Author: ©️K.T.2026

Earthling, poet, crone. In planetary hospice.

le claire [street] in june

On By ©️K.T.2026In Chicago, Gnosis, june, Narrative, Poem, poeme, poetry, summer, TreesLeave a comment

originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023

* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.

the author’s mulberry-stained fingers

A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night

Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease

A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life

a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one

A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree

Woody Guthrie, the mulberry forager

A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called

On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark

a contorted mulberry tree at night, located in a private front yard, but sidewalk spillage is fair game
the same contorted mulberry in Sun’s light: wowowow

Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth

The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep

Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn

She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.

All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws

A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?

That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy

an impressive purple mess-feast
i pressed a twig and berries from the Le Claire street mulberry, before I moved to the otherside of the Lake; i used my Chicago Botanic Garden gift shop flower press.

2023 addendum:

Continue reading “le claire [street] in june” →

for Christi:

On By ©️K.T.2026In Poem, poet, poetryLeave a comment

inspired, in part, by a poem from Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin :

how can i “calm down” when all i feel is love and rage, when all i experience is beauty and pain/ no in-between / pass the cab and the kettle corn / and if you didn’t want me to opine on fresh-cut flowers and this film — then why, why, why – did you insist that my eyes see them – yes, i know there are flower farms —— but have you heard that pollinators aren’t allowed indoors around vases? it’s none of anyone’s business how many time i’ve seen “Almost Famous!”

yes, i am a mother, and i drink too much wine, sometimes — but he’s in Albuquerque not in a crib in the next room — i wish time travel were true // and other times, wine is not enough to squelch the pangs – of 18 years gone in a flash but thousands of hours wasted on PTA — and fucking homework ! /// i took my kid road-tripping and camping, sent him to the SCA and The Tetons to keep him out of these systems — how many huckleberry milkshakes at the Pioneer Grill does it take to finally see mountains and bears and rivers and trees as real living persons? well, i can actually tell you!

we had our deep talks, but not enough, never — how can time spent philosophizing be measured? in life choices and paths — that’s how. and i’m proud.

can you make a pact with me and promise i’ll never have to eat these words – especially the rants — and when, not if, i say something really wrong — you’ll push bowls of fresh figs and olives in my face to shut me up as a signal? salsa and chips will work too

can i tell you i’m broken without you trying to fix me? can you tell i’m broken — or do i wear it well? do these big feelings make my brain look small?

never stop showing me the radiance of you just because i’m dark — someone has to be the shadow, the mourning veil, the contrarian — and i know i volunteered — a long time ago — but “at some point” i really would appreciate a different assignment?

— by the way, your auras do wonders for this room

you’ll both never not be in cascade canyon with me,

[ever]

it was

fated,

serendipity.

american Beauty : attention is reverence

On By ©️K.T.2026In art, Arte Agraria, Arte Bucolia, Arte Ruralia, conceptual artLeave a comment



the macro and micro cosmic exterior environment is imbued with art


— if you just fucking look —


art is everywhere

art is more than cities, than galleries, statues, murals, landscaped botanical gardens, paintings, commissioned installations, fountains, graffiti, sculptures, museums, fashion, prints, architecture and the built environment

attention is reverence

arte ruralia

air

arte agraria

earth

arte voyeura

water

arte bucolia

fire

unseen

On By ©️K.T.2026In PoemLeave a comment

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 and unsettling

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 own wilderness

i sit here in this dark room in my white chair next to this open window looking south into the blackest night

Continue reading “unseen” →

song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations

On By ©️K.T.2026In Crone, Crone Consciousness, Epigenetic, Essay, Finnish, Knowledge, Lament, Lamentations, poet, poetryLeave a comment

During the summer and autumn of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, a “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 and/or self-soothing 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 Finnish women-kin.

The lyrics and tunes occurred spontaneously over several months, and I often automatically repeated the same ones 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.

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.

Continue reading “song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations” →

stop praying for what you want

On By ©️K.T.2026In Death, exposition, Life, Life and Death, limineen, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

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

Continue reading “stop praying for what you want” →

soul mate

On By ©️K.T.2026In Poem, poemo, poetryLeave a comment

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

Her

On By ©️K.T.2026In Lajuana Lampkins, PoemLeave a comment

for

Lajuana Lampkins

Portrait of The Artist in her pink chair.
“I 👁️♥️U”

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” →

a roof with a view | baptism by kettling

On By ©️K.T.2026In Chicago, NATO, NATO SummitLeave a comment

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.

REJECT FALSE AUSTERITY & ENGINEERED WAR
(there’s always enough money for war)
WE ARE ALL INTERCONNECTED
TO ONE ANOTHER
& TO OUR EARTH

On May 20, 2012, I also attended the mass protest and marched in opposition to NATO and its global hegemony and destruction.

CHICAGO IS MY KIND OF TOWN

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.

THE BLOATED BLUE LINE
Chicago cops at the behest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel insulated the NATO warmakers from being held accountable by the People who came from across the globe to confront them with the deaths of civilians, the occupation of foreign lands and the trillions of dollars spent on conflict, war, destruction and death, and with personal accounts and statistics of military rape, PTSD and
veteran death-by-suicide.
Continue reading “a roof with a view | baptism by kettling” →

life support: the breath of words

On By ©️K.T.2026In Alchemy, Anais Nin, Crone, exposition, Quote, Words, WritingLeave a comment

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

Dream Gerund: being

On By ©️K.T.2026In Derivate Works, exposition, Poem, Poem for Poet, poemo, poet, poetryLeave a comment

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.  

~ dxo

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:

Arte Digitora.

a digital derivative work (Arte Digitora) created on July 19, 2022 from shared media of the poem “On Doing” and photoshopped with digital photos of printed text from two poems by the same author published in memotoallemployees, 1995)
Continue reading “Dream Gerund: being” →