Long Palsied Poems
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I've often wondered if my non-verbal
cerebral palsied son
dreams in colors
and/or words
he can hear clearly
but cannot himself see or say,
at least not clearly articulated.
Yet any sounds and gentle touch
we appreciate perhaps too dearly
if that is possible with D,
my wounded son.
So, I was surprised,
after twenty years of delighted wonder,
and awed last new moon night
when he shouted "Hey!" into my ear,
about one inch from his mouth
in that time of darkest sight
While I had been dreaming of stepping out
where full moon's light
brights a mysterious pilgrimage into mystic,
perhaps even mischievous, adventure.
My heart sparked
as D shouted Hey! miraculously
just as I was greeting moon light
splayed across our front porch,
intending to leave him behind
to rest in peace
while walking out into Earth's brighter staged sights.
My eyes popped open.
While D slept peacefully on,
without triumphant smile or despondent frown,
although perhaps just a hint
of his mischievous shy dimple, down
toward the front of his right cheek
curling open to grace me
with a loopy grateful grin
shallow but neatly round.
Say Hey! together
calling out this night's pilgrimage spell
swelling day's scavenging bright un-voiced adventures
in listening well.
Calling out
to both Sun and Rain
to thank these for their presence
and remind them of covenants
to remain in perpetual organic balance,
co-present presence,
not too hot and ultra-violet,
not too wet
and green moldy degenerate.
Calling out
in dreams of healthy new moons
and wealthy fullness, shout
resting in Advent's
adventurous
adventuring
peaceful outback pilgrimage
into boundaries of minds
in dreaming full-voiced bodies.
Pomposity
Arrogance and ego are hazards that lead us astray.
Jealousy will tarnish your blessings when allowed to stay.
Center your pain, adapt and overcome for relief.
Passing judgement is deplorable, that’s just my belief.
A smug puritan will point their finger and berate.
We should never blame others for the reality we create.
Discretion is for all, understand and learn.
When frolicking in the flame, beware of the burn.
We can write whatever we choose, ramifications abound.
Sanctions, however, can be bequeathed when blasphemy is found.
Some will praise God, seeking attention for their glass shelves.
Unfortunately, the self-righteous just seek praise for themselves.
I think every poet on this site has talent with their words that glisten.
Insults and palsied stones are understood by many, just read and listen.
Embitterment will ensue when foul scents become thick.
Karma can strike with a vengeance, it’s time to put down the stick.
My cerebral palsied Fetal-Alcohol daughter
asked her teacher if she could be her Substitute
while said teacher will be absent next week.
I was asked for my opinion
on the wisdom of accepting this offer:
While volunteering with grand Cinderella intentions,
she will Deep Drunken State rule
with Ugly StepMother tyranny.
She emulates President Trump's monotheistic style
of King Midas vs Disobedient Rabble.
With her, we call it Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
With him, we call it Chief Executive DisOrder.
Same mental-emotional-behavioral healthcare indifference.
I can look at the two of them Right side up
and see Health and Safety Disorder
may be why "patriotic" things
are as they capitalistically are
Monotheistically monopolizing
monetized
anti-religious Value v DisValue.
So that Oppositional Defiant Disorder
has become the singular unsung purpose
of the Department of [Not]Justice
and the Department of Homeland [In]Security
and the Department of [Mis and Dis]Education
and the Department of Health and Human [Dis]Services
and the Department of [Violent]Defense
has reformed
to become, once again, the Department of [Anti-Peace]War
Valuing [not]human and [not]civil and [not]religious Rights
[vs polytheistic Wrongs]
Disvaluing humane
and civil
and inter-religious Leftovers
Which,
when coldly unappealing,
often get thrown against the nearest wall
Left,
although not right,
for Cinderella to clean up
Which is her thankless
health and safety
civil service job.
Anxious in Ancona (1)
His plan, as he’s boarding his baldachined barge
en route for the easterly sea,
(arthritis allowing) is giving it large,
but the pain is as bad as can be:
though Rome is his home, he must go and take charge:
Cortona is cortisone-free.
One thousand four hundred the Christian years
(and then we’ll add sixty-four more):
Pope Pius the Second, that subtlest of seers,
is bound for the Umbrian shore.
