Balancing Act

The assumption that a whole system can be made to work better through an assault on its conscious elements betrays a dangerous ignorance. This has often been the ignorant approach of those who call themselves scientists and technologists.~Frank Herbert

The kitten’s dragging a Santa Claus hat
past my clean black pants eyed by the white cat.
I’ve been up for hours, wheezing, gasping
off balance paradisiac grasping.

These fantasies bred deep my nemesis
words and story enslavement genesis.
The illusion of separation junk
science I have no desire to debunk.

We each embrace some nifty dream planted
in our ancestral stream, awkly granted
audience when we’re too small to recall
the spells, recant the curse and be it all.

Inspired by: Nemesis, Junk, Paradisiac and Nifty.

Budding Genius

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.~Thomas Carlyle

My mother was my first reader, spying
my diatribes (pure angst). Prying, writing
censure against dangerous emotions.
Her unsought notes set feelings in motion:

betrayal, outrage, anger, grief and fear.
The bad ones I should parcel out–not here–
far away freedom to say, just shove it.
While in my cells, ancestral hordes covet

bright life force, vital and wild. Past mistakes
could be healed by this child. Successive takes
keep failing, the patterns keep flailing whip-
like retribution, scoring wounds that strip

away hope. I’m enslaved, wishing to flee,
generations of neglect dogging me.
I breathe. And alternating pen and broom,
I write and sweep, my power now abloom.

Inspired by: Emotions, Dangerous, Parcel and Covet and the certainty that now is not the time to flee. In this hour, assume our power and step by grueling step unravel the mess at our doorstep.

Calling The Governor

You’ll not earn money writing poetry,
he warned. Look at the magnolia tree,
the fleeting impression of beauty-truth.
Erudite lessons from unruly youth

you’ve spent each cent, it seems, to flit. Scaddle
crass frantic careen through time astraddle
a wild bucking force you can’t control,
although you try, grasping, to save your soul.

I haven’t paid him; this is free consult.
His kind words are calculated insult
to shake up my perspective, find a way
back to the fold and income to create.

From childhood, writing poetry makes sense.
Metering, rhyming my experience.
Atop your hill of money, in ill health,
you dare to sneer, can’t see my hidden wealth.

In myriad ways called to destiny,
we learn to stand in our integrity,
to say, this evil shall not pass. I bring
my potent voice to bear. Uncertainty

and fear lead into a morass of pain.
Look in. The song of love runs through your veins.
So here now in the quickening of spring,
grounded, outside, blossom, rejoicing: sing.

Inspired by a recent blistering call to speak my truth to elected officials and these prompts: Myriad, Impression, Flit and Erudite. It’s spring in my part of the world and the constellations are bathing us in hope and illumination!

Call In The Alchemist

In the morning while the cats eat orchids
I’m petulant despite the calendar
springing. Saturn’s sextile’s jagged orbit
has me in a snit. What fierce caliber

must I inculcate so intentional
begin each day? Multi-dimensional
facets of myself call, in utter cheek
hiding among the calyxes cats seek

–what I insist is mine is torn from me–
and I’m assured, from these stars I can’t flee.
Just grin and bear it, stoic soldier, be
the calvary. Higher trajectory

the only aim, with each breath, steady on.
Seek calmness as each calloused piece of heart
exposes–all this weight so heavy on
the chains I must transmute for my new start.

Inspired by: Petulant, Jagged, Cheek, Inculcate and the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt “starts with cal.”

New Cosmology

The kitten’s shooting marbles ‘cross the floor.
Je t’adore, mon chat: impavid, explore
the darkest corners, eager for a fight.
Leaping ninja acrobatic delight.

While I clean out the litterbox, intent
on sifting these last vestiges–content
affianced with my once delusional
views science-propelled truth illusional

I breathe new power. My cosmology
sprouts in consonant musicology.
Harmonious beings snooze at my feet:
familiars, furry, curious, complete.

A new perspective affords a release.
Concordance tastes extraordinary, sweet.
I cannot save you, so I set you free
distortions in my electricity.

Beware the group-think, my heart, the grasping
claws, the biting jaws, confusion rasping
propaganda harsh and unreconciled.
The individual’s song free and wild’s

the only savior in the game. Let loose.
Follow your joy, imagine with your juice!
Comes now the equinox. Flame into spring.
The world is waiting for the gifts you bring.

