Sweeter Than Honey

for James Tipton who was the first headliner of Sparrows, Colorado’s Perfomance Poetry Festival who is already sorely missed.

Even poetry has
no words for this death
your soul rising above
the 14th floor where
i sit sleepless in Denver
your spirit has always risen
beyond all borders now
drenches my sorrow bones

how you came to SPARROWS 
FIRST featured performer
suggesting that you share
the stage with Rosemerry
a younger songbird who
would become most precious to me

you brought me honey in jars and
on your tongue
you understood and could sing
what my Brazilian heart only hoped
was true
even Isabel Allende recognized
an alphabet that came straight
from your fire belly unadulterated
by your genius with words

we poets fell in love the the 
complete rotund of your bellied
body like the pied piper you
led us to our wish to open
our zippers and let the costumes
fall onto the floor
so that naked we could dance with you

that you changed everything is true
though I lost you to the mountains of Mexico
long before I was ready and we called
you back with the enticments we could muster
very briefly but my body remembers the
thrill of your own poetry trilling again on your tongue

still this is another emptiness
one that can only be filled 
with the words you left us
written on the bark of other poets'skin
not a eulogy...a prayer
tearful gratitude for the small 
pieces of your grand old being
we have tasted and become drunk
on...your delicious honey

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Someone Called me from Burma

and again i write into
the night . hurricanes 
roar, days won't end
i am sick to death of
commerce and fear of dying

someone called me from Burma
today, mayanmar both names
showed up on my bombasted 
phone where my number had
be grabbed by the greedy

one guy had an Indian accent
my heart was not ready for
international wonderings today
i would like to afford a
renewed passport so at least
i could make it over the border
into Canada should the whim arrise

they'll put a chip in this time
to find or hunt me down for some
imagined tresspass or to save me
is what they say i mistrust the
greedy powerful, well not all
but most a wealthy athlete gave
away 150 million bucks today his
face looked kind i think he didn't
want another Katrina, but with
global warming the opportunities
will abound I think, don't know but guess

in our one room rental i sit at the
card table far from home, but 
remeber to be grateful for 
dry ground and a roof though
i do not like what happens
here i see the deep poverty
and sorrow all around me, feel
the bigger call to do something
i don't know what but guess
at compassion in action where it finds me

it is night and someone called me
from Burma today. i couldn't afford
to answer, but it's there recorded
Iphones do that take us way past ourselves
clikidy clak the keys tap out a message
maybe just that i am here trying to
know how to help, i am here anyway, 
i write into the night of hurricanes
and sorrow, i write love letters to
this world to the piece or peace that
i am I write love letters into the night

Feminist Musings–Published unedited

it has been more than fifty years
since I began to think of myself in
feminist terms though I was born rejecting
the third class citizenship card i was given for no
other reason than my birth. my mother is 91
and will lose a bunch of the compensation my
father had when he died a few days ago though
she was married to him for 71 years and worked 
by his side on the mission field and in churches
across Maine until she got her master's degree 
and began teaching school though well past her prime

i turn seventy in a few days and live on the nothing
that is the result of raising children in my youth and
divorcing when I was forty, working to get my boys through
high school with almost no help from their father my ex and theirs
he rides high in his retirement while i collect $312 a month
from Social Security and the yahoo clown in our white house 
continues to banish those of us who have very little in support
of his cronies, though we are used to that from those who rule us
and scream that we should vote. for what? another version of the screw job?

We are all on this road to perdition. God on the backs of those who persecute
and care little for their souls or the anguish of those who find themselves
unable to live. i am a believer in Love, in a world created and sustained by
this phenomena very few take time to understand. it is not a secret hidden in
sacred books interpreted by powerful men, but an announcement written inside each
soul and proclamation of nature loudly stated by stars, waterfalls and oceans.
i chose this day to be kind, to love as if tomorrow will never come to ignore the
lies that make up our daily lives and to be concerned and guided by nothing but the One
Creator, sustainer, lover, giver, and caretaker of all that she has made in fact
sometimes when i look in the mirror I can see my resemblance and it is about the only
thing in this wide world that makes me smile and keep on walking there is nothing
better for me than knowing where i come from and where my inheritance resides that
there is not one little piece of creation to which I am not kith and kin to the Great
Mother Father origin, essence and presence of all the Universe be honor Amen.

The Cure

my dad wants I’ll Fly Away

to be sung at his funeral

even as those who love him flock to his side

i go to his bedside today

feel the pinch of human bond

know we are pulled toward

each other in this salad of

love oil on our wounds is

being together although we

have found that most other

remedies are easier the pharma

book of love that has rats addicted

to heroin but only when isolated

and alone, back at the rat ranch

with friends and a warm place to

run they don’t like the substitute

for love any more lose the desire

for drug, can you believe we have

wared on this drug for years only

to discover that all we wanted was

the deep contact of other human

beings a touch like and the stone

when Jesus

cradled the face of  a leper in his hands

rolled away from the tomb

just because there was no more loneliness

Grief Loss and Black Holes

 

my throat gets raw
tears spill my belly growls
feel hell at my heels
only to sit in perfect
silence for ten minutes
until that unmistakable
peace comes oozing into
pores and bones forcing me to climb
out of a vast black hole
just as if it were only mud
filled and not a cosmic reversed star
sucking the life out of whatever holds
me in orbit like a reverse mortgage
changing the way of everything
leaving me cleaned out and ready to live again

A poem with no name

 

can’t read anymore horror stories

babies suffocating in painful deaths

what war crimes are we committing daily

standing silent with bombs in our hands

i’m digging deep for beauty the face of 255

tiny babies born every minute on this planet

soft faces to touch and souls to nurture they

come with the risk of the worst grief

 

i want neighbors to love and houses for all

i want peace like a river taking us away from

this lying bundle of uncivilised violent hate

i want love and kisses and dancing i want to give away

money and come again to the divine origin of life