Original Sin
I suppose first
I’ll hit you with a list
of relevant scholars, no need
to take my word, by all means
educate yourself: Marija Gimbutas,
Riane Eisler, Charlene Spretnak,
and Merlin Stone. Towards the end
of the Bronze Age there was a shift—
earlier or later depending on the area—
a violent wind, a novel virus,
take that mass grave
recently revealed. Patriarchal pastoralists
so very concerned with the unchecked spread
of their herds and seed, sought to destroy
the forest.
Systems so sophisticated they mistook
millennia of patient, symbiotic cultivation
for “wild” or “unkempt.”
The merciless slaughter
of predominantly women and girls
from the entire region. Some boys and young males
who likely chose death over betrayal. The youngest
an infant son. Was that mercy? Valuables removed,
seeds tossed upon their corpses, a dead animal.
Did the men who survived
think they’d change the system
from the inside? We see real clear now
how that turned out, how many thousands
of times did this play out? To what
do intermittent good intentions amount?
Inside every woman
is a mass grave.
If you ever think
I’m being too harsh, my eye sharp,
consider the gaping silence
of more than half of humanity
as I decide exactly how much mercy
I think you deserve.
Preeclampsia
Mitochondrial Eve lived
about 200,000 years ago
give or take and to be clear:
their brains were just like ours.
So I ask
what is more likely, that “civilization”
began 6000 years ago,
or that men kill, steal, and lie?
Annihilate and corrupt out of jealousy?
How many silenced mothers?
What wisdom lost?
So men could play at God,
pretend to be our equals, superiors,
in the act of creation.
I think the fuck not.
They say Neanderthals perished
because their heads were too large,
excessive maternal mortality
decimated their numbers.
Their bodies couldn’t handle
building brains. A dangerous business.
You know they grew
because women were always keeping track
of extended family, inventing language,
and juggling tasks while raising babes.
We made that happen. We tended forests.
We didn’t cling to monuments, proof, our “mark”,
it lived and breathed all around us.
Everyone knew which woman you came out of,
the other women were there.
All this religion and pedantry,
scientists, politicians, CEOs, and nobility,
too big for the britches their women wash,
eyes ten times the size of their stomachs,
and not a man in sight
could faithfully manage
to put the work in, humble enough
to meet me in the garden.
Happy Families
Just get the roots in the ground,
quit fucking around, if She don’t
want it there, She’ll tell you. Simple.
The components of a fruit tree guild:
nitrogen fixers, dynamic accumulators,
pollinator attractors, pest repellents
and ground covers/mulchers.
Central element, fertilizer,
nutrient miners, insectary plants,
pest deterrents, chop-and-drop
where applicable. Find a spot
and get it done. Shit, use a stock tank.
Use several. You don’t have to grow out,
you can grow up.
Quarter of an acre is plenty enough,
corners and abandoned lots,
seed bombs. Oops did I
fuck up your lawn? Your
deadzone grass expanse? Oh shit,
there’s mint. How’d that get there.
Brambles bitch. Mystery flowers.
Would be a damn shame
if your excessive number of ruminants
came down with indigestion.
Don’t neglect
your natives, I favor
windbreaks of oak, coppiced alder—
which can aid in feeding chinampas,
that’s zones 4 on up so no excuses—
red osier dogwood and assorted
bog friendly berries. Acid lovers.
Birch.
Mind the slope, pH, and sun’s path.
Every day, at all times, walk the land.
Soil should never be exposed
or compressed. A forest
creates its own rain in a process
called transpiration.
Stabilizes water tables, sinks carbon,
seeds clouds.
The world is bankrupt on that front,
imminent bread basket collapse,
or shall I call them plundered cradles,
devastated ecosystems,
irreversible damage driven
by agriculture and industrial waste.
So go piss on that compost pile,
even shit recycles, give back what you took,
you belong
to the land and its creatures, all of them,
those relationships are what make you
a people. You are born
with obligations. You are the elected official.
You. Yes you. Do you live here? Show of hands,
that’s behavioral activation, every fucking day,
children do as you do, not as you say,
life doesn’t happen at a desk or at a screen.
