A Funeral of Years

I cut my teeth on the gap-toothed effervescent glow of innocence

where weeds and wishes grew in wild abandon

in that back yard that seemed to stretch forever.

With pockets full of daydreams, we exchanged small miracles for shiny nickels,

and braided lilting melodies of joy

into the flower crowns we wore.

Running with wild abandon into the future that shined so startlingly bright,

we never thought to look back at the innocence we shucked with every leap we took.

I lost that little girl somewhere in the sands of time and after many years of searching, I realized I’d attended my own funeral when I abandoned her.

Prettier Than a Broken Heart

If I could write to you of sorrow, if I could explain this devastation,
I’d use words like utterly, and calamity, and grief.

But the words refuse my bidding, choosing to cloak themselves in darkness and half formed thoughts instead.

They shuffle off their course like drunken sailors, lose their way somewhere between half-hearted and dejected.

With quivering chins and sagging limbs, I’ve not the strength to make them dance
to fool a broken heart into being
prettier than it ever is.

“where are the angels?”

One of the most beautiful and relevant poems I have read.

A broken tulip

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For the woman gangraped by the tribe of Benjamin. 

Silent you were. You were
silenced. Not a word given you
in the whole merciless narrative.
Not a movement credited you
except one: prelude to the tale,
you returned to your father’s house
for four months. And one more
movement: footnote at the end,
you reach forward a hand.
Between that you are moved
as a pawn by primary players.

Nameless you are. You were
unnamed, called “concubine” and
“slave-woman” . Your “master”
was honoured as a “son-in-law”
yet you were no wife.

The whole story you travel between and with
the men meant to protect you. Father. Master (husband). Host.
They brutally betray you.

Father and son-in-law dine nightly
feast again and again, the two of them
then he takes you and “his other servant”

departs. Arrive in Gibeah.
Dialogue between master and servant.
Dialogue between master…

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Incongruous

A trellis of verdant roses
creeps slowly
up the knobby ridges of my spine
Clinging fast to empty spaces
where the heart’s grandeur, like brilliant stars, would shine
Every night I traverse this Rorschach devastation
To die of grief in the light of day
Leaving fodder for the wild roses
plucked at will by all who pass this way

*One of my favorite poets is Robert Frost, and to this day I still love to recite his Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening poem every time we get the first snow of the winter. I was reading his Desert Places poem and was inspired to write something similar to his style of poetry (even though I actually dislike rhyming poems if they’re written by anyone other than Robert Frost.) I drew on my own experiences for this poem, as I’m sure Robert drew on his for his poems.

My Grief With My Culture

In this culture there is no room for individuality. There is only one mindset–conformity. Either conform or die.

What they don’t tell you is that to conform is to choose to die also.

To Love Deeply

If you’ve never truly hated someone with the deepest of bitter resentment and the hottest fire of burning rage–then do you truly know what it is to love someone?
If ever the black crashing waves of the purest loathing have never pummeled you, sucking you under in the fierce current of their bottomless depths, then tell me–how do you ascend into that sweet paradise of sublime beauty in equal measure?

To love deeply is to risk letting the pits of hell take you into their unrelenting embrace.
To crash unexpectedly into that fiery inferno, arms and legs akimbo as you pinwheel helplessly through the air.
To feel a thousand deaths as you watch your dreams sputter and die, winking out one by one.

But the glaring tragedy here is not having to survive such unbearable loss, no–the real tragedy here is to never have felt that kind of consuming love at all.