Inspired by: Vestige, Sprout, Affiance and Impavid. And the “beware” line heavily influenced by recent readings of my beloved Jabberwocky to my favorite Aries in the featured photo.

As The Nail That Sticks Out

Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.~Abraham Kaplan

He calls me dangerous, says that I cling
to queer opinions. Such unease I bring
he’s shunned me, cut off all communiqués.
Creating affordable gamma rays

clearly insane, my body electric
healing in ways unexpected. Skeptics
look at labels, shake their heads. They believe
I should be dead. Reality I weave

so far from this society’s masked view
I’ve thrown aside the falsities. What’s true
is my sovereignty. I walk head held high
grounded in mother earth, plugged into sky.

Inspired by: Affordable, Cling, Queer and Opinion.

The Past At Our Backs

Carrying marbles, the kittens burst in.
Lethal claws cause no anguish; they’ve been trimmed.
Still I duck. They attack. Glass balls gyrate.
The volatile clock leaped into dark’s sway

in the night. Now I rise, my direction
unclear. I fumble for lights, inspection
might pierce through this fog. Now a dog enters
the melee, wagging tail innocent, her

invitation to pounce–she’s trounced. Poem
flowing, the running beat of feet: grandchild
whirls in. Ancestral patterns keep showing
beyond our ken, cast shadows tall and wild.

Inspired by: Duck, Direction, Anguish, Volatile, a change to daily savings time and kittens who run with marbles in their mouths.

Creating Glitches

How can we ever hope to awaken people to the fact that an ecocidal, omnicidal oligarchic empire is driving us toward disaster while singing us to sleep using propaganda lullabies?~Caitlin Johnstone

The visual clues obfuscate our view
–we’ve sworn all our lives we know what is true.
We’ve been trained, after all, quiet and prim
accepting the jinx, lies filled to the brim.

Wanting to be helpful, participate
in the spell woven ’round us, demonstrate
our worth. Outlandish to consider how
the days and weeks and months and years allow

manipulators dreamworlds to narrate
and we buy in, accept the silly prate,
build lives amid lies. Our family ties
despised and shunned. Our dissonance divides

until bankrupt, we realize the earth
essential grounds us. Though we’re taught from birth
how we should think and how perceive what’s real,
now we wake up, abandon the false spiel.

Inspired by: Visual, Jinx, Prim, Outlandish and the Stream of Saturday Consciousness prompt day/week/month/year.

Love Insists

Housekeeping is like being caught in a revolving door. ~Marcelene Cox

In the morning, love insists I redo
what’s been undone in the dark. Teens go through
the night kitchen with zest, unscrew and xertz
and spill amidst the kittens’ howling concerts

fierce tumbles and bold leaps. A disaster
zone, in short. Add the dogs. A forecaster
could simplify my gripes. It is ordained
this stress and mess. I interview harebrained

schemes, good intentions wrought–for I have bought
in, this sanctuary’s quirks food for thought.
I’m here in heart country and resolute
I clean my fractal, healing, destitute

of money. Energetically astute,
I ground and charge. My judgments now transmute.
The kitten purrs, then bites my thumb, my lap
the absolutely best place for his nap.

Written for these prompts: Simplify, Interview, Xertz and Resolute.

These Glory Days

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.~Frank Herbert

When I ignore my stomach’s butterflies
–angel wings of intuition advise
just so the route prescribed and doors opened–
I take a powder. Failure’s orotund

song plangent and layered, brimming lessons
I wish to avoid. All of my blessings
in retrospect I connect. Obstacles
abound as I stumble through miracles.

How can I see what’s real? These censored eyes
trained to filter and disguise, obey lies
push me to seek success defined by men;
enslavement and oppression equal win.

Squeezed to the breaking point, at last I sing
a soulful contrapuntal voice I bring
into the dissonance. And I believe
my solo creates new reality.

And every judgment that I form, release.
Unlearning what fear taught, I become free.

Inspired by: Route, Butterfly, Orotund and Powder. Featured image: my grandson stared at a mysterious circle in the stream lit by the setting sun and said, It’s reading my mind!