Category Archives: Poetry

A Good Day

She is well but doesn’t know me by sight.

She knows me by sound.

I have to tell her my name like a password

that unlocks that she likes me.

We talk,

Or I do the mundane,

Or we read together.

The together is a championed victory

The memory of presence remarkable

In the Deep

I’m fragmented by your absence.

Infinitely reformed.

I’m suffering love

the color of tears.

It is salty and dark

It is laborious to breathe.

I’m not afraid

of loving you

as I held you.

I’m conscious of the vulnerability

in which I’m submersed

from our severed physical connection.

My grief is a mere reflection

of our laughter, our conversations

distilled into our unwitting last

“I love you.”

I bring the best parts of us forward with me.

I will not betray our trust.

Your love is a part of who I am now.

No matter how deep the anguish,

There is no regret in cherishing

the you I knew.

Trauma as an Ally

Trauma has become an ally

It has allowed me to see through

many shadowed secrets kept by others

who haven’t figured out

the origami of self-propelled healing

Trauma isn’t my friend, but it knows what I know

It’s circumscribed me

magnifying me in the darkness

It has believed me, revealed unguarded truth

about myself, about others, about what happens if…

I have altered myself; inside out.

It makes it easier to wear my heart on my sleeve

It forces darkness into the light

It keeps me from internalizing

It has revealed me as strong

(although I truly had to ask what that means.)

I was told “Hurt people hurt people”

I have many points of reference for torment

But, I’ve also been the recipient of deep compassion

enduring kindness, and demonstrations of resilience

that have shown me HOW to turn and be inside out

in the most powerful of ways.

The Still of Grief

In the still of grief
Time moves strangely,
Cruelly away from
The last breath,
The last moment shared
unforgiving
Unrelenting
In its finality.
It is like swimming in shallows
While experiencing depths
One half of a choreographed routine
Meant for two;

danced by one

Invisibility (Linda Looney)

I am an invisible person.

I’m sure you’ll disagree

But you’ve been well versed in

How to visualize me.

Maybe scorch-eye my belly

Disapprove my thickened thighs

Look down your nose at me ready

to allow me to be humanized

then possibly you’ll witness me

Become familiar and un-stigmatized

Spiritual Bath

Perfumed purification

anointed my skin

fragrant with absolution

My brethren

Blessed sisters;

Heart-bound lovers

Spirit-kin

My blood baptized

in the cistern of love

Forgiven to be human

The elation of redemption

damp against my brow

Dancing in broad circles

Breathless with abandon

the release of blissful beauty

For Granted

Cereal

The process of living:

retrieving the cereal from the pantry

The simple pouring of the cereal

into a bowl from the cupboard

with milk from the fridge

with a spoon from the drawer

pulling out my chair with the extra cushion

lifting my spoon from the bowl with a bite of crunch

Automatic conveyance without mindful grip

relaxing into the sensations of living, breathe in

hold and exhale gently while ingesting energy

Setting the spoon to ceramic bowl clanking glassily

DISTRACTION

lifting my spoon from the bowl with a bite of crunch

That little girl

That little girl under the table

that little girl under the table

scratching at knees as a mosquito might

pestering annoyingly enough;

but she’s not.

that little girl under the table

she’s not grown out of it

because she never left (even though she did)

Once in anger, once bereft,

grafting failure to achieve

something withered from the roots

Blood, not her blood, embraced her

brought her Polaroids of family blessed

as blissed as deeply remembered it to be

created in Tunes of resonant harmonies

The only home she wasn’t

that little girl under the table

who begged for scraps of affection

but the dogs eat faster, less furiously,

less needy than

that little girl under the table.

The Blessing of Venus

I’ve absolved myself of sin

of treating my body as a man’s

loving whomever I desired

again and again and again.

There is no shame between these thighs.

Sighs the ecstasy of night

Breaks the silence with Goddess song

Venus’ blessing; my kiss prolonged

Beckoning divine delights

There Gathered The Women

Home and Hearth

And yet, in the kitchen,

where life is rebirthed,

there gathered the women

Deep work of the hearth

The water is boiling

the rags have been torn

Love’s labor is roiling

the guides through the storm;

change the only constant

Lachesis sings then

the hist’ry of what was

Clotho the spinner

weaving fates justly caused

Atropos, the shears

ending life at her whim

The Moirai have weaved

The Fates genuine hymns