He’s even less warlike than Billie Joe Spears,
but wants to be wading through gore.
He’s running a fever, his legs have ballooned,
but he won’t be deflected or swayed.
He’ll not be impugned or dragooned or lampooned:
undampened his rodomontade:
the mention of mercy, mere salt in the wound –
hell-bent on a pious crusade.
The portents are palsied: a bargeman is drowned:
this project is just getting sillier.
“Venetians are keeping us hanging around:
we can hire troops for Tyre in Sicilia.”
The Middle East! Pius wants boots on the ground
(now why does that sound so familiar?)
The ominous omens are gathering thickly,
but no-one could call him a quitter.
He’s scrofulous, suffering, sallow and sickly,
but boyishly buoyant, not bitter.
They land him on sand on the strand of Otricoli,
and lift him aloft in a litter.
The power to name is a trait of God.
After making man, He named him Adam.
The power to name, God shared it with man.
God made the woman; Adam named her Eve.
God made the creatures; Adam gave them names.
The power to name, God’s image reveals.
The names Adam chose, were pleasing to God,
For Adam and God, were of the same mind.
The entrance of sin, corrupted man’s mind,
Sin put man at odds, with the will of God.
The power to name was soon used to shame,
And in short order, to play the blame game.
The power to name can be used for good,
But the same power could be used for bad.
The names we give things aid conversation.
They do not just name but also describe.
Children learn to use their power early,
naming some mates friends, and some enemies.
They know the names to use to hurt and harm,
and the ones to use when they want to charm.
Many parents use their power to name,
in ways that cause their children pain and shame.
The names they call them cause deep wounds and hurt,
that for many an adult never heal.
The power to name can humiliate,
when the goals are, to control and dominate.
By calling men slaves and naming them brutes,
some take the liberty to treat them like boots.
The power to name can incriminate
when the purpose is to exterminate.
Call a race a disease or name them fleas,
then fumigate them as one would do bees.
Some men described their foes as cockroaches,
then ordered their tribe to hunt down and kill.
This led to genocide on a grand scale,
to brutal murders and violence wholesale.
The power to name is as potent as wind,
Given by God to men who have since sinned.
Give names that lift those who are palsied by pain,
Your power to name, don’t ever profane.
In a place faraway, your eyes hold a bejeweled, luminous sky,
Each a sphere divine in which stars are birthed and swim.
Envied are these heavenly dwellers for their place on high,
Privileged are they, privy to your every fancy and whim.
In a land beyond, your laughter peals honeyed through air
Palsied by melancholy words and stillborn dreams,
Trills a cadence that soars ever higher like a diva’s dare,
With each seraphic note, inspires ballads in endless reams.
In a world apart, your smile curls lips with a sinuous grace
Nary a painter’s palette nor sculptor’s chisel can capture,
Lines flow eternal to make every calloused heart race,
Kindle threadbare minds with untold shades of rapture.
In a distant dream, your hand sprinkles a fine dust of bliss,
Thus is this city of paltry charm a blessed place anointed.
Oh how many eternities must I endure till our fateful tryst,
When my weary soul, at last, is by your beauty transported?
Approaching winter...
OK, maybe encroaching mid-winter
of life's seasonal span
with resonantly compelling grace,
perhaps even transparent vulnerability,
feels controversial,
too laissez-faire
Too much courage
in declaring preliminary success
with too little curiosity
about what happens next
on planet Earth
Continuing to revolve all four seasons
dynamics
holistic lenses.
I recall the poet's admonition
to not go quietly
into this winterish
cold night.
Life's final reflective opportunity
does not invite quiet
so much as impassioned peace
of a windless snowfall
blanketing all I can see
and more faintly hear,
touch and awkwardly feel,
smell and bittersweetly taste
unsafe passage.
I recently moved from autumn habitat,
a creative tension between summer's midlife climax
and this new winter habit
above Connecticut's exquisite Salmon River.
This is a compromised writer's winter hermitage
shared with my son who cannot speak
but can roar,
who cannot walk by himself
but can scoot
and belly laugh at his own internal sensations
and my external sensational sounds.
And, following Daquan
from my fall habitat
to winter's eremetical search for peace,
however coldly displaced,
with social
and political
and spiritual
and natural distancing,
Behind Daquan
are daily in-home nurses
and his most avid companion,
my romantically distanced husband.
