near invisible,
imagine silk organza, chameleoned
peach-pink colored, when i Am naked,
the color of water as i bathe.
sky blue, golden, sherbet, grayed or midnight black,
when i Am outside
ever-shifting with the time of day and weather,
once, even green,
as i knelt down in the cold grass
while diaphanous to all the unobservant
i Am dressed in this cloak of mourning
and the hem is lined with lead
Continue reading “the mourning cloak”the golden light
stole her attention, as per
halted her forward motion, as per
the Sun’s set
would be the first
without Her, earthside
she took some photos, as per,
/but also, to remember that very first one/
she then acknowledged
that the Sun, Moon and Stars
herald no one’s birth, announce no one’s death
and perhaps that’s why
the Star of Bethlehem
and a midday eclipse
the first night, the long night
the first sleep
sobbing or wailing into oblivion
eyes forced shut by swollen lids
eventually the mammalian body
succumbs to the exhaustion
from the metabolic expenditure of emotional agony and adrenaline
the next morning
the first sweet seconds of confusion of time and place
as the tender light or familiar sounds of daybreak
breach the senses
a suspension of forgetting
the devastation of yesterday
those must be the most ephemeral moments
in human consciousness
then a stirring
a shifting in bed
to adjust position
breaks the magic of sleep
the anvil of non-specific grief returns to the chest
the coils of hopelessness entwine the limbs
the last meal that She cooked for herself
was in the late afternoon of the 18th of September the Year of Our Hearts, 2023
that same evening
She would spend the last night together alone with her only child, her son, in Their house on Adams Street
he had already stopped at Chik-fil-A
– or Quesabroso? for his dinner
he, sixteen forever, for Her, not even licensed for a year yet
She thought, then said aloud to him
“pasta. i want some pasta.”
and so She very slowly set about
choosing saucepans, boiling water,
sautéing a little ground beef with a bit of diced onion, and minced garlic from a giant container from Costco,
adding in a half jar of Rao’s Original, some dried herbs — nothing too spicy or fancy now,
cooking her favorite gluten-free rigatoni,
or was it penne, mostaccioli?
She ate, rinsed the pots, loaded and ran the dishwasher, put the combined leftovers in her fridge
and at dinner time the very next day,
She told her oldest and dearest friend about it
her friend listened, and watched Her plate, reheat, and sit down to eat those leftovers — She wanting to do all that for Herself, still
She taking the smallest and most intentional bites possible,
every delicate swallow and cough amplified in the too-big-for-two, unusually quiet house, the parade of Her friends and visitors gone until tomorrow
“i’m not supposed to drink with these meds, but lemme have just one lil’ sip of your wine”
Continue reading “the last meal of a woman”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
I am not nesting
for the birth of a baby
I am harboring
for the death of a friend
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 “popular!”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
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
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
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
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 Murder of an August Meadow”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
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?
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 “fulcrums”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 