Principia- The Physics of Fight

One, “every object persists in its state of rest

Or uniform motion in a straight line
unless it is compelled to change
that state by forces impressed on it.”

My mother thought she was carrying a boy.

(This was before most realized that
Woman, too, can be synonymous with warrior.)

I was going to be named “Harry.”

Harry the quarterback, bulldozing touchdowns in her belly.

Or Harry the Samurai, hai-ya! Take that, Pre-birth placental swine!

I have been persisting (insisting) in this state of uniform rage 

Encaged in it, foaming and seething incurable cage.

Will You now be said force that compels me to change?

Two, 

We were two creatures entwined

In a warfare so fine

That from afar we looked more like lovers

Decelerating faster than the speed of light

(this is the part of the poem

where time stood still)

Three, 

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction:

In spite of this rage, I love you

Out of spite for this rage, I love you

For all of this anger there is an equal and opposite quantum of joy.

About: anger and fight and joy- all of which have curiously coexisted in my belly since birth.

Firestarters

(dedicated to all of my spiritual brothers worldwide)

Hey beautiful human,

I like the way your arteries light up the x-ray

Like muscle boom thunder

Life strike a matchbox like lightning 

And it was good. 

So good, in fact, that from the bony chamber of his chest

God plucked a crystal-dipped rib of its cage 

And with it painted Woman.

And she too was good.

So good, in fact, that Woman, skilled woodsman of words

Like lightning struck speechless;

Enlightened to speak less but feel more.

Poured out but filled more with respect for

Your faith that infuriates the fire

And love that incites that fire to glow higher,

Grow higher to where its smoke can smother the night.

Flame lick the cold, choke off the throat from which

The Devil doubted.

Heat re-rerouted to where you lead it to burn.

Turned and taught by the forest's finest boughs.

My God knows, you have been so Good.

Crimson Army

(dedicated to all of my spiritual sisters worldwide)

Did you know that Jesus has hands?

Though holey palms bear witness of our sins

(And still they cup new seeds)

Though holy, only-begotten, Papa's right-hand man

(And still they humble themselves
 that those seeds may take root)

Though wholly existing without the womb of a woman

(And still solely able to paint our fields blood red).

Is the color of a battleground 

That against all odds yields a crimson camellia army.

Her faith reach the root shoot up to the stigma,

(It is here the bees meet their match

Smothered in wax, now ready to be reborn.)

"She is clothed with strength and splendor";

Every petal and peduncle breathing testimony to this truth.

The weeds, the shovel, the creeping weevil and the hoe

All conspiring to kill

All aspiring to know:

Who would win the war,

The bomb or the bud?
Well, it's the camellia, of course.
And what's more,

The middlemist red shoots her pistil into the sky.

ABOUT: The Middlemist Red Camellia. "Surviving the twists and turns of history, climates of different continents and even bombings, these meaningful rarest camellias can definitely serve as a vivid lesson for the human race." -Arena Flowers India

Proverbs 31

Syria, My Beloved

One

There is this kid,

Maybe he's six,

Maybe he just embodies what a six-year-old

Is supposed to look like,

The point is-

He is the kind of small that could crawl into a 

Cougar's den without getting caught.

Yet, not small enough to escape the 

The manchild's draft.

Two

Draft

(Noun)

A current of cool air moving in a closed space

Three 

A current of boy army, of toy soldier, breeze in to

Enclose Damascus.

Four 

The bowels of his mother turn

(A ghost-womb belly kick

At the flashflood of her baby boy's face)

Churn into wanting,

Then rumble into waste.

At last she has emptied herself of him.

Five

Who

Really 

Is

More 

Death

Than

A

Woman 

Bereft?

Six

The soft skin inside his elbow

Is tickled by a

Smooth, round bomb:

The corner of his lips crinkle

Upward at the "touch" of her

"Fingertips".

Seven

From miles across Aleppo's rubble,

The child and his bomb

Could be confused for a 

Mother cradling her suckling infant

Until he falls asleep full of milk,

Pool of it dribbling down his chin.

Eight

There are two types of hunger:

The kind you can kill 

Or the kind that kills you.

Nine:

And so they salvage their own city,

Bullying milk from a thin bovine's breasts,

Desperate cannibal feeding off his own flesh.

The streets reek of hurt and desolation.

Ten:

Scrawny-man-with-big-anger-

But-her-little-boy's-eyes bumps her at the market.

He turns in her stomach

Yanks back her breath.

Death is a living thing

She calls it by his name.

ABOUT// A Syrian boy soldier and his mother

Isaiah 2:4- He will render judgment among the nations and set matters straight respecting many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war anymore.

