the macro-and-microcosmic exterior environment is suffused with art
“tree of knowledge”
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”a fotographic series of Bucolia
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”I
she cosplays as human
but vestigial dark plasma
long percolating,
now seeps
through
random pores of her pink flesh
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
originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023
* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.
A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night
Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease
A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life
a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one
A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree
A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called
On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark
Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth
The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep
Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn
She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.
All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws
A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy
2023 addendum:
inspired, in part, by a poem from Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin :
how can i “calm down” when all i feel is love and rage, when all i experience is beauty and pain/ no in-between / pass the cab and the kettle corn / and if you didn’t want me to opine on fresh-cut flowers and this film — then why, why, why – did you insist that my eyes see them – yes, i know there are flower farms —— but have you heard that pollinators aren’t allowed indoors around vases? it’s none of anyone’s business how many time i’ve seen “Almost Famous!”
yes, i am a mother, and i drink too much wine, sometimes — but he’s in Albuquerque not in a crib in the next room — i wish time travel were true // and other times, wine is not enough to squelch the pangs – of 18 years gone in a flash but thousands of hours wasted on PTA — and fucking homework ! /// i took my kid road-tripping and camping, sent him to the SCA and The Tetons to keep him out of these systems — how many huckleberry milkshakes at the Pioneer Grill does it take to finally see mountains and bears and rivers and trees as real living persons? well, i can actually tell you!
we had our deep talks, but not enough, never — how can time spent philosophizing be measured? in life choices and paths — that’s how. and i’m proud.
can you make a pact with me and promise i’ll never have to eat these words – especially the rants — and when, not if, i say something really wrong — you’ll push bowls of fresh figs and olives in my face to shut me up as a signal? salsa and chips will work too
can i tell you i’m broken without you trying to fix me? can you tell i’m broken — or do i wear it well? do these big feelings make my brain look small?
never stop showing me the radiance of you just because i’m dark — someone has to be the shadow, the mourning veil, the contrarian — and i know i volunteered — a long time ago — but “at some point” i really would appreciate a different assignment?
— by the way, your auras do wonders for this room
you’ll both never not be in cascade canyon with me,
[ever]
it was
fated,
serendipity.
oh, june
she crushes me
these roses warmed in her Sun
today, tomorrow, and yesterday, at least
it’s not enough
to see them, touch them,
smell them, now
i want to swallow them down warm
into my heart
and keep them forever
the holy trinity of feminine archetypes
the macro and micro cosmic exterior environment is imbued with art
— if you just fucking look —
art is everywhere
art is more than cities, than galleries, statues, murals, landscaped botanical gardens, paintings, commissioned installations, fountains, graffiti, sculptures, museums, fashion, prints, architecture and the built environment
attention is reverence
arte ruralia
arte agraria
arte voyeura
arte bucolia
i woke to the voices of unseen crows at 3:03 ante meridiem
crying out, cawing out
i know the voices of my dear familiars,
and this is unnatural and unsettling
unsettling an already-unsettled human woman
these crows see me unsettled on my feet
the gods see me unsettled in my dreams
crying out, calling out in my wilderness
i sit here in this dark room in my white chair by this open window looking south into the black night
Continue reading “unseen”During the summer and autumn of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, a “milestone” birthday, and a relocation to a quiet rural place with dark skies and an abundance of fauna and flora — I literally heard myself: I had unconsciously begun a meditative and/or soothing practice of singing or humming verses and melodies of sorrow, wonder, gratitude — or simply, of the mundane. They were autonomic and presumably original, lamentations.
then, serendipitously, I retroactively encountered a May 2017 piece published in Yes! magazine about the revival and history of “lament singing” in Finland.
To find that I was unconsciously, but actually, participating in a Finnish tradition that I had never experienced or even heard of — but that was somehow still within in me — in some cellular, trans-generational or ancestral place — felt like a bridge to my lineage — to all my unknown Finnish women-kin.
The lyrics and tunes occurred spontaneously over several months, and I often automatically repeated the same one over and over while working, cleaning, cooking, gardening, walking or driving. I sung or hummed them mostly while alone, but sometimes they would emerge aloud in public places — and I didn’t even realize that I was in song or know how long I had been doing it.
Continue reading “song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations”People who laugh, cry, sing and talk to themselves aloud in the street are not “crazy” — we are comforting, raging, celebrating, mocking and mourning ourselves, our lives, our experiences and the world.
the birds’ choir
is a mockery outside my window, eight different species on the sill — eight — for gods’ sake!
these days when the
Sun’s arc is long
and the soil is warming for the season — and permanently
i am in my bed with lead bones
annoyed that i woke up again, and guilty with an ungratefulness about it
my steady lament is sung out loud — but still unheard
i counted my mistakes like sheep, to sleep again
they didn’t wander away though
they stay close to their shepherd, always
they say Death comes in threes and that’s true
but it still hasn’t chosen me
instead, conscripting two complacent men, known to me, thirty-six, fifty three, in one week’s time — why?
while i’m out here volunteering for the cause
it cruelly searches elsewhere to complete their trio
of course i’m still fucking here!
the gods won’t give you what you pray for!
courage, love, fidelity, life, death
they’re full of motherfuckery
they know exactly what i — and what you, want most — of all
so they sent these birds here to taunt me
so they keep me here to taunt you
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 