poem

poem

Oh August

IMG_2297.jpeg internet photo

Oh  August

 

Oh August – most regal month 

So aptly named -awaited eagerly 

as a child who yearned for  

sticky summers to crisp, for cool

breezes to blow on my legs as 

summer flowers still stood and

school! -  those halcyon halls of 

joy, elixirs of chalk and quiet,

new squeaky shoes and ah

blackboards wiped clean with 

white wet cloths … beckoned 

beckoned soon… soon… soon

Oh August …month when so many

years beyond childhood -  

my father chose, on  white pillows

piled high to step from this mortal

coil to another …

and yet, oh August, oh August he only

deepened the mystery, the joy of all 

that awaited, unknown

mystic and magic… floating just 

beyond…

August. 

Let Anger Bang Its Head

 

Let Anger Bang Its Head 

Anger is the word that lives behind the door

that remains closed – a stain of outrage

seeps under and rises up as I wipe it

with cloths of protest and activism 

hope, poetry and determination – but

Anger stays behind the door – they 

tell me, tell me, tell me, that  to live without 

anger is impossible, disingenuous, 

sanctimonious, even a blatant lie, and yet… 

Anger is the word that lives behind the door, as

I stand on the other side - aware of its possibility

skeptical of its productivity when outrage and

action, reflection, and when possible - reconciliation 

wave bright banners of hope and possibility as anger

silently broods, stews, festers, contained and unneeded.

For I do know that anger holds its finger ever on a trigger –

grasps  the shaft of a shiv – for anger is blind, dumb and active 

Let anger stay behind the door – let it bang its empty blinded

head against the walls until it distills its fetid blood to useful outrage, 

and then, and then, - I shall take those clean cloths of hope and 

wipe and wipe and wipe 

what I can clean, aware when to enlist 

help when all that  -is - 

is just too much to bear

alone. 

 

Proof and Prophecy

Proof and Prophecy 

The winds of change 

blew and I thought

they had vanished

as crumbled leaves

in winter’s coming

and yet… and yet..

Here it comes

The winds of change

once again on a back

no longer young 

resurging in a heart 

forever filled with 

hope  ..

Oh yes, together

once again we stand

in time’s reflection 

and refraction 

shimmering as 

the times they 

are a changing… 

We are the change

We are the wind 

We are the time that was  

Singing in the time that is yet to be..

We are the proof and prophecy of time

Changing… 

 

Proof and Prophecy

https://youtu.be/B_nKf7BNqhA

Proof and Prophecy - 

The winds of change 

blew and I thought

they had vanished

as crumbled leaves

in winter’s coming

and yet… and yet..

Here it comes

The winds of change

once again on a back

no longer young 

resurging in a heart 

forever filled with 

hope  ..

Oh yes, together

once again we stand

in time’s reflection 

and refraction 

shimmering as 

the times they 

are a changing… 

We are the change

We are the wind 

We are the time that was  

Singing in the time that is yet to be..

We are the proof and prophecy of time

Changing… 

 

 

On rain dancing

On rain dancing 

Once I danced in the ever summered 

sweet tropic rains … skies opening to 

slanted sheets love slapping my face

awake – cooling my hot skin, soaking

wild hair slick against my bare back -

Now I rush from the car holding a coat

above my salon coiffed curls – ducking

from a single drop –  and for moment – 

just, for a moment, 

-stop-  

and ponder 

letting the damn

coat slip to

ground -

stepping 

back 

out 

into 

rain 

once

  again 

free

Doors Doors Doors ....

Doors Doors Doors ...

Hallways limned with eye stretched lines of door after door

Straight, twisted, crystal, planked, illusory, sidewise, more and more

found down in childhood rabbit holes in verdant gardens green 

on and on appearing, in places contrived, concocted, and unseen

Big doors, small doors, mouse doors with cartoon cats awaiting

pretty doors, shabby doors hanging on their hinges, sealed doors,

cracked doors, revelatory, deceptive, secret doors, all with lessons baiting

Doors that swing open bang you upside the head – amid them that singular

door that fills most with dread - 

you know that door, the door that shall hungrily open swallow and mark you - doornail dead - 

Onward  – 

Doors hiding tigers and ladies behind their planks

Doors shimmering with jewels, with joy, with ecstasy, as gasping into thanks

Doors that open into my body to enter love and exit the miracle of child

Doors that are pristinely quietly shut and others flung wide and wild

Motorcycles behind some and hearses  draped in black

Door limned and shimmering ahead and doors looking back

Doors oh doors they say when one closes another opens 

Sometimes this is good and true 

Others times slammed in one’s face shocking throughout and through

Oh these gobsmacked doors … 

Swinging, locked, open, ajar, others just a slivered, silver, Siren-calling crack

Some beckon with fresh white  paint and dripping trellised perfumed roses

Others draped in sinister solid black

Always among them that door that will open up - that final final door– 

a knob here and there  turned tenuously recklessly, curiously, anxiously, 

will-o-the-wisp devil-may-care - up until now always opening onto more

In front once they marched onto a horizon far far beyond sight– now ahead one ponders

how many more, doorways, how many more or less doors to try,  how much more light…? 

Someday whilst looking back, forward, or distracted by life's mundanity and more

The door - The door - The door - 

That door will fling open to klieg lights of stardusted  Universe

And there shall be … Yes, there shall be …..

?????

Did you think I had a conclusion, that I have a vision, to share all that I clearly see?

