woman

Earth Goddesses

 

 

 Ceres, mother of the Earth

 Athena, of cerebral birth

 Juno, queen of all the gods

 Vesta, pure against all odds

 Virgo woman, life bequeaths you,

 Standing proud amongst your sheaths,

 Wisdom, loving gifts of grace,

 In all fields is your place

 To give of virtue, mind and soul

 You plant the seed. You help it grow.

 You till the soil and prune and weed.

 You are the soil. You are the seed.

 

 A snow-white light on field's relief

 To countenance divine belief.

 The image of a wishful star:

 A steady shine -- but still so far.

 The nights of hope; the days of pain

 And on and on, that old refrain

 We are the heart, the soul, the spleen

 We are all we've known, done and seen

 We are the time that marches on

 With much to do before we're gone.

 

 

 

Your Philosophy

 

 

movie plot as object lesson

boys find valuable object

boys lose valuable object

boys fight to get valuable object back

 

 

I am woman born

no source of father's pride

too early in my days, they

track my aroma

I know not to hide

use me in some back room

until my womb rises with a new slave

for their diversions

 

I am sacred mother

tit tied to feeding, always feeding

(agonized bleeding in secret shame)

No more than a tether, a trough, and

tantalizer of the profane. I am a wrecked

train, a vehicle left to rust, blamed for

slatternly stagnation,

never quite thrown away.

 

Reject me; reject hard truths,

long trod diamonds, scuff-polished,

hidden like icebergs in paleolithic mud.

Dismiss prophetic exaltation, work songs,

labyrinthine gardens,

we who are only dreams in your philosophy.

 

You may well be better

stuck in your own

wheel of clay.

My lesson, when I am ready,

is to leave you to your way;

cleave to the ecstasy

loose, lost, subjective

heroic

 

 

 

Scrying on the Moon (for Brigid)

 

 

~twilight of the goddess, call to song to aery dancing, lady fair your fiery trance rewinds our souls; enjoy these offerings of fancy: all art is yours ~

 

By sibylline light

images I recognize,

creviced captures of my life.

I know her judgment to be my own.

 

"Nourished by Moon rivers

mythical cavern blooms

unseen by sunlight

glow green." 

Thus she sets the scene;

becomes the prophecy.

 

"Purest white simplicity

curved to suggest fragility

faith fed maiden ready for

plucking,

given in bondage to womanly woes,

hard rows to hoe

for that human hug through 

crying of night.

 

Fate of mortal soldiers, sacrificed to lust.

Seeking relief, beg for the boon of drama

high adventure

sneaking into sad hotels

for a fix or a tumble.

Laughs,

deadly play,

danger, a real chance.

 

Barefoot in the snow

icy roads

winds so strong

I could not make you hear.

I thought you were my destiny.

Crazy thoughts, far from clear;

but I believed

song lyrics from Saturnine deities

would not lie, leave me

dying, fading into winter's grey

drifting clouds,

endless sorrow endured for naught.

Lost on this careless corner,

dreaming of oblivion, intent on visions

like rain

tapping against eternity's

vast windowpane.

Scenic serenity.

Nature's gradations of green

soothe tired eyes,

trembling nerves, throbbing  veins.

Slivers of moonlight reflect

in withered refrains, unearth secrets

embedded in song

effervescing through cool pure air

 

cleansing the uprising nestling

set aflame

resurrected

tempered mettle,

pure, wise, tested

engorged with the will

to rise"

 

 

 

Lady Moon

 

 

Masked Lady Moon shines

into my room

speaks of fantastic adventure.

Dare I question her

abundant concern?

I a masked gypsy

painted in gloom,

a taste for wry humour,

impossible promises,

resplendent terrain.

A woman insane,

taken in by the Moon

fair sister, sparkling cold

so far

I wander without home

but that clear, quiet salvation

hiding like Moonlight

unmasked in my mind.

 

 

 

Athena's Valentine

 

 

Athena fair

stalwart daughter of Zeus

graces her time and place

with divine knowledge.

Today unlined face,

silken hair,

robust yet fragile form

are proclaimed as the graces

of womanhood.

Athena, lost in the pantheon,

whispers to the nightears

of her faithful,

saying:  "True woman's mind

inclines to wisdom."

But Daddy's girl

wants more recompense

for loneliness.

 

 

 

Bride

 

 

She awoke in a body, young, womanly, driving consciousness

on hold somewhere like dreamless sleep.

It was her occasional brief invasion to feel in touch with

mortal concerns.

She is to be a bride, again.  Foolish, innocent yet of so many

regrets and betrayals to come.  She is ready to exult in the veil

and it symbolic lift.  Happy to perform, darling of her audience

of familiars.  Happy day, swept clean of trepidations, of all

yesterdays and their burdensome effluvia.  Today is always hers.

These ceremonies, traditional duties and pleasures, bind her to

cults, cultures, accumulated lore and intuition.  Not creature, but

weaver – still she is inseparable from the story.

Today she again assumes bridehood.  Tonight, awash in festivities,

again she removes her spell of possession.

This new bride returns to a familiar world, changed.

No longer civil child nor spiritual supplicant, she has ascended.

People see her differently, treat her with more deference, more

distance even as they proclaim her their precious chosen intimate,

ply her with cherished secrets as if her allegiance would add value.

Her bearing carries an air, an enhanced spirit, a subtle awareness,

unspoken by any inner voicing.

Language is a human art.

 

 

 

Here at the bar again

 

 

Here at the bar again, bar nothing to me.

Deepest Scorpio, gusts tinged icy.

Onward toward Chumley's  2 pm Village poetry reading.

