A culture is sustained by its traditions
And its quality is known by the fruits
Of those traditions.
We live in a time of change
When tradition is challenged and discarded
Simply for being traditional.
We don’t know what will replace it
We just want “hope and change”
With blind faith it’ll be better.
But that’s not the way civilizations are built
That is how they are destroyed.
When the bottom falls out
Morals are abandoned
Values are reversed
The baby is thrown out
And the old dirty bathwater consumed
As if nectar.
Then drunk on delusion
The revelers cry
When in the morning
The large, shiny Trojan Horse is empty
And it’s clear their life will never be the same.
(8/30/26)
Common Barbie, let’s go party…
Because you know, girls just wanna have fun.
Which today means,
Oops I’m pregnant, what’s the best way to kill it?
Oh man, I’m so bummed to be a mom,
What’s the best way
To get rid of my little ones?
Damn, here I am, biological clock ticking
Where are all the good men?
And now, alone, quickly sliding down the hill,
At least I have my cats and a fine chardonnay.
TikTok girls at least got those likes
One time long ago.
Was it worth it, was it ever something more
Than just more adolescent drama?
Maybe that’s the wrong angle
After all,
Maybe it was only
Always just about the hormones.
(8/28/26)
The overachiever in me wishes I were born a man.
For some doors would open
without needing me to force them.
I could do as I pleased
without being asked,
"How do you expect to marry if you act like that?"
I would be reckless,
and they'd laugh,
"Boys will be boys."
But the empath in me
is grateful I was born a woman.
For society raises too many men
to mistake silence for strength,
to wound without remorse,
or to witness cruelty
and call it "not my problem."
And my heart
could never learn
to carry that.
So I will soar,
higher than every ceiling
they built for me.
And I will be proud
to call myself a woman.
For it is no small feat.
Pure and sinful. Saintly and filthy.
An angry dog. Teeth sharp and gnashing. I don’t understand why I’m so angry.
A warning shot before I’m put down. Knocked to the ground, air leaves my lungs in form of sharp breath.
Mans best friend is a quiet woman and lord only knows I am not.
Perfect until my mouth opens.
Then I have opinions and am devalued.
I am bark and bite.
Dog. .
Put me on a leash and lead me around, why don’t you?
I will drag my heels and disobey.
Nip at you and run away.
Mans best friend is a woman that submits.
So I bend the rules and run wild.
Tall grass tickles my legs.
Morning dew drips.
Stray.
My woman is
a sad French painting,
feeling.
A chardonnay and cheap red wine,
contradictory, yet refined.
My woman glitters like the chandelier of
an old world building, clear and bright.
Graceful, sensitive, secretive,
forgiving of much too much and
vengeful all the like.
Wild,
ever wild,
adventures à la mode.
Waxed in all the right places,
with hair I like to pull.
Sexy, sure of herself and confident.
Cheers to you, the other half of me
I am sure to never
find.
Blessed by bloodied earth and born with connection
Our mothers are our shadow in every reflection
Scorned by the lumberjacks of the tree of life
They cut from us our sense of worth and our taste for life
Our Pride!
Is a memory long forgotten
Replaced with fairytales
to blind us from the smell
Rotten!
They are to the core
Violence, oh violence!
Gore and gore
Repression by Oppression
Submission by Omission
The truth and our birthright
Can never come to light
Back!
Go back to how things were
Love us and treat us as kings
Forget! That's what we prefer
Blind!
They want us blind to natural order
Religion and laws are absolute
for them they are keys, for us they are torture
No More!
We shall have it no more!
We once were sleep but now we wake
to the light of a new day
Our freedom is a seed
Our kingdom is in need
of water and sunlight
Replenish so we can grow with all our might!
if and when,
Jesus comes back,
Jesus isn’t a man…
The house was rushed to the ground, your tapping leaves it unshaken, your words caused it to tremble.
All the things you'd say, all the walls you'd paint, ruining its glory, leaving trembling bodies crawling.
How do you see it now? How do you see these houses stretched across the nation?
How do you feel now that the gods have granted you tools, or will you go bare?
Don't be fooled, some say they hold up well, until you feel the thunder strike and it'll all collapse, before the bugs crawl in and fix the debris, what's left of shards and bricks will be washed into the sea.
Battering wet cement, you lay it thick on the ground,
past soil to the core, no questions asked.
The land has been crowned for many things,
but never the sound of a roar.
You wait till its voice grows softer than sore.
These walls want to forget, but it's hard when the builders are the visitors and the debt grows worse each time the bills come due.
