there’s no sense
in gaslighting me
i Am already ablaze
Category: Poem
night falls, late july
nightfall
proceeds like this
small rodentia head under, in or up,
mourning doves perform a vigorous last forage,
hummingbirds, always reliable for last call, drink up/
rabbits boldly show out in numbers to spaghetti-slurp dandelion, plantain and clover stems/
barn and tree swallows own the lower troposphere
red-winged blackbirds
cardinals, and robins
in that exact order
loudly call everyone home for the night
the air surrenders to insects,
the sky — to bats, beautifully acrobatic /hey!/
cottonwood or black walnut trees will host owls on supremely, rare summer evenings
moths, beetles take the lamps
frogs take the sidewalks, steps, stoop,
walls, windows,
and eventually, the lamps too/
toads pace and post sentry on barn thresholds
deer passage through — or bed down
in the tall unmowed grasses, now properly – a prairie, a meadow,
natural salt licks — and halved, quartered and whole apples,
are my selfishly generous lures ’til autumn’s own bounty
coyotes herald the Moon
or the first dark train,
depending on the phase,
lightning bugs mimic eye-level stars,
golden-gold like our Sun and in asynchronous constellations
raccoons strategize, then raid, but i know to expect them now
possums about their business — quiet, slow, sweet — these, my dear ones, stay a while, please
cricketsong
errant cicadas, what year is it, again?
and incessant croaking, banjoing, ribbitting
fog may appear,
then settle — or lift,
or maybe the night is sultry, still or clear
Continue reading “night falls, late july”death mask
sometimes, in the mirror
she closes one eye,
pulls, spreading the skin of her cheekbone,
cheek, and jowl,
down, away and taut
to see what she’d look like
in repose
if she died
a gentle death tonight
venus 𝖗𝖃
and she and i were out of sync
and he and i were out of sync
and the crows and i were out of sync
and he and i were out of sync
and she and i were out of sync
and he and i were out of sync
and we were all,
out of sync
but mostly, i Am out of sync
so i stepped back,
and out,
then forward, and back, yet again,
then circled,
and waited,
waded, treaded, floated
it
out
to keep from
sinking
sunset at silver beach, part I
seasonal converts in droves
others, in situ, accidental, parishioners
we, longtime devout, are also among them
no one calls it a benediction
in congregant, we partake in a sacrament
of unblinding and mooring
our westered eyes and bodies
in autonomic yielding
upon this
irrefutable
Continue reading “sunset at silver beach, part I”Hydrangea nostalgia
revised for the fourth of july, 2025
july 2023
This Hydrangea nostalgia bush was grown from a 2017 autumn cutting from its parent which is, or was, located in the front yard of my brick 2-flat in the northwest side neighborhood of Portage Park in Chicago. One of a half-dozen or so white hydrangeas planted by me in the late 90s, I had nurtured and obsessed over them for nearly 23 years — this one is now the lone survivor in my care at my rural home in Michigan.
rooting hormone solution,
and growing medium,
September 23, 2017
(not even one of these most precious lilac cuttings rooted and survived)
autumn hydrangea & lilac cuttings,
not ideal for propagation,
but ready for transport and transplant
to Michigan
But the genesis of my city girl hydrangea devotion was not Martha Stewart’s ubiquitous “Living” magazine, also of 1990s — though she certainly named, informed, inspired and validated many a hydrangea obsession within those pages — rather, it was the nostalgic ubiquity of enormous white snowball blooms and arresting blue-purple poms on heritage shrubs that I admired, coveted, played and hid among during my childhood summers spent with my maternal grandparents in Murphysboro — a sleepy, rural town in Southern Illinois — where my maternal great, great grandmother, my great grandmother and grandmother were all born.
I was entranced by those plants each summer — yet without the language to name and fully describe them to my mother when I returned back home to the Chicago Housing Authority’s Lathrop Homes aka “the projects” – which usually, was just in the nick of time for back-to-school in late August. Interestingly, I don’t recall ever drawing a picture of hydrangeas or taking a photo of them with my hard-earned Kodak Instamatic pocket camera as a child – even though I frequently used both methods to capture/record my favorite things. //
“Nostalgia Kills”
Nostalgia is a psychologically pining for a sweeter but largely false time in our lives — a naive, shallow or ignorant time that we prefer to, that we choose to, remember as “innocence” or romanticize, idealize or distort as the “best times of my life” or the “good ol’ days”.
Instead of thoroughly revisiting the entirety of the time, place, people or experience, nostalgia often robs — or kills — the opportunity for true introspection and material dialectics. ///
Continue reading “Hydrangea nostalgia”Nostalgia sounds like the name of the a psychological condition catalyzed by avoiding “dis-ease”
poetry as sustenance /ethan hawke
“Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry until …”
// this piece on creativity by Ethan Hawke is one that i return to often //
illusion|elusion
do, do, do
go, go, go
try, try, try
see, see, see
get, get, get
say, say, say
show, show, show
plan, plan, plan
prove, prove, prove
your incantatory verbs
elude
the
magick
of
being
“[S]he floats like a butterfly …”
marker, paint, glue and chunky gold glitter
on 12”x12” square
gold metallic cardstock
These two gorgeous, requested works by the most gorgeous and extraordinary artist and person Mz. Lajuana Lampkins of Chicago.
You might find her making her art in the late night scene of her favorite spots in the Wicker Park/Bucktown neighborhoods of Chicago — or reach out to her on Instagram at Lajuana.Lampkins1 and peruse her art, her process and her community.
