Everyone’s political
anti critical
right by the rights
now wrongly divisional
Giving up the literal
power unconditional
Narratives are narrowly
focused on disparity
comparatively ignorant
to actual reality
You’ll never change the past
try to understand it better
Don’t look passed what made it past
its not your own endeavour
advantages that you now have your ancestors didn’t
branching out from beginnings to a global vision
colonies were empires and empires were common
the way that people were back then has long since been forgotten
so don’t skip over history the path we all come from
everybody’s owed something we need to move along
I kicked my legs and off I went
Up into the midnight black,
The sky tilted, the trees bent
As I looked down and back
To narrowly miss the drifted stars
I quickly ducked my head ...
Out beyond lies Saturn and Mars
And my body in it's bed ...
I flipped on a windy draft
Landing on a crescent beam,
The moon and I simply laughed
About my flying in a dream.
I have this urge to sway
on street corners in a derelict way,
disheveled - a little drunk,
with an impulse to praise Mary,
not the virgin, but her
less immaculate namesake.
Perhaps the sound of my prayers
will de-ice parked cars, straighten
shopping cartwheels, save a kid's
balloon from escaping?
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
The fruit of your womb goes downtown.
A truck narrowly misses a cat.
A door is held open for an expectant mother.
A smile from a mean looking youth.
It begins to rain. Snow turns to slush.
The winter evening slaps our cheeks.
Pray for us sinners.
A handcuffed Magdalene
steps into a cruiser.
The cops are smiling; she is smiling
they have done this before.
An old man in a thin jacket
huddles cold bones
against a wolfish wind.
He will survive its killing teeth.
Look!
It is Happy Hour.
the Magdalene will be serving,
tending to both good company
and bad.
“Now and at the hour of our death".
"Let us share one last
imperfect breath.”
Declares a racoon
from its holy dumpster.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
only narrowly escaped drowning.
She had a penchant for swimming in torrents,
which occasionally occur in Florence.
They stream in, seeking liberty
hoping for some sympathy
America once extended a welcome
Today the outstretched hand is seldom
Leaders neglected to check the newcomers
for police records, to view their true colors
We let in too many criminals, too much crime
with neither good reason nor rhyme
A perfect storm ensued
migrant murder and corruption
dominates the news
giving well-meaning Americans the blues
A tragedy could have been averted
had not government shirked its sworn duty
But now there are mass deportations
narrowly backed by a jilted population
Hope is a complex emotion
There is such a thing as too much hope
Which drowns you in unrealistic dreams
Fed by the unfulfilled imaginations of your heart.
It lifts you up, but the fall is that much worse.
It sets your soul on fire, but it only leaves ashes behind.
You hope too much and your body starts devouring itself from the inside out, leaving a skeleton of desires and broken promises behind.
But you need hope to live, to put one foot in front of the other, to feel the love and the pain, to anchor your existence to this planet, grow old and turn to dust.
You need hope to free your soul and let it wander in the unknown when you cease to be.
Hope is what you're always looking for and narrowly miss on.
Hope is for everyone else, but you.
Hope is an illusion, which you need to let go.
Hope dies when it meets you so don't let it come too close.
Crushed.
Dust chokes the air
And encircles the vicinity
Burnt.
Charred and battered.
A blackened stump,
The remains of what once was alive.
Hacked to pieces.
Still, lifeless—
Left to die
Will you still bloom?
Will you rise from the ruins,
Brush off the kiss of death?
Will you cling on to the fact that—
You still breathe?
Get up.
They crushed you.
They burnt you—
Tried to turn you to ash,
Hacked you to pieces,
But still—you stand.
Stand tall.
Raise that head high.
You overcame what no man ever did—
A living testimony.
Narrowly escaping your own death
You fought—
You fought the obstacles, the trials, the stones meant to hurt you
And yet—you bloomed.
A wind blasted tree,
not lightning struck,
but raped
by a heartless wind.
Just the one tree
on a bare-assed hill,
It stands pallid and naked,
its bark striped away
by raging teeth.
