Sing

When the heart asks a question
there’s no answer for
we can open the windows
and lie on the floor
allowing the cross breeze to
whisper the truth
about long lost lovers
about long lost youth

And the answers will pain us
and the answers will sting
bitter comfort to heartbreak
a sad song to sing

Lay me down and lie with me
let the melody bring
tears and some consolation
a sad song to sing

When the ceiling is cast
with the sweep of the dark
we can listen to shifts changing
out in the park
as the day things and night things switch places
so we
can pretend things are different
in the shadows just be

And the moonlight will glitter
and the starlight will string
sparkling tears on our faces
a sad song to sing

Lay me down and lie with me
let the melody bring
tears and some consolation
a sad song to sing

(c) RCGA 2023 — For J

Hello

I am so tired.

This journey has lasted a lot longer

than a few months

or years…

No, this journey

has been going on

most of my life.

For a long time I just thought

I was being awkward,

as most people tend to be

about their image

their appearance

their body in general,

especially those of us

that didn’t fit the societal pattern

of clean and fit presentation

in pressed linen

and summer seersucker,

pretty hair

and figures that behaved

even when they bled.

I had a long and contentious

relationship with my womb.

She and I were at odds

for over forty years

and never reached détente

in a war that shouldn’t have been.

I tried the women’s circles

and embracing my moon

but frankly…

there isn’t enough hippie

in this old nurse

to appreciate the rust and cramps

of spoiled bedclothes,

the standing rush of effluvia.

I was Rachel,

sitting on the camel saddle,

complaining that

the time of women was upon me.

So time and again

time and again

time and again

the time came and went.

Outside the physics of the pudendal volcano

I struggled with my form

too round

too soft

too much

and though I paid it lip service,

secretly I wished for the sylph

instead of the mother.

Now I am at the end

of letting go of my flow.

They have pronounced

my parts dangerous

and taken them away,

strafing the fields behind them

with the shock and awe

of chemicals and waves

that alter me

at a fundamental level.

I am so tired.

No longer am I a maiden

and I was never really a mother

so now I must embrace

the crone

and I am not sure I know how.

I do not know my body

when I look at myself

in the mirror.

Maybe I haven’t been looking

for a long time?

Maybe I should have been looking

more closely.

I see the looseness,

the crepe and the sagging

the extra element of softness in the skin

that pronounces it fragile…

and I am discovering that I am pale

and I am discovering that I am aging

and I am discovering that I have ignored

so many changes in my life,

and now they are sitting at my feet

attentive and unwilling to be set aside

time and again.

The time has come.

They say beauty is skin deep,

and if so, I am not beautiful,

but I am striking

and I am a warrior

with radiation marks on her belly

and surgical scars.

They say you are as young as you feel;

then I am ancient.

I have never been newborn

and will only get older.

I am a timeless warden of human femaleness.

I am given to the receptive generosity

that belies the hard bones

of my infrastructure.

I don’t always know who I am

when I look in the mirror,

but when I look inside myself

I have no doubt.

This is the time for me to be

tired and sometimes lost as I am

something and someone

I never knew

because I did not introduce myself.

Hello.

I am you.

I know you are tired.

So am I.

Let’s rest together.

We have a lot to do.

(c) RCGA 4-5-2023

AI of MysticFool as warrior woman.

Sleep Medicine

I fell asleep unsettled,
days on days of mental gymnastics
and physical pain
rolling into psychic distress:
the echo of a silent scream
devolving into whimpers,
self-soothing,
rocking…
and as breaths became deeper,
reaching further into the bottom of my lungs,
benevolent ancestors crept up beside me
singing.
No matter my circumstances,
no matter,
no matter.
My body is a sacred space.
My tears are holy.
My heartbeat is the drum that guides the feet of my spirit,
and the dance is healing.

(c) RCGA, 2023

Mastodon

Just an FYI for folx who might be in the Mastoverse, I am there, having moved from the bird.

My feed from the other site used to scroll down the side of this page as a widget, but I don’t see one I can use for my toots yet.

I’ve gotten into a bunch of daily prompts for writing, mostly haiku and senryu, but also other short forms.

I also suspect I’ll be doing some Homophone Hotline posts, those also used to crosspost to FB before the two of them cut relations some time back. As an unapologetic grammar fiend, I often find misused homophones in the books I read, and that’s usually where I get the inspiration for a Hotline post. Some, but not all of them, rhyme.

So, if you are wandering around on Mastodon, you can find me as @CaroCrow@mindly.social and follow me, and let me know who you are over here. There’s a learning curve if you’re used to a really simple interface, but I’ve been over there about a month now and I’m pretty comfortable playing around. Hashtags abound, it can be as crazy or as kind as you like depending on who you follow, and that includes hashtags. I have been really enjoying the art, photography, short fiction, poetry, informational posts… and pet pictures! Lots of makers creating and finding community on various incidences, but if you know their address, you can find them and add them to your personal circle.

I know I’m gushing a bit, but I really think the decentralized model has a lot going for it as far as freedom goes.

Be well, my WP friends. Here in the Northern Hemisphere we are looking at the Longest Night, the Winter Solstice, and after that, the days will get progressively longer as we huddle down in the chill of winter and wait for spring. Where I am, we are expecting very cold weather for a few days, I’m sure the alligators will be frozen in the mud! Remember, if you’re cold, they’re cold, bring ’em inside! (JK. But really, make sure your outside critters are okay, it’s gonna be frigid!)

