Pushing Poppies
It’s a bit like when a cat
presents you a dead animal.
Functionally dependent or an addict,
that’s splitting hairs, and courtesy
of a botched spinal surgery,
there’s a certain significance.
Mmm, thanks for the oxy dad,
I will treasure this…prescription opium
right here under my statue of Isis,
though I won’t tell you that.
Had period cramps so bad I threw up
one time
and he was traumatized.
Oh my ex was the same way.
I’ve got terminal cancer meds
from an old folks home—
they don’t outlive these pill counts.
Fun fact:
many don’t “go bad”
they just take longer to kick in.
Why do I know this?
America.
No healthcare,
everyone works half or mostly dead
with no retirement
and your only constant is pain.
But no pain I’ve ever experienced—
and baby that’s a lot—
was so bad I didn’t think ahead.
What if? Just in case.
There might come a day
when only one recourse remains,
that I’ve held on for someone I love,
a painless death.
A Happy End.
Silence
Breath, rhythm, vibration, touch.
The fundamentals of pain management.
You must be present. Waves. Move with,
not against. Gravity is your friend.
Do you need cold or hot? Listen.
Water. Bread. Mint. Floor.
Naked in your struggle sweat?
Shit, text my ass.
No TMI between us.
Seen all this shit before.
No pun intended.
Just throw those out,
we’ll get you new britches.
You might feel stinky, sad, and gross
like a forgotten potato in a dark cupboard,
but I promise I only love you more.
Long past wrinkles, arthritis, and dust.
If the worst appears over, get up
and take a shower. Just stand there.
I’ll support you if I must.
Sometimes staying in range is all you’ve got.
I’ll lay you down.
It’s enough.
1001 Kisses
I’ll hold you close,
brush your hair, trace
the shell curve of your ear
and the shivered nape of your neck
and tell you how we met,
a place I’ve made inside.
The first cool sighs of autumn,
when night lingers long past
previous predawn.
When you open the door and pause.
Churning star pierced sky, low melodic chimes,
a dog startles in the distance,
restless willows, clattering signs, groaning eaves,
fan palm fronds sails at high sea,
in this darkness
you can be anything, put the road
beneath your feet.
They all lead to me.
The tension upon delivery,
awaiting a newborn’s first cry.
Nothing so lost I can’t find.
Who stole the whispers and wonder
in your eyes?
Come outside.
Try. Try. Leave it all behind.
Remember where you belong,
you were always mine
stolen child.
Open Pollinated
For three nights
I was visited, I dreamt
first a moment so real,
from my phone an ethereal instrumental
somehow, when I woke had to be sure,
but it was still storm sleep sounds.
Next I coursed the brick walls
of a pub-ish industrial room somewhere and there,
in the middle must have been a man,
if a man were a fluffy sound cloud,
ram took off and turned up wow-round.
Atmospheric disturbance. Overlapping signals.
Soft rain blue, some light show. He sang
but I couldn’t tell what, tender as winter birds at dawn,
interview simultaneous,
he was to be wed and no one more shocked
about that than himself. An unspeakable
joy he dared not name lest it slip from his grasp.
At last. At last. Ambrosia
on the tongue of mere mortal man, some kinda
intervention. Are you a thing that exists?
Am I allowed to have this? But one magic
the gods can’t possess,
for there is no love without death.
What kinda woman
takes a tempest to bed?
Puts a rope and a bell on it, he’s
in there somewhere, breaks ten pair shears.
Settles him all the way down. Finds the right shape.
Trouble though. His most beautiful song,
food for the gods, hung in the balance.
Wouldn’t exist
unless he made the right choice.
Waking dropped barometric in my chest
as if my jurisdiction, when ya boy
biffs it so hard his gods dial up my spec ops ass,
Steve Irwin of ho handlers, said
with utmost affection. Godspeed
whoever he is, don’t make ’em tell you twice.
Last, through a stilled memory I carry
from a park festival where a daughter
sat on the ground hiding
in her mother’s bright skirt at a food truck.
A woman’s voice
sang through the sunlight and towering trees
in an accent very clearly
ancient Irish. Celtic, rather. Old Gaelic.
The oldest.
When I woke then, I wept with release
and wrote Aisling Aengus. How it must go.