On Loving a Man with Trust Issues

Was it worth the ache?
Trying to tame a tiger
licking at his wounds?

Postscript// I decided to try writing out of my comfort zone; It's a haiku (5-7-5).

Fortress

The shade of her overlay turns to toasted almond

in the summertime too.

When we smile, our top front teeth jut out-

Off-white overbite stubborn in its statute.

Broody-eyed brown mud baths blink behind kink and coiled lashes-

Seeing my sights in a non-dimensional being.

My God, she even has my laugh.

Voice that sing like mine, but vacant.

Hands that hold like mine 

cannot chafe and burn abiding your burden.

Soul that shine like mine dims dull come morning.

Warning-

Do not run reckless into your own reverie-

No river of blood will surface through ruptured flesh.

No hope to quicksand your way into those brown mud baths.

She is blue velvet laughter rubbed clean and quiet at
the first sign of danger, lady stranger.

You have built an illustrious illusion and

put my name on its fortress,

But there is no woman there with a heart to call home.

ABOUT: have you ever talked to someone and realized they're more interested in the idea of you (this totally fictional character) than who you really are? It's pretty awful.

Slow Dance with Day

So you wanna know what it's like?

Imagine being suspended in thin air by 

The peach fuzz of Miles Davis' 

Blue Note recordings;

His trumpet, blaring its very bearings and bone

For the sake of my own pleasure.

Le soleil embrasse mes joues

Et le ciel me demande de danser.

And just like that:

The wind's got one palm in the small of my back,

('Neath the nook in my black).

I acquiesce,

My smile buried deep in the light of his chest;

Slow heaving breaths in rugged pine
or maple sap
perhaps hint of mahogany.

While the crystalline creek
counts our steady beat, unsteady feet-

I have never felt so loved.

Postscript// French to English translation:
Le soleil embrasse me joues, et le ciel me demande de danser.
The sun kisses my cheeks and the heavens ask me to dance.

ABOUT: I am so in love with this beautiful planet Earth.

Fencing with Night

In combat, the only barrier between the blade

and your throbbing jugular 

is the way you wield your weaponry.

Shield too quickly, your cover is blown:

Now, how will you atone for your lapse of judgement?

Strike delayed, with breath belated,

Your opponent's fate has been betrayed.

But shadows?

Shadows?

Who cower like cowards 

At the hands of what's right.

And how does one fight a mere trick of light?

Master such art as fencing with night?

Lasso the setting sun and beg him to stay.

Sway dusk with truth and reason.

My dark is tired; this body is treason.

My dark is tired, but won't let me mourn it.

To grasp this bull by both its horns,

I tell the Devil "No"

The Devil knows his death is sworn.

ABOUT: Luke 10:17, 18- "'Lord, even the demons are made subject to us by the use of your name." At that he said to them: "I see Satan already fallen like lightning from heaven."

White Sheep, White Wound

 

We stood some ways back from the bleating hordes of white cloud. 

Just distant enough to catch soft drift of their thick musk,

Too close for them to believe in our abandonment.

Most of them lay lazy fluff and warm,

Unashamed at the ease with which
their fat bodies hugged the supple earth.

So at ease, our own cheeks flush fevered with guilt;

We could not understand that freedom.

One girl, though, lingered
a few feet from the pack that stretched for miles.

You knelt nose-to-nose with her
urging with your fingertips
through the course of coarse fur
to tell you what went wrong.

She exhausted herself at your knees,

Pangs of black and white pain
jolting from her underside. 

Why aren't the others helping her?

"Well don't just stand there,"
that overease beckoned me to berate them.

Not one of us could see where a thorny branch
had torn clean through the fleece and
left her there to brave the blow alone.

ABOUT: I think maybe we've all been hurt in ways no one is aware of but God.

This is the Story of a Little Rock

Were he the chiseled child of say, the amethyst or jade,

perhaps the little rock would quit smoldering;

Shouldering so impossible a weight

As light as light.

It took near all of the swing the Pacific could bolster

to budge the brooding rock from his reticent state.

Slate swore sore against his silhouette,

Didn't know how to look at that stubborn glint across 

Jade's moony face without swooning.

Didn't know how to even maybe like
The barbed edge of his mother,

That God-awful ashtray gray of his father.

And what of sapphire's serenity?

Men mesmerized by the soul of her cut crystal.

He fantasized mountains and boulders,

Bolder in brawn and height than he.

Behemoths can do big things quickly, I bet.

Probably could stop oceans or
cop light or trick time if they so pleased,

Teased into torture by all that he was not.

