i woke to the voices of unseen crows at 3:03 ante meridiem
crying out, cawing out
i know the voices of my dear familiars,
and this is unnatural
unsettling an already-unsettled human woman
these crows see me unsettled on my feet
the gods see me unsettled in my dreams
crying out, calling out in my wilderness
i sit here in this dark room in my white chair by this open window looking south into the black night
Continue reading “unseen”During the summer of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, an upcoming “milestone” birthday, and a relocation to a quiet rural place with dark skies and an abundance of fauna and flora — I literally heard myself: I had unconsciously begun a meditative practice of singing or humming verses and melodies of sorrow, wonder, gratitude — or simply, of the mundane. They were autonomic and presumably original, lamentations.
then, serendipitously, I retroactively encountered a May 2017 piece published in Yes! magazine about the revival and history of “lament singing” in Finland.
To find that I was unconsciously, but actually, participating in a Finnish tradition that I had never experienced or even heard of — but that was somehow still within in me — in some cellular, trans-generational or ancestral place — felt like a bridge to my lineage — to all my unknown women-kin.
The lyrics and tunes occurred spontaneously over several months, and I often automatically repeated the same one over and over while working, cleaning, cooking, gardening, walking or driving. I sung or hummed them mostly while alone, but sometimes they would emerge aloud in public places — and I didn’t even realize that I was in song or know how long I had been doing it.
Continue reading “song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations”People who laugh, cry, sing and talk to themselves aloud in the street are not “crazy” — we are comforting, raging, celebrating, mocking and mourning ourselves, our lives, our experiences and the world.
the birds’ choir
is a mockery outside my window, eight different species on the sill — eight — for gods’ sake!
these days when the
Sun’s arc is long
and the soil is warming for the season — and permanently
i am in my bed with lead bones
annoyed that i woke up again, and guilty with an ungratefulness about it
my steady lament is sung out loud — but still unheard
i counted my mistakes like sheep, to sleep again
they didn’t wander away though
they stay close to their shepherd, always
they say Death comes in threes and that’s true
but it still hasn’t chosen me
instead, conscripting two complacent men, known to me, thirty-six, fifty three, in one week’s time — why?
while i’m out here volunteering for the cause
it cruelly searches elsewhere to complete their trio
of course i’m still fucking here!
the gods won’t give you what you pray for!
courage, love, fidelity, life, death
they’re full of motherfuckery
they know exactly what i — and what you, want most — of all
so they sent these birds here to taunt me
so they keep me here to taunt you
a fotografic series of bucolia
sit with me, straddle me
don’t say a word
hear my heart with your heart
let mine hear yours
look at me, into me
like a Magic Eye
until the real me comes into your focus
our definitions no longer concealed
listen to me, read me
my words are my knowable mind
come, know what i know
and be known by me
lay on top of me
our mouths open
breathe me in slowly and deeply
let my pneuma impregnate you
i want to make you the father of my art
i want to be the mother of yours
the volume of love, tenderness, peace, comfort, safety, and security
that she so profoundly deserves
might never be offered in the sustained abundance
requisite
for her to heal
from our
sins against her and hers,
our sins, once or twice removed, from us — or so we proudly imagine//
we failed her and hers — over and over again
in our refusal to just stop
in our refusal to just start
in our refusal to just not
so her and hers’ trauma untreated became epigenetic, chronic, lethal
her sorrow and rage manifest in righteous and rightful litanies against our society, our systems, and the falseness of our lives //
because of us, because of the world we’ve built, maintain or co-sign for privilege
her and hers’ lives remain
unfair
unstable
unsafe
un “forfilled”
she has not for one single moment stopped working and fighting to live and thrive for her and hers
ease, rest and respite are not her companions
her pursuit for her and hers truth and justice — and for universal justice and truth is unrelenting and well-beyond humbling //
let none of us proclaim her “strong” or “survivor” — those titles are unwanted blood medals forced around her neck standing atop a podium made of her ancestors’ and son’s bones and of her own
she is more,
so very much more,
more
than her 66 year-long sentence of struggle, more than this 404 year-long American genocide and apartheid
she is an activist, a mother-warrior, a revolutionary
but
all she ever wanted was to be
a baby, a child, a daughter, a sister, a woman, a mother, a lover, a friend, an aunt, a grandmother, an artist, a poet, a writer, a philosopher, a scientist, an historian, a teacher, an advocate, a protector, a provider,
and
to be human
to be human
to be human
the same,
no less, no more
just human
like you
like me
like Her.
