A dark and wintry melody
Sung alone with a guitar
Cracked my heart open tonight
Remembering
The shimmering of fresh snow
From golden street lamps between shadows
Underneath a black empty sky
I am small, sprinting barefoot across campus
Holding my stilettos
Drunk and foolish
Running with a new friend I’ll never see again
to catch a midnight movie in time
How vast the night skies, all of them
How fruitless her hills, I went hungry sometimes
The nagging feeling there was going to be nothing here for me.
I cannot stay.

How far away from that time I feel now.
Novels have been written.
I cry for the trials I would face.
How much life would change me
Remembering the hunger that looked like drive
To those near enough to witness.
Many have traveled much farther
Also alone
Crossing dark oceans with hope in their heart.
How strange and beautiful is this life?
How grateful am I to finally have a companion.
But tonight I feel her loneliness
I feel her emptiness, her placelessness
I feel the cold snow stinging and numbing my feet
And the alcohol warming my heart
For the long and difficult road ahead.

Hunkering down

The winds are whipping around tonight

Like mad little goblins

Just when I’m maximum spooked

The enormous, graceful koi fish

Makes an appearance again

It’s my sign to:

Wait

Wait

Wait

Earlier,

A capitalist’s wet dream

Flooded American living rooms

Not a dry eye anywhere

But it seemed a little too perfect to me

Wait, wait, wait

Am I being seduced?

To what am I faithful?

Do you all need seduction?

And what if I refuse?

Can you imagine

How much suffering evolution required?

The gasping of gills choking on light air

The pain of rocks against

Soft foot flesh

The stretching of lungs too tight for thin mountain air

The number of children you had to watch die

Helplessly

What pain was endured to arrive at this

Halcyon moment of comfort and balance

And we take it all for granted

Until we can’t breathe freely again.

The door of possibilities cracked open
Light floods in
Billions of opportunities
Too many colors to consider
Dazzled and frazzled
How to know which wavelength is yours?
This little light of mine
Where
And how
And for who
To shine?

Rebirth
a motionless falling backward
into the dark abyss from which
all life emerges

A time
for obliteration, surrender
from the buried seed of my silent mind
I will choose my nourishment

Then thoughts
like baby green sprouts
bursting toward the surface for light
and exchange of gases

I will form myself again

Deep dive
A steady slow descent
Sinking
Surrounded by thick primordial soup
In motion
I become small
And powerless
A human-sized drop of water
Colliding gently

It’s time to write again
Synthesize
Log my thoughts
While there is time enough for them to breathe

Still have an ache in my spine
Right between the shoulders
Behind my heart
Where i slung a 20# weight from my slender frame
Until I inhaled pain and exhaled nausea

Then again, my upper spine violently bent to the left,
T-boned,
Too eager for the direct route
to work
But too careful to take a blind risk

And a new ache, left, below my stomach
First noticeable against my seat belt
Pushing away the pressure
A belly yearning to grow
or a fight against
suffocating tightness
of waistbands and circumstances

I still grind my teeth
Quick, rhythmic sharpening in the day
My own songs
Tapping molded plastic at night
Forever frustrated with the pace

My children,

You may struggle as I do

To find your place.

I have taken jackhammers to concrete, changed my names, carried my belongings thousands of miles.

I have drifted, high and light, spinning with feather arms, winds carrying me far from home into new lands.

All along, losing myself, catching glimpses of my joy, learning about myself.

I want to meet you on fertile, welcoming soil.

I want to be joyful in my labor. Pointed in my power.

What could father have done? Do we knock on new doors, or do we wait for introductions?

In a foreign state
Surrounded by family
Running and gleefully shouting beautiful children
Feeling a crisis of ambition
Wondering again
As we pass graffiti endorsements for Governor
President
What is calling out to me now?
What laughter stays vibrating in my ovaries?
What can I create from my unrootedness?
Is the soil even fertile? And will there be sun?
Or does it want me to die a forever migrant?
Is that still, small voice still singing?
Or is she bound and gagged and forced to watch the abuse?
Drugged and made placid
How to connect to your dreams when they’ve collected so much dust
Not 6 feet yet

Maybe one day we will look back
And see that this was when the feminine
Emerged
That we got our first female President
In 2016

Not like we wished for…
Fierce, wise, brave, fit, gorgeous
More like a nascent caricature of a woman
As if you’d heard of one but never met one
And were scared to death of them

Constantly moved by untamable emotions
Erratic, controlling, moody
Soft-bodied, so low on testosterone the skin glows
The teeth rot
Honesty an afterthought, words draw attention, and that’s enough
Reveling in competition between women

Gilding oneself in jewels and precious metals
Hoping to catch the light
Turn heads
Draw them all in, pocketbooks wide
Kissing your feet

She’s not fit for war
Too much money to be collected
Wars are expensive
Bowing at the altar of the goddess
The still mysterious feminine
Unworthy of our worship
Too soon to be understood