Category: Poetry

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Happy International Talk Like a Pirate’s Day!

Female_pirate_Anne_Bonny (1)

When I was girl, aye, many a moon ago,

a landlubber me, me mateys too

sailed the ocean in books from the bilge,

the library basement racks, and ventured far,

anchored only by words like hook of the captain

luring us in like Moby, wee urchins to the salty seas,

uprising smartly when it was time to go.

But we’d come another day for a skull’s whistle.

“For a tale awaits on the shores of shelves,”

the spectacle’d lass in pumps and plum lips said.

“Pirate the world in an open palm, my beauties,

Steal the wind with a spell set on shivering leaves.”

Ahoy and avast! And we did, alit below the stars

of blackened ceilings open endlessly beyond

and long before days peering into Davey’s Locker..

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Are All Writer’s Introverts?

  
I googled that question today after teaching two classes, writing a few blog posts, counseling a student, and editing an article. Facing the prospects of a shift at a retail job to finish off the day’s work schedule, I am on the verge of collapsing into the couch and burying my head deep under the pillows.

People exhaust me. I am clearly an introvert, and I have never taken a test to prove it. I know it. However, whenever I confess to this most trendy of trends…”You know you’re an introvert if…” being an introvert, people are amazed. “But you’re a teacher and seem so social.” Both are true. I am a pleasant person, courteous at least, in the company of others and am certainly a teacher. I love teaching. But neither of those facts make me less of an introvert.

I hate to be the living cliché, but I believe most writers are introverts, living inside of texts, which are quieter and less demanding. People require attention, not only of the mind but of all the senses. They must be heard, seen, sensed, smelled and sometimes…touched. It’s all too much by the end of the day.

While I am among the masses, however, I do not feel sapped of energy. It’s when I hit the quiet of the late afternoon, sitting in the sun’s windowed reflection under the ticking of the clock punctuating my solitude among the table and chairs, tablecloth and armoire of my kitchen/dining area that the absolute exhaustion–a bone weariness of the mind and spirit–overwhelms me.

 

An aphid burrowing into the cells 

homing the pulp of me, crawling 

the synapses ablaze with centipedal

feet by the hundreds across attention

span and heat of the moment glee of

questions answered and asked, again

ticking off to-do’s of the do-nothings

but ply, ply, ply; it’s my trade, my cue,

my plight, but in the end, husked,

devoured, twisted, torn and teeth-

marked, me, hollow, me, cocooned

in respite of the dark, silent sap of

the dead thickening thinned linings

undressed, undermined and stripped

swollen, aching in whispering dawn.

 
credit: laurensapala.com

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One for the Bees

Victory, most probably pyrrhic, for the bees last week in a San Francisco Court that ruled against the EPA’s approval of neonicotinoid pesticides, specifically sulfoxaflor, a Dow chemical product that confuses bees flight patterns, according to the New Scientist. Apparently succumbing to “public pressure” (Dow’s money and agricultural lobby?), the EPA approved the use of the chemical without enough viable support, tactfully stated as “flawed data.” This despite the known harm to not only bees but all pollinators, other insects and even birds.

The upshot: Fuck the bees. There’s money to be made.

But can we live without the bees?

They are critical pollinators: they pollinate 70 of the around 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world. Honey bees are responsible for $30 billion a year in crops.

The battle for the bee is not won, however. Though one of these nenicotinoids have been banned in the U.S., they have not been banned in Europe or elsewhere. Bees do not stay in one place. And other harmful pesticides are still in use–just not sulfoxaflor.

And while pesticides are only one of the causes for the dwindling bee population, they are a big contributor, one that can be controlled by human intervention. So hooray for the court’s decision last week, but so much more needs to be done.

Who will speak for the bees?

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Workhorses of a seething-bustling, 
strange, 
misunderstood 
and alien world that we barely see
its glory and gore
acidic stew of swallow
and cilia claws 
burrowed below
but for the infrequent frightful protrusion,
intrusion,
extrusion, 
threatening a sting, 
a bite 
or a siphon
sipping the living juices of us,
savagery in the encounter.
 