I pick up a stick from the ground,
it’s a severed branch
as stiff as an artificial limb,
tap the storm-shorn trunk,
note that the tree
is not hollow yet.
If lightning had split it,
it would have echoed
a deeper, deadlier silence.
Within the wood
is a narrowly constricted throat,
it is still able to speak
through that elongated windpipe.
What did I hear?
I heard a caged wind
being strangled to death,
and death, it had a ghost-white face,
that’s what I heard,
that's what I thought I saw
through wide, and astonished eyes.
it is always terrifying to follow MapQuest
the guide’s voice might stop talking halfway there
or you might hear “turn there” after you have blown by an alleyway
if your phone rings while you are trying to follow, do you answer it?
Not if you have no idea where you are heading
I narrowly escape a panic attack every time I drive somewhere new
or somewhere I have not been for awhile
I am not the person who remembers how they got here the last six times
driving anywhere unfamiliar is a daymare for me
is it my age?
hello yes
I am also a small town girl
that doesn’t help me much
conjunction event
two celestial objects
are narrowly close
Luna elude part Venus
astronomical measures
Like a bird gliding the sky
Free and merry with wings spread wide
Miracles come free and unbound
Happening so fast, faster than sound.
They feel like a product of high luck
After one overcomes a tough life's roadblock
But no, it is His mercy passing through
Even when you're unaware, it’s there for you.
Miracles like the air we inhale
Are God's graces on free, not for sale
Narrowly dodging an accident
Miracle, it is, your unplanned event.
A major storm is churning in the Atlantic ready to raise havoc on shore Evacuation orders are in place as the authorities have gone door to door
The hurricane center is forecasting the highest wind speeds to ever be recorded
Our beach house over the years has survived every storm, but this one is surely not to be ignored
We are leaving with a few items and the clothes on our backs
Is this the last time we will see our house in one piece, or by some miracle will the storm veer off-track
We now leave it up to the powers from up above to determine our fate
We hurry to the car we need to get to higher ground before it,s too late
If the storm should demolish our place and flatten it to the ground
It will do nothing to destroy our fond memories and the people we surround
In the end, we narrowly avoided a direct hit, so the house survived to fight another day
The hurricane and my partner are both named Carol what's that you say
I’m sorry, reader.
You’ve simply arrived too late.
All the action has already happened:
I’ve slain the dragon,
stolen the gem,
ran through dagger forests,
sacrificed life and limb,
and no one was even there to see it!
I swam through a witchcrafted lake,
narrowly avoiding confrontation,
but wasn’t so lucky when it came to the snake,
lurking inside a pool of lava.
I’m sorry to say yet again
that you, dear reader, have missed all of this action,
all of it!
Now I am lying amongst wildflowers in a meadow.
Sometimes it’s obvious
And sometimes subtle
That no matter what good you try to do
The universe rewards you with the opposite.
It might be as simple as the duality we create
By such intentions;
A materialist mindset
That falls into a Newtonian universe
Of every action needing
An equal and opposite reaction.
Bound by these rules of physics
The road to hell
Is certainly paved.
While beyond these rules
The wise and masterful play.
The problem is
Within the bounds of materialism
We are all slaves
Ruled by our own fears and hopes
Narrowly following our individual paths
Heads down
Our persistent plodding
The very force that turns the grind stone.
While beyond these rules - the etiquettes of a guest
Needing permission to sit and stay, come and lay down -
The host in all His graciousness
Allows us the freedom to be enslaved.
(8/4/23)
Why does our heart resist
soft murmurings of love,
holding promise of bliss,
bringing to us rapture,
that leaves nothing amiss?
Why does our heart resist
to forgive the wayward,
who are yet to awake
and narrowly judging,
burning love at the stake?
Why does our heart resist
not, cravings of ego,
that spawns desire and fear,
shrouding us in darkness,
stopping God to draw near?
Why does our heart resist
melding with the vast void,
that entwined thus with space,
childlike heart may imbibe,
outpourings of God’s grace?
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