wyrdwind

Microburst

For when they don’t wanna

use the T word. Like the wind

makes a fist and boxes

some roofs off, throws

some furniture

into the neighbor’s yard

blocks down,

and by that I mean

half your house

and also the power grid.

Used to be rare.

The night I wrote Blackthorn

I went to bed early and woke

abruptly at midnight.

There hadn’t been a single cloud

in the sky for many miles

but tree chimes don’t lie.

A storm was outside.

Weather app transmission cut off

hours prior. Clear through dawn.

Not.

My willows swayed and shook,

but I know my work,

knew their strong arms

would hold, their roots

firmly anchored.

Sudden temperature drop.

The cats stood guard but noted

my lack of concern. Thunder,

lightning, rain.

My preferred lullaby.

Something-omething spicy brains and ions.

The thing about acacia willows,

they’re pioneer trees.

Fast growing nitrogen fixers.

Favorites of livestock, birds, and bees.

You gotta keep ’em trimmed back

and train hard for a trunk

when they’re young. Seedlings.

Be aggressive.

They get ahead of themselves.

Regardless, at least once,

they’ll take a tumble.

Hit the ground real good.

All scraped, sappy, and raw.

No matter how bad it looks

do not give up.

Clean the open wound

and bandage those trunks

whatever position or predicament

they find themselves in.

Wait.

The city and your snotty neighbors

will complain. Tell them fuck off.

Over time

your willows will stand upright,

pull from their own strength.

They will not fall again.

When the next storm hits

yours will be the only house

undamaged.

Out of Order

What’re all the willows for?

That’s when you speed run

barren salty silt to forest floor.

If there’s no mycelium, microbes,

worms, more, then

that’s not soil. It’s dirt. Silent screamin’.

This task,

havin’ to terraform your own

fuckin’ planet

requires biomass. Lots and lots

of death. Decay. Compost. Mulch.

Topsoil should never be exposed.

Leave those fuckin’ leaves

right where they fell.

On the ground where they belong.

Fuck you and the grass lawn

you rode in on. Or in Arizona’s case,

rocks.

No poison, no lawnmower,

no fuckin’ herbivores in one spot too long.

If you want more than a homely number—

it takes not much to feed your whole town—

expect predation and do not interfere.

Fuck your profit margins and your bottom line.

You do not have the right.

Fun fact:

pesticides cause

breast and cervical cancer.

Women have highly absorbent

skin. Much like geckos

whom your yard can’t support

if there’s any contaminants at all.

Don’t even get me started

on plastics and petroleum. Fuckin’ oil.

You get the picture.

What’s done to women

is done to the Earth.

We are one.

What doesn’t serve us

is an affront to life.

A dogma viral,

an extinction spiral.

So there’s me in the moonlight,

ten trees to start, ten more on the way,

with elemental sulfur, blood meal, and wood chips

because suicide looks a lot like a pH of 10,

rippin’ up the entire yard

of rocks.

Fuck off.

Reverb Recall

“Hi mom.”

A little, very small,

from the clothes rack jungle

of my first job

found me folding on the floor

and sat down

gazing daisy-eyed at my face

awaiting instruction.

Ignored his dad

who finally stage whispered

“That’s not your mom,” and

“are you helping?”

Further on, I watched

a silly show about angels,

an episode about the daughter

of the Morning Star

whose human mother wept

when she saw her wings

were blades. Feathers razor sharp.

She traveled back in time—

an ability not even God possessed—

to course correct

and beat the shit

out of her dead beat dad. Asked

what horror

made her daughter become a weapon.

She assured, her most frightening traits

manifested from deepest love

for her mother. Power where she’d had none.

A champion.

The very moment

she came home on screen

the wind picked up

and beat the door.

My formerly feral kitten

silently tumbled into my lap

to cozy in my knotted

skirt swag. A hammock.

Lights flickered. All at once.

“Hi mom.”

See I’ve a wide memory,

swallows detritus and details like the sea,

and something’s always

waiting.

It occurred to me

that it’s never Help Daddy,

it’s Hail Mary.

Everything Matters

The kitten Maize,

a scrappy tortoise shell

I’d taken,

lured from the crackhead cat house—

no judgment, someone’s gotta

hold ’em down,

one of my best friends

is the traumatized daughter

of a bipolar crack ho,

and we all know

bipolar is the new hysteria.

Idk you’re a woman idgaf.

I digress—

she needed

antibiotics for her eyes,

crusted by infection. So small.

I doted

on her little sneezes.

Massaged her baby lungs.

She remained partially blind

but that didn’t slow her down,

she radiated

happiness and love

all she’d ever known.