And yet they sustain those who would crush them,
self-defense or not, 
fill the undergirding of our world with germinating life, 
exchange and commerce in wildflowers of the fields, 
manicured gardens of urban rooftops 
and edges of the sand dunes. 
They nourish us with sweet meats 
of the trees 
and gifts of the earth’s panoply of gallant beauties
pageantry of roses, peonies and daffodils,
and green godly goodness of cabbage cool,
beans of the vine
and broccoli floret 
walnuts
almonds
Brazils
the browns of nutty seas.
You, pinpoint friend, swap the day away, 
flitting from one sweet hollow to the next 
wearing, 
ingesting, 
carrying 
and dusting yourself with your wares, 
plying your trade 
and all we breathe better for it
and eat 
and expire
respire by your daily toil, 
though your armies are micro
populated,
though thinning, 
smallest of the small, 
and most benign. 
Some will warn
look away
not to watch,
not to near 
or interfere
or swat 
our swelling flesh worse for the encounter.
Carpenters of the Carribbean, 
homed amid the yuccas 
and woods 
while others gnaw at our backyard decks right here. 
Crow swims in sunflowers and black-eyed Susans, 
carpeting himself the golden sun, 
while sumptuous sand specialists 
hang in the hills of North Carolina 
or the Eastern Shore dunes, 
skimming the edges for life. 
Affable-bliss, 
drunkard, 
drinks from his nose of a tongue, 
buzzing about the Badlands, 
sucking up sweets from the wells of bells, 
trumpet trollops of honey delight, 
a piña colada of rum and pineapple pollen bits.  
But big old bombus and Metallica and modest-us, 
modest in size, 
half a rice grain wide, 
who carries her goods inside, 
a vomitous gift 
her babies survive
or they die
too sick
sparse
poisoned
murdered
by un-notice
unseen
unheard
unfelt
turnaway.
Health of heart, 
health of earth, 
home to hordes
4000 kinds strong
all native North American
only 40 left home
to honeycomb here
home to homo-cides
ignorants
polluters
stung-greedy
core-less
suicides
who
deny
if they are we are.
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Fugue

  

  
Sundays. 

In day-drifts I spend them in lengthy morning sheets, 

woven threads striping maypole my legs with yours.

Skills. 

You have them: attentive, unwavering, intent. 

Your strong gentleness fills our bed with symphonic hum, a vibrational fugue. 

I cry. 

Some tenderness tears at lost time, flaked off bits of skinned cycles round, 

a heart with no hands.

Touch: soft swept fingers warm atop cupped palms, like namaste hands, loose prayers. 

Your hands. 

The edges brush by bristled cheek, full flesh and heated like sun-baked summer squash.

Promises: unsaid, steady and willed. 

You cannot. 

Ties from September past, 

a dozen dozen or more in months melded to seamless years of you and you and you. 

And her. 

Until: always when, yet, but still, then again, for now, someday, and forgive me.

 
credit: thisisnickwhite.com

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Yet Another Ode to Dionysus: Sampling Under the Auspices of Research on a Saturday Afternoon

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I drove miles to meet, caught on the draft of highway 1,
Steeped knee deep in alder wooded cabinets stained in olive oil for
Caressed care of liquid pearl, grapey god’s velvet sip.
A dream of Athens, fleet footed baccanalia, you, my hedonistic loined lover of leaf and vine.
The sun.
Engineered glycolic canyons deep, your sugar mined for me
Wilts me weeping, drunk on pleasures
Deep, soil rich and dancing, your hooves in mine, herding your tethered Lust for wine–and me.

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Who’s that Knocking at my Door?

 

 

A shadow slumps in the doorway, a darkness hollowed by blazing corners

where the light exhales, squeezing past the hulking figure that is my father.

“What are we having for breakfast?” Code for make me something to eat.

Desires, requests, pleas, all are puzzles to a man who knows no direct say.

“Sure, go ahead and eat without me. You don’t give a shit about me anyway.”

Read: I want to be loved, appreciated and acknowledged as a human being.

He knows no direct. His sentences scrape the underside of a mirror, inverted.

An uneducated master of language manipulates impulses, inherited relations

to move, respond, act, resist and surrender–a force of father-thinned twining.

 
Mother instilled the love of words in those of us who shone in penning letters.

She idled hours in solving crosswords, leafing magazines, and correcting him.

“‘Don’t got’ is a double negative and makes you sound like an illiterate moron.”

Her words sliding by as if unspoken, he ignored her, she, his virtual dictionary,

until Scrabble time, where strategy schooled the unwary wordsmith defensed.

A board game master, card player extraordinaire and pathological liar, he waits.

Convinced long ago she filled me with philologist love, I glance upon his notion;

my words form around the blankness in the doorway, the gamesman stares me

while the muse I wrestled to the ground, a slutty run-around, scampers past him.

 
credit: i2.wp.com

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Just Until…

  
Just until I am 10, then I will almost be a teenager and can do more things, and not be treated like a baby.

Just until I am 16 and can drive, then I will be free…to work, earn money, and buy my own clothes.

Just until I am 18, when I can get the hell out, be on my own.

Just until I am 21 and can drink–legally. 

Just until I am 28 and will finally graduate from bull shit schooling, start a life.

Just until I am 35 and can finally give in to the urge to procreate.

Just until I am 40, when I can stop having kids.

Just until I am 45, when the kids are in school and I can work more, go back to school.

Just until I am 48 and get my PhD finished, I can teach locally.

Just until I am 50, I will give myself permission to have a mid-life crisis, go away, learn to surf, dye my hair.

Just until I am 55, when I can make a plan, hold on long enough to finish growing up my kids, get them through college, just another 5 years or so, until I am 60 when I can begin to wait out my term, be on my own watch, do my own thing.

