The dust has barely settled.
My cup is empty again.
The protests of the floor above
isn’t you. It’s them.
I sit at my table wanting
to be left alone
I have no need for antics
knowing you are gone
I’m not really sad
I’m not really upset
I’m not really happy
Wishing to forget.
Sheba the cat never smelled that good again.
She went unnoticed, unimportant, just another face to greet and forget. Politely enough she smiled, laughed a bit, joked a bit then faded quickly.
In the freezing cold of a February winter on the mountain’s edge overlooking the valley, the sun came out and shined from her face. She forced a double take from me.
The snow melted away as if July had suddenly sprung a leak before it was supposed to and stole the frigid air right from our lungs.
I stood there and looked at her and she at me. Our eyes blinked like newborns at the sudden bright light that ignited in between us like a bonfire.
As the snow drifted on the winds that tickled the pine needles down from the branches to land on the pristine white, we became believers in faith and one another.
We picked up our brooms, our mops and our feather dusters and buckled into mundane work while we wove our foundation with light and shadowed ghost stories.
Our hands took away the dirt that accumulated on surfaces long ignored, like she’d been, like I was. The intricate loom swish-clack-swished our lives together into a southwestern design.
The colors were rusted sand, Ponderosa pine, snow white, gravel gray, sunset pink, sunrise yellow, and broken sky blue. We wrapped within each stitch making it our fortress.
When the work of the night was completed, the cleaning utensils put back where they belonged, we remained. We stayed bonding our bindings with tomorrows that have yet finished their tasks.
A Love Note
Goddess
Her hair flows like cool rivers around her shoulders
brushing softly at my cheeks
she leans in to touch my arm
whispering thoughts that caress my ears like a song
Her scent is musky rain with a hint of sandalwood
It cloaks my breath with its subtle incense
My heart shudders, bounces, tossed as if on a rolling sea
Her soul floats openly in her kaleidoscope eyes
Her tranquil gracefulness is haunted
with echos of vulnerability and pain
She glows like an oil lamp, flickering, heated,
fueled by a passion for life…and love
She pulls away and with a simple gesture of her hand
she proves herself to be exquisite, delicate, powerful
Her gentleness sweeps against my skin like a searing hot fire
Her giggled words, like cannons,
firing…exploding
encompassing me.
One kiss would damn me
One intimate touch would be my downfall
The consequences harsh and brutal
The risk too great
I hover, instead, around her light in hopes
that perhaps she might shine on me again.
HeLa: The Immortal Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951)
Where are the women who are unafraid to be the equal of men? To stand as their creators? To be burdened with their mortality? For we, as women, as mothers, are immortal. We have been granted a power that all humans must acknowledge, particularly the men who use oppression and tyranny to impose their version of self-righteous piety while pillaging villages, pockets, and people who birthed them.
We were blushed into passivity through vile and violent means. Our voices taken by violations against our bodies, against our spirits, against the essence of our glorious contribution. The Patriarchy discounts their birth by denying the truth of their own creation. They refuse to honor, as Maya Angelou sasses, that we dance like we have diamonds at the meeting of our thighs.
We are their creators. We are their equals. We are the Light of the Goddess; the vessels of her beauty in all of her forms with billions of names sprung free from the lips of our tribes, our people, our neighbors and families. We are immortal by the generous fruit we produce in our tree of life. We are the basis for their power, the support for their child-like steps.
They are not cruel and unforgiving of us because we are women, oh no. They know we are without end. They know we last longer than they. Their deaths will come before our own. Their genes become as muddied as their jeans, but the Matriarch will be the crown of their history. They want to hide her away as, according to the Mormon’s beliefs, God does his wife. So sacred is her name, or so I’ve been told, that even God will not speak her name to anyone else for fear they would desecrate that which he loves above all others. He holds her sacred, not as a less than in the equation.
My sisters, take heed the power of your name as the Matriarchs of ancient history have spoken. You are the power of the Universe embodied in physical form, freed of your heritage, embraced by your sister-kin, released from the shackles of Patriarchy if we choose to leave in unison.
We are not meek and mild. We are fierce and protective. We have allowed ourselves to become divided into separate distinctions instead of unified. We have been torn down to be seen only as ornaments, only as decorations, only as status symbols but not valued for our true selves. Our strength, our courage, our power, our voice, our very being is to be embraced, celebrated, lifted up in the arms of our sisters standing proudly by our sides.
We are the Alpha and the Omega of their mortality. We are the embodiment of The Goddess.
This poem was inspired by Alison Nappi’s poem: An Open Love Letter to Your Inner Child
( http://www.writewithspirit.com/letters-of-love–madness/an-open-love-letter-to-your-inner-child )
Mare Martell, aged 6
Your story took my age away and I became six again.
It sucked the breath out of my lungs
Replacing it with looks of befuddlement
That I got from grown-ups when I tried to explain
how I saw things or
what I saw and when.
An adult would often correct me
Explaining how it appeared in their world,
but magic existed before I knew it
before it claimed the runes of mystical auras.
I want to write this love letter to my six year old self
but not like this,
similar but with different color crayons
and different paper,
maybe bark or finger paints.
As I look through the eyes of my youth
I see what I saw then clearly
That crack in the sidewalk didn’t exist
as much as it was the seaside beach
where fairies lived and robins played.
I was taught that my visions were faulty
So I quit trusting them, I quit believing I understood things
I doubted what my spirit knew as absolute
I thought I was wrong for thinking in shapes or
pictures that had words labeled on them, but did not define them.
I heard you.
I’m so glad you remembered me
Way back then when mud pies were important and dolls drove matchbox cars.
I don’t feel like a phoenix anymore
I feel overthrown and solitary
In my dreams and nightmares
I hear his cries, his pleas
I am as defenseless as he
I can’t save him from living death
Any more than I can save myself
In my meandering daydreams
I cuddle him closely to my skin
But the sun snows clouds of fog
and I become confused in the ashes.
And I can’t feel his hair
I can’t smell his skin
My body aches to hug him tightly
To tell him everything will be okay
I wander around in darkness without him
I don’t feel like a phoenix anymore
Hen Fredrickson’s paint palette inspired this ditty
That’s the bed where he used to lay
when the sun set on his pillow
That’s the song that won’t go away
where music wept like a willow
That’s the dream that we used to share
as the moon danced through the window
That’s the night that never ended
the waning that made a widow.
That’s the blanket we used to warm
against the winter’s icy chill
That’s the torn quilt of fam’ly guilt
that left our beliefs unfulfilled
That’s the place where we used to be
where our dreams became fragile histories
That’s the place where I mourn him still
forfeited by death’s tragic mysteries
An Independent Nondiscriminatory Platform With No Religious, Political, Financial, or Social Affiliations - FOUNDED 2014
Life is a patchwork of moments — laughter, solitude, everyday joys, and quiet aches. Through scribbled stories, I explore travels both far and inward, from sunrise over unfamiliar streets to the comfort of home. This is life as I see it, captured in ink and memory. Stick around; let's wander together.
Hosanna High Community Burial Project
True wealth is the wealth of the soul
Daydreaming and then, maybe, writing a poem about it. And that's my life.
Life as an American poet of excellence
Epic fantasy & military sci-fi author.
Love Letters to the Tar Pit
Making Space for Dreams
binge thinking and other things in life
Mare Martell 