“Red spider lilies are bright summer flowers native throughout Asia. They are associated with final goodbyes, and legend has it that these flowers grow wherever people part ways for good. In old Buddhist writings, the red spider lily is said to guide the dead through samsara, the cycle of rebirth. Red spider lilies are often used for funerals, but they are also used decoratively with no such connotations.”
Even now, forces battle for fractions
of light and dark, air and earth, truths and lies
the spoils, ripened treasures and abstractions
like oil, our foods, as humankind’s soul cries
split to the bone in factions
honed for overreactions
My soul’s not known for overreactions
compressing, sealing night into fractions
of morbid amusement, viewing factions
through porous veneers of their willful lies
unmoved by their biased cries
on currents of abstractions
Our sun will yield to night and abstractions
leaving the void and overreactions
light evening showers won’t drown-out the cries
of justice-seekers sliced into fractions
divided by clever lies
blinded factions fight factions
I welcome rain as night deceives factions
truth is our souls are merely abstractions
these lines dividing us all are sad lies
gains of few, fueled by overreactions
many fight over fractions
immune to his brother’s cries
I remain in-tune with my brother’s cries
but turn a deaf-ear to brother’s factions
I see us whole, and not just the fractions
bellies are filled by more than abstractions
stilled by overreactions
humanity’s fate still lies
I wonder which side will win through the lies
will we have our peace or feast on war-cries?
I still observe the overreactions
blackening hearts into soulless factions
they have killed for abstractions
weighing lives by the fractions
I wonder which lies will fell the factions
silencing the cries; soulless abstractions
overreactions leaving fractions.
***
Written for dVerse Poetry Form: Sestina, hosted by Victoria C. Slotto. Other poets have contributed to this prompt here. The Sestina is an oily form, super-tricky to pull off, like Jello-wrestling a sexy, nude, female vampire who’s riding a velociraptor. Naturally, I had to give it a go (the poem, not the Jello-wrestling, though I’d probably be game for that too.)
National Memorial for Peace and Justice, 2018, Montgomery, Alabama (photo: Michael Delli Carpini, CC BY-NC 2.0)
stories, labels, and approvals (Collaboration with trE)
not everything needs a story
it’s possible to want justice
without being seen as angry
and you’re damned right I’m angry
when our justice is perverted
time and again, and again
you fixate on the anger
spinning a yarn about
the irrational response
of us ungrateful thugs
the ones you want to
linger beneath the soles of your feet
will be the very ones who
you’ll beg to add more days
onto your life.
and when the Maker calls your number,
I will play bailiff,
executing all plans for your demise.
and the difference between you and I
will be that I had nothing
to do with it.
make your presence known in other ways.
show this world that there is
so much more to living than
constantly trying to flaunt your
privileges in my face
OR
belittling me every chance you get.
“when they go low, we go high,”
and it must feel like shit
watching angels scale the skies
while you reach into your pockets
for God-status and pull up lint instead
not everything needs a label
it’s possible to seek solitude
without being tagged as arrogant
I look inward for serenity
I demand airspace to be me
authentically free from the box
you cram to shove me in
I guess I’m arrogant enough
to exist in stout defiance
of your weights and measures
not everything needs approval
it’s possible to just want to breathe
without society constricting airflow
or to share life, laughter with a lover
without enraging a stranger lording
bizarre, anachronistic, dogmatic views
I wish to seek the warmth of the sun
free from fear of fatalistic reprisal
because I fit some unsavory description
or I love in a way that you don’t
and, I’ve watched you, watching me–
you want me to be this robotic
thing intent on following your lead:
no disputes, no disagreements, and
no opinion of my own,
and losing the biggest part of me
is not something I am willing to do.
this frustrates you . . .
it digs into places of your soul
that you aren’t willing to share and
I have fun witnessing your strength
dwindle to mere nothingness
since it feeds off hate.
***
This is a collaboration with my good friend trE. trE is an insightful and gifted writer. I highly recommend that you visit her blog, A Cornered Gurl.
“Your move, Mr. Bedroom Eyes,”
the words oozed from her coiled rubies,
mingling with her strawberry scent,
joining the rest of my taunted senses.
“She’s made so right
for all the wrong things,”
I think to myself
in her moon-drenched room,
willfully ignoring my own complicities.