Always in my skirt

whether I sat or worked.

One night she slipped out

and our street a favorite

for speeding cars,

reckless drivers. So I didn’t look up

when I heard some asshole

bottom out, no muffler.

I knew something was wrong

when her absence,

her lack of checking in,

threw the rhythm of the house off.

I went outside

and immediately spotted

her smashed body’s silhouette

on the pavement. I knew.

I knew. And I still

cry about it, I always will.

If you wonder

why I tense up, agitate,

whenever a car’s too loud. Too fast.

Wrong kind of bump in the bed.

She never stood a chance.

I scooped her up, wracked

with sobs and buried her,

I don’t stand ’round let the grass grow.

Found out my biker neighbor

across the way

had been awake and moved to help

but her husband died recently

and soon as she heard me

on the black road

she just stopped

stricken with tears herself.

Strays

A few things.

Big water and small water

are the same, always

returns to the source.

I do hit a segue, throw

from left field.

Animal companionship

is a human right

and that is a hill

you will die by my hand, don’t

try to debate.

Often what halts

an elder’s sharp decline

is a new kitten or puppy

to replace the one that died.

They are not lesser lights,

the richer your soul their lessons mind,

how there’s no one right way to be,

a hand’s a hand’s a friend to these.

Take my man Jackson Galaxy,

a distressed musician who nursed

a sick cat and in so doing

saved himself. Many such tales.

They’re his life’s work now.

A family called him for help

when their cat went off the rails,

at a loss, didn’t want to give her up,

behavior suddenly unpredictable,

she’d shredded both arms

on their very young son.

Galaxy’s last ditch effort

revealed that a jarring sound

from an open door, once,

had left her scarred—

You know, PTSD

was studied and treated in dogs

long before soldiers,

but “real doctors” looked down on vets

and no one listened—

A moment they thought

nothing of

reshaped her world.

A creature of fractures,

triggers.

Ultimately

the parents asked their son

what he wanted to do.

Still hurting and very scared,

he wouldn’t see her go,

he’d help her find solid footing

himself.

Use every cat daddy trick in the book.

This was his girl.

Well of course

there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Like Galaxy says,

never without tears,

every cat

deserves a home.

Tombstone

Like any Arizona girl

born in a whole wide dry

river bed of rock bottoms

worth her weight

in salt and burrs,

I’m versed in westerns

and Lord,

I may have been like twelve,

but I fuck with that

southern drawl

disaster gunslinger dandy shit,

boy be prone to melancholy and like

all the drugs,

default drunk. A real Dionysus

hot mess.

Val Kilmer killed it.

Doc Holliday is my fuckin’ man.

Learned everything I know

’bout how to handle weaklings and bullies

from Wyatt Earp. Barely restrained

straight laced tiger in a cage.

Of course they’re Best Fuckin’ Friends,

it’s a mystery how they even met, in retrospect,

dentists doubled as surgeons back then—

that’s right, lung hackin’ piano guy is also a dentist,

god they just let people do whatever—

so maybe Earp got shot.

Strange pairs are my catnip—

Lucy and Quincey

deserved happily ever after,

fuck you Stoker, I love my goth boy waifs

but I always roll

yolo yeehaw, ranged dps raid tank mama,

pull up with my bards and spam debuff,

like a bask maw gator with a butterfly crown

kissy sippin’ on my salt,

anyhow, dad thought it funny as fuck

when I invoked the spirit

of the handlebar mustache.

Disneyland? Saloon wench?

Nah.

One hit KO showdown at the O.K. Corral

’bout to Land Back black bag some rabid dogs,

hats off for the law of bad mom pistol whip,

watch how fast I dig a ditch,

s-s-six feet and then some when I say get gone,

let the let the bodies hit the floor,

battle gimme good good vibrato real low,

I’ll be your baby maker undertaker say ah,

drop a beat so hard I nasty necromance,

check your sullen ass tryna cut a glance,

think yourself a man,

don’t make me waste a glass.

I, I, I digress.

In my thug feelins

when our besties ride out

to balance the scales,

too many men eyes bigger’n their stomachs

and killin’ what’s left,

Earp become the dark hand

of some kinda law

and Doc’s on his last legs

sayin’ he’s the only reason

he ever had any hope at all.

His last wish

is for Earp to light the fuse

on that socially acceptable bomb

and blow it all up

to pursue his true love,

a free spirit Lady Devil, his Rhiannon,

no plan here I am where will we go,

just once what he woulda done

ever had fortune to find the One,

which he does. And that’s all

well and good but shit,

have you considered,

what if

Wyatt Earp were a woman?

