A Real Boy

Oak

I want to be a real boy, I don’t want to be a stump

My joints articulating better than my knotty lump

My heart a pumping sap filled core,

with arms outstretched to shelter more

I wait for the carver to create me anew

From my snazzy top hat to my hard wooden shoes.

Direct me, show me, guide life to this oak

Allow me a life, my leaves are all spoke.

Queen in Passing

grave

Solemnity spoke

The night I prayed would never come

has whispered hallowed night

a reclamation of eternal earth

the kiss of chilled winds blight

The hands I loved have now succumbed

The fiery pyre take flesh from sight

a resolution to embrace rebirth

your angelic spirit take flight

These Are My People: Linda Looney

Linda and Mare

A relationship between a mother and daughter

is far more complicated than it oughter

be, with wrecks and disasters no happily ever after

as one struggles to hold on, the other to be free.

But if you ask them, one on one how they feel,

you’ll hear nothing but the true theist spiel

of love and emotion, undying devotion

between mother and child, where nothing is mild

when familial blood runs rivers through reconciled

years washed pure in the hopeful heart referred

“Glad to be of help.” the moniker tenured

Ben

What hands have held my face, to stare into my soul?

What lips have breathed a lifetime of my kisses stole?

What voice has whispered me my truth, my secrets sealed untold?

What arms have held me in a haven, my broken heart consoled?

What legs have walked a million miles to cross my sacred threshold?

What heart has answered the siren’s song our bindings to behold?

What worth is placed on eternal devotion, more valuable than gold?

What gifts be given to thine own true love, from youthful glow to old?

Moon Mother

Of our spirit comes forth a light that cannot be denied

A token of our birthright, our power her wedded bride

Raise our hands up to the moon to draw her down to see

Sing in sky-clad voices, to the tune played three times three

Hark! Hail! We greet you with our bodies meet your night

Hark! Hail! We honor you with this our hearth-fire light.

Hark! Hail! We beckon you to join our ecstasy

Hark! Hail! We dance for you, dear Mother, Blessed Be!

Do not be afraid

As you are an ocean of tears, so are you a world of forgiveness. A haven of justice filtered through human imperfections that allows opportunity for love with each challenge to your comfort.

You possess free will enough to elect whether you embrace change or if you allow fear to petrify your heart into jaded segments. How can you gaze upon a child’s pain with no desire to make the world innocent for them; for yourself?

It is inevitable that your faithful trust in your brethren will be accosted with confusion or anger towards your generosity. But, the price you pay now, will be small compared to the cost of refusal should you deny your righteous compass.

Turn to your true north, even being different than your friends, to find what makes your spirit, your very essence scream with the ecstasy of rapturous delight. Give permission to yourself to be extraordinarily outstanding in a world that only allows what is nurtured to bloom and grow.

If you find yourself in the forest of darkness with bruised, bloodied, or damaged limbs falling from your own family tree, notice where they’re planted. See how shallow or how deeply those roots linger in the earth by releasing your primal self to its care.

Drink from the knowledge of the river bend that granted your ancestors life to flood your own flesh. Sing in the voice of your grandmother, your grandfather, and those back to the beginning of time’s pacing.

Decree your path without word because what you say can be erased, what you do is how you progress through your life unhindered; calling like-minded to your shores. The shores of the ocean of tears that surrounds your world of forgiveness are yours for the sake of personal redemption.

Setting down the son

I wanted to love you beyond reason

to tuck you under warm blankets

inhale the scent of your freshly bathed skin

pressing my lips to your cool forehead

stroking your hair back from your face

so I could memorize it until dawn.

I wanted to embrace you with hugs

to protect you from the angry, vengeful world

to be your advocate for justice until you spoke

your first words in defense of your right to exist

that I could offer you a vocabulary for peace

that would last throughout your lifetime

I wanted family intimacy to gestate organically

with inside jokes created with one another

stories built upon our common history

beliefs based on a mutual understanding

goals set and met together in blood-line unity

Cherished memories transmogrified into legends

BUT

I stand here holding a bin full of dusty artifacts

every imagining I’d dreamed about abandoned

discarded into a tornadic swipe of desolation

Emptied of sacredness into the seasonal winds

My love, hugs, and hope for a family with you

have perished due to your intentional self-destruction

I mourn for you as if you had passed the veil

I see evidence of you in portraits lying happily

with smiles that don’t eat your eyes with joy

except for mine which shine with implicit trust

passionate encouragement radiates towards you

so brightly that you cringed away, scalded by love

that didn’t hurt but should have flayed your skin

because that’s what you were taught by my blood

I wish you peace.

I wish you love.

I wish you happiness.

I wish you a life worth living.

I wish you to know that I’d do it all again.

A-Cross Borne

As I released her hand, my heart bled tears of peace

As I released her hand, my heart bled tears of peace

She once was my holiest of Saviors

begging my life of me as a personal favor

when that night sailed away with the moon.

If not for the promise I gave her

from my ugliest desperate behavior

I’d have deserted the weeping stars too soon.

Now the full moon rises stark

bringing forth what won from dark

as the stars witness my release

I emancipate her hand, relinquish her heart

Another path taken on this journey I embark

To her I offer a blessing of light, love and peace

Polka Dot Salmon (Fish Ladder Blues)

Fishing the Grand River

I was born in your arms

cradled but not protected

shunned, rejected, refused

a starving babe to river’s teat.

I cried colic at your shores;

survived despite your abuse.

Like a battered lover, I, escaped

ONLY

to believe your honeyed promises

to desire your rushing waters

to climb above my station against odds

to find my true love begetting fruition

to linger too long where love dies

I avoided your calls

I dodged your temptations

I surpassed any lack you created

I became, am becoming; power

Infuse me at my request

with the Grand Rapids river’s ravishing rush

pour your shores to return my blood

reunite my spirit with yours

Let’s embrace intimately

passionate with endearing lust

so we may fall in love, again

on my terms.

Opinion: Rev. Morrill addresses ‘Black Lives Matter’

This past July, a church committee requested a new message on the electronic sign, which faces the Oak Ridge Turnpike. The message they requested was “Black Lives Matter.” The board of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, or ORUUC, voted to approve it, and the message was added to the sign’s series of scrolling messages.

Source: Opinion: Rev. Morrill addresses ‘Black Lives Matter’