she negotiated her mortality
prematurely
suddenly, but not unexpectedly
the many days over 30 years
she imagined or wished herself gone
she wears like a scarlet letter,
better a moss green letter, a french blue one
A for Agony
A for Asshole
A for “A”, school girl, good girl
A for Antigone
A for Anam
the tears, wasted and years, squandered
tethering her to expectations of men and mothers
to shame and insignificance
to dumb successes and false failures
“To be neutral, to be passive in a situation is to collaborate with whatever is going on.
You can’t be neutral on a moving train,’ I would tell them. . . . Events are already moving in certain deadly directions, and to be neutral means to accept that.
Howard Zinn
Continue reading “From the River to the Sea | neutrality empowers and normalizes genocide”
If you ever wondered what you’d have done during
[Transatlantic human trafficking and chattel slavery,
Manifest Destiny,
The Indian Removal Act,
the Trail of Tears,
the Wounded Knee Massacre,
The Homestead Act,
Jim Crow and lynch mobs,
the Holocaust,
Apartheid,
or the Civil Rights Movement]
… well,
you’re doing it
right now.
i want to share things like:
this morning, i accidentally swiped my cosmetic brush across the 4 toned mineral highlight powder instead of translucent powder — and i now look like a 70s disco queen (especially with bed hair) or Ziggy Stardust (it’s too much to rewash my face and i’m just gonna look like this all day)
and, that i had another Big Dream (Jungian) early this morning before Sun’s rise — it was powerful and unnerving; are you dreaming too? have you had any Big Dreams?
and, that after buying myself 5 (actually 7) houseplant babies for the Ides of February, bringing the total upwards of 50 plants, my house is still not even close to being filled — so how can i be called a “plant lady”?
and that a crow died here and i performed some rites over and left gifts upon, their dear remains;
Continue reading “i want to tell you, talk with you, about things, but i can’t, we can’t | we can only cry: CEASEFIRE, FREE PALESTINE! Rafah!”i have a heart for crows.
a Crow died and also lived here
likely dying during or before the brief, but deep snowdrifts of january 2024
and definitely not by predation; Crows are simply too smart for the local feral cat bird-killers (the only worthwhile information that author Jonathan Franzen ever imparted to me) — and work in groups to warn and defend against hawks and owls;
Continue reading “crow-hearted”“and the [future] memory of snow”
the ticks never slept
the lilacs just awoke
shh! go back to bed
this clock is all fucked up
the roses’ leaves are greening
the kale and fennel, they never died
i hear the blackbirds singing
yet ripe fruit’s nowhere in sight
he thought he saw “our” brown bats
and i’ve sighted bunnies in the field
i’ve worried about pre-emergence
now, these worries become real
february rains replaced snowpack
another cause for dread
the maplesap’s begun to flow
it seems that winter’s all but dead
last evening, i finally finished watching the film “Oppenheimer” — a biographical film centered primarily on two forces of physics:
J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb
in the film, the cohort of physicists involved in the development of the atomic bomb postulated that the force and heat of the nuclear explosion could trigger a runaway atomic chain reaction by igniting atmospheric nitrogen —- thus, engulfing and destroying the entire planet — their confident mathematical conclusion: “near zero” — but not absolutely zero;
that infinitesimal quantum potential was apparently played to over-dramatic effect for the film — curious about the validity of this apocalyptic concern, i learned that this was never more than a scenario that required elimination in early mathematical and scientific due diligence;
still, the possibility instantly struck me as a parallel for the runaway greenhouse effect — where the greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere trigger feedback loops that indeed ignite and fuel further feedback loops — causing abrupt climate change, planetary inhabitability and then mass extinction — where no adaptation, mitigation or survival is possible and plants, animals and humans die en masse —
conditions of which, we are on the cusp right now — an anthropogenic-caused-and-accelerated global temperature event horizon that is postulated as a very real probability by climate scientists and evolutionary/conservation biologists across the globe even as it’s played out as something that could occur over the next centuries or millennia rather than in this or the next decade or two —
yet, that more-than-zero-possibility scenario was detailed in a January 2024 article in Popular Mechanics based on a published model in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics
i write today to pay my belated respects and sympathies and to process my retroactive and present grief and rage:
Continue reading “Destroyers of World”this informal essay was inspired by Jeff Gibbs’ statement posted February 6, 2024;
I publish this, as per — to be publicly accountable and on record.