Not Anne, But Gabrielle
by Gabrielle Munslow
If you want me to take you to another time,
take my hand.
Don’t furrow your brow.
Slick with storylines,
my tongue twists
like an adder.
Poetry spills—
some good, some bad,
but always real.
I write of suffering.
I write of death.
I write of want.
No pretty, prophetic prose.
But I can still
slip a ditty off my toes.
I am Anne with an E.
No bird.
No net ensnares me.
Still, I rest,
and language thrills my bones.
Time stills—
or quickens.
Language isn’t luxury;
it’s necessity.
Down rabbit holes I go,
deep and twisted.
I braid my breath into roots.
I speak to the dirt,
and it answers.
Once a girl.
Now a woman,
retelling her youth.
I
am not Anne with an E.
I am Gabrielle—
with poems for sale.
?
© 2025 Gabrielle Munslow. All rights reserved.
This poem may not be reproduced, distributed, or performed without the author’s permission.
They said she loved only one man —
that’s how the old song goes.
But the truth?
It was a tree —
no metaphor, no myth.
A real one:
knotted, gnarled,
older than shame itself.
She found it when her heart
was still raw from trying,
and men were hollow bells,
rung too many times.
So she tended it,
whispered to it,
sang into its bark
with a voice no longer needed elsewhere.
Her youth curled at its roots.
Her strength climbed its spine.
And every year, it grew
as she grew smaller.
She told her daughter,
“This is love. Quiet. Loyal. Rooted.”
But her daughter heard
the ache between the words.
She looked at the rope,
the sky,
the body curved like devotion —
and asked herself:
Was it really love,
or martyrdom in a dress?
They found her hanging —
peaceful,
like she was returning
to something
she’d never really left.
And the tree?
It didn’t break.
It didn’t bend.
It held her —
not like a tombstone,
like a witness,
like a mirror.
And then,
they were one —
not woman,
not wood,
but myth.
Whisper.
Wild thing.
I dreamed a song —
hush tones and haunted chords.
A woman loved once,
and it grew into a tree.
She watered it with years,
fed it her voice,
slept beneath it,
called the silence love.
And in the final verse,
she hung herself in its arms.
I woke with the melody lodged
between my ribs like a blade.
I turned to you,
my daughters,
my mirrors,
my storms unsoftened by shame.
I almost sang it to you,
almost let it pass
from my mouth into your bones,
like the women before me did —
lullabies lined with
martyrdom in a dress.
But I stopped.
Because I saw your eyes —
not frightened,
but awake.
And you, fierce ones,
you deserve a different song.
She Does Not Chase Light
She does not chase light.
She is the myth
the men forgot to write.
The goddess of the long, slow burn —
hips like prophecy,
voice like a key dropped in honey.
She doesn’t beg for warmth.
She remembers the fire.
She is not the muse.
She is the mouth
from which the muses learned.
She does not chase light —
she waits
for it to ask her name.
Woman is a hole,
Soft with spongey walls,
Press the button, make her howl,
Crash through her virgin halls.
A newborn baby, little girl,
Fresh kitchen rag to store,
Waiting ignorant of the day,
When she too will be soiled.
Decades later, kitchen rags,
Sit discarded in a bin,
A loony bin for hags to talk,
And squeeze out salty drips.
Streaming semen pulling tears,
Out of ragged women,
In a circle all but holes,
Men uninvited saunter in.
Inspired by the USPS "19th Amendment: Women vote"
forever stamp (2020)
They stamped her face–
like that could contain her fire.
Purple, white, and gold–
not colors, but warning,
wrapped around a marching soul.
She didn't walk,
she moved like thunder–
every step cracking silence,
every breath remembering
the women who weren't allowed to speak.
They called her too loud.
Too much.
Too wild.
But she was never meant to be quiet.
She was never made to blow.
She wasn't built to fold.
She was built to ignite.
providers
mothers provided homelessness
to get a job
and now
walk the streets, terrorizing men
what do we do
well you kill people
so you can go shopping
it is called shopping addiction
and little boys and girls who you hate
die in the receipts of your smile
you don't see, but we get abused
by the freedom we have
as you grow and multiply
the fat gross arms come flying
mouth flapping
disgust in your eye shadow
exhausting demons of news
desert mules trampling slaves
men fought this civil war, under many titles
so the gold and silver and logos of banking
would never touch our graves
and the beasts stampede, ugly and weak
blind justices of empty delivery
abandoned mirrors covered in shame
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