shelter

memory means nothing
when you cannot remember
a time or a place
was it june or december
did the bed linens
rustle with angry love
did the morning come
with a forgiving blush
were you powerless once
in a snug cul de sac
did the houses get bigger
the rent out of whack
sure thing you recall
surviving a storm
was it strong was it cold
was it unseasonably warm
did you talk to your dog,
your plumbing, your stove
were you able to walk
and lookover the farm
did you make a meal
alone in the dark
was your chaos just yours
or the plank to the ark
were sturdy trees felled

and arguments quelled
did you lose a friend
and make one of another
is the blanket you pull
up to your bothersome chin
enough to silence
a gymnasium din
did you vote

did you argue
before the storm
was the lovemaking made
before you were worn
here is the meal
in a plastic pack
like soldiers eat

before they attack

there is your cot
don’t mind the shriek
he’s your neighbor now
walking angry and guarded
remember your life
before it was martyred
you were a child
you were a start
someone will listen
to your beating heart

Rev. nyc 3.23.20/11.7.12

Passing Through

birth was her first catastrophe

wet and unyielding 

she wailed screaming like a poem

bleaker than Plath

this is it she reckoned

this leaky ballast

what if she asked them 

to leave her alone

those aliens called parents

her sham called a home

she grew from the nettles 

too often grasped 

envious of fences white 

yet still masked

avoiding the snares

she kept to a rule

golden and solid rejected by fools

she grew from the lies in empty rooms

learning simple clues 

on where to roam

she grew thick like a weed

in her vacant lot heart

staring sometimes at her white-hot flesh

lit by the light of her tenderness

at darkness aground

she travelled with ghosts those

companions profound

grew from the murders she 

meant to believe 

had meaning had sound

but I’m just a girl she cried

hungover and older

engrossed with the thrall

of the times they are changing

renewed with the chorus

we sing to with aging

born free she was and still remains

a woman with oars on

a boat run aground

it comes back to nothing 

she drains the hole in her head

passing through again and again

for the time calculated

devoted to anger 

those truths she craves

that range further and further

those stories she’s told

passing through ages

in glorious rhyme

on camouflage pages

these stories she tells until

everything’s new

these stories she tells until

her passage is through

Homemade elderberries

Are the best kind

Trust the elders who challenge the worried

Who question the juice of manufactured berries

Squashed like bugs

And tagged unrelenting

We can hardly lose to the ignorant

Coughs are the rugged cries of the resistance

Temperatures rise inflated by insistence

This is not a time for blind obedience

This is a time for ripened romance

The lure of the anarchist

Not so frightening in a handshake

Among the resistance

This is the time for brave berry picking

Noting the ripe and the bruised from living

Gathering for the inevitable 

The common great listening

It will come slowly free of insistence

When the hearts and the minds 

Coalesce in an earthquake

The planet gives up its right to tsunami

When the people wake up

When they are armed with

The love of themselves who speak with disarming

Of peace and enclosure

Respect and the disposal of war

Plant an elderberry or ten

Become human again.

Stop coughing. Note the scars

Bring nothing but change.

Pick elderberries and be brave again.

Eat elderberries readied for the strange.

Go forth and bleed. Again and again.

It’s a star we possess in the end.