I wait. As we all do. We abide biding time as if time could be had. We are had by time and its illusion. Desire is the expression of suffering we live to fill space with all things but ourselves. There really is no time–just inhale and exhale.

 
credit: edge.neocha.com

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Something Itching to Come

  
The angst is biting mites today, 

leaving blazing sores, 

small but cumulatively painful, raging.

Yet, the promise unknown …looming.

A gift encircled in the inverted telescope?

My bones marrow in distant headlights.

A missive, visitor or opportunity,

Something approaches.

Ah, but absorption sucks it dry,

sponged back in the dull hum lethargy.

Only a fleeting prick of moment.

 
credit: img.wonderhowto.com

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So Many Ways to Lose a Daughter

 

 
When they were little, headless operations I called them, 

toddling about with no motion detection sensors, 

oblivious to the science of mass in flight against

the immovable object, cause and effect, win and lose, 

I feared losing their pristine purity, their soft roundness

drenched in new flesh, irradiant, to rocks and bumps

in the playground grass or sandbox, opening into

split lips or knobby eggs on their foreheads. I feared

losing them to cars in free fall, driven by madness 

up on my lawn, taking my children with them, like 

the newspaper clipping in the local Starbucks report.

I feared flus and asthma, pneumonia, broken bones

and stitches they could contract or suffer with 

complication and then die in my arms or in their sleep.

I dreamed of kidnappings and wanderings off in 

supermarkets or department store aisles, lost, lost, lost.

I walked them to school the block and a half every day.

And when they were in middle school, I dreaded

the treacherous row of absent-minded, harried

dropping-off moms vs. the brainless, twit t’weeners on

bikes, laughing and careening their wheels into traffic,

caring little for mortality the daily drive threatened

like that boy and his friend on a bike, on the same road,

on the way to school two days before the school year

start, picking up his schedule, leisurely, laughing, 

peddling, looking back at his lagging friend just before

the swerve, the truck, the texting driver, the hit–gone.

I never let them ride their bikes to school, not with that.

I did not want to lose them to twenty somethings’ texts.

Just like I did not want to lose them to drugs, drunk

drivers and AIDS, cancer, concussions or accidents.

I did not want to lose them. And I lost them any way.

To friends, trends, music and driver’s licenses, to

social media and idealism, fierce loyalty and pride of

a generation angry in the wake of destruction their

parents have left them to navigate, chlorinate the gunk

of polluted finance and corrupt opinions and falsity, 

falsity everywhere. I lost them to independence and

opportunity elsewhere, greener, colder, blue-skyed

distant and lonely, free and home away from home.
 

credit: arthistoryarchive.com

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Wild, Weird and Wonderful: Trip inside my vagina

Okay, so it’s not my vagina, much to the disappointment or relief of my readers.

So much to be said here but the video says it all. What every growing girl should know, beginning with honest names about body parts, celebrated not shamed. Had I been taught about orgasm as a child, or at least exposed to the concept  pre-understanding, I would not have had to go through unnecessary anxiety and sexual misgivings affecting my relationships.

Why is this such a difficult matter, educating ourselves and our children about their bodies so that they may be more responsible and responsive adults? Why must the idea of a “love your body” explicit video be so revolutionary?

Huffpost’s Poussy Draama’s Mobile Doctor’s Office is Challenging Sex Ed Norms in America merits a reading even if only for the video and colorful pictures injected into an investigative journalism piece on wacky personalities with the right message.

Author Priscilla Frank introduces Poussy Draama, a performance artist, gyno specialist and educator who roams the country introducing those ready to learn to love the beloved female body (enough loving of men’s has been the story of HIStory, she claims), not the one that merely makes babies but the one that has so much more power and pleasure.

She enlightens youngsters through her bizarre videos and also appears live to help groups of women take pictures of their cervixes when she is not celebrating all of the names for vagina. Hey, why wasn’t my personal favorite, twat, on that list? Must be a French thing.

 The bizarro TV show, aimed to teach kids about sexuality and consent, features tripped out vagina suits, lots of rainbows and even more body positivity. Poussy Draama — the babe on the right, in the video above — is a performance artist, a sexologist, an alter-gynecologist and a witch. Not witch, like, black hat and broomstick, though. Witch like witch doctor or healer. “What I do hasn’t much to do with magic,” Draama explained to The Huffington Post. “It’s witchcraft, in the way of empiric, experimental and politically engaged healing.” 


Although in medium and technique Draama’s work is all over the map, her subject matter consistently revolves around educating others on sexuality in an un-authoritative, open-minded and, duh, feminist manner. “Womxn are overrepresented and underrepresenting,” Draama said. “You know what I mean? And as an artist, I don’t wanna play the ‘male-gaze game’ so I have to be careful, cause everything tends to drive you to do so.” (Note: The spelling of “womxn” is intentional, per Draama’s choice.)

The risk takers who challenge the “norm” by exposing sedimented attitudes expose themselves to ridicule even as they gather fame. You know those insecure ones (you know who you are) who do not like to be discomfited will doff off old Poussy as a whack rather than appreciate her creativity and spirit for a good cause.

Fingers crossed for her (riffing on the article opener there).

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