Stop focusing your energy
on the effectively useless,
always selective,
always tenuous,
always exclusive,
always revocable,
First Amendment,
right now.
right fucking now.
Continue reading “americans of empathetic, inclusive and courageous consciousness:”i carry on in absentia
dialogues
monologues — rhetoric, socratic, analytic,
with — and for, people i once
knew,
had,
loved,
who i have lost or misplaced,
or
who have lost or misplaced me,
in some way,
Billionaire JB Pritzker, the current Governor of the State of Illinois in an annual constitutionally mandated “State Of The State” address of February 19, 2025, questioned the near and long-term State of the Union — of the United States of America,
the relevant paragraphs are excerpted below with a link to the full transcript:
Continue reading “The time is NOW for applied anti-fascist actions of resistance and desistance and acts of courage —firstly, by elected and sworn state and local leadership”
If birthright citizenship granted by the U.S. Constitution will be bastardized or revoked; to potentially exclude 574 Federally recognized Indigenous Tribal Nations;
if the U.S. is leaving WHO;
if the NIH, CDC, FDA and USDA are intentionally incommunicado during an endemic, debilitating chronic virus — with another potential pandemic on the global horizon — and may be permanently silenced or defunded;
if the U.S. Government won’t recognize, adhere to or enforce the United Nations International Criminal Court findings, rulings, sanctions and warrants on human rights violations and war crimes;
if the U.S. Government has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement both by action, inaction and officially; if the U.S government is abandoning climate mitigation and bio-diversity loss mitigation both by action, inaction and officially;
if FEMA is to be dissolved and defunded amid increasing, expanding and worsening anthropogenic-caused or accelerated climate catastrophes;
if Federal income tax collection may cease, to be replaced by tariffs or other regressive tax; or the working classes will be further over-burdened by Federal income tax collection even as the Federal programs that crucially and critically support or supplement life and lives are weakened or eliminated;
and granted, these institutions, agencies and policies are deficient, mismanaged or corrupted in some way or many ways;
if the two political parties in the U.S. Government are entrenched without possible legitimate political, military or civic challenge; if the three separate branches of the U.S. Government are in virtual lock-step as an autocracy; and, if there is de facto rule of the United States of America by oligarchy;
then,
coming into full being as a crone, one thing i have learned — and practice — is to not suppress my emotions or thoughts
whether in private, shared, or public space
but to feel or express them right then (with very rare exceptions) —
and to NOT control “my smiles and cries”
i spend a significant amount of time solo —largely, by choice,
so, when I feel immense grief or joy, or experience beauty or pain, humor or outrage,
i let my tears
or my teeth
or my uvula
or my tongue
or
my voice
be in the moment,
and this often manifests even if i am in a public space
i have become as uninhibited and honest — as a young child,
or — as someone on their death bed.
Continue reading ““smiles and cries””a sweet spot, a warm, quiet evening,
of a too-soft winter here,
on & of the good Earth,
that tempts the comfortable one
to flirt with forgetting
the hard totality
of this hot and cold, man-made,
loud and brutal World.
if there was a Mother God,
if God was a Mother,
not “were”
this wouldn’t be
our reality
a dying planet
a deadened polity
mass extinction by chainsaw, net,
bolt-gun or bomb
they said, “96% of children in Gaza feel that death is imminent”
in Sudan, the famine is massive,
oh, this reaper, he is very discriminate
in Congo, there’s mass enslavement for minerals,
see the phone in her hand?! her hypocrisy?! she can’t claim to be innocent!
the Pacific’s so hot,
that it’s killed 4 million murres
while the Indigenous still invoke
“cultural rights” to baby seal furs
therefore,
God is either male — or, truer,
the God who created everything,
was the very first one extincted,
as Nietzsche,
and the german thinkers before him,
all, belatedly said,
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
“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.”