Nemesis

Well we just watched

s2e2 and reiterate:

Ingrid Derian is the best

character on Watson

and the best thing to happen

to Sherlock Holmes period,

as a public domain body of work

and may I just take a moment to say

whatever fuckin’ song they play

at the start, that’s a voice,

haven’t looked it up yet

on account of distraction,

wasn’t focused on lyrics, but it’s like

bruises and cat tongues and I feel very

witch from Hansel and Gretel about it,

like come see me in the forest baby,

don’t mind my teeth,

get yo ass up in my kitchen

’bout to put somethin’ in the oven,

whole baker’s dozen son, fist full

of my favorite spice

on this episode of Master Chef.

I digress.

That shit wrote itself, how the fuck

those writers fumble a voice that fine

on a scene so lame. No chemistry.

Goddamn shame.

By the way, Sherlock doesn’t use

an imprecise term. Nemesis.

He is correct, people forget

she is a daughter of Nyx.

The path you walk,

its underside,

darkest truth

on the edge of a knife, a sword arm,

death to the deceiver, severance

of fruits undeserved, for which

you did not labor, exsanguinator

of hubris. Failure

to honor the gifts of the gods.

Hone them. Wield them.

Remember the Dark Mother.

Zeus ain’t fuck shit.

When their father

broke her sister’s back

and all her professional betters

turned theirs, saw the truth

and hung up their hands,

sent a girl

with useless legs and no defense

home to an abuser,

Ingrid showed steel

as the eldest and made

absolute certain

he could never lay a hand

on her sister again.

Ever again.

People fancy themselves champions,

agents of the greater good, have cake

and eat it too, but the price

of truly protecting

even just one, to serve a cause,

see it done,

is always blood.

Your field of fucks

should be a Shire of burial mounds.

Ingrid clocks that tricky bastard,

“alien hand syndrome” trust fund dipshit,

and says there’s one way for sure

to reduce the violent hand’s motor functions

to zero.

Be still my heart.

My girl. Get ’em.

You know, “sociopath”

is just how they pathologize

justice at a woman’s hand,

frequently a man dead,

premeditated without regret,

dispatched in calm fashion,

tit for tat the evil he’s done,

just takin’ out the trash.

People’s favorite horse to trot,

a real woman, Aileen Wuornos

had the only sane and measured

response to the first and worst

form of slavery. Prostitution.

She did nothing wrong.

Every single one of those men

got what they deserved.

Money changing hands

is never consent. Entertainment.

First or second hand rape.

They deserved worse,

that’s right clutch those pearls

at the law of the wild

unto Herself.

It’s always self defense.

Full Metal Alchemist

Captain Bible Thump himself

said God would throw me down

to Hell

on account of bein’ a witch,

oh he meant it,

see also: a woman

with spirit and opinions,

uncomfortable questions,

and gods bless him,

MENSA Quantum Physics

fuckin’ had enough. Sick to death

of this kid’s shit. Not usually one

for confrontation, in the spirit

of schoolyard one-upmanship said

I’d just go down there and overpower Satan,

eat him

like fuckin’ Cronos and take

his place in the vacuum left behind,

then I’d finish the fight he fuckin’ started

and eat God. The universe

would be reborn in my image.

There is no sin I commit.

Flamboyant Gay Bass,

son of a Mexican pastor,

cackled in C2 for emphasis

and said “Fuck Him.”

Fuck around enough

and people be willin’ to build

a bridge of broken bodies

just for one clean shot at God.

Pig iron

for a Lance of Longinus

in the hands of a woman

bringin’ Heaven to Earth.

Boys.

Soldiers.

My Bass,

all he sound a grown man

payin’ taxes buyin’ socks and shit,

was my Baby. Saw the writing

on the walls before he was a teen

and said bullies not today.

Sometimes boys wear pretty things

and that’s okay.

Had to talk him down

from suicide

because of his dad and

I do not forgive. Thank stars

his last impulse before the end

was to check in. Graveyard shift

pinch hitter.

Styx not today.

I took great care

many great pains,

on this particular pair of wings.

Once you go black

you never go back

hits different

when I do it.

His dad disowned him

when he said

everything he ever learned

about being a real man

he learned from me,

I was ten times

the size he’d ever be,

God is nothing, hollow inside,

and so is he.

Told me his only faith,

the two of us laughing

so hard we cry in the rain, synchronized,

the same gestures and off hand remarks

at the exact same time. At the Big Bang

his atoms must have been born

next to mine.

Bright Children of the Night.

Blood is the secret ingredient,

how a Friend becomes Best.

Brought me flowers

on Father’s Day.

When he left, flew the nest,

he never looked back again,

and that’s okay.