Lament

And, also, J’accuse 

i read about her
a teacher at Marjorie
Stoneman Douglas
who watched helplessly
as two students
died in a spatter

and splash of blood

and after held virtual hands

with twenty-two

who did not die

hugging them in spirit

for years

and introducing them

to a kid from Columbine

 

who could share

his own stories

how he travelled

the long post survival arc

unaware that his stories

would end so abruptly and too soon

framing the thesis of endless

rippling surging trauma washing over 

even the most remotely connected

famously understood as a simple

matter of mere degrees of separation

 

this is no claim to knowing

what that was like

or will be like

only the dripping tears

of a distant witness

who struggles to speak

the names Trayvon

Sandra   George   Laquan

Sandy Hook   Uvalde

or (as metaphors only)

Katrina Maria and Harvey

or the women we did not believe

E Jean   Summer   Kathleen

and Karen and girls whose names

we do not know but who were made

to be baby mamas and boys

who became men in prison

where they did not rightfully belong

and Venezuelan migrants not welcomed
but so cruelly abused
and Palestinian children maimed and dying
by bombs and bullets paid for
by American taxpayers
and eleven dead at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life
and fifty-one killed in Christchurch mosques
and boys past and future jailed
with never a chance to be men
and one million transkids count em
fearing all the worst they can imagine
 
and all the people on the islands
starving and submerging and drifting on the seas
and the forests burning
and the planet gasping
through our dirty exhalations
and wet tears while the man
whom Brian calls The Grifter
casually compounds the pain
and names the people losers
and names the people takers
while in mid-reach for a billion more
and a brand new air force one
 
i lament every loss
but i also accuse
i accuse all of those
who monetize the peoples pain

Cherish

You are the girliest

girl I know.

I say so knowing you

to be a woman of deeds,

of experience, a woman

possessed of a gaze

and a touch that heals

all who fall

under your tender regard.

 

But yet you

are always the girl

I have wished to join

on journeys

and at rest.

 

You instill a wish in me

to do what I can

with every thought and tool

that I can wield to protect

all that there is of you.

 

To lie with that girl,

to trace with cautious fingertips

every curve of you,

to make sweetness and murmur,

to hum and to twist,

to stretch minutes like taffy,

to linger in those moments,

languid and liquid,

to soar and to swoon,

winging our way to a rapture

that is only ours,

to make.

They Cannot Be Us

 

They cannot ban

what they do not

understand.

Speak not

of Zuckerbergs

and Musks and others

slithering through the muck.

Let them suffer

in the profundity

of the silence

rejecting their grasp and reach.

 

Speak

in the poetry

of our lives lived

in grit and fire

and tender touch,

and lived

in honor and memory

of our Nerudas, our Morrisons,

our mothers, our fathers,

and all who did not,

will not obey.

 

We are our gift

to each other,

We share our gifts

with each other.

We live in embrace

of our communities

which we exalt hard

and often. We march

to a rhythm of our own.

Renewing Reinventing.

Exultant. Relentless.

 

And they? They cannot be us,

not because they don’t want to be,

but because we won’t let them.

 

We grant power only

to ourselves.