illuminated at night
(embellished canvas, dollar store)
La Virgen de Guadalupe
illuminated at night
(embellished canvas, dollar store)
Author: ©️K.T.2026
Earthling, poet, crone. In planetary hospice.
illuminated at night
(embellished canvas, dollar store)
waiting for the bough to break
i am waiting for the bough to break — or, to be severed by proxy at my behest.
earlier this week on my daily walk-about, i noticed that a primary limb, the major artery, on a nearly 80’ tall and likely nearing 100 years-old, elm tree on the land i occupy, had cleaved and that the fracture was migrating down into the trunk — and dangerously so.
i don’t know the cause: if it was the abrupt shift in temperature to freezing here in southwest Michigan — or, if the tree was stressed from a standing-water-wet spring followed by a very dry summer, or if “it” is simply at the end of their life — all the elms here had unusually held onto an abundance of their prolific leaves until the fourth week of November.
no matter.
the matters:
the massive limb of the elm stretches high and precariously over the old barn, and depending on the wind direction, there’s a chance if it falls, it could clip the back of my house or take the whole tree down with it.
i await the tree surgery & removal crew. i am at their and the northerly and westerly gusts’ mercy.
in the meantime, i have also been wrestling with the possible choice of whether to have the crew amputate just the cleaved limbs — if the tree is in fact salvageable — or, to remove the entire tree at once instead of forestalling the inevitable.
Continue reading “waiting for the bough to break”view from a winter bath
slouching toward bethlehem
i resist stirring, opening my eyes, or thinking
as the dog wakes, and waits
i am in the center of another dawn-dream,
on the precipice of
experiencing some thing, of understanding some thing
but it cannot hold,
evaporating
with every
slouch toward consciousness
i open my eyes to
the grey of the room, to the dark white gyre of the sky through these generous windows
i open my ears
to the beat
of crystals pummeling these generous windows,
once and again, realizing
i possess slow thighs,
heavy lungs, a heavier heart,
an entire weighted mass,
and a mind — less than half-known / half-known
i want to re-bury myself in the warm sands of sleep, the enveloping weightless numb
and drift back to
the liminal/
this must be the
feeling
of the fully-gestated
unborn fetus, warm,
quiet, still
waiting to be born
yet resisting being known, moving on
Self-possessed: Mona Frida Warhol
There’s a simple term for the look in Frida Kahlo’s eyes: self-possession.
The gaze is not that of the (putatively male, white) viewer looking inwards. It is her own. She’s the one who does the looking. Her preternaturally long neck holds her head completely still and completely erect so that the eyes are front and centre.
But it’s important to remember that Kahlo didn’t become iconic. She created herself, quite literally, as an icon. The process is one she controlled. Though it’s not a comparison I’ve encountered in art history, Kahlo seems to me to be, among other things, a precursor of Warhol. Her images seem to be made for mass reproduction.
contemplating intent, consent, kill lists and ceasefire: deer hunting season, regular firearm, November 15 – 30, 2024 Michigan, U.S.
“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
which was presumed to be of exclusive use of songbirds — especially, eastern bluebirds,
on the land the author occupies
Halloween 2024
“all treatery, no trickery”
Regular firearm, deer hunting season began yesterday in Michigan, United States of America, and the crack of rifles and the blast of shotguns destroy both peace and life.
There is some version of a legalized, defined kill list or belated, legalized “protection list” for nearly every non-human animal being population on Earth. And, for human animal being populations on Earth too.
What defines murder for human beings, of the human animal body?
INTENT.
All Hunting is INTENT – intent to kill.
All animal “livestock” agriculture is INTENT — intent to kill for profit.
Genocide is INTENT.
Continue reading “contemplating intent, consent, kill lists and ceasefire: deer hunting season, regular firearm, November 15 – 30, 2024 Michigan, U.S.”birth, the morning eve of november ides, northern hemisphere
the sky is divided crisply into
white and blue in the East
but in the far Southeast,
rather, the far Eastsouth
a golden slit opens
from aural gradations of pink
a cosmic vulva, one, among millions, billions?