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.”lilacs re-leaf, re-bloom
in October
hummingbird moths feed,
and simultaneously,
She’s un-be-coming a human be-ing
She’s destined to,
we’re destined to, too
no
need to
tell me, explain
what’s happening
as constant witness,
as constant, remote witness to slaughter,
as constant gardener,
as constant tender,
as constant daughter,
i see.
i recognize.
i know,
Continue reading “phenology II”if you’re seeing this, you’re alive,
though dying — no matter your age, health, relative safety, relative comfortability —
on this living, though suffering and actively dying, planet
Earthlings and Earth together in a protracted hospice
right now, in these brief years, these grief years,
we are the “ever-living ghosts of what once was”
a “was” that most all of us alive this morning have never known as lived experience — save for the untouched tribes — 10,000 Uncontacted Peoples — 10,000 unsystematized, “uncivilized”
and the Ocean, and the few, still-standing Ancient One Trees; the untouched Desert, and the Mountains — even the youngest of them — The Tetons and The Himalayas, know what it “was” to be alive.
we are mere ghosts, walking dead.
another part of mourning, an enduring part of mourning:
the loss of the “institutional knowledge” of you that they alone held, documented and archived;
when
a life-long, childhood or early adulthood friend
a beloved mother, or grandmother, or father,
a harmonious sibling, a close cousin
a long-time lover,
a partner in a long marriage, officiated — or not
a child whom you birthed or raised and who may have also birthed or raised you, have mercy.
when, those relationships become one-sided through death — or other endings,
not only are they gone,
Continue reading “institutional knowledge”it may feel
tenuous
so much of this seems predicated on phantom 1s, zeroes, grids & presidents
remember what is true, what is real
a deer ambling into the bramble of an overgrown blueberry patch
at last light
a trail of fireflies sparkling behind her like a golden bridal veil
there are deer, there are fireflies, there are blueberries, still
children around your table, grandchildren or a dog underfoot
cotton and wool
flint, boots,
a cache of seeds, oils, a pantry full of grains and beans, bundles of dried herbs, a cellar of roots
a deep well, a spring, or a stream and some vessels
steel, wood, stone, charcoal
pictographs, petroglyphs
cell-deep stories
strings, drums, flutes
a few poems — memorized, recited, improvised
hands near your own as you
birthe, work, live, fight, grieve, survive — and then die
and right now, in this exact moment
Continue reading “tenuous”recipe and method for feeding a baby starling
recipe:
one-half of a medium-boiled large egg, super finely diced
3-4 sardines canned in water, with all the bones and skin, gingerly rinsed under a thin stream of tap water, to remove excess salt, laid atop a paper towel
to passively drain the water,
then, finely chopped
mash sardines and egg together,
then slowly add up to 1 teaspoon of unsweetened organic apple sauce,
the mash should be integrated and mostly smooth
but not too wet or runny
store in sealed glass container refrigerated for no more than 2.5 days
(increase to whole boiled egg and full can of sardines and extra applesauce — and increase mash chunkiness as bird grows)
to feed:
fill a plastic drinking straw with the food,
by pumping the straw up and down into the mash with suction
warm the filled straw in hand while wearing a disposable glove to bring the mash close to room temperature
gently but quickly eject tubes/ribbons of mash into baby bird’s mouth as she gapes for food - like toothpaste on toothbrush almost; it’s daunting at first; she is so demanding! so loud! so urgent!
so hungry!
she will stop gaping when full
wash straw and reuse
(DQ & Five Guys straws are wide, flexible and work best)
repeat feeding every half hour, then eventually every hour or so, about 300 times over the course of next three weeks
to thrive:
during that time create and whistle to her a short, 3-4 note, unique song to recognize your voice
love her, talk to her,
encourage her, comfort her,
and hold her, carry her outside to see the world she will soon enter
also during that time: bring her small worms, slugs and insects to taste and/or eat / you will need to manually reduce them to be digestible for her, at first
then teach her to forage and hunt for them herself; she will use her beak as a shovel to unearth them and poke at and sever them with her beak;
watch her back while she’s busy doing this - be her wingman!
she will teach herself to bathe and sun, fluff, dry and preen
one day she will hop, sputter-fly into the grass, into the garden; into the bramble or tall grasses
then, she will fly and soar - high into the trees, beyond your reach, sight or protection
you will worry about predators and bird bullies, weather, machines, injury and hunger
you will listen for her voice
and whistle and call for her
sometimes you will hear her;
but she will always hear you; she knows your face, form, voice and song
she will still come home for supplemental feeding
she will still come home to sleep in her nest box inside the barn overnight because being a baby bird alone in the world - is exhausting
being a mother bird, even moreso
she will come back, again and again.
she is just pure joy.
she is pure trust.
you are so lucky to have experienced her first weeks of life
you rescued her; but she has restored you, in fact.
please know,
always remember, and never forget:
every bird you see, every wild mammal you see, they all initially survived because of a very devoted mother
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 