Hot shot pearl out the belly of an oyster

Rolled beside our little friend, said

"But it wasn't a mountain David hurled 

To slay Goliath."

ABOUT: If Jehovah can use a small boy with a little stone to kill a giant, just imagine how He can use you.

1 Samuel 17:50- So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; he struck down the Philistine and put him to death, though there was no sword in David's hand.

Birth

Six minutes and forty-two seconds into the first

alternate ending, the soft silk slips from its security.

The bang of her body is heard in 6B,

Though mistaken for child's play.

Hypoxia has turned her nail beds blue

But not cold, 

not yet.

Much like the first, the second alternative 

Reveals a burden too great for the pink scarf to carry.

This time there is a loud CRRRT!

The tear mirrors a too familiar failing

Jagged edges of silk glare down at her, as if to ask

"Even now?"

On her way to double-joint the vile cloth, 

The third take glimpses the girl 

With one hand already gripping the closet doorknob.

Seven seconds into the clip,

The microphone picks ups her thudding heart.

(Doosh-doosh...)

A rare ray of light radiates against Genesis 22:10

Etched into the redwood bedpost.

(Doosh-doosh) 

Her beating heart, a bleating lamb.

In the bottom of the fourth, the thought of the noose

Is but a passing storm cloud:

A dark and distant dustpuff dissolving overhead.

The blush boa is still just a means
to keep the bangs out of her eyes.

There is no raging void 

No split silk 

nor knot with which to hang from.

Or not 

Hang from.

The fifth finale divulges 

A wolf cub born smack-dab

Between a rock and a hard place.

ABOUT: It's Mental Illness Awareness Month. This poem is a reminder that there is always another option than suicide.

Postscript: while I think wolves are beautiful creatures that humans can learn from, I do not believe in "spirit animals" in the Shamanistic sense; just thought I needed to clarify my use of symbols.

A Battle Hymn

At the sound of a pulsing harp,
let your hearts pulsate the floor.
Crushing inner cloud, collapse
breath retracted, back protracted
knee joints snapped.
Trapped beneath the weight of
everything you lack.
Let your mindslack interact
with the fact that now,
All you have to do is ask.

When the breathing drum breaks
from the beat it was formerly bound:
let your bodies raise.
Shake the quake from your trembling bones
Heat retreating from the feat of fear rising
and fallen.
You slipped, fell upward, now rise.
Partake in the waking of your former unmaking,
Let this bass vibrate you to extricate arms from arms.
Getting louder: disengage, His war is waged.
Loudest now: praise His name!

Quietly the chimes unwind
Unbind hips but fists confined
Refined mind and loose-foot ready to...

CHARGE!

ABOUT: 2 Corinthians 10:4- For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but powerful by God for overturning strongly entrenched things.

Landowners pt. II

They come waving their country flags in my face.

Each with his own textbook anthem

And self-proclaimed victories.

Medals glisten off their puffed-up chests:

"Ashley, I defeated right after her parents split for the second time."

"Oh yeah? Well I won Demarielle at a house party.
Two drinks in, her body was basically begging to be subjugated."

These are no noble explorers trying to make nice with the natives.

These are pirates and thieves that sleep on the dismembered isles of heartache.

Were they to dig below the surface,

It is not breasts and bottoms and legs they would unearth,

But connected-by-artery-and-vein chambers.

Still pumping for God's sake.

Still pumping.

ABOUT: according to a study conducted by the CDC almost 1 in 5 women have been raped in their lifetime.

Chemical Galley

Bright green means it's morning,

dark green induces dreams

There is no polite way to insert 

Neuroses inbetween casual conversation:

"Hi, how are you? 

A deluge of uninhibited emotion 

Is about to deconstruct;

Erupt bucked but breaking tear ducts 

At the faint smell of light,

At the feigned felt polite

At the slain and the slight."

Or

"I hear it's supposed to rain today,

What are the chances that you think

We will survive?"

Or

"The family is doing fine,

But the drugs could use a tweak or two."

You,

With the look and the awkward and the hole.

Whole mouths full of what we cannot say,

Weigh the unwellness against her weight.

Until one bright green anchor persuaded the bay

To let me stay floating what feels like upstream

Until I slid serene into one dark green valley

Fluid slumber- chemical galley,

Sailing seamlessly into a new dawn 

Beyond the crippling despondency 

I wave this freak flag triumphant-

Bright green means it's morning,

dark green induces dreams

about: Hydroxyzine Pamoate & Fluoxetine; they aren't cures for the anxiety and depression, but they help keep me afloat until the new system when no one will have to say "I am sick." (Isaiah 33:24)

THIS ARTICLE on depression and THIS ARTICLE on anxiety can also help.