Are you tired? So am I. A tiny thing
is still a thing. Go outside. Go outside.
Go outside and identify
three places, flora, or fauna who need help.
Look back in time, a tree’s reckoning,
that’s some distance, who’s missing?
No bears or wolves? Shame,
there’s no such thing as a weed or pest,
only imbalance. A broken loop.
Parasitic priorities.
Take responsibility.
What are you waiting for,
the divine right of kings?
Otherworlds
You could say
I’m pretty intense about plants.
The environment. Animals. Well,
long ago
during the sputtering remains of my youth
and early adulthood, somewhere in the third phase
amid a years long brutal depression,
wherein my limbs felt like leaden sand,
and every single word I spoke
took as much effort as hauling an anchor
from the Mariana Trench, and my chest
keened every single moment I drew breath,
and I wept and wept and wept,
I dreamt
walking through my brother’s house,
empty, a ghost, and as I passed
a door, I saw my reflection
distantly lit in a dark bathroom mirror.
I had hair.
As it is now in fact, perhaps not as much
white,
and an entire half of my naked body
was tattooed with branches and vines
in technicolor, both fruiting and flowering.
Shivering and writhing.
Never heard such a thing in all my life.
Before I could investigate,
I was called away. Deployed. Apparently
my mission was to find and wake
a Lord of the Earth, the one
I was bound to and responsible for.
No backup. No assist. No resources.
I had to get it done.
I flew over a barren landscape
such as the desert I grew up in, ravaged and rootless,
where the sun, soil, and water were all poison,
and entered a massive glowering cavern,
an unknowable chasm,
to call out into the unmade place
that it should learn from me its purpose,
and I mine.
I revived a mighty green beast,
green as the dawn through new leaves,
called Her forth from deepest shadow,
a Hadal zone.
Rainbow gems and precious metals
pebbled in Her armored hide, along Her back
light spilling and splashing through fountain-like,
so architectural these spine ridges
as humans could literally settle there.
She was enormous. A titan. Born
of dark waters and crushing Earth.
No matter the cost,
I had to protect Her.
When I woke, I remembered
that for a tree to both fruit and flower
you must graft a number of scions
onto desirable rootstock, otherwise
a tree exhibits this behavior on its own
only when under extreme duress,
such as environmental collapse.
And when I woke,
having crossed at last
the cursed slumber itself,
I found that I was somehow both
much, much older
and much, much younger
than my ordinary peers.
For everyone else
lifetimes had passed, we had nothing,
no language of experience in common,
whereas I had only just begun.
My Island
More recently,
my Ex disregarded
all my explicit warnings, wasn’t even looking
straight ahead, and drove the truck
off a cliff
into the ocean, I kicked out the window,
climbed around and jumped off the bed
onto some kinda
sea stack situation
and somehow Donkey Konged my way
onto a bright and cheerful boardwalk.
Gathering my wits I pulled a paper
outta nowhere and drew a map,
my property a distant compass star, and I explained
the precise shape of this new mass
to a mysterious onlooker. This shape,
as I began outlining the first coastal section
on the upper left, was like an anatomical heart
if you roughed it up a bit
or kinda a lot—like damn
no need to call me out like that—
and suddenly my map sprung to life,
became a little bird in flight.
I chased the mischief creature
along some kinda kaleidoscopic pub complex—
truly an excessive amount in one spot,
and to be clear I rarely drink, though
I thoroughly enjoy the pub atmosphere,
I wouldn’t say that I literally Heart them,
but I digress—
I breezed through
open doors and windows
into an ambered wood interior,
heard pleasing muffled chatter,
laughter and clinks in the next room,
and some man’s
very beautiful singing voice. That voice alone
enough to get you drunk. Them tingly thighs.
Sunlight poured
through every orifice, puddled
on the glossy wood, and I sensed
the distinct hover of a Mama
showing you baby pictures
of her Very Good Son.
I stood there and listened—
and listen,
the only acceptable response
is yes Mama I do hear him,
you taught him up right,
’cause he could be a rat bastard
but fact of the matter is
mama’s a mama and every mama
risked her life, her babies
been the only point
she’s allowed pride,
so you tell her good job
even if he comes home in a box,
that’s just manners,
but I digress—
Did my due diligence,
but I wasn’t there tryna snoop,
didn’t pursue the song to its source,
for though I’m highly curious, I’m not one
to derail a mission. On task.
