judgement 

I rendered upon you 

in my innocent ignorant self-righteousness

and so unleashed our tragedy upon us.



Now— could I travel that twisted high wire of time

back through the forty years 

yet keep the wisdom of lessons

learned of forgiveness and judgment—

we would be young lovers

starting out again

and I would gift

you treasures of ancient gods and goddesses—

olive oil, an olive tree to plant,

casks of rose water, 

roughly hewn amber, the mythic tears,

in which we could be captured.



I raise my head, turn my eyes to the road ahead,

locking the door to that place 

where you are kept

preserved in perfection:

Sitting in the window seat,

your head tilted to the light,

sunlight glistening off your copper color hair,

smile wide as you lift your drawing pad 
and pencil,

and begin to sketch,

your thin lovely hand floating 
in movement above the page.

There,I leave you once again,

As I drive away.