Harvest Moon, northern hemisphere, 2023

On September 29, 2023October 17, 2023 By ©️K.T. 2026In Death, dying, Lament, Life, Life and Death, liminal, limineen, moon, Poem, poetry, threshold, Womenfolk, WordsLeave a comment

i missed the rise of the
Full Moon last night,
preoccupied in thought
hands busy in work

she missed the rise of the
Full Moon last night
preoccupied in pain
early to bed, early to bed-ridden

i say, i will witness Her tonight
waning only slightly, gibbous,
99, 98 percent
or next month,
with confidence, and guilt

i say, she won’t witness Her tonight,
or next month, or any phase
Zero percent
wondering if she ever considered the Moon,
with confidence, and guilt

the word “full” lingers on beyond the Moon’s illumination
— as relative,
in these lives of ours

Continue reading →

the opposite of maternity

On September 27, 2023September 27, 2023 By ©️K.T. 2026In cancer, Crone, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, Death, dying, Lament, Life and Death, limineen, Poem, poetry, Terminal Illness, thresholdLeave a comment

I am not nesting
for the birth of a baby
I am harboring
for the death of a friend

Continue reading →

the path of the hylic

she had always prized
quantity over quality
with both people and money
never interrogating
the integrity or provenance of either

never asking the hard questions of herself

nor pursuing the big ones,

now,

she’s left only with errant glitter,

an impotent wand,

a cortège of pink fools,

her plated crown of paste jewels, atop her head, askew

you see, i knew that was all distraction, decoy, masked unconfidence

home, is within your Self

so, i chose to be [come] “Wicked”,

i wear my gold

in my bones,

in my blood.

Continue reading →

conspiracy to kill the creator

On September 15, 2023September 23, 2023 By ©️K.T. 2026In Gnosis, Gnostic, Kenoma, liminal, liminality, limineen, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

she sips a glass
of wine
and admits, agrees
she too, doesn’t want to be

on this prison planet
under these archons,
guided and insulated by sadistic angels,
both, in servitude to the demiurge

no escaping it, Them

even in Bucolia

she’s still plagued by the 24-hour news cycle,
contemplation that often veers off into nihilism,

and, by bouts of suicidal ideation
— but to go back around, back to another false birth in this Samsara, to start over? — no thanks //

perhaps crying in the wilderness, then.

where is that, exactly?
the mountains, buttes and canyons also betray us — those ancient Watchers, the petroglyphs warned us of
— and of shapeshifters cloaked in feathers, fur and scales ///

she knows she can’t save her Self, preserve her Pneuma and reunite with her Daimon,
solely with an Earth-based practice of resistance

and, so begins the invocation, the genesis of her mission,

she supposes the element of surprise may be compromised by Their so-called omniscience

but who knows – what They actually know

even gods have blindspots
even gods sleep and fuck — or mindlessly scroll and binge

we, Their creation, create Their content, after all

yes.

she will go to Them

traversing the liminal terrain

to find and kill Them in their confident repose in the Kenoma

monarch chrysalis: endogenous alchemy

On September 7, 2023April 22, 2025 By ©️K.T. 2026In PoemLeave a comment

I am witness to and aspirant of alchemy

living alchemy:
imaginal cells metamorphose en pupa
*Monarch [Danaus plexippus] chrysalis on plantain lily [Hosta plantiginea] stem bract.*

"Crave wisdom of God, the sense to understand,

Else meddle not herewith, nor take it in hand.

For it will cost thee much wordly wealth;

But trust not to other, but do it thyself.

Learn, therefore, first to cleanse, purify and sublime,

To dissolve, congeal, distill and, sometime

To conjoin and separate, and how to do all,

That when you think to rise, thou do not fall,

Trust to thyself and not to another;

I can say no more to thee if thou were my brother." 