He comes bearing gifts
of clothes,
cleaning supplies,
far too much meaty food
for a proper hermitage
and not enough
for sufficient redemption
and for self-forgiveness.
He comes unaware of my ecofeminist wintering spirit,
longing for Earth's warm womb justice
restoring peace
resilient through all four seasons
of present
past
and future Earth lives.
My ecofeminist lineage
feels too white to him,
not a journey for him
and our two brown sons
and my brown and cerebral palsied daughter
and Daquan.
So, this writer's winter hermitage
remains newly compromised by past fall
and summer
and even spring
of extended multicultural family life.
May it always be so
or no,
I'm not sure which to pray for
or against
as I quietly write
into this warm and peaceful night,
just right,
not too dim or bright.
Your lover’s drawing straws without you, better bid farewell;
he’d never time for rhyme or reason, so it’s just as well.
Slip out the curtained window quick, the future winks and calls,
ignoring paths of pagan gods, where faulty footsteps fall.
Identify faint flashbacks, cloaked and clustered in a heap
and sort out those you treasure most, you need or long to keep;
Forget about the epoch past, which wasn’t what you’d sought,
pursue instead remaining dreams before they come to naught.
Reflect no more on what it was he’d meant for you,
strike out ahead where something waits, has sent for you.
The graveyard night is haunted still, it hovers where you sleep
recalling souvenirs amassed, the ones that made you weep.
The poets poised in dungeon vaults, now growing old and bald,
retrace their palsied pleas in dust, like those that you once scrawled.
Except for runic proverbs carved on stone walls ill defined,
assumptions will not dog you that you dare to leave behind.
The fortune-tellers waiting at the moat for you
read tarot cards while setting sail a boat for you.
The road behind is empty now, the sky is painted black
so gather all the wisdom gained, no time for looking back.
Forego the prophets’ prophecies, so tempting to pursue -
although they might be asked advice, they seldom have a clue.
Reject the secrets they reveal, enveloped in their guile,
which be betrayed between the tombs in ruins of their smile.
They’re waiting with a fractured rule of thumb for you
while beating on a perforated drum for you.
A sand-glass dribbles distant dunes, the sun dial’s shadow’s late,
so now’s the time for slipping through the open swinging gate.
A joker wild defies the fools to read between the lines
in search of cryptic radiance the future world enshrines -
“the days ahead will wake again like waves before the dawn
when picking up the pieces left behind a passing pawn.”
A noble knight awaits to clear the board for you
when, soon, a cup of nectar wine is poured for you.
Terminology:
Crystal booths in a nocturnal snow.
significant downpours of shedding stars.
This said, feel free to scatter, scrabble or mash.
Words are fungible,
many still believe that poetics
do indeed belong to the fungi family,
though some have been classified
as many-limbed Triffids
of the squishy kind.
Now throw moondust at the reader's eyes:
Obscurity is essential, however, first create a window
that opens to reflect the thrower.
Rain down upon the moondust until mud takes shape.
There are no words for this process,
so, make some up.
Flourish:
Without a final flourish the poet is left with a turgid puddle
avoid turgidity at all costs, especially puddles.
Sprays of celebratory tinsel
or globs of gore are always effective.
Reaching for the stars with a palsied hand
will jerk tears out of a slab of concrete
eventually.
Swiftly leave the space you are now occupying,
other's will be impatiently waiting to craft their next masterpiece.
Sixties Secret Agent
In black and orange inks
some wag had stenciled,
"no need for tests -
for use on dinks".
Gung-ho. Can-do.
Make war, not love.
You hit puberty, and find
you're the biggest kid on the block.
Time to throw some weight around.
Buy yourself a Glock.
Damn this forest.
They don't play fair.
We'll catch 'em in the open
with our phosphorescent flares.
We invented cocaine drinks,
electric chairs, chop suey -
let's have us a little think:
claymores, napalm, hueys.
If only we could find a way
to murder all these trees:
if all this life were scalded, flayed,
and shriveled till it dropped away,
poisoned, sickly, palsied, grey,
then Charlie, skulking somewhere
out there
would show up in our lenses' stare
and we could bring our guns
to bear.
So. Get it done.