Category Archives: Prose

These Are My People: Marge Swenson

aliciameninga

This is not Marge Swenson. This is my friend Alicia. I love this picture.

abstractmichigan

This is an abstract interpretation of the original picture, minus my friend Alicia. It was taken with my phone, so I apologize for the quality.

There she is with her cheeks shining diamond smiles

Her eyes laughing blue sparkles of periwinkle

She ripples with giggles that bubble fountain-like

Barely restrained by her excitement to honor her calling

I unquestioningly obey her request for open arms

I pull her close to me in spirit love and protection

Warmth and true affection.

“How are you today, my beautiful friend?”

She pushes me away but doesn’t release me

She looks up into my eyes declaring, “I love you, so much.”

We share mutual admiration, forever, for a moment.

I jest with her of how much I love to learn at her knee

To greet, to host, to welcome, to embrace our community.

She laughs at me as if I were the village idiot

I’m inept compared to her. She’s a Mistress of Greeters

I, her apostle.

When the torch is handed onward, I pray I can continue

To honor her beautiful spirit with jovial conviviality

That she displays with the grace of whispering breezes

The dance the spring time brings that blesses each blossom with life

In tandem with the warm embrace of the sun.

MargeSwenson

This is Marge Swenson. She’s one of my favorite people, hands down. She’s just lovely.

Spiritual Theft

The one way ticket

The broken cocoon

The hung up phone

The crying loon

The losses from gain

The strength of cotton

The shallow grave

The vacant rock-bottom

The dissolution of rest

The combination of fates

The sunken boat

The bone-filled crates

The unaligned ranks

The prayer of confession

The misguided belief

The unanswered question

The white washed skull

The ostrich-headed sin

The ill-fitting shoes

The enemy within

Blind-sighted

I see you every once in a while in the Otherwhere.
The place that isn’t here or there or somewhere or anywhere.
It’s just Other.

Soul pictures

Soul pictures

It has the pres(c)ents of Christmas trees and home cooked feasts.
It smells of beloved familial hugs, pas-s-s-sionately presented embraces
It laughs a babbling brook of foolish happiness punctuated with excitement marks!!!!
It offers kaleidoscopic shows of  vernacular laced paragraphs with buntings of (these)
Still, sometimes, I know (though I don’t know), I see both you and me.
Not in the way that makes you triple check your doors; throwing the deadbolt
Not in the way that keeps you window to window pacing floors; with naked paranoia
but in the way that allows the meditation of the forest to seep into the spirit of indulging ideas
reaping benefits of beauty as only gypsy tribe of poets can explore it.
I see you every once in a while in the Otherwhere.

(inspired by: http://urbanpoetrees.com/2014/12/31/disciple-less-prophets/ )

Pirates in your cabinets

Slut Walk 2011 Costume

Slut Walk 2011 Costume

I admit that I am an explorer of other people’s homes.

A pirate seeking buried treasure that’s right beneath their nose.

I like to admire the stained glass lamp that has a shade with fringe.

I like to see the beauty beneath the cobwebs and the dim.

I like to use the bathroom and see the colors of your towels

I won’t rhyme this line unless I can remove all the vowels

Wn’t rhym ths ln nlss cn rmv ll th vwls

May I peek into your medicine cabinet to see your secret life?

May I, with little poking ‘round, see what gives you strife?

Are you careful with your products all neatly lined up in a row?

Are you careless with your inventory like a freaking circus show?

Do you keep random things to surprise people like me?

Or do you hide that secret life in your secret menagerie?

Do you appreciate your happies when you look shiny to reflection?

Or do you begrudgingly criticize your imagined dereliction?

I reluctantly admit, that I’m an explorer of other people’s homes.

A pirate seeking buried treasure that’s right beneath their nose.

Beautiful Uptown

It wasn’t the blur of her leopard print skirt

Or the lower East side blaring taxi yellow sweater,

I was crucified by the intensity of her regal features

As they nailed me with their direct stare

Through chocolate colored eyes that blinked

Like hammers

Their inquisitive, yet dismissive, questions

Unanswered.

I looked away, ashamed to have imposed on her space.

The Can’t Cant

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
I cant. I cant. I cant.
I am afraid to say breathe. I’m afraid to reach out. I’m afraid for my friends. I’m afraid for my people. I’m afraid for my tribe. I’m afraid of the police.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
I cant. I cant. I cant.
I’m pulling on my leggings. I’m pulling on my hoodie. I’m pulling on my black clothing. I’m draping on my colorful cape. I’m standing up with you.
I can. I can. I can.
I am. I am. I am.
Black lives matter.

Hands up! Don’t shoot!

Black lives matter!

I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!

Black lives matter!

My brothers! My sisters!
‪#‎blacklivesmatter‬

The reign of blood

Stop the Hate

Stop the Hate

I ride with my brothers and sisters of all races and creeds;

To rear up their own steeds in unified protest;

To ride the momentum of waves of grief

Heeding the cries of mothers for their stricken children

Comforting tears of fathers for their lost legacy

We beg our inheritance returned from the barrels

Of the guns, drugs, and forced disintegration of segregation

Of caged familial relationships in the name of

Law enforcement in a police state.

Oh, Lady Justice! Raise your blindfold!

We beckon you to turn your marble eyes

Towards those who insult your intention!

We call out in solidarity for your scales

To balance the inequality that takes our skin

And uses it against our fellow Americans;

Our future! Our could-have-beens:

Strong leaders, bold teachers, smart cookies, fast learners,

Good parents, good people, good workers, good earners

Had they not been vilified by unjust practices

My blood, as theirs, is caught in the web of deception

Colored every nuance of brown, every color of tarnished brass.

