Beasts of Burden

daughter of thunder · Beasts of Burden

The limping horse 

Will grow as resentful as its unkempt ergot;

the load, while free, has cost him everything.

Furious:

He at me for needing him,

We, at life and death

both conceptually 

and 

the way their reality spit in our faces

(Can you imagine? Death dealing so disrespectfully

And before we’d been properly introduced!)

Quietly fuming, until at last 

The buck bucks and vehemently 

In rebuttal I rebuke

and plead for just one more way

to rid me of this pain

post script// thank you for listening 

about: a quiet reminder to not take for granted those who help us bear our burdens

Grave (at the River Bend)

daughter of thunder · Grave (at the River Bend)

I do not know

Have you tried the truth yet?

I know, it is disgusting--

All of those wet bodies

Not sardines, but all the more so

Entombed. 

Sardines but human

Raped young bulls but human 

Slaughterhouse but human home.

I 

Do not 

Know

What any grandchild is to make of all these ashes,

But to deny the ashes exist?

While he’s coughing up blood 

Lungs filled of fluid and another man’s folly?

The banks like the back are broken,

Feeble 

Arms grasping at the edges of their own extinction.

My God, how tired the dollar bill must be!

Weighed down by centuries of dead skin and bones;

I do not pity its inevitable demise.

Neither is an apology lethal

Is not humiliating 

Is not exacting, even but 

Rather a calling to arms, to alliance.

The grandsons would like to put the urn down now

But safely

But gently 

But human.

Grief of such impenetrable power 

Cannot run its river course

Without allowance from the trees to 

Bend.

Postscript// my own ancestors were complicit in the gravest crimes in human history; that doesn’t make me a victim of slavery and that doesn’t make me my ancestors.

Isaiah 58:6

At Wrest

daughter of thunder · At Wrest

Certainty is the weight on your chest

Even at wrest, cannot catch your breath

The absolute bottom of the barrel 

Bad Guy to end all bad guys

But why does he have your same left thigh birthmark?

Or why does her sharp wit

Cut glass in the same backward blade as yours?

The mirror knows what the reflection refuses to see.

The Pharisee, a champion against time and mercy

The father feeding his family from the table of demons,

The most well-fed woman in the world 

Who convinced her husband of their hunger:

Is not God, Himself, their Villain? 

Imagine that is the truth you have chosen to believe.

James 1:23-25

Culture Culture

daughter of thunder · Culture Culture

All it takes is a sample of society

slicked smooth sliver of it really

to understand

science is not salvation.

The petri dish swarming in spilt blood

Cannot cure itself of the

lust for more blood.

Even as the skin or the very spine of

the river ran dry,

Still the physicist tries to

heal immorality.

Hands

Clasped

Desperately

at the beaker in prayer,

Cut glass poking through the flesh

of their 

very last hope.

about: from an anthropological standpoint, people will cling to their culture (whether born from semen or science) even if it's killing them.

Reaching for the Cleaver

daughter of thunder · Reaching for the Cleaver

Banana cream maybe?

Apple a la mode, obviously 

Mango and Rumberries, to me

But always a browned-butter crust.

The purpose of the American Pie is just that:

First, it’s going to taste the way 

temptation teased it would

And then?

It’s going to kill you.

The poison isn’t the pie, per se

But the going back for more

3 Haiku on Belonging

daughter of thunder · 3 Haiku on Belonging

I

Hood in the heavens 

Pack among the prophets, a

Lone wolf would have died

II

We want to go home

Said: take us to your leader.

Alien be(longing)

III

Although, look at God!

Sisterhood a mended heart

Every brother a blessing

2 Thessalonians 2:13- we are obligated always to thank God for you, brothers loved by Jehovah

post script// what if the science fiction genre needed to create the concept of  "aliens” to make sense of the heavenly spirit realm?

post2// I'm thoroughly and utterly in love

Siren of Pavlov

daughter of thunder · 2025-01-10-203838

**

Mother’s voice

G-flat in the key of fear major hums:

“They are incapable of a love this deep”

can you hear it ring truth?

**

P o p

idolized and fiendin’

for her next big hit 

the bell a vivid reminder of what happens 

when the hit hit back

**

Who a vivid reminder of

When what happened where

and 

With whom

**

Bell disobedient to the body’s language!

Does not recognize a crooked smirk from 

a clenched fist 

**

A hand grazing my butt

**

Or predator crouched in the underbrush

**

A paycheck that will not cum

**

Upon waking from someone else’s dream

**

Relieved

Another woman’s husband sighs

with her heart in his hands and his

Boot on my neck

**

And squeeze

**

The bell teaches the guillotine 

when to swing

But Who should we hold responsible 

for the song the sirens sing?

About// the behavioral conditioning of women; Homer’s sirens