I bowed out to go recover the truck,
for my family could only afford one vehicle,
and it doubled as the backup generator
for my mother’s oxygen when the power failed (often),
with or without my Ex’s body inside, I must
retrieve it before I did anything else,
but the tide had risen, gulls wheeled above, water
lapped my ankles,
the way I’d come was gone.
If I strove forward, gentle but insurmountable
waves pushed me back. I knew better
than to fight nature.
Just as I puzzled my reroute,
I was scooped up in a big net,
and this rather pushy promenade or…spirit seemed
to clutch me to its bosom. Such as it was,
shifting jumble of homes and businesses,
all the little people, pulse of the land beneath.
Like shit alright fine, you win.
Shimmied a bit in my new predicament,
idly wondering
if I’d just been abducted,
straight Shanghaied.
But it was such a fine day,
a most jubilant sea spray.
Finally a pair of fishermen
in funny squish caps
saw me
and scratched their heads.
They opted to bring me in,
and joy or fragile hope leaked from my eyes,
sweetly salted cheeks, and I don’t have these
two firm seals for nothing so
my next order of business was all,
ahem,
I presume
that you are some fisher-mans,
I too would like some fishes,
never mind what you expected
to find in this net, seafood
is in fact
my favorite.
Anyway, when I woke
and took my morning scroll, I stumbled upon
another distant (digital) shore,
that Polynesian lovers’ tale all random like,
alright,
I know when I’m being told.
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Enter an origami plane,
battlefronts collide, a storm
across all of spacetime, dancing
across tipping points
wherever inspiration did strike.
My usual
backdrop of chaos and strife.
Just dubstep, death growls, trap, arias,
cellos and silence.
I broke through
to a crumbling place,
some conglomerate Tetris city’s dregs,
and I answered
a cursed boy’s
unintentional distress signal.
Brushstrokes heavy and frenetic. Dark.
Whenever he tried
to speak from the heart,
tell a girl he loved her,
she mutated beyond all recognition.
One immediately vomited and convulsed,
warped and unraveled into sand.
Another tried so hard to retain
her form, concept of worth, values
until she too devolved into
material riches. Jewelry and such. Gold.
So much. So much.
They fell through his hands.
All I could specifically identify
was pale eyes and a pale face
wasted with tears. Mute terror.
When I reached out
to collect his precious salt, give comfort,
my wings more than strong enough
to take a passenger—this little wisp,
perhaps a gremlin of sorts, a glitch,
not so scary as all that—
he started and scuttled away
like some cephalopod ink sploot.
Mischief creature.
Whatever his curse entailed, alas,
I hadn’t the chance
to address. Step one
would have been retrofit
secure attachment, establish
object permanence, evaluate
locus of control and repair or replace.
Yes, yes, I’m a deft hand at curses, courtesy
of my prickly and forbidding nature, big
and warm but just a lil stabby stab. Alas,
I remained
the unseen. Misunderstood. That one’s mine.
An old, old woman
suddenly beside me with an easel,
the two of us standing on jagged cement
at the edge of everything, she scowled
and said that I am not afraid
because my body is a prison,
that I’ll give no quarter
if he sets me free.
Talked mad shit, evaluated
whether or not I’d balk
or be cowed. As if I hadn’t spent
decades being Too Much, as if I’d grown
up into the kinda bitch wears a bra
or gives a fuck. She showed me the canvas
where she’d painted some primordial
darkness as a harrowing thrush
of nebula splatter ravens affixed
the branches of a gnarled tree,
crown to roots penetrating
every layer of reality,
springfire green streams
coursing up the trunk, motes
flickering, pulsating veins
through a blackened artery.
Behind closed lids, a feathered pair
of ultraviolet eyes in the sky. That old woman,
though her own eyes sparkled vicious approval,
her tone suggested I should be horrified,
apologize for my shameless spread, but inside
every woman
is a mass grave.
wyrdwind 