Lajuana Lampkins has had her art exhibited to great praise; she is a prolific and widely collected street artist; and she has edited and published a book of her late son’s essays, poetry and letters: The Collected Works of Prince Akbar AKA Jus Rhymz.
She is also a sister, aunt, friend, poet, community member and activist, writer, rapper, historian, archivist, fashionista, paralegal, social commentarian and modern philosopher — but most proudly, a mother, grandmother and great grandmother
— and to me, she epitomizes the Crone.
Muhammad Ali
Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.
Mz. Lampkins works may be exhibited again in autumn 2023 in a community art show that she is hoping to create and develop —-and she aspires to publish her next non-fiction book in the nearer future.
She is also the subject of the forthcoming documentary “My Mother is An Artist” which follows Mz. Lampkins’s journey from 2019, eight years post-release from a 30 year incarceration as a wrongfully prosecuted and convicted young woman and mother —to 2023, as a working, locally-renown and yet-still-struggling artist living in these American systems of modern oppression and exploitation.
Continue reading ““[S]he floats like a butterfly …””maybe, on the full Moon
maybe the luna moth will reveal herself to you on the full Moon
Continue reading “maybe, on the full Moon”
creation stories : “a nation is a massacre”
&
“every american flag is a warning sign”
– Demian DinéYazhi’
my ancestors will not let me forget this, 2019 Neon, aluminum, insulated wiring, mechanical components 2019 Eiteljorg Fellow
Museum purchase from the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship 2019
“This is the way settler-colonial trauma settles into the body of the colonized We unconsciously re-live the genocides and brutalities inflicted against our ancestors
The shame the rape the beatings the enslavement The white bodies with their killing machines and unholy structures of
torture and discipline
The distrust the disease the disgust the deceit the miseducation and
immoral fixations
The flamboyant uniforms
My ancestors will not let me forget this and every american flag is a warning sign
Even the one my grandfather was given as a Code Talker.”
-excerpt, “An Infected Sunrise”
by Demian DinéYazhi’
In addition to a career in visual arts, DinéYazhi' is a spoken word poet, who in the fourth grade, fell in love with writing. Exhibited at the 2019 Honolulu Biennial, my ancestors will not let me forget this, references Diné Yazhi''s childhood hometown of Gallup, New Mexico, which is less than twenty miles from Church Rock, New Mexico. United Nuclear Corporation milled uranium in Church Rock, which borders Navajo reservation trust-lands. In July 1979, its disposal pond for tailings breached its dam, causing at least eleven hundred tons of mill waste to spill into Puerco River. Today, Church Rock is the largest recorded radioactive spill in U.S. history and is an EPA Superfund site.
dream phoenix
you think: if I merely bury this bitxch
one day, she may raise up again //
and haunt not your nightmares,
but surface in your dreams
and worse,
his
instead, you two
dismember her together
on your walks
at your coffee table
in your marital bed //
until she’s betrayed, and dead.
you decide what to cremate her in your pristine oven,
then collect her charred bones,
grind them to ash with your mortar and pestle from Sur La Table
dissolve a spoonful of her into your wine in secret, and drink it
the rest, you feed to your lilacs //
you think: she’ll never again be whole //
yet, her linger slowly poisons you and your home
and, she waits
like Isis
to collect her relics that you foolishly thought you could consume, transmute and possess
her essence migrating into the strands of your wiry, brittle hair
and into the fragrant beautiful blooms and heart-shaped leaves just outside your door, that school children are so tempted to pluck.
then, one night, as you sleep,
she clips and carries them off — clumps and bouquet — in a pouch fashioned from your favorite silk dress — cruelly spun from the bodies of one thousand sacrificial worms — to break the curse
while his phallus pulses crimson, like a beacon, erect and dripping with life from his dreams of her/
as he sleeps,
she spits into his open, parched mouth
before she soars out
leaves him with an eternal, wet, delicious taste of her
don’t you know,
Continue reading “dream phoenix”incidental
i check the bleuets on the boundary to the west
feral shrubs in reclaimed and overgrown prairie teeming with life
the berries are still pink-sky-sunset blue
not yet dusty indigo blue
i’ll check again tomorrow
like i did yesterday
a lone deer forages
in the freshly seeded field to the north
probably soybean this year, i say with confidence
after observing rotation and rest patterns for nitrogen, for six summers, now
i raise my hands up slow and high
surrendering to the deer
to show i don’t have a gun /on me/
or a bow or blade, bought or made
my tradition is not forged steel and gunpowder,
my ceremony is not stone, bone, shaft and feather,
my nature is not always claws these days
i hold my mouth, soft, open
in a weird smile
to show
i have no usable canines
i transmit a thought, a query
concerning the herd
“where are the six you lived and walked with all last winter?”
there’s no response
to my attempt at telepathy — although — one day
i emanate waves of empathy out from my heart — i imagine them like Lake Michigan gently lapping at the local beach
and hope that kin feels it
because
Continue reading “incidental”cosplay
I
she cosplays as human
but vestigial dark plasma
long percolating,
now seeps
through
random pores of her pink flesh
Continue reading “cosplay”
transfusion
don’t bother to resuscitate me,
it won’t do any good,
if you want to [try to] save my life
donate to me what i’ve lost
or maybe, never had
that one essential thing
not love, no, not that //
to save me,
vow to infuse me, transfuse me
continuously
with your infectious
will to live
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 