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.
wyrdwind 