birthing an ordinary, extraordinary morning
no pushing, no bearing down, no pain
that’s how easy
birthing once was
parthogenetiXally,
Continue reading “birth, the morning eve of november ides, northern hemisphere”Brunching Whilst the New Rome Burns
oh, these [neo]liberals
they love to be seen,
what’s the point of excess everything
if you ain’t seen by The Peers™️ or The Poors™️
they tell us we are unfortunates or degenerates, ambitionless, uneducated, lazy: we, mere mothers, workers, poors, caregivers, included with “the deplorables” — lumped together in the unmelting trash pot of America
“our” consumption has created islands of plastic in the Pacific ocean
and the dunes of clothing in the Chilean desert
our thoughtless, lowbrow Walmart and Target tastes,
our holiday shopping, and aspirational Disney World, Pigeon Forge, or Vegas vacations — our rare and short-lived “joy” until the credit card is full and the bill arrives / we don’t get to savor the memories — our joy quickly mutates into anxiety, over-time hours, debt, pain
whilst every single day — is their windfall, every day is their holiday,
their screens open to the financial page bookmarks first thing in the morning followed by local crime, never white-collared, though — never to poverty, hunger, oppression, genocide:
Continue reading “Brunching Whilst the New Rome Burns”HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE ? — Joffre Stewart
HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE? vers. 2024
a posthumous collab with Joffre Stewart, most respectfully & reverently
Which party would be better for Israel?
Red or Blue?
Trick Question!
Both, that’s who!
Which party would be better for The People?
Red or Blue?
Trick Question!
Both, hate you!
Did CRAZY HORSE vote his Lakota People out of Dispossession and Genocide?
Did BLACK PEOPLE vote themselves out of Enslavement and American Apartheid?
Did WOMEN vote themselves IRREVOCABLE Equal and Reproductive Rights?
Have the SOLUTIONS to human dispossession, oppression ever been secured at the polls
with votes of RED or BLUE?
LISTEN:
REVOLUTION has been the ONLY DURABLE AMERICAN SOLUTION.
Yet, childlike, playing at history,
& with the future
You color some ovals, You check a box,
And, deny this
TRUTH.
Continue reading “HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE ? — Joffre Stewart”breathwork
imagining cocoons of
luna moths
in every furled and fallen
leaf
i use all my breaths
to counter the Wind
who wants to roar them, all,
away
Continue reading “breathwork”
birthday, poem i
i want, i need, tomorrow’s time
for myself, to re-birth my self
she said to her self
on October 28th
but on October 29th
the dog
the birds
the people
were
hungry, thirsty
at all different times
in all different ways
and so,
she was consumed, clocked, measured, and watched
like an ordinary, non-re-birthing day
still, she waits,
like a pregnant cinderella
for her water to break
Continue reading “birthday, poem i”Open Letter to Americans
Dear Americans:
When you finally realize that the solution to the economy — rent and groceries (not the stock market, not your investment portfolio), to health and healthcare, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, the climate crisis, to environmental destruction — of land, air, and water and biodiversity, to wealth inequality, to systemic racism/white supremacy, to colossal, empire-sized military and police budgets — and endless overt and proxy wars and ongoing GENOCIDE — CAN NOT and WILL NOT be found in the BALLOT BOX — blue or red,
— then what?
then, what will you do? will you hope to ride it out quietly with whatever measure of privilege you possess (white male, white adult, middle-classed, usefully employed in the systems of government or institutions of political or corporate power)?
Will you finally rise up and do the necessary-yet-awful, brave, brutal and hard work to resist and fight — like every dignified human collective across history and even today — like the Palestinians? Like the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho? Like the Maroons of Haiti — or will you be like the Germans — roll over, fall in line, bide your time — hope they come for your neighbor or coworker instead; maybe even turn them in?
This “nation is a massacre”, it always has been
for tens of millions of people right here of and on this land — and for hundreds of millions globally — even if that excludes you and yours (for now).
Enough of this profane American existence.
Enough already.
Continue reading “Open Letter to Americans”
399
The Queen, Mother and Grandmother Grizzly Bear,
the iconic Matriarch of Grand Teton National Park & the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, US
The iconic and prolific female grizzly bear [399] — a mother and grandmother was in forage with her own eldest adult daughter [610] — also a mother, along with her cubs and grand cubs.
399, pictured here, who should be referred to respectfully as Grand Mother Bear, at the age of 24, in Spring of 2020 birthed four cubs [a rare, large litter no matter the age of the grizzly, but at 24, was truly astounding] was with 610, whom should be called Daughter Bear, who birthed two cubs as well.
All but two of the six cubs were mostly hidden by the deep sagebrush and dense fog.
What wild majesty to behold.
Lodged in my mind’s eye forevermore.
photo by: author
“Grizzly 399” is gone,
and this Autumn, and last, and every season in between have required so much Auden
Continue reading “399”