Development is development is development. All development damages the remaining already profoundly fragmented wilderness-ish habitat no matter what kind of development it is — no matter the seemingly innocuous or good intent: a paved bike path through forest, a solar array in the desert, an ayahuasca retreat center on a river in northern Illinois, a new organic farm.
“If you build it, they will come.” And then never stop coming and building.
We must stop destroying land to build more of anything — we must begin to reclaim and return land to nature and welcome, encourage, champion and personally embody the practices of degrowth.
An example of behavior:
“You should build a little rental cottage on your land over there for supplemental income and to sustain yourself through your golden years.”
– no, i will not build anything there ever — that’s where i set out the salt licks for the deer – by the three apple trees; no, that area is too near to where the blue racer lays her eggs every summer; no! as tempting as that false security is, i will live modestly and reject improvements for improvement’s sake — and embrace flaws and maintenance, and do with what i have — or without. this land is not mine; i merely temporarily co-occupy and humbly and gratefully tend and share this land.
also, there are no more golden years — to quote Beatrix Kiddo, “Bitch, you don’t have a future” — do you understand the science, the projections? let me help you to, i want to.
An opposite example of behavior:
Continue reading “Degrowth or die-out: an imperative for the insatiable species.”Today is day 122 of the settler-colonial state of Israel’s GENOCIDE of the Indigenous Palestinian People on their ancestral lands.
NO place is safe from the brutality and savagery of the Israeli government and army — not evacuation routes, not refugee camps, not “safe zones”, not schools, not hospitals, not universities.
Israel has murdered 11,500 children in 122 days.
Israel has murdered 11,500 children in 122 days.
Israel has murdered 11,500 children in 122 days.
Israel has murdered at least 30,000 people in 122 days.
Israel along with the US, UK, Italy, Australia, Finland and other nations are depriving Palestinians of UN humanitarian aid by defunding the UN’s Relief and Works Agency — and by physically blocking shipments of food, water, and medicine and medical supplies. Israel and its coalition are starving-out Gazan refugees.
Israel Occupation Forces have boldly filmed, documented and published their own war crimes against both “prisoners of war” and civilians.
According to UN Women: “70 per cent of people killed in Gaza are today estimated to be women and children, including two mothers per hour killed since the beginning of the crisis.” — This is textbook genocide – to destroy women, mothers and children is to destroy the future viability of a people.
Israel has decimated Gaza and murdered Palestinians with the direct and sustained support of the United States Government, funded by US taxpayers’ money and with US Pentagon & defense contractor weapons.
While the People in the United States:
Continue reading “Free Palestine : Day 122 of Israel’s genocide — and its ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian People”¿Dónde está nuestro Chávez?
i witnessed the last of the snow piles
hand-shoveled or machine-threwn
and the natural drifts too
and the mound in the hollow
of the hügelkultur crescent moon
slowly recede, in a mesmerizing, seemingly molassic, week’s long retreat
then finally and sadly, concede
to the undormant grasses and soft ground beneath
to the sunlit warmth
of these nouveau
great lakes winters
my god,
what global madness
this adored microcosm, my priceless homestead, reveals
and catechizes for me:
our violent, human heat
an unrelenting torrent of accelerant that would
vanquish the ancients
melt greenland’s sheets of ice,
calve antarctic glaciers, strand polar bears,
expose or drown granite, basalt, gneiss
all, in the time of
that old sugar maple’s life
fetal cells
remain in a mother’s body for decades
they know this
particularly
because of mothers of sons
son cells discovered
co-mingling in their mother’s
blood
and marrow
long after their first breaths of atmosphere
and for far too many mothers,
long after their child’s last
we mothers, in-secret chimeras
29, 50,
years after birthing /
no wonder
he breathes
1,191.582 miles away from me
as the crow flies,
as the monarch flies
as the hummingbird flies
and still, i feel the cells of gold i alchemized
for 42 strange, wondrous weeks
in my crone bones
postpartum is forever
Continue reading “postpartum”the widespread muck,
usual to late March
now spoils the January, the December, February too
there are no more
seasons,
only drownt
or parched
what use
is axial tilt, solar distance
while these men
lock-up the thermostat and disarrange the elements
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 