fragment

i have known rageful men
and bottled up women
who live with them,
and sometimes
die of it
years later---
a long death,
a death by inches.

i have know such women
suddenly soar free,
spirits bright as sparks,
offering their old lives
to the flames of a new day.

myself,
i keep my heart in a jar
these days,
the jar in a box
the box in a cupboard
that locks, in a hut
abandoned on a mountain-top
at the ends of the earth...

i'll not be a moth
beating against a lighted pane
coveting a cold comfort flame
flickering deceitfully
in those houses,
anything but safe
no matter what they say.

skull light

baba yaga's home
is the place you go
when everything else
has fallen apart
tucked in twisty trees
fenced with stacks of bones
bones that speak to us
saying what we most
fear and need to hear.
women leave the wood
holding flaming skulls
the baba gave us
witch-light, hot and bright
saying, take it home
to find what was lost.
we have done our time
in the endless dark
performed in silence
impossible tasks
helped by mother love
we have found our strength
in the witch's house.
we have returned now
pockets full of change
carrying the light
of ancient fires
no longer silent
no longer afraid
father's house will burn
we will leave the ash
smoking behind us
and set our faces
toward something new.
we will build a house
warmed by ancestral
memory of joy
and fenced with justice
wolves and whales and all
the wild things will sing
our children will go
back to the forest
and leave roses there
for baba yaga
with our fiercest love.



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rhymes with ump...

hey, i’m talking to you, yes, you, donald trump,
whose mission in life has just been to scrump,
you’re as useless to me as a dead camel’s hump,
with that arrogant face i so wish to thump,
with your brain like the shell of a long-rotten stump,
with that mad puff of hair like an orangutan’s rump,
with your virulent soul like a toxic waste dump,
with your over-priced wardrobe, you asinine frump,
with your hate-filled campaign with which you pump
a poisonous muck to our political sump,
your heart is as empty as your wallet is plump,
you’re such a mean spirited, miserable grump,
i bet you wouldn’t cry if you watched “forest gump”,
even your surgically-bolstered women must slump
when they see you each morning, you pustulant bump
on the face of the nation, you weed-ridden tump,
you vile and vindictive, perfidious chump,
you self-centered, fork-tongued, lying mugwump,
you graveyard of ethics, where all foul things clump,
you morally bankrupt, pompous great lump,
get out of the spotlight---go away, donald trump.

erinys

maybe today
i am dusted with shed feathers
and spitting out bones.
maybe i have seen
another mother
disheveled, red-eyed,
clothes wrinkled from long hours
curled in a hard chair
by the bed
of one dying too young,
too suddenly,
and needlessly.
maybe my own eyes
are red with anger
and grief
and it makes you
turn away
don't.
don't dare.
you need to see.
if you have not seen
a loved child
in a forest of tubes
and pulsing lights
slowly leaving
that watching woman,
if you have not stood
coffin-side with those
saying farewell to a girl,
looking hard at her folded hands
and not--oh, god, not--
at her shattered skull,
if you haven't seen this
you should
so you can know
just what the unthinking, lie-fed,
worship of guns,
of phrases,
of money,
really costs.
i can tell you
what any mother knows,
that a child's life,
any child's life,
is worth more
than anything you set
in the balance against it.
don't turn away.
don't dare to look away.
don't.
there are bones in my throat
and there should be bones
sharp as claws,
in yours.

diagnosis

as i would put forth a hand
to stop the flow of blood
from accidental harm,
so i wished to stop the pain
that pours unceasing
from your heart
where it lives in endless dark wells,
a daily stain,
unfaded and increasing,
an evil childhood spell
written on its victim's very brain.
there is no counter-charm---
my good intentions,
all my love or care,
are powerless to staunch
the bitterness that dwells
immortal there.
nothing that i do or am
and nothing that you say
you wish for can stand
against the rising flood,
weaponless, you wound yourself
again with each new day.

"thoughts and prayers"

in ugly times,
don't be facile
with your prayers.
be willing to look
a little deeper
into the murky under layers
of what went wrong.
prayer, by the way, isn't only meant
to be a solace or a sop
a way to make your sorrows
or discomfort stop---no,
it is a heart-cry to all that is,
a rending hope for better,
and a promise to make
things so...
the gods most smile on those
who feel another's pain
and also work
to see it not occur again.

meaning-full

looking for meaning
in most things
may be
if not mistaken,
then at least
unhelpful, because it brings
such sorrow.
i've made a list
of places not to look:
anywhere that you forsook someone
or were forsaken,
where you were yesterday
or hoped to be
tomorrow,
the news, the television
generally---
it's a voluntary prison
we put ourselves in daily.
it's best to look outside---
outside ourselves,
outside our walls
and noisy streets.
look to the slide of raindrops
down a tree,
the way the bark shines
and colors appear.
a hawk may take a rabbit
for its meal,
and there is some grief,
but not like our human world
where one who takes a life
is not a hunter
but a thief.
look to the calls of birds
the way their chorus greets
the dawn,
look at a leaf in the sun
shining like a gem---
all the things we barely see
and barely hear
because of noise
and daily grind
and false comparison.
see the world
for what it is:
beautiful.
it need not have been,
but somehow is
and that evergreen perplexity
of beauty being
is all the meaning
that i need to see.