Searching outside book stall for bargains,

found a Paul Goodman

with cat and dog and baby photographs

to give to Cindy

a gift of love for a fragile child

stranger/sister.

Still affright from last night's heavy scene,

wherein the police took my man away again,

this time with my blessing and accomplicement.

. . . A man is a hard thing.

Also a drag on my developmental aspirations.

When all he does is loom and threaten

Big Brute Violence

to storm my sensibilities.

(What's frustrating is he doesn't hear me

plead for shelter.)

Laughing in the park we loved

Crying in the night we parted

Oh, beseech I, gods above:

Why must you leave me broken-hearted?

(and I know he'll be returning with more disregards

and diatribes and possibly pistol drawn to fire)

So I sit here in the bar, again.

Drinking sweet Kahlua and awaiting the poetry.

Taking a respite, you see.

Oh, Goddess, for this while,

bar nothing to this troubled child

(for child I feel, though woman grown).

Let peace alone assail me.

 

 

 

Pink and Blue

(and red all over)

 

 

Fist shakes from rage

channeled, coursing,

flailing bloodlines.

Caught, snarled,

stagnant dying ocean

willing to be taken down

from fear to violence.

Call wild arms,

breast, sinew, shame.

Chemistry surges, overplays.

One mortal coup de grace

burst sword to heart

that never lived

beyond desire.

 

If man is fire, dissolved

into greater waves,

why does Woman weep?

Why does not the flood

of pain absolve and

succor?  Why should fate

deny blessings of mortal

release in wash of blood

to lady fair,

snakes and thistles to braid her hair,

expose her tortured face?

Eyes that kill in silence,

stone lips, wrinkled nose,

washed out in times of

stoic denial.  Why must

she kneel, vile, victim

of violence, not its cause?

Who makes these laws of

natural selection?

Who takes the stone?

Who takes the stone's projection?

 

 

 

sacrifice

 

 

Why would a woman risk

death or other bodily terrors,

social exposure to all the slings and arrows

of frenzied hate,

to end her unborn’s fate?

She is protecting her child, like a good mother does,

despite her own suffering,

protecting her innocent from this horrid world,

from people like you.

 

 

 

Bitter Dregs

 

 

You don't get it.

You don't want to.

It would be too much to bear

if you let your thought go there.

Briefly unconscious, awakened to

hard concrete ground surrounded

by heels and toes, amazing

they don't crush me, but no,

like clockstep they walk around

though occasionally a(n unmeaning?)

shove -- I'm not a someone,

just a minor obstacle

unnoted in their busy day.

No worries.

Not like shoved down under

hard muscle, jutting  bone,

stinking of beer and rage;

or waking from too brief oblivion,

broken pain, bleeding

tears, torn, bruised, a

colorful toy

made for pleasure.

Then the voices, echoes.

Harpies and Sirens, Furies

and sad old women.  Fingers

shake in disapprobation.

Shrill voices call me beautiful,

in the way that ugly things are.

So bad, so pitiful, cardinal

status among the neverweres.

Struggling shadows, whispering

curses demurely lest anyone

notice and throw them further

down, below duration.

Never easy, confessing degradation.

The sin adheres.  No one wants to know.

 

 

 

God of Sky and Rain

 

 

Women hold up half the sky?

In His world

women hold up the sky.

Men sit around, masturbate, watch football,

occasionally,

go out and rape

lowering

that small part

of the sky.

 

 

 

Capricorn Woman

 

 

I am not nice, or warm

I am not a cozy fire nor a sparkling stream

I am practical, compassionate, concerned that form

follow substance, not content to seek what comes

easily.

I swim stormy seas, climb rocky spires, sometimes pretend

to conform while I investigate the scene. 

Winter born, Saturn ruled, not a saint nor a fool,

Capricorn woman, I discreetly ascend

into my truth.

 

 

 

A Woman Disappointed and Disillusioned, Courageously Facing a Seemingly Empty Life

 

 

Dressed in sadness

Depressed to madness

Mad to believe in passion,

which never lasts beyond the hour.

Shrieking to bequeath the

power to stand, to breathe.

Years appear, macabre hag

preening her wares.

"See how it was, how it could be.

Drag and drop your face, your fate

onto a printed page.  Can you see

new meaning?  New lamps for old."

She cackles, like

a metronome.

New maps for a new age.

That charming village erstwhile

known as Hell

has realigned into Helvetica.

All that burning sorrow

tomorrow's poetry.

 

 

 

Lovers Meeting

 

 

Carry her with love

Always, in your deepest places

She is a woman upon the Earth

in a land of briar and weeds

It is so easy to fall

to fail to thrive

set upon by slavering beasts

and prophets

You know she yearns to serve

so well

that none could find fault

Yet every agonizing step

like angry knives

cutting from below

hobbles her further, deeper

leaving less to give

Bloody prints mark her

dusty trail

Thirsting for the cooling warmth

of love

Carry her into your

sacred caverns

secreted wellsprings

journey's end

 

 

 

cubicle woman

 

 

The moments slither by if you forget they're there.

Sucking in sweetness,

hot sugared coffee, aroma of memory.

It might be a sluggish, clammy

descent of summer afternoon. Hints of autumn

like blackberry spicing the air.

The people here are decent.

They smile to make conversation a pleasant bit of business.

They want me to feel safe, subdued.

It doesn't matter that we are never more than strangers,

passing faces, complaisant.

They bring me coffee with sugar and plastic sticks for stirring.

In this moment all of the world

turns so skillfully

I move along without pause for acknowledgement,

stealthily aware.