What it Never Was

daughter of thunder · What It Never Was

The answer was always no

Was never any wriggling our way into an alternate reality 

Or

Could I for five minutes 

Just five uninterrupted moments

Mend the mortal grief that confronts my every thought?

No.

I fear that if I cannot accept it,

Am I really any better than the men who raped me?

No.

I am all out of your favorite shade 

trying to maneuver a mango gold into a searing red

Of well if everyone is calling the peach a gooseberry 

Whose to say it isn’t at least a bit sour?

No, and shut down the gaslight on your way out.

No, who once tried to inch its way toward a 

sorta-kinda-maybe (?)

But collapsed before the presence of prophecy

No is exactly what it looks like.

I am exactly what I look like.

Bombs May Fall.

That which is longing to kill me may well have her day in court.

The mere state of my silver sliver is not

what is being balanced on the scales of time and reason.

Speak your truth;

But should that two-lettered brute 

Happen to pry the way out its jawbone jailhouse,

To try and train it, already born, bourne 

and on its way to ruin?

To conquer its fate now is too tenuous a task

that only time could possibly tell.

about// The worst sort of liars are the ones lying to themselves

The Apple Tree

daughter of thunder · The Apple Tree

 Foremost, the hunger.

So the fruit juice driveled down while the seed was swallowed whole

Could feel it germinate a warm hum against my kidney

fibrous arms wrapped tendrils around the loops of each bowel

Boy or bosc? Pear, clementine or a sweet baby girl?

I baked round basking in the morning glory.

The waiting, that delicious want

Womb expanding with wonder

To try and escape the grit now? Mud brown 

bittersweet the core bore

Chromosomes neat and tucked 

between bits of bark in the teeth

Why even bother?

Just like his father before him

I close my eyes,

Dream of the orchard at my feet

Who else could I ever be?

about// because the apple cannot fall from the tree

Know Your Place

daughter of thunder · Know Your Place

I walk around with a jambya lodged 

Between the 11th and 12th vertebrae

Just

Floating there

Really

Curious how it curves just so

One might believe it has always been there

Do not lie on my grave

 and tell them it has always been there 

I beg of you—

Remember:

If there are angels watching over us,

There must too be demons.

We imagine them bull-horned and lurking 

But you have only to glance around to see

we are surrounded by darkness.

They would like to spook us.

But if there are demons recreating with marionettes,

There must too be angels.

And what really is a cheap dagger

next to the sword of my King?

Revelation 19:15

A Formal Apology to the Forest Birds

daughter of thunder · A Formal Apology to the Forest Birds

After Robert Frost

Eagerly

That is how the enemy anticipates our downfall 

In the same manner the sky fell rain

(Or men fell trees)

like always a punctured lung 

with the water seeping in

Eager tentacles bent on canoodling into my every cranny

with sole intentions of utter annihilation.

Who would have thought all of that misery could

 squeeze in so narrow a heartspace?

 

Although…

We bore witness Bobby kneeling in the garden bed;

didn’t stand a chance against so ruthless an adversary

as bullet sharp wind--

lodged but not dead.

Well,

We all saw it and said nothing

Just as I rock to bottom 

knocked clear out my axis

watched just three birds grace the cloud with their dance

After hail

After hawk talons 

After drought, the affliction of fever in

Ten thousand scorching suns

And then, on their flight back

What felt like punctured lung,

the dead tree smoking a hole clear through their conscience 

What could hurt more than this?

To know only three came back among millions.

I heard their wailing song and said nothing

But I am standing before you now;

If no one else will say it, I will:

I am sorry the terrors you have suffered 

Lay your tired head in my lap my love.

about// for you, who survive unspeakable evils 

postscript: quotation reference from Robert Frost's poem Lodged

Blood and Flesh

daughter of thunder · Blood and Flesh

Will yours still want to graze my lips when the fangs glare livid?

Hold my hand when these claws come out of their slumber?

If an apocalypse is nothing more than a revealing of truth,

Imagine how many little boys were slaughtered 

upon learning what I have been trying to tell you all along:

this rage was not an accident,

 a mere whoopsy-daisy coincidence of a cluster 

created at random.

A child can comprehend the concept of cause and consequence 

But leave a grown man alone to beat on his beloved?

And some remain bewildered at her becoming.

Well, what could we expect

when instead of heart she grew spine?

It is a practiced thing this thorn in the flesh

I fear for the flesh 

what the thorn begets.

Postscript// You can appreciate a woman being disgusted by cowardice can’t you? I'm exhausted.

Sibling Rivalry

daughter of thunder · Sibling Rivalry

What good could it do—

 holding sway, relinquishing rule—

at a time like this?

As if the mountain peaked and obliterated 

himself.

No, but it was the flick of God’s golden wrist.

(And who would that make me

to render God wicked?)

A fine wine turned to water as 

king after fallen king trip over his own crown.

How many psalms I have ached to spawn!

Oh, to spew sunsets reflected on salt-peppered coastlines, 

A butterfly’s violent rupture into rapture,

Puppies

All the while the outcry in Gaza, a malignant mental knot—

A young girl’s unraveling braid is pulled by her brother 

a relentless bickering 

Over who got more cheddar on their grilled cheese.

Poppa, furious at their unwillingness to relinquish 

Who really put bread on the table.

One of these days I’m going to sing sunshine out my hindquarters 

Boom fireworks like fireflies on a summer night.

On this night though?

This inkblack eve dripping virulent dew

across an entire planet?

I hold my palms upward cradling

my heart broken but beating (even still),

 an offering.

Post// “I’ve seen what happens to the wicked and proud when they decide to try and take on the throne for the crown”- Brand New

The Battle Cries Back

daughter of thunder · The Battle Cries Back

I

Those of us who know nothing but war

Bewilder cowards 

(And there is no shortage of 

soldiers who linger behind 

the loopholes)

But to be fair, I am equally confounded by cowardice

At the first beacon of blood, you run?

Who will save you from the massacre to come?

And so we stand on the frontline gawking

At the other’s means of survival.

Which is to say:

I do not understand how to be both warrior

And afraid.

II

Torture is a disc slipped from its seams

not a man too weak to know his woman’s strengths,

Try as he might to convince himself 

that you can grieve a thing you never knew.

Is not this dwelling place of demons 

The liars are calling romance.

Torture could never be 

The blooming beauty of truth:

That you could not love him

Because he would not let you.

There was nothing there to pinch the nerve,

To jolt alive at its rupture.

about: at the depth of my heart is a fighter for truth; I believe not picking a side is a final decision