No, dear readers, this is where we must stop and heed the peal of carillon clarion call  

Where we must cease hypothesizing that this significant door is actually the end of all

For unknown in the stardusted spectrum of eternity there just might be an endless hall  

 

The Maiden, The Prince and the Child

 

The Maiden, The Prince and the Child 

 

Once upon a time in a land far off and away

there was born a little girl in a most unusual way

to a maiden who was young and a prince who

heart was failing as he lay upon a hospital bed – 

a tiny girl child arrived without customary portents…

instead – 

On the eve of the young prince’s wizardly cardiac operation 

with loved ones waiting in scrunched faced anxious anticipation 

the young maiden paced, felt stirring, a rushing urgency in her gut

and with fast patters down a hallway she 

spied a chair next to her princely lover but -

could not sit - it seemed there was something there, there, 

far larger than any pea – twas the referenced little girl slipping …  

into the world – dusted with mystery, magic and curls –  

unexpected – manifested from wherever –

me  

Treasured

Treasured 

Greeting cards and sentiments

handwritten and signed by those

once children, others now long

gone – letters still somehow un-

yellowed folded pieces of lined

school paper filled with love and

song lyrics passed in the hallway

by a sweaty palm of a lovely boy

eager to move from friend to some

things – these things – photographs

catalogued one winter when dread

assailed and thoughts of a looming

horizon motivated legacy leaving –

ahh the files, the files, manilla tabbed

and computer coded – filled with words

words, words, research, reflection, books

written and in halted progress a pilgrimage

of poems – trapped as data – some escaped

into volumes, stray pieces of printed paper,

handwritten scratches , oh the binders of 

would be novels, that would not breathe, 

and the paraphernalia, jewelry, a diamond

ring of promises made and broken another

of promises kept and delivered evermore,

my mother’s father’s tiny police shield 

mounted on a gold disk that my mother 

wore every day, I broke the chain, 

forget the jewelry, lovely in their own

right but not keepsakes, not worth

reciting gemstones and turquoise,

the baby ring I wore in kindergarten 

chewed through somehow, the 

charm bracelet of childhood, jangling

with small tokens, a parakeet, a bicycle, 

a typewriter, even then…

on and on the things, the things, when a super

storm hit – I packed a plastic container with all

considered vital.. it is in the bottom of a bedroom

closet – I’d leave it now if rains fell..books written

have been writ, poems published have been read, 

jewlery mere stones, sentiments remembered, 

no need to gaze upon handwritings, of children now

no longer adoring nor parents and grandparents whose

adoration remains without a card .. perhaps my grandmother’s

letter where she thanked me for being a wonderful granddaughter

a year or two after my father’s death, or my father’s letter, written

at twenty before heart surgery he did not expect to come through…

maybe, maybe not. What is truly a treasure, tangible and precious- 

a notecard from my analyst and mentor an almost magical woman

who lived in a house with a white arbor lush with pink roses, a sitting

room of chintz and the kindest, wisest eyes ever to look upon me, perhaps, 

her note card – saying that something about her feeling for me, perhaps not – 

Most definitely the wedding bands upon my hands -  if not worn they would certainly be in a 

treasure box, the “wow” one on the occasion of our twenty-fifth when things were good shining 

with my husband’s obvious usually completely unstated pride, the simple gold band, we 

married in, yes these, yes these and the half cut glass bowl that sat on my grandmother’s 

table – that crashed to the floor several years ago … half shattered… a large semi circle 

remaining…still holding in the prism of rainbow reflections the love of a life-time

the rings, and the the broken bowl my legacy, my treasure.  I think of tossing all else and it 

brings me joy and clarity as does the peace that I need not do anything. I know if a storm were 

to come or I simply heeded the call to go… 

I would check my fingers for my rings, wrap the sharp edges of the shimmering remnants of 

my grandmother's cut glass bowl in a piece of her worn soft rose quilted coverlet and walk out 

through the door 

unencumbered. 

I am the creation of words

I am the creation of words

 

I am the creation of words

my hair fingered by countless 

lovers .. my skin caressed, 

slapped, cut, imprisoned

and freed by thousands of

hands - calloused, gentle, 

manicured, newborn, aged, 

drenched in filth and courtly 

perfume

I am the creation of words

swallowed in greedy gulps

in childhood beds and 

Caribbean sea shores

on grandmother’s velvet couch 

in university libraries, subways

railroads, and jet planes – 

my eyes fill with cinders of

bodies burnt, squinting in 

rabbit holes, insane asylums

train stations, savannas stretching

I roam - ingest verdant fields,  

slumber in feather-beds, forests, 

city streets, grandfather’s straw bed, 

roll in ecstasy in gardens, 

under brilliant skies, torrential rains

tornadoes, tsunamis, drenched in 

weather, in love, in hate, in pity, in

horror, in exultation, in adoration, in

mysticism, magic and math, mania,

madness, mindfulness, each image

intractably impressed retina to soul

I am the rallying cries, and solitary 

screams for help, for joy, for justice, 

for grief, for pain, for pleasure each 

echoing in the chambers of ear to heart

I taste each swallow- though mere words

may be lost – I am the worded creation - 

the lyric legacy of countless pages has

formed me, informed me, 

terrified, teased, tormented, 

tickled, transformed the 

constant metamorphosis

the shimmering murmuration 

of fluttering leaves digested

whole into my blood, bone,

mind and soul … 

I am so titled 

stamped 

and numbered 

indelible volume