Valentine singing on an open sleeve

“Water, water, every where
Nor any drop to drink” –Coleridge

It is her touch I remember
as soft and willowy
as a drop of dew.
The fingerprint that claims
a part of my soul,
her touch so soft
is what she eats now
slipping down without
the choke.
The vee of geese upon
the wing, the perching
hawk in highway tree –
words that draw
a mosaic do not
capture the love
my mother has
rained down on me.
The tear that wets her eye
I dry it with my sleeve
and hold her hand
while that tear
traverses to my cheek.
I can comfort, I can give
the dripping of ink
from the pen I hold,
but I find the will of
boastful men a mountain
treacherous to scale.

It is the place within
where madness lurks, the
turn of knife, a calypso
eye, half open, half shut
and a smile, or a smirk
brings forth avarice-
the manly sin, as it shot
the albatross down,
this water all around us –
just a mother’s salty tears.
For this winter, watery
paradise is turning
to slime by Midas men
with a wink and a sigh
and a rolling eye
as I watch my mother’s
demise. The heart that
drips upon my sleeve
is the legacy my mother
has bequeathed to me.

The poet sang of concrete

The poet sang of concrete
and paradise destroyed,
the dollar stores are ringing
up landfill fodder
for the gulls. And when
the bittern finds his
habitat banned
from our state,
we know the
ducklings roaming
Lansing with their crutches
have deemed to
legislate away all the
living – a person tries
not to hate
but honestly! Praying
for persecutors is
getting harder to do.
If someone knocked your
house down, wouldn’t
you despise him too?

Of teargas and borders

It is ever the poor we blame,
the precipice on which they stand
requires a nudge
and a shrug
and then we can turn
to the reeling –
our spider lives
mask this visage
of ourselves,

the spinning of webs of conspiracy,
the jumping from hoax to hoax,
the fox has become the hunter,
cunning words his weapon of choice.

Malindy I need your voice,
it is all that is true in this world
the web of deceit
that power weaves
is the demon – tick tock
the sand slipping through,
time erasing
any good that we do,
tick tock, tick tock,
tick tock.

Lavender women

I give a day of thanks
for the ones I cannot equal,
leaves of steel falling
from this tree –
the mighty oak towering,
sprung from the smallest
acorn, fed by the brownest
soil, nutrient rich.
brown, black, rich is the
source of life,
I can never equal them
but I can give
this day of thanks.

Fanny of the hammer –
all morning did she swing,
the joy of freedom rising
echoing
those who came before
from Harriet to
Sojourner – in the deepest
forest they stood, sowing
the seed of righteousness.
The strangeness of the fruit
hanging from a southern tree,
the truth rang out across the land
when Ida shone her light upon it.
Every hand that ever helped
the beggar drained of blood,
those hands caress the living
with the effort to keep on.
In singing for their cause
I know it is surely true,
they protect me and
they shield me,
they fought for me too.
I thank them yes
I thank them –
on this day of thanks
I do.

I can never equal
the leaves of the mighty oak,
despite their life
giving force
my gratitude is slow,
so slow, so slow it
putters away
in sloth, but I know that
the leaves of the oak
that fell and are falling still
are all that will ever
save humanity from itself.
This is the truth I know
of every American dream –
It is stitched together
from end to end
by lavender women
It seems.

We the people

Don’t let the wind
blow your dreams away.
Don’t let the rain
bury joy beneath the sea.
This land is yours
while you circle the sun
and fear will never
let your heart stray from
what you know is
the path of common
cause – each man’s shoulder
waits for a head to rest,
each woman’s arms
will hold you to her breast.
We dance, we dance
together, this is all I know
the dance oh the dance –
we did it yes, we did,
we pulled the grass up
from roots forever deep.
I’m glad I have your
light and surely you
can see I am forever
at your side,
breathe, my people, breathe.

All the world resides

All the world resides
in a grain of sand
bound to bring discomfort
when wet upon the skin.
Venomous face
whether punched
or body slammed
the words keep on twitting
no breath for the living
to catch – it is
a feat for ladies
mulling over tea. All
the world will wash
through a grain of sand.

But keeping on is
weary making beads
upon the brow when
demagogues are
normalized and the
twitting of hate means
there is no chance for sleep.
Violation runs deep for
this, cruelty hanging
so short of breath.
For every body hurt
pay attention to the
single grain of sand
where all the world resides
or surely we are damned.

The space between words

Into the lull steps Isabella –
late summer comes
the chipping
when the cardinal
desists from singing.
No words, no words
can ever match
empathy like
the wave upon the shore –
the still is everything,
muffled ever more.

The voice of silence
is a woman breaking,
the measure of sound
is a girl no more.
Hush now – quiet,
this is all,
your truth is shut,
mere nail to wood –
a wood of patterns
set deep in time,
multitudes gagged
bound to supreme
lies, all lies.

I will not normalize evil

Dred Scott pled before us,
and Plessy stood his ground,
history is so ominous when
it massages the ego of difference.

The old boys required
blinders on our eyes
when they lashed the African
to a funeral pyre.

I live in a sad sad country
where children become brides,
they tell you it doesn’t happen,
they lie, my friend, they lie.

When the sellers of souls
ensure the poor remain poor,
when they wield the cudgel of hate
the battered are bruised as

another mountain is created –
an edifice doomed to fall,
while placards carrying names
are replaced with the holy ones.

The gate they raise to protect
the riches amassed and held dear
is a gate that will hold them captive
when justice is normalized here.

Iniquity

The fact of a gas chamber
is unremarkable.
Like ragweed in late summer,
giving the itch of nose,
it comes and goes,
one century after
another.

A death march is
easily foretold.
Scheherazade,
that spinner of tales,
could not be surer
of how such an incident
repeats itself.

Infinite recklessness
and chance – only
fortune swaying this
way or that, thus jay or
flycatcher turns to food
when the circling raptor
swoops.

All life is food
whether microscopic
being or the fierceness
of wood.
Only conscience
can make it evil.
A fragmented thing is
conscience, once again
under siege.

Bubble men

There is a pattern
in the sky of dark,
in the starry, starry 
night. Hunters and lions
swing amid cumulus,
weaving circles into lies.
The old boys are at it,
those highway blues again,
I’m singing, singing, singing,
those highway blues again.

These men who live in bubbles
like an unbrewed cup of tea –
they whack the wings of buntings,
so steeped in misogyny – they are
the migraine that knocks you
down upon your knees.
That flick of a knife
slicing through your eye –
you know you are a slave
to an eternity of pain,
grabbing at your being,
rendering you slain.

The content of their character
is as holey as swiss cheese,
if you bite into it
you might spit the air
between your teeth,
giving way to an emptiness
running deep, running deep.
The world cannot be whole,
the moon is never complete,
when the sisters lie forgotten
weep, humanity, weep.