Open Letter to a Field of Poppies

daughter of thunder · Open Letter to a Field of Poppies

 Aren’t we pathetic?

The inertia in the stance of our stems,

The solidarity of our collective spine 

tall as the mountain faith alone could uproot.

What the sun-beat calls foolish we consider

resolute come torrent or tempest wind.

And where to begin with our pistils shooting blind into sky?

No, but not for naught!

Always the fruit of another stamen’s labor to 

Remind us of what we were planted in this field to do. 

What a passerine might perceive as 

futile vanity— 

the way our crimson petals pop;

tiny fists of immortal spring—

Is in fact the instinct to survive,

if not gracefully.

 

No winter could defy us our rightful bloom,

no weed, our beauty.

And alas,

Our coat of sepal, 

the wind that drives open the stigma and pushes the pollen down down

The root, of course the root, always thirst and raw lust

Is perpetually satisfied if only we would let it.

All so that we can begin again.

Our river, One River,

our God, one God.

2 Chronicles 20:17

Come Dawn

daughter of thunder · Come Dawn

 

 Villainy is the pitch black nothing.

A dark I inhale yet cannot fathom,

like smoke but not.

The 89-passenger Greyhound railing me over 

 

come dawn

drowsy grasp for conscious thought 

Elicits

drowning gasp in conscious thought 

Every decibel of human hurt?

Green shape-shifting into a pitch black nothing

up the west coast?

(The empty din of a silent massacre)

A howling out from Russian bondage?

What noiseless cry on your bedroom floor?

This too is villainy

The Way He Does Not Love Me pulls the trigger

The Arctic Melt euthanasia 

not one creature soul demanded

We are encircled entirely by enemies;

just look at how the millennia snarl aloud,

licking our ears wet with blood

Light-ning strikes in the sixth hour (dawn come)

Death too is a dying breed

Her demise trembles restless with fear

About: the whole entire earth is crying out

 

1 Corinthians 15:26- The last enemy, death, is to be brought to nothing

The Predicate Revolts

I wanted to bend each word,

As blue waves bend in refraction—

yielding an entire sea of bent over cerulean wavelengths,

That is how I so longed to manipulate the subject into matter.

Wanted to carve purpose into pretension,

Wane profundity into pretty 

like christ-mass but Christ-less

like all frosting but no cake

like run-ons running on and on 

(and where is the point?)

A river running nowhere 

So alluring albeit insubstantial. 

I wanted to bennnd

each wooooo rrrrd;

worried when the army of predicate 

wielded its weapon of mass conception

in demand of truth.

about: purpose over poetry

Choice Weaponry When Waging a War

I hesitate to apologize

Not because I do not feel sorry.
Grief, a tyrant
proves nuclear in its suppressive power.

Unrelenting remorse is in fact

The trusty bayonet I reach for 

When all of my other emotions

deplete of ammunition.

But it is a passing sleet

when the fire is closing in;

what terror can an apology quiet,

what good does my sorry do?

Sympathy cannot be the best way to remedy a mass killing,

Is no tactic to declare a monster abated,

A baited Lochness writhing at the ropes;

Clearly the chaos will plan its escape.

And there I’ll be— hunched over, mouth ajar

when the rifle is unburdened any remnant of rage,

I will quiver my bayonet

More white flag than weapon

Nonetheless,

I carry it with me always,

I carry you with me always.

About: anyone else feeling utterly helpless and ineffective at battling this pandemic and every war it has waged on the human race?

Who is Your Black Beast?

I stooped down to mine,

so close my fingers dripped slick 

with its warm breath-fog.

Knew it was being driven mad by hunger,

I finally stooped down and fed my fear;

Decades of white-hot hurt, 

the sort of jitterbug anxiety that could 

make skin crawl off the bone,

and futile thought process 

shoveled into the gaping mouth of the bete noire.

As you may have guessed, my fear remained famished.

(In tact in fact, multiplied or metastasized in groaning)

A gnawing aggressor,

I next tried to drown her out in honey.

The thick sweet chafed my throat raw.

Stomach ache with

All of that hot air bursting at my bowels.

(A poisonous blue in the belly of the wolf

I yelp louder

Sharp jags of howl cutting the listening moon.)

The glistening moon shone fierce in reply:

“Do not be afraid... I am with you.”

About: the futility of fear (like flatulence-- inconvenient but relatively harmless). God reminds me He’s got my back though

postscript: Isaiah 41:10

A Most Humiliating Ascent

The harder I try to pluck at the muck of every mood swing,

At the panic in my instinct,

The stronger the snapback and snag is of 

My knotted rebellion of DNA.

Labyrinthine yarnball of my bloodline

spilling in-between my fingers—

Every taint and tendency pool murky, irresolute.

I tug at the string, 

loosely at first, but the stubborn knot won’t give until

Finally, I am clawing at the constituents of me,

Battling the helixes of my genome with bare hands.

adenosine-darkskinbigsmile-thymine

cytosine-widehipsnarrowpatience-guanine

adenosine-ballnoseandclosemouthed-thymine

cytosine-funnybonegutturalgroan-guanine

Rung by rung, I fever dream my way up this 

Sick and shoddy ladder;

What humiliating ascent!

What strange science is this that I cannot algorithm 

My way out of?

Is no protein acid chain I can inject to synthesize joy.

Miserable woman that I am, indeed.

Still, I kick and scream at this plight,

Will not go gently into that good night;

The blood of the Lamb

Spilling inbetween God’s fingers.

About: a self-portait, I suppose. 

post script: references from Dylan Thomas in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:24

Chronic

On my ugliest days,

You could not convince the algae to

disentangle from my already kinked naps.

1:19am and I am still picking the fronds out,

as if to say

Yes, but you weathered the storm, didn’t you?

Sure, the jagged cut burns every time 

You furrow your left brow.

But at least the jagged cut burns.

Am I right?

Somewhere between a punchline and a gut-punch,

My survival lays in wait for its next reckoning.

ABOUT: my chronic clinical depression