Even when she turns away,
concealing her lewd loveliness
in muted midnight shadows,
her elongated shaded nudity
jiggled in ways that seemed
to beckon to a deeper need
transcending the lust and greed
gripping us within this bizarre gravity.
“And don’t you dare pretend that this,”
she added, gesturing generally at the
space between us, “is all one-sided.”
She read me effortlessly, relentlessly
just as she always had, dynamically
consoling, enticing, demanding,
“It’s just us now; be honest.
Don’t act like you don’t want this.
No lies between us tonight.”
She wasn’t made for me,
but her eyes perpetrate the lie;
giving none of the game away,
expecting to be taken,
inviting me to consume
all that I crave to taste,
daring me to meet
where her heat beckons;
the divine junction of where abstraction
melts into sensation, defining touch.
Using only the sight of her
copper-kissed marbled frame,
the ripened flowered goddess’ scent,
and the hot-buttercreamed
sound of her verbal dare,
she deftly sculpted my need
to close the distance,
to thrust my ugly intent
deep inside her beautiful taunt,
to drown her velvet purrs within
undercurrents of my straining grunts,
our bodies rising, falling in unison,
fueled by primal need to occupy
the same finite space simultaneously.
This is what I want
and what she invites.
Of this, I cannot lie.
But it’s also true then, that if we
shackle ourselves to our desires,
indulging ourselves, yielding to them,
we will forever be enslaved by them.
I take a step backwards, fussing with
half the buttons on my shirt that I
don’t recall how they came undone.
Turning towards me, her smile widened
leaning into my gaze, the moonlight falling
upon her contoured sex slowly opening
in my direction, cooing her incantations;
“Even now, you would deny your ache
to possess me, knowing by your pulse
that you were already mine long before,
when we first exchanged glances,
even in that crowded space of fortunes
untold, we saw what we saw in each
other’s eyes, the clarity of potential,
the unspoken intent, and even then,
I knew you were mine,
and that you wished it so,
and while you looked away,
you couldn’t help but to return
to my gaze to see if I was
still looking, and of course I was,
with each time our eyes met,
from you, I stole yet another breath
till now as you stand apart from me,
allowing yourself to breathe
only when I will it;
draw breath now and
tell me, am I wrong?”
I look away, failing spectacularly
in my task to rebutton my shirt.
“Look at me,” she commands.
I comply, my chest becoming tight.
“Breathe,” she says gently, and
I felt my chest relax as I obeyed.
“Now, don’t lie to me,” she demands,
“and don’t lie to yourself, either.
Right here, right now, speak truth.
Tell me what you want.”
“You,” I confess, my chest
once again restricting airflow.
“Who rules your air, your earth,
your body, your soul?” she asks,
knowing the answer.
“You rule me,” I answer,
my unbuttoned shirt now
on the floor behind me,
discarded with my integrity.
“Why are you still dressed then?”
she asked, and then suddenly I wasn’t.
“Still your move, Mr. Bedroom Eyes,”
she taunted again. “I can’t do
everything for you, you know?”
I moved towards her,
overwhelmed by the ache
to feel my skin pressed into hers.
Just as our lips pressed
colors into touch,
just as I tasted her scarlet
smeared onto me,
I smirked at my
illusion of helplessness,
yielding to the power exchange
we demanded the moment
our paths crossed.
***
“You look good all dressed up”
a voice said, and I turned
to see her two grey eyes fixed
upon me, devouring my contrasts
and contours, reading my reactions
as if she knew I’d always wanted
for her to say something, anything
to me, knowing I wouldn’t know
how to reply as I stammered out
a cheesy, but sincere “well, uhm,
you look good anywhere” retort
that made her snort, her crooked
smile twinkling down upon me
from the declining escalator we
both shared that seemed to descend
endlessly into the gutter of dirty
things I wanted to do with her that
made me blush as if she could
read my intimate thoughts on what
had to be the protruding horns of
my corny forehead that she reached
out to touch gently, having heard my
thought that said “please, for the love
of everything holy, reach out to
touch me gently, or even not so gently,
I don’t even care, thank God you’re
here-” my thirst interrupted and
quenched by a tender kiss and a soft
reminder that it’s time for me to end
the escalator ride towards the center
of us and awaken to the real world,
and much like my dream, this poem
will end abruptly with a vague sense of
dissatisfaction.
***
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 