A Conversation with Gravity

 

"I like you,"

Is how Big G bellowed from the basement of his belly

(I imagine gravity booms at every inflect of his 

mellow baritone bellow),
 

Echoed off the walls of my cognitive halls.
I resolved to get to the bottom of all the alls
that burdened my body down.

Body bound by pound on top of pound
of groundless weight:
The duress that gravity pressed upon my head
rendered me utterly confounded.

So I said to Big G,
my unlikely oppressor
"But your intracranial pressure, that
smoldering smog that fogs the thought,
that smothers all logic into bullheaded knot,
is wrought by rot
and I am crashing violently downward Earth's core.
I implore of you: restore my former mass."

And as I lay fraught with fret,
the fringes of freedom
all frostbitten and beaten,
tempted me toward
tomorrow:
my magnet rebelling on the verge of resilience.

about: my clinical depression

Unveiling the Great Weightless Wonder

Do you remember that scene from Twister?

The cow gets flung across a vast mass of country

Levitating bird of a bull blowing breeze like 

BAM! Right outside their window.

The car kept shaking, making gravity seem like

This game they played, but prayed would lose its momentum.

Lady in the backseat goes "we got cows."

But her feeble strike at wit gets out-quipped

By the mad, upchucking fists of wind-

Beating the expanse into submission.

What the film forgot to show is what happens to

The wind when it is weary of its wailing.

The Great Weightless Wonder Unveiling;

What you thought was violent,

Rendered silent.

Giant baby of a tyrant,

Tempest twister now compliantly docile.

Fossil fingerprint from that which they called killer:

Dark-skin girl in a bright yellow dress.

about: my anxiety disorder

Metamorphosis

Rehashed

Cast shadows lashed against the dash

Creating dark dancing figurines

From a peek-a-boo sun sauntering 

between rolling storm clouds.

Rehashed

It is not the past per se

But the (clear and) present (danger)

Presenting itself as if unhinged from yesterday,

Wearing different pants 

Humming an unfamiliar tune.

It is not the past per se,

But the fast forward future

Peering in the mirror

To see last Wednesday when it was 

Prodding and primping its way through the glass.

Rehashed

The mask under the face under the skin under the mask-

It's the shape shifting venemous viper who swears

the only contrast between seeing and being, 

Between glitter and gold, is the way that you glisten,

Is the fairytale that's told,

Is the lie worth believing, 

Is his skin ever peeling,

Is the blade is the rust is the truth in the dust is the yes in the no is the white hot glow is the infinite inferno is the pain-struck reconstructed painting of the past in the present toward the past is the past. 

Rehashed. 

About// I had 2 Corinthians 11:14 in mind when writing this: Satan keeps disguising himself as an angel of light.

Bagel and Wife

THE HEART

Is the way the cinnamon bagel dissolves

into the mouth of my mouth,

which is to say, it is not just within,

but a part of the moving mandible.

Masticating off to this

crunchy crumbling cream-topped creature

IS MORE TREACHEROUS 

When encaptured in clenched gnaw

Than spewed out from a slack-jaw.

Voracious in size or incisor, 

Insatiable unsizable saliva,

This hunger is more

Bladed weaponry of a saw-toothed smile

THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

I am enamored with the way bagel ogles at my fingers.

I mean, I love to sit at a table set for four

But right now it's just the two of us:

Butcher and knife

I mean bagel and wife.

Our covenant seems incurable,

batting its butterfly wings in my belly

Is most unholy 

AND IS DESPERATE.

But when caught and called for what it is-

A most beguiling betrayal,

It taunts a song that

Haunts my gut hollow:

WHO CAN KNOW IT?

WHO CAN KNOW IT?

WHO CAN KNOW IT?

about: a satire about the betrayal of the heart against the body based on JEREMIAH 17:9-

The heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate. Who can know it?

Oh, hey

5 Things to Know Before I Divulge Myself:

1. I've been reading poetry for as long as I can remember reading. I've been writing poetry since circa 2002 (which makes me eight-billion-years-old).
2. I write mostly out of necessity; it is my favorite form of catharsis.
3. I'm a book nerd, music head and she-wolf.  Do what you will with that information.
4. daughter of thunder is a play on "sons of thunder" (based on Mark 3:17). 
• You can't frighten lightning.
• I am deafening whole cities in the whipped crack of my voice.
5. I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses (check out the official website: CLICK HERE!). My work, however, is not intended to replace or add to the bible or any of their publications. Feel free to share, but I ask that you do not replicate my poetry for commercial or distributive purposes. Thank you, kindly.