Here’s a free haiku just for being you LOL…

In the realm of words
Communication dances
both naked and veiled

Bad Veins

Today I apologized for having bad veins
but what I meant to say was

Slow down

Please slow down

You are making me anxious
and that isn’t helping any of us

I don’t want to be here
and maybe you don’t either
sweet little fresh faced girls
in cotton scrubs
prattling over me
the invisible hurdle
in your tightly scheduled day

I have been you
many times I have been you

Look at me

Right in my eyes

Take a deep breath
and slow down

We’re going to get through this
I promise

(c) RCGA 2022

Tarot Roulette

One night in college
a reader came from NOLA
to a friend’s tea room

We sat the night through
drinking whiskey from teacups
reading each other

The joke was on us
JD stole our memories
like he always did

Child I’ll read your cards
if you’re not afraid to know
otherwise drink up

All Souls

On All Souls morning

the sidewalk in front of the iron fence

housing the dead

it’s full of cheerful Catholic schoolgirls

in sweaters and plaid

some dancing, some shuffling

two arm in arm

skipping along

their oxfords pattering

against segments made uneven

by the rude roots of venerable trees

So

this is what life is

a precarious balance

of vigorous being

against the place where

what’s left comes and goes

where giggling girls

play in fallen leaves

that may contain the essence

of their ancestors

and if there is justice

they see it and smile

RCGA 2022 – All Souls Day

From Midjourney Discord, AI creation of Carabella 11-2-22

Holding Breath

Sometimes in the times past dark

there’s bad news and

it alters the physics of your mind

expansion

retraction

explosion

implosion

in and out and in again

like breathing

only more so

until

until

you try to hold your breath

just to make it stop

to cut the cord of

hyperventilation

to retain a tiny morsel

of the moments before

before

before

But you can’t hold your breath

forever

only the dead cease breathing

and in the end

at the very end

at the end of it all

when they expire

they exhale

So take in the breath

take in every molecule

let it feed your body

and your mind

in the dark places

let it gather up your

detritus

let it give you a moment

a precious moment of

homeostasis

then

let it go

let it go

let it go

let it

go

(c) RCGA 2022

Toothache

You see them everywhere

and nowhere

the insanity of hope and horror

stirring your denial

just another moment

They are never close

yet ever present

glimpsed at edges

slippery images

slick as glass knives

steady as clockwork

Until one day

you are pained to realize

you haven’t seen them

in a while

and the absence of pain

like a long-pulled tooth

aches again

but not in the sharp and bleeding way

of recent injury

not in the throbbing despair of something

that surrounds with no escape

not in your tightly clenched jaw at all

but somewhere

behind your ribs

a heart-home for all your missing teeth

where instead of shifting ephemera

teasing at your periphery

they grind and gnash silently

slick as glass knives

steady as clockwork

(c) RCGA 10-01-20

On the death of Chadwick Boseman – August 28, 2020

A young man, only 43, ravaged by cancer, yet triumphant in his calling. May he rest in power, rise in glory, and his name be spoken forever. Chadwick Boseman (1976-2020).

A Litany of Atlanta
W. E. Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963)
Done at Atlanta, in the Day of Death, 1906

O SILENT GOD, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days—
Hear us, good Lord!

Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery in Thy sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy heaven, O God, crying:
We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!

We are not better than our fellows, Lord, we are but weak and human men. When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed: curse them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home.
Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!

And yet whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them in crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their mothers and their grandmothers? Who bought and sold their crime, and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity?
Thou knowest, good God!

Is this Thy justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence, and the innocent crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty?
Justice, O judge of men!

Wherefore do we pray? Is not the God of the fathers dead? Have not seers seen in Heaven’s halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and rolling smoke of sin; where all along bow bitter forms of endless dead?
Awake, Thou that sleepest!

Thou art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, thru blazing corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong and free—far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy and chaste prostitution of this shameful speck of dust!
Turn again, O Lord, leave us not to perish in our sin!

From lust of body and lust of blood
Great God, deliver us!

From lust of power and lust of gold,
Great God, deliver us!

From the leagued lying of despot and of brute,
Great God, deliver us!

A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars when church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance!
Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!

In the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears and held our leaping hands, but they—did they not wag their heads and leer and cry with bloody jaws: Cease from Crime! The word was mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one.
Turn again our captivity, O Lord!

Behold this maimed and broken thing; dear God, it was an humble black man who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They told him: Work and Rise. He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but some one told how some one said another did—one whom he had never seen nor known. Yet for that man’s crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children, to poverty and evil.
Hear us, O Heavenly Father!

Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes who do such deeds high on Thine altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever and forever!
Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!

Bewildered we are, and passion-tost, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy Throne, we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this? Tell us the Plan; give us the Sign!
Keep not thou silence, O God!

Sit no longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely Thou too art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing?
Ah! Christ of all the Pities!

Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words. Thou art still the God of our black fathers, and in Thy soul’s soul sit some soft darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night.

But whisper—speak—call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path.

Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and without, the liar. Whither? To death?
Amen! Welcome dark sleep!

Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet shudder lest we must, and it is red, Ah! God! It is a red and awful shape.
Selah!

In yonder East trembles a star.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!

Thy will, O Lord, be done!
Kyrie Eleison!

Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words.
We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!

We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children.
We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!

Our voices sink in silence and in night.
Hear us, good Lord!

In night, O God of a godless land!
Amen!

In silence, O Silent God.
Selah!