Tag: Poetry

night falls, late july

On By ©️K.T. 2025In agraria, Arte Agraria, Arte Bucolia, Arte Ruralia, bucolia, Crone, earthlings, Garden of Eden, ki, kin, nightfall, outer rural, Poem, poet, poetry, ruralia, witchLeave a comment

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!/
cottonwoods or black walnuts 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” →

venus 𝖗𝖃

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Poem, poet, poetryLeave a comment

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

dream phoenix

On By ©️K.T. 2025In dreams, isis, liminal, liminality, phoenix, Poem, poetry, succubus2 Comments

you think: if I just bury the bitch
one day she may raise up again //

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 dead

you cremate her in your pristine oven
collect her charred bones,
grind them to ash with your mortar and pestle from Sur La Table
dissolve a spoonful 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 thought you could 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

one night, as you sleep,

she clips and carries them off — clumps and bouquet — in a pouch fashioned from your favorite silk dress — made from the bodies of one thousand 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 in his open, parched mouth
before she soars out

leaves him with an eternal, wet, delicious taste of her

don’t you know,

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for Christi:

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Poem, poet, poetryLeave a comment

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 homework — fucking homework ! /// i took my kid road-tripping and camping, sent him to the SCA and Grand Teton 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 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 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

it was

fated, serendipity

song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Crone, Crone Consciousness, Epigenetic, Essay, Finnish, Knowledge, Lament, Lamentations, poet, poetryLeave a comment

During the summer of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, an upcoming “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 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 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.

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.

Continue reading “song[s] of my self: epigenetic lamentations” →

stop praying for what you want

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Death, exposition, Life, Life and Death, limineen, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

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

Continue reading “stop praying for what you want” →

soul mate

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Poem, poemo, poetryLeave a comment

sit with me, straddle me
don’t say a word
hear my heart with your heart
let mine hear yours

look at me, into me
like a Magic Eye
until the real me comes into your focus
our definitions no longer concealed

listen to me, read me
my words are my knowable mind
come, know what i know
and be known by me

lay on top of me
our mouths open
breathe me in slowly and deeply
let my pneuma impregnate you

i want to make you the father of my art

i want to be the mother of yours

Dream Gerund: being

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Derivate Works, exposition, Poem, Poem for Poet, poemo, poet, poetryLeave a comment

Arte Digitora derived from the poems: “On Doing” & “Dream Gerund”

On Doing

I have a compulsion to do.

But sometimes/often just want recline.

And the softness [and] of being. Pulled tight into a cocoon & the doing hushed out of me and filled with prairie definitions.

My untold untyped Great/lake fantasies.

Fallen grass tufts and waterproof boot slosh and plant names and hours of dendrochronology with fantas/tical idealized notions of rubbing and human collision, of being.

July nothingness would be a dream come true I close my eyes to it and do and do and do.  

~ juggernaut

On July 19, 2022, upon noting the correspondence between the words “doing”, “being” and “dream” in the above poem and the published poem “Dream Gerund” both written by the same poet — I created a digital derivative work – works which I now refer to by the neologism that I conceived:

Arte Digitora.

a digital derivative work (Arte Digitora) created on July 19, 2022 from shared media of the poem “On Doing” and photoshopped with digital photos of printed text from two poems by the same author published in memotoallemployees, 1995)
Continue reading “Dream Gerund: being” →

They are the O’Kneels

On By ©️K.T. 2025In betrayal, cuckquean, O’KneelsLeave a comment

1 ain’t dumb
+ 1 ain’t dumb
= 0 authentic lives

“seeking intellectual stimulation and companionship in Chicago”

a profile headline for a dating site, August 2008

and they’ve never pretended harder,
to be happier,
in their marriage,

than they are right now

“she ain’t dumb.” said, the Mr.

“he ain’t dumb.” said, the Mrs.

silently, renewing those practical vows,

but

2 “ain’t dumbs” will never add up to

1 authentic life

what their calculus hath joined together,

let no verdant, regent 𝕮𝖗𝖔𝖓𝖊 put asunder,

let us now re-pronounce them:

the O’Kneels

Continue reading “They are the O’Kneels” →

proof of life :

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Mother, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

she taught me to not like
myself/

especially, my image

— in photographs and in the moments themselves

ingraining a self-consciousness in me

and in the candidness of my real life

in

play
laughter
effort
surprise
exertion
contemplation
fatigue
wonder
sadness
silliness
conversation
worry
unmade

pose, poise, posture, profile, perfect,

control

and because perfection

is unattainable,

in the eye of the beholder and in the eye of the beheld

she was absent from the photos of our lives, and so also was i,

becoming onlooker, background, photographer,

instead of subject

and, so i learned

to make myself invisible

to become invisible

to accept invisibility

there are so many ways to be a thief, mother

self-portrait, proof of life,
Kahlo, an ideal of self-possession
Continue reading “proof of life :” →

ravenous

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Poem, poetryLeave a comment

i subsist on this right now

chartreuse
red, purple, black
and gold

early, brave dandelions, low-key wonders

muscari, moss, catkins, i study in real-time-lapse — like it’s my last Spring / is it?

these black birds — red-winged, grackles, and starlings, their obsidian gloss and iridescence, who could look away

sandhill cranes, five years familiar, but i am still arrested with awe every single time

deer roam in forage for hours for tender emergent greens among last year’s corn stover/

chorus frogs and woodcocks at twilight, i heard them into the night, this had to be the first white noise for human beings

i watch for owls til there’s no more light, straining my eyes / willing them to feast on the moles that i can’t bear to kill /

no one’s here to call me in / no street lights/ and i forget to eat til i am

ravenous or ravishing/ my favorite and unforgettable malaprop

i am warmed, buoyed, sated with vernal sensuality

but the mud, my heart – and hips

remind me
that i am also

Continue reading “ravenous” →