- Simon Forman 1597

“alchemy exists to transform mortals from a state of suffering to enlightenment”

endogenous alchemy is the only possible panacea for humanity — as individuals, as families, as communities, as a civilization — and for all we have wrought upon our fellow non-human Earthlings and upon Earth, herself

no matter what situations or circumstance we face, we have an escape route: transforming our own mind.
– S. Rinpoche

Continue reading →

repair of the heart | kintsugi

On September 6, 2023September 8, 2023 By ©️K.T. 2026In Alchemy, Crone, heartbreak, kintsugi, kintsukuroi, Poem, poet, poetryLeave a comment

version i

a vessel
of perpetual sustenance
fumbled by graceless hands of men
those breaks that once disfigured her
now sealed
with aurum scars instead

Continue reading →

premeditated mourning

On September 1, 2023November 17, 2024 By ©️K.T. 2026In cancer, Death, dreaming, dreams, dying, Hospice, Life and Death, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

i am in premeditative mourning

desperate to get it
over and done with
before she’s dead

i choke on the dream scene, the prognosis and the grand scheme / ever-present in my throat /
and weep
then, a memory of us wedges in
i cry a smile, and smile a cry

i think
this, is all, too much
i can’t do this.

she is the one doing it
with her dignity, her calm, her reserve, she’s had too much practice, she’s well-traveled on this terrain

these consecutive life sentences, handed out

i am in retroactive outrage
over these injured bodies, injured, not failing,
precision is imperative /
i am in proactive rage
against these failing systems within this failed system in this injured, not failing, closed system /
precision is imperative

does anyone else want to know
the cause/s of death/s
these expendable, collateral clusters — of families, neighborhoods, workers, of an implausible deniability
one after another at four, five or six decades — dead

did he bring home the syndrome
in silica tucked in the creases
of his work clothes
of his brow,
he built the skyline! the Hancock even
my god, did he carry it in his semen

or was it the apartment on wabansia?
on karlov? on keystone?
all zoned mixed-use residential-commercial-industrial — industrial!
when they all walked from home
to work at the factory down the block,
on the next block, or across the alley
a metal plater
a powder coater
a dry-cleaner
tool and die

i don’t want these precognitions anymore!
let me dream her as a grandmother
with her grandchildren, all, all pristine!

i know the outcome
of walking forward in waking fantasy, in empty, unheard prayer, instead of trusting the retrograde revelations of my sleep

Continue reading →

how

On August 30, 2023September 10, 2023 By ©️K.T. 2026In PoemLeave a comment

how?

how do you fall in love with the same Sun, the same trees, the same colors, the same Moon, the same people

every single day?

you just do.

they

impel,

compel

you.

Continue reading →

the evening hours

On August 23, 2023August 4, 2025 By ©️K.T. 2026In Poem, poetryLeave a comment

i’m on the phone with her
i listen,
attentive to both the mundanity and gravity
of her daily tales and decadal recollections
i wait for the right words, the right pause to speak, which sometimes never comes/
she is always dilated, crowning or birthing new and old pain
but is fertile with ideas and pregnant with laughter too
i am a patient doula, never a midwife.
and suddenly, an hour, or more, is gone

dicing and mincing my holy quarternity, my mirepoix, my sofrito — to music or a lecture / sauté, season, blanche, stew, cook, boil, sear, bake, toss, assemble, plate, serve, eat, scrape, scrub, wash, dry, shelve, pack, store, clean and compost.
and suddenly, two — or more hours, are gone

i rush to the stoop hoping i haven’t missed the sweet spot between sunset and twilight/
i watch for the brown bats, i know they come from the west — from the bluff
their roost in remnant shagbark hickory,
and in hollows, i think about how there is no old growth left — hickory, beech, maple, oak, pine — once in primeval abundance,
hell, there are hardly even any old barns or attics left anymore — everyone wants a kennebunkport or grand beach compound, a summer, second or third home/
i am always buoyed at the bats’ arrival, entranced by their acrobatics, they are a living barometer: they’re still alive, still here – in spite of it, all.
and suddenly, an hour is gone

a spider weaves
a web between black walnut leaves
in the very last of light
my obsessive, awed witness of their movements
their silken threads, their physics, their engineering, their architecture
and suddenly, the hour, and light is gone

back on the stoop
i think about

who and what i Am

what i have
what i’ve lost

who i love

what’s past
what’s to come

what i’ll die for, who i’ll die for

what i live for, who i live for

i follow the thread of the patchwork of my quilted life
backward and forward til i reach the beautiful dark fabric of the universe the alpha and omega
i take the ends, and fold it, and fold it again

i put it in my basket to carry inside and upstairs to my bedroom to envelope me
the hours are nearly gone

Continue reading →

The Murder of an August Meadow

On August 20, 2023August 25, 2025 By ©️K.T. 2026In August, Crone, crone chronicles, dirt road chronicles, ki, kin, Lament, Lamentations, plant beings, Poem, poetry, summer, symbiosity, wildlifeLeave a comment

full bloom,
milkweed, goldenrod, chicory,
aster,
thistle or teasel — i don’t know
they’re 7, 8, 9, feet tall
their leaf cups full of collected dew, or rain

the meadow is just all

give give give.

in fifteen minutes,
give or take,

all, gone
beneath a tractor blade

take, take, take,

take.