Continue reading “Her”Eleven years ago this week, ahead of the NATO Summit in Chicago in May 2012, I wrote messages with spray paint on the roof of my home in my Portage Park, Chicago neighborhood for world leaders to read as they traveled in military helicopters passing low and loud overhead en route to the Summit venue at McCormick Place.
On May 20, 2012, I also attended the mass protest and marched in opposition to NATO and its global hegemony and destruction.
Also on that day, in one of the most profoundly moving and humbling experiences of my life, while standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others, I listened to personal stories of war — of killing, death, rape, horror, pain, guilt and grief — from both U.S./NATO soldiers and the victims of those wars.
I witnessed from just yards away, as Jacob George, by then a warrior, no longer a soldier, along with warrior Scott Olsen (a former Marine, Iraq War veteran, Occupy veteran, and Oakland Police terror survivor) and 43 other war veterans-turned-warriors tossed their military service medals across the CPD police-enforced, Secret Service barricade toward the protected U.S./NATO generals, the policy-makers, and world “leaders” comfortably ensconced and insulated at McCormick Place at the NATO Summit in their gathering of war-makers.
“A warrior is someone who takes his orders from the heart, not some outside force."
- Jacob George
The U.S./NATO war generals, in cowardice, would not agree to meet in person with the men and women who served in their wars and conflicts to ceremoniously accept the return of those unwanted, inglorious war service medals. Those medals were publicly rebuked and surrendered to the asphalt at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road nonetheless.
on September 17th, 2014
Jacob George
died by suicide.
After the act of disavowing the war medals, We, The People were told to disburse and vacate the area — when we didn’t — and attempted to march forward toward McCormick Place to encounter the World’s warmakers face to face — or at least be seen and heard by them, several hundreds were kettled by Chicago cops and Illinois State Police — resulting in resistance by — “We, The People” with physical and verbal clashes, police violence and protester arrests.
We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers.
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.
We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth.
We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely… If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write because our culture has no use for it.
When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.“
~ Anaïs Nin
Arte Digitora derived from the poems: “On Doing” & “Dream Gerund”
On Doing
I have a compulsion to do.
But sometimes/often just want recline.
And the softness [and] of being. Pulled tight into a cocoon & the doing hushed out of me and filled with prairie definitions.
My untold untyped Great/lake fantasies.
Fallen grass tufts and waterproof boot slosh and plant names and hours of dendrochronology with fantas/tical idealized notions of rubbing and human collision, of being.
July nothingness would be a dream come true I close my eyes to it and do and do and do.
~ juggernaut
On July 19, 2022, upon noting the correspondence between the words “doing”, “being” and “dream” in the above poem and the published poem “Dream Gerund” both written by the same poet — I created a digital derivative work – works which I now refer to by the neologism that I conceived:
motherhood: the unparalleled choice, work, joy and privilege of my life
on the day they plow
the fields clear of last year’s stover
i stay quiet and invisible, indoors
there is a seen and unseen frantic attempt at evacuation, an exodus of
snakes, turtles, frogs, toads, rabbits, moles, voles, possums, weasels, marmots, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, mice, rats,
evicted without notice, again
geese and sandhill crane nests destroyed
over-wintered graves defiled
and newly-born deer crushed, plowed over and under
/this destruction, all,
for corn to fatten-up confined and tortured
pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, salmon, catfish, tilapia
for human appetite, gluttony/
death eaters!
if i just stay quiet,
quieter than the snake and mole i saw yesterday,
if i just stay inside, unseen, all day ‘til Sun’s set, like the possum i saw last night,
then kin may seek refuge, find sanctuary here
to catch their breath
some of us have forgotten that they too breathe
and feel fear,
and scream, wail, and mourn
run!!! come, run here!!!
stay right here, please, the roads to west and south also bring death!
i put all my faith into telepathy today
the gulls arrive
chasing and taunting the tractor driver,
he’s no farmer
his hands literally never touch soil or seed
a machine operating a machine guided by satellite
if only the gulls or crows would pluck out his eyes when he dismounts
if only, i would.
Continue reading “the May plow”
spring, lyrically
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 