Tag: poetry

Caw

The crows cawed ominously on my rainy
isolated apocalypse walk.

Plague history echos chime through my mind.
We have been through this before.

Our old collective memory is calling to us.
We are the descendants of survivors,

That’s why we’re still here.
It’s time to listen. Time to hear the cries of our past selves
and our terrified neighbors.

What do you have to spare?
A loss of one thing usually leads to an abundance of something else.

What powers did you use to overcome your loss?
How strong are you now?

Look to yourself dear ones. Be who you want to be,
Now in this time of uncertainty.

The only one who gets to choose is you.

I love you.

Circe

I know you’ve heard what you think is my story.
I hear the voices on the winds,
the echoes of fear in your voice.

That’s not my story.
That’s his.

Not that you have no reason to fear, not that I do not wield a power that may destroy you.

He would come to my house without invitation.
Against all advice.
Escape and name me the villain.

My power is not to turn people into pigs.
It is to reveal their true form.
It’s not my fault that is who they are.

So if you choose to invade my territory.
Dominate me in my own space.
You have been warned.

I am a practical creature and pork is a sweet meat.

The View From Here is Frightening, But I Don’t Have to Look

Realizing we finally found the eye of the storm.
Safety, peace, pleasantness even
all collected in this shared life

learning each other’s languages
supporting each other’s dreams
setting up healthy boundaries

Setting up life as cooperative separates
rather than a multiheaded beast


We can acknowledge the storm
The apocalypse really
raging outside
We don’t have to invite it in.

We deserve this safety
We deserve this peace

Security will have to wait until the storm passes
We will face the thick of it again
Go out in the storm
but not yet

And when we go, it will be with a new confidence
we found peace for ourselves
in the eye of the storm

Harbingers

Here there be dragons
When there is nothing left to lose,
the dragons come and burn it all down

Dragons are change
Bringers of the apocalypse
Harbingers of the changing of the cosmic guard

The dragons come and the fires burn
Hubris burns so bright
The empowered in their haughty towers
Look down on us no more.

The humble in their steady way
Hear the noise and wonder
What new horror will replace the old

Those close to the ground
Will toil and suffer as they always have
The seeded ash will sprout anew
The ambitious will scramble
New towers will be built

Things will go as they always have
And the dragons will come again.

Broken Mirror

As the emotional eruption happens before me
I see myself as I used to be
unprotected, invisible
The fears, oh so much fear
Though I want to be a witness, a force for kindness

I fail.

An earthquake is triggered
deep inside of me.
My plates shift and I am no longer my new self.


I have reverted,
but remain precariously balanced between my new self and old
Straddling crevasses of pain
Stretching back to my earliest days
my smallest, my most vulnerable

No one protected me then
No one protects me now

The broken mirror reveals these cracks in both of us.

I see that pain and love you
I see that pain and try to love myself.

It is difficult and I am flailing.
Witnessing and honoring my progress
Witnessing and honoring our shared pain
Trying not to panic.

Coaxing the memory of the child/woman/wife I was
back to the now
Holding out a hand for
The child/woman/wife still suffering in front of me.
I hope to remind us both,
We are not alone.

There is more to life than jumping across ravines
And hiding from reflections
both for you and for me.

May love teach us both.

OOps I Wasn’t Supposed to Post That Here

I declined to join your secret club.
I’ve been in those before.
Secrets have killed me more than once,
I’d like something more.
Secret clubs, and secret rooms, and secret codes and then,
secret attacks behind your back and round and round again.


Don’t trust me with your secrets, your rumors and your lies,
I’m often immune to glamour and will see through your disguise.

Trust me with your truths
those things I understand,
Your calibration of discretion,
Is how I’ll play my hand.
I’d rather have connection, than join an exclusive club.
You can keep your secrets, They’re the hindrance of love.

Choosing a New Legacy

I am feral, I am fae
I culturally reject the legacy I was handed
The god
The land
The blood
The violence

I reject the Patriarchy
I reject supremacy of all kinds
I reject my place in the colonial kingdom

I accept
As fully as I can
my racist, misogynist, abelist
history and personal actions
I can believe in my intentions
but they do not matter
the impact of me not rejecting the white god sooner
will always be mine to bear

And I do not deserve the luxury of a
woe is me.
I do not want it anyway,
My place in the world was handed to me
without my consent,
just like everyone else.

If not woe then what?
Who has time for woe
when we all must be confined in this space and time
Why must I choose to swim upstream?
The trip is so hard and everything is against me.

I want to get to the root
my root
find the poison in my well
so I quit
and work to quit
over and over again

Sending it downstream

It’s OK I Missed the Train

Waiting for my letter to Hogwarts.
But not really, I’m closer to an old lady now
Why do I feel this way?

Waiting for an invitation out of my life as it is
knowing I was meant for more
knowing I am more
an invitation that never comes

I don’t even want to go to Hogwarts.
Ensconced in an institution in a magical fever dream of a TERF.

But that magical moment of being seen
Being rescued
Being valued for the first time in my life.
That’s the longing.
The longing for the invitation to belong.

And to stop the need to prove that I do.

Bladder Control

Spend so much time
Dancing around
Shuffling foot to foot
Feeling the feelings bladder swell
Pressure inching, ratcheting up, up


Left scanning
Searching acceptable release
Not safe to scream


The bladder’s volume escalates
Soon it’s all that can be heard
While also not making a sound


Nothing gets through the barrier
Distracted presence
Rude, shocking


Dancing in place
no I don’t have to pee
Need to escape
Need to say the things that
Can’t be said


Swallow
Swallow
Run to the car
Cry.

Stretch Marks

I didn’t know until I went there
I didn’t understand
I had disturbing preconceptions

That now I’m searching for ways not to turn into self loathing
I want my stretch marks to witness my growth
Not tattoo my shame

I want to wear them visibly so I can speak
about how wrong I was
visible my growth
I earned these scars

Oh, I used to be different, see?