Continue reading →

the mourning doves

On August 12, 2023August 26, 2024 By ©️K.T. 2026In earthlings, human non-beings, hunters, hunting, ki, kin, Poem, poetry, wildlifeLeave a comment

i still surprise them
even after nearly six years of quiet-yet-unstealthy,
devotion to them

they’ve never once held their roost or kept their forage
upon my careful intrusion, my neutral presence
to maybe know of me
to maybe trust of me

their survival instinct is so strong
but i still take umbrage,
playful, but umbrage, nonetheless

then i remember Nemerov’s words about their feathers
in our caps, our pillows, our coats
“The Distances They Keep,”
then i remember Kimmerer’s words about
the aweing ubiquity and incredible extinction of the Omimi,
Martha the Last, died 109 years ago come September,
then i read how happy fields of sunflowers are cultivated to serve as bait traps for dove hunters at my beloved Starved Rock – after all the lovely fall engagement and high school photo shoots wind down,
and of those who cruelly suggest their flesh is quite delicious

there is no honorable harvest among the descendants of thieves, of colonizers, of settlers, of “homesteaders” — i know this.

so, my god, yes,

stay shy, stay distant, dear doves,

there are many reasons, that i stay shy, stay distant, and in mourning too, but none as good as theirs

addendum poem:

“dove,”
what a lovely name for a gentle bird
what a lovely name for a newly-born girl
what a terrible name for a woman in this world

Continue reading →

beach OBE

On August 11, 2023August 4, 2025 By ©️K.T. 2026In Alchemy, crone chronicles, grandmother, liminal, metaphysical, out-of-body experience, Poem, poetry, waterLeave a comment

i Am revisiting the significance of this poem — first published on my former Tumblr site [kimtn.tumblr.com] in August 2012 and one of the first poems i ever composed

this poem is derived from my near-drowning and out-of-body experience [OBE] when i was about three years old at a beach near Waukegan, Illinois while under the brief watch of my Finnish-American paternal grandmother, Dolores “Babe” Laine (shortened from Kumpulainen) who was often drunk

i am actually lucky that this near-drowning happened to me — and at such a tender age; my out-of-body experience imprinted on me and left me with the capacity to be open to, recognize and receive other metaphysical and liminal experiences throughout my life, and is absolutely part of the origin story for The Limineen and its previous incarnation as the “Accidental Seeker & Intentional Opiner”

beach obe

I open my eyes and ochre water’s all around

I’m underneath, but I’m not scared,

I still see golden sunlight too

I see your legs; you’ve let me go

and I think I’m down here all alone

I hear voices, but I can’t breathe

So I leave, I’m off to explore

But wait, there’s me! – that’s my face!

Can you see, that somehow now, there’s two of me?!

you finally see — the first me
you slowly raise her up

She coughs and breathes;

and the other me, She goes, She floats away

But, which one Am i?

now, i’m not sure

Am i real, or was it She?

Continue reading →

fulcrums

pinpoint the moment,
the fulcrum,
where verdant green life
slips into hot summer crackle,
Sun-steeped leaves
aromatic, chamomile-like
parched beneath our feet
all those places a hose will never reach,
a scent in your nose
reminiscent of a birthday hike
on switchbacks
to stand properly on, and in shadow of,
“The Grand”,
a surprise, teal, alpine lake.
was that the time he dove from the rock like a young god, an Adonis?
all those trips to Wyoming in August, in June,

begin to merge into one core memory,
a hunk of young granite
carried down in rock slide
then, carried all the way down to the valley in my pocket
for him, to give to him, on his birthday.
i ran down that mountain like a gazelle, ahead of them
it was the fastest and freest i have ever felt in all my life, truly
and, i astounded them, all, — and myself.

then, a long, quiet drive back to
a newly dog-less house
how did this all happen in one June, one August, or — was it two?
then,
the first time i felt a chill in months,
a different kind of crunch underfoot
the wind rained down
a carpet of leaves all about, in an instant

just as they appeared at birth,
all golden again,
but different, wiser,

a frost sets in.

Continue reading →