Motherhood is the only Truth of Life

Hae.mi, every verse is a child of love
As I watch you with your child
I think upon the qualities of your womanhood
Your ancestry and your design upon time

The heart as a gulf, and a bridge and a blessing
I who have experienced so little true joy
Can admire the cherishing of a maternal love
That exceeds in brightness and in sport

The spring’s treasured moments of a young mother
I watch you with your child, as I would the stars
Or holding the Earth in my mind as I would
Imagine life caring for all the galaxies

Hae.mi, so when you think of me, remember
I die at dawn and daybreak, every day
To witness your majesty as a woman and a mother
With no decisions and no receiving, I’ll carry on

So as to die with the morning and the evening
We might support the future in a familiar face
Like your son or the billions of lights
That swim in the hawk-like night

And the swan-like soul of all living things
Those eyes, a little bit like our own,
Those hearts, that feel and hope and love
Like we do, Hae.mi, that is your gift

That I can love you like a father who watches his daughter
Taking care of the world while she travels it
In the years and greetings and journeys
Given to her, and what will live on in her sons

In his daughter, who will one day become a mother…

 

Photo Courtesy.

Perfectly Red #amwriting #erotic #NaPoWriMo #AppreciateAnAuthor

Perfectly Red

What if I were to tell you,
I am profoundly enchanted
By the flowing complexity in you
Would you believe me, that I have read
You like a novel, dove into your skin

Your diaries I’ve taken into my heart
Move me, may I be the one to
Unlace your secrets down your spine
Hitching up your skirt to straddle your mind
They saw the brain is the most erotic organ

In ways you are but and will remain a stranger
Like a seed I will never sow
And with lips I am yet to ever kiss
With eyes that have not met in a flood
Of these lingering touches I’ve never known

What if I am aroused by your
Labour of scripture, your tyranny of ambition
When it comes to authors, they are not
Required to be naked in bed to make love
All it takes are the tools of

Our minds writing letters at an uncontrollable pace
But I suspect, you like to pull close
Then dart away, breathing in short bursts
In anticipation of the next melting
Where you are perfection and I am

Always slightly ready, with mouth of wonder slightly open
And heart turned wet in a stranger’s kiss.

The Medicine Collaboration #NaPoWriMo #Gratitude

When I was a young poet, toiling on the writer’s cafe (www.writerscafe.org), there was this one constant presence. One indomitable giver of praise, recognition, reviews. I won’t forget WHO that was, or their quality of compassion, generosity and their human spirit: it’s

https://johncoyote.wordpress.com. This poem is dedicated to him:

The Medicine Collaboration

Life is hard, they used to tell me
I didn’t not understand
Until I found out for myself

Life punishes the ones we love
Enough, to internalize kindness
Is there a cost to being kind?
Mercy, forgiveness, gratitude

It’s not an investment
Altruism isn’t a burden
Being nice isn’t difficult

Life is hard, I heard it again
From my own mouth
Later in life, and I could see
What they were saying

Cut jobs, heartbreaks, divorce, debt
Living had a silent toll

Art was a release of the good & bad
The chronicle of our relationship
With a God, that wasn’t going
For an easy life without errors
Failures had a place in our learning

Evolution wasn’t afraid
Of tragedy, dying young, cancer

Life is hard
So why not try to do some good?

Anticipation of that Moment

(Ode to Mark Strand)

Poets love death, for that’s their existential
Crisis, the juice that makes them write
The immortal point of heavens
And the final Dream of laughter

I am not thinking of death
For Death thinks of me
I am not standing alone
For being alone is my script

To observe a world as lonely as this?
And point to dying as an epiphany
For mortality is a leafless change
Youth too short, those city of souls

Too transient! I no longer yearn
For the great plaza of life, or the various
Temptations that one might find in existence
It’s all fair and well, O’ let is all be done soon

I love mystery and as such, I’m looking
Forward to the journey that is death
Though one thing I dislike, this waltz in
Delirium, I will no longer be able to write!

WHITE JADE, FEMALE POET, ORANGE PITCHER

Heaven bless the babe
Orphaned by divinity
What queer books she will read
Granted, to be a poet isn’t easy

When she is older, she will say:
“Till the Spring, my murdered lover
Till our souls meet in another form
The language of my foolishness
Will be the bridge I swear”

Heaven bless the babe
Who suffered for the world
To make a cheerful song
That could outlast the centuries

Quiet, suavely clothed in sacrifice
Hurling, golden spears of martyrdom
Up the lines my silver runner
With a pen and a canvas
Bearing the banner of lost poets

In a siege of a dead poet’s society
Heaven bless the babe
Who became a writer
When critics were white rich men

Come now Aphra, be content
You and I have nothing to do with music
Akhmatova’s cannon is all about
Death beating the door in
For women fraught with inequality

Emily knew in her circle of white
Edna urged a certain possession of zest
For being born a woman, is a clarity
In the pulse, a sonnet gone unread.

P.S. To female poets: Aphra Behn, Anna Akhmatova, Emily Dickinson, Edna St.Vincent Millay.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sylvia-II-460402222