Look,
I know when I’m being told. I know what I know
when I’m meant. Haven’t been wrong yet.
There’s so much more
to being human
than you think.
Does a caterpillar
know what a cocoon even is,
what it becomes upon entering
a state of living decomposition,
or does it just have faith?
True Oak
What is true is always true
and may be observed
through presence of mind.
Who has need of locked rooms,
musty robes, and tomes
has need of lies.
We have need of trees.
Music
is the only valid currency,
the spiritual blood of humanity,
that which remains in motion,
the purpose of your mother’s pulse,
how blood is made inside bones,
and yours grew from hers and hers
and hers all the way back
to the First. Ancestors.
Conduction
is a mitochondrial function.
Before we rise in unison, first
I must convince you Tree is Good.
Back to back to basics,
real toddler shit. Uh oh, that hurt.
Tree is Good. Oops, fell down.
Tree is Good….Dog is Good.
Hey. Hey. Dog is—okay, Dirt is Good.
I can sit here much longer than you.
See that kitty cat?
It’s Good.
Life’s just about
taking care of your pile of things.
As many as you can reach.
The only way
to attain impressive height
is living to love longest.
Love the most, variety
is riches.
Where
have all my trees and creatures gone?
In the name of your “wealth,”
a false God.
Mabon
Once upon an autumn equinox
as a young girl I’d found a book
describing the Wheel of the Year,
it seemed quite practical, sensible,
oh I was no fan of any church.
But I’ve always appreciated rhythm.
Relationships. Webs of cause and effect.
So I said fuck it why not,
on a breezy morn much like this one,
and cooked a meal for a happy family
I didn’t have. A harvest
of foods no one would miss. Open
invitation I guess.
Well afterwards I took a bath
for the warmth, even though water
always made me homesick.
Suddenly exhausted,
I fell asleep. My first
hyperrealistic dream. Looked down
at my hands, and my silver vine ring
I always wore on my right hand
had been joined
by a gold vine on the left.
I suppose if my mind must concoct nonsense,
I’m grateful it showed me what it feels like.
I’d always be well aware
when something isn’t Right.
Striking Beauty
Your real totems
are the media you consume
when you’re Going Through Some Shit,
dicking around on YouTube down
some kinda hole,
blanket up over your head
and haven’t slept.
My thing is grainy nature documentaries.
This one guy devoted his life,
wished to be remembered as a lover
of the wild. An amateur
in the truest sense of the word. Spent months
alone in a tiny hidden tree tent, unmoving,
eating so plain he lost his human stink.
He waited.
Then, he woke in the night, half
gone out his mind, and saw a tigress,
mouth dripping gore.
He cried. Named
her Bloody Mary in reverence.
When she bore cubs, he had privilege
to witness. Named Snow White, Sky White,
and Moon White respectively.
Professionals declared his work
of highest caliber. Quality. Never before seen.
Another time, some grizzly bears,
I don’t remember where. When the narrator
declared the forest a vast cathedral, I felt it.
Did you know bears, in the midst of fighting,
fattening, and fucking will sit
just to behold the majesty?
They give birth during winter hibernation, asleep.
I imagined tearfully what a mother bear might see
in her great dreaming.
Then in Central America some men
sought the apex predators of the overstory,
the all embracing canopy. Harpy eagles.
Elusive. They mate for life. One or two young
every three to four years, devoted parents.
Cascading effect,
keep every other species in check, in balance.
Their preferred diet
is monkeys and sloths. Grizzly size claws
on a twenty pound bird.
Those men fucked around and found out.
Jungles are noisy, and they tracked a male
back to his tree. If cacophony critters
weren’t worried, why should they be?
One begun the climb. After all,
they were busy right? Besides,
he wore armor, so it was fine.
Right? Right.
A sudden quiet,
deafening.
If you can’t hear her, it’s too late.
He didn’t move and scarcely breathed.
When the female takes to sky.
Without that armor
she would have lacerated
his cervical spine in precision dive.
The impact
alone stunned him, no stretch
to play dead, could only pray
she lost interest.
I remembered ever after that,
no matter the size, dress, or supposed intellect
he’s just a foolish monkey climbing high
like it’s his business, groping at your nest.
Put Him in his place.
wyrdwind 