Saturday, August 26, 2017

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.

 

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