You’ve stolen my generation’s heirlooms

Away from the breathing world

Crammed them into the darkest days of greatest sin,

The murder of my brethren; their only “crime” is having more melanin.

I’m a human, not a lady

I am not a good girl

I am not a good girl

Why do I need to act like a “lady?” What does that even mean? Be a yes, sir, no ma’am demure wall flower in hopes that I’ll get picked to be the next Cinderella? Does that mean I have to put someone else before me always and pray that my needs get met because I was a good girl and followed the rules?

Why do I need to play like a boy when I can be a woman and ditch cars, ride horses, bake cakes, kick dirt, saw wood, paint wordy pictures, dream just like any other human? Why does that even have to have a gender placed on it? We all know what we can do, why separate the two?

Why do I have to be respectable in public when the public slut shames my gender? Starts war upon my sisters with horrible results and back-alley horrors committed against their beauty out of spite, anger, jealousy? Why do I have to bow down to the “mighty” man of six years old because he was born with a penis and I was not? Fuck that. I’ll be who I am. You adapt to me. I’ll color just enough inside the lines so that you’ll have no choice but to look at my art, but when you start telling me that a sun has to be yellow and not purple, we’re no longer friends and I don’t have to be nice to you any more.

Why can’t I be passionate no matter where I am? No matter where I’m going? No matter what I’m doing? If I feel it, why should I make an excuse for loving my life and everything about it? This seems insulting to the very gifts I’ve been given. This seems selfish of me to hold back the beauty that is everything I am. It’s disgraceful to not be passionate about the life-gift we’ve been given and I don’t think it has anything to do about being a sexual being.

I treat my body like a temple, not a mausoleum. I don’t need quiet pristine walls to know that I’m alive. I need vibrant colors, loud music, laughter and singing, dancing at all hours with colors winging the ceilings and candles and joyous arousal. I need hats and capes, and delicious chocolates dripping with harmony. I’m here to live life not pretend I only want a little bit of a taste. I want the whole damn thing. I want to swallow it whole and chew for hours on ideas and thoughts of what I see; experience on every level.

Why can’t I treat my body like a motel if I want to? Why can’t I take a lover into my arms, no matter the number, no matter the reason? Why should I be held to a different standard than someone who happens to have different genitalia? Why do I need to limit myself to the taste and pleasures of one gender? What if I want to dip fingers into honey as much as I want to lick my lips up the honey dipper? Why can’t I smear sex on my body like peanut butter if I desire it? That’s a horrible double standard and I refuse your rule book, your little black marks, your stigma, and your anger towards my freedom to choose what I do with my body. It’s not some body. It’s MY body. See that? It’s not called YOUR body. It’s MY body. I can have a revolving door if I choose, so don’t dictate my hours or my calling. It’s not your motel to run. I’m sorry you’ve found the Bates Motel more to your liking, lurking with the dead and dispassionate. That’s not me.

I refuse to love unconditionally. If I were to do that, I’d be God or Goddess, or Buddha or Christ and I’m not any of those. I’m a human. I can look at you with disgust if I want to. I can refuse you entry to my chapel of horrors and my circus if I don’t like your act. I don’t owe you anything which, as many misconceive is what love is when it’s unconditional. That, in many people’s minds means without question. I’m not going to love someone who harms children, particularly me. No way. Been there done that and I’ve served my life sentence every day since my birth. No. I will not.

This part I can agree with. I will speak my truth and I will live as honestly as I can. Not for your benefit but because my spirit is peaceful when I know I’ve done my best to follow my own compass without your rules holding me to unrealistic and unreasonable behavioral constructs that do not belong in my body, mind, spirit, or hands. What I will further agree with is that if you trust me with your heart and I trust you with mine which means we vow, with word or not, to never betray that trust intentionally, you will never again have to feel alone.

Ms. Marble

Marbles

Marbles

If I could be a marble in a bag around a child’s waist

propounding challenge to my peers like an alchemist

whose recipe for destruction lay in my bulging satchel

filled with conquests found in the sandpit battlefield

of my childhood playground, dominated by concentrated

versions of precisely aimed shots using one inch of glass

and stick drawn circles of boundaries no other should cross.

If I were a marble in a sack around my childhood waist

I would be a peerie of blue green that made them lose

as they wondered at my ocean colors splashing their spirits free

through the distractions of the wildly colored cat’s eyes

that stared back at them with deadened stares emptied

of life, unlike me, who shined and waved like the open sea

And they would avoid hitting me with their knocker’s sin

because who doesn’t want Mother Ocean to win?

being in the moment while being in the moment

This is not my work, but it struck me so I’m sharing. This is captured just right. I should remember this day…Isn’t that how it is? Just an ordinary day when an ordinary person sits up and realizes that today, like every other day, is the only day and this is the only moment.

This sings not with a note but with a melody. It dances on the staff of life and truth as it always has. Thank you for reminding me that today my job, like every other day, is to sit up and remember that today is the day. Now is the moment.

being in the moment while being in the moment.

i should remember
today
like i should recall each day.
as the day,
i changed a little,
i learned a little,
and got my soul
to being a little more whole,
not even concerned
with being holier,
as long as i learn, expand, develop and GROW
like the plants in our garden.
from beginning to the end
to be a part of the message
that’s going to change the world.

i should recall today
as not just any other day,
as how i should perceive each and every day
like the day, i chose to change the way
i saw everything and learned to finally
see everything.

02.15.11.