YOUR TURN
You locked the door,
put your hand over our mouth,
ground against us.
Now we have many doors,
and they are all open.
We have a voice
and we are not ashamed.
You thought to grind us small
but together we are bigger
than you can imagine.
Truth does not need bluster and shout.
It is your turn to be afraid.
Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy.
~Polish aphorism
But this is my circus:
the bareback rider dancing in perfect balance
between the prancing horses,
the spangled artists on the flying trapeze.
The fire-eaters are mine,
the jugglers,
the troupe riding unicycles across the wire.
The whole sideshow is mine.
These are my elephants, stolen from the forests;
these are my unhappy lions.
The clowns, of course, are mine,
emerging from their tiny car,
swarming around the ring,
beeping their noses,
stumbling over their feet. But
the monkeys?
No.
Not the monkeys.
This lot of monkeys
was never mine.
published on the facebook page “Rattle Poets Respond,” July 24, 2017
RIPPED PAPER
In memory of Ursula K. Le Guin
Winter Prompt #26
Tear it all up—
old bills and tax returns, bank
statements, stock certificates,
manuals and guarantees.
But don’t stop
there. Tear up all the useless
books: archaic sciences, outdated
histories, smug theologies,
the whole thick body
of masculine pronoun,
life as battle,
possession as the highest good.
ANSWERING
If someone says
You didn’t see that,
say But I did.
And I heard it, too.
If someone says
Surely that’s not
what you think, say
That’s what you think.
If they say
You shouldn’t feel
that way,
say Ha!
should has nothing
to do with it.
If they say
You shouldn’t say
things like that,
say Just listen.
ON LEAVING FACEBOOK: part II
I went there
when I was lonely or bored.
There.
As if it were a place
like the back porch of my house
where I sit with the dog
or The Bakery where people I know
go to drink their coffee
or the yarn shop full of color and light.
I liked
things there so casually,
not the way I like
a cat on my lap
or a walk in the field with the dog
or sitting beside my husband on the sofa,
each with a book and a mug of tea.
I could share
things there mindlessly,
not the way I share
worries and joys with Meg
when go for our morning walk
or the way I share with my Real Godmother
Eleanor when we email every morning,
or the way I share recipes and rants about the news
with my old friend Kathy
or the way I share time on the phone
with my sister or my son or my grandson
or lunch with Linda or Megaera or Carol
or pie with Jean and Mel
or energy with the Tai Chi class
or books with the Heretics
or life with the Spring St. Poets
or music with Encanto.
They said it was always free
but not as free as making music
or knitting socks or reading Proust
or weeding the garden.
Not free
like the smell of bread or apples,
like sunset across the meadow
and sunrise through the branches of the gingko tree.
april 28 prompt
You have been sent to apologize to a foreign power on behalf of our government.
Do it in a limerick.
Ray’s #4
(Except I cheated and wrote it nearly a week ago while walking in the woods and when I drew another one, I put it back because I wanted this one today since I have to go to an all-day Tai Chi workshop again and call my mother’s old friend in Norway first.)
TO THE WORLD IN GENERAL:
SORRY.
AT LEAST WE’RE MODERATELY ENTERTAINING.
PROBABLY.
Here in this country called US
The system is all in a muss.
The rich guys control it,
Politicians extol it,
‘cept Bernie, who’s making a fuss.
NEW CLOTHES
Our fabric is woven so tight and fine,
garments stitched up with pride—
gunbelts and helmets and gold—
We have the combinations,
watches, buttons, colored shoes.
This hat will keep you safe.
This cloak will end your pain.
See us in parade, wearing
mirrors of our own devising.
But where is the little child?
Around the next corner
on the street of clowns?
Down by the river
where improbable ducks dive
below the ice to feed?
Beneath your coat,
under your itchy skin?
Somewhere in your throat
they’ve worked so hard to close?
How much it is like death
to hear your fear exposed.
TURNING A BATTLESHIP
They say it’s like turning a battleship.
They say they’re making progress:
the vast bulk of iron against the swell
that rises and rises and against the wind
that never, ever, for a moment, lets up.
All hands are doing what sailors do–
–turning cranks, watching dials,
running to and fro. It was more obvious
when the ships were under sail,
when it had to do with lowering and raising,
with ropes and anchors and chains.
Like turning a battleship, they say.
Something that big, pounding along in a fixed direction,
thousands of tons afloat
inflexible, ungraceful, lumbering, loud,
not like, say, whales,
who turn their enormity
graceful and swiftly, who breach and sing and whisper and fly–
and porpoises–
and kayaks, currochs, dugouts,
sailboards and surfboards
skimming and slipping the surface–
and leaves in autumn–
russet from the ash trees, red from the maple,
brown from the oak–
and golden birch leaves–
how they blow light and high, following
every whisp
of wind–
and ravens somersaulting–and hawks–
and little birds
flipping so easy above the corn–
and snowflakes and snowboarders and
children on swings and monkey-bars–
and ballerinas, gymnasts,
contra-dancers,
parachutists, politicians, bass guitarists–
and all those World Cup footballers
turning on a dime.
I wrote this in 2006. An experiement, since wordpress doesn’t let me use my own formats. Here’s a screenshot of the poem–the words aren’t too legible, I think, but this shows the shape of it.
Traditionally, the rich partook of diamonds
in the drawing room just before dinner.
Butlers filled and passed the heirloom lith-bowls
made of ebony or jet, and subtly shaped
to show to advantage the clarity, the fire.
To employ a family crest or other personal symbol
has always been considered execrable taste but
at State and Embassy functions, it has not been uncommon
to see one’s country’s flag displayed in coloured gems
on a small rectangular tray above one’s service plate.
However, since good cheap synthetics are available now,
many discriminating people have turned to laser-shaped obsidians
imported from Armenia or Greece, or hand-knapped flints
from paleolithic sites in Middle Belgium or Southwest France.
A small monogram may be engraved on each.
The newly rich debate the merits of river stones
from the Amazon, the Volga, the Nile.
They choose colors that match their decor,
shapes that complement their latest dinnerware,
textures that enhance the dining experience.
They arrange the stones in individual dishes
garnished with rose petals or eucalyptus leaves,
or on polished boards of exotic woods, or in perfect shells.
They are careful to select compatible wines.
Vegetarians, Progressives, and others of that ilk
use organic pebbles which they gather from pure sources
in local mountains or deserts and pile in pottery crocks
or scatter in fountains of filtered rainwater.
They select and swallow a few any time of day,
whenever they feel the need.
The poor grab whatever they can get:
broken cement, beach glass,
a handful of winter gravel
left over on the edges of the road.
MP May 16, 2008
Do something.
They are everywhere.
Look:
Louise washing her wrinkled self
at the conference center sink,
naked and unashamed,
singing a hymn;
Elizabeth unafraid
to die in her house alone,
leaving the nasty nursing home
on the arm of her 90-year old attorney;
Hazel, Marion, Jean–
Three Graces, Weird Sisters–
dirty jokes about the curate,
roses from the old gay priest;
Bea by herself at dawn
along the lake,
hunting warblers,
fossils, walking fern;
Susan in her goatskin gloves
plucking nettles,
killing chickens
in their sleep.
Ann sharing her cane-stool
with the young ones
in Washington
just before the war.
GladErrand 