Category: poetry

Updraft

On By buildingalifeofhopeIn poetryLeave a comment
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Can a plastic bag take wing?

Can God speak through the blue sky eyes of a homeless vet?

Can a ripple turn into a wave?

The litter grows like weeds

Stumbling and bumbling

Debris cast aside like a jilted lover

You were not to be ignored

Our paths crossed

You noticed my burden and you blessed me

I am a creature of Mother Earth

I pick up the detritus

The unwanted and disregarded

I make room for life

Yet there’s one that always gets away

Feather light-

First it skitters across the pavement

Then gains speed

The wind gusts and it’s lifted

Once, twice

over the polluted pond

( Please don’t fall in!)

Another gust and it soars higher,

Then lower

dodging windshields

until at last it gains its final wings

and flies out of sight

From Florida With Fear: A Found Poem

On By buildingalifeofhopeIn American Politics, Covid 19, Florida, poetryLeave a comment


This poem was written a couple of years ago as part of my writing class’ found poem project. (A found poem  takes existing texts and reorders the words. Usually, I select anywhere from 75-150 and then cut them in half. Then from there, I construct a poem.)

I had read Lauren Groff’s  Florida, which is a collection of short stories set in the state. As a transplant who has struggled to live here, I found her stories to be affirming of my angst about this state.  The fact that Florida is now the epicenter of the virus serves as no surprise to me. The lack of leadership is epic in its dysfunction.  I thought today was a good day to share my anxiety as well as my observations.  I want to thank my stepdaughter for her help in transferring my poem to the post. It was trial and error but she made it work!

High Tide

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                    Rough Atlantic surf near St. Augustine, Florida

 

The wind is up and the surf is rough

I need its roar to quiet my mind

quell my sinking thoughts

(It’s a daily occurrence)

I am seeking peace and clarity

and finding it to be a rarity

Can you hear them again?

The thundering hooves of despots and the pandering peacocks

with  painted smiles

promising

protection

A return to greatness and glory

Making the nation “theirs” again

They’ve created a turbulent uncertainty

and a typhoon of terror

They fracture freedoms of the disenfranchised

Revoke rights and restrict access

Rape Mother Earth in the dead of night

This is not my beloved country

I am not in the land of the free

But there’s still time to be brave

I am swimming with the riptide

Rowing with one oar

( I’ve been here before)

  and racing into the headwinds

in search of a safer shore

Day 18: Part of an undated entry in my writer’s notebook, rediscovered.

Union

On By buildingalifeofhopeIn poetry2 Comments

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             Image courtesy of: https://www.art2dstudio.com/fine-art-nudes-figurative-art/glowing-soul-abstract-figure-fine-art-print-yoga-art

 

The journey began on a rainy, cold, and dark November evening

Blacker than Black

Sheets of sideways rain and gusts of raw wind

Driving in circles

I misplaced myself

Still, I was determined to heal

Something was calling my name

When I discovered its source, I knew I was home

  Yoga:

a sacred space

The challenge to stay grounded

Yoga:

The  shedding of the stain of suffering and taint of living in a toxic world

  Yoga:

a refuge

Yoga:

The discovery of auras and energies and cellular spaces

that transform into a places for healing

and ways to move through pain

Yoga:

Once I walked in darkness, now I walk in light

 

 Day 17: This poem came from a post in 2012 entitled:  How Yoga Saved My Life https://wordpress.com/post/buildingalifeofhope.com/431. As with all found work, much has been transformed or changed. Yoga  has been a tremendous gift to me on endless levels with-I expect- more to come. 

 

 

Thoughts While Driving in the Sunshine State

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Image courtesy of:  https://www.deviantart.com/mossaabdaoui/art/Drowning-356156996

 

Stuck at another endless red light

I wonder

How will I leave if it’s a Cat 4 or 5?

Will I make it out alive?

I consider the fragility of my state

(and I mean my mind)

Refugee status is one crisis away

But then I disagree

(with myself in my mind)

Catastrophe and Calamity

have already arrived!

The Winds

The Rains

The Fires

The Explosions

The Persecutions

and Famines

My status is wavering and faltering

like the ground beneath my feet

My fears are well founded:

The displacement of my gender

The  violation of my validity

my cogency

my power

my credibility

Declaring war on me

Religion that seeks my submission

with no regard of my opinion

never mind my cognition

A refugee in my own nation

The waters are rising on a blue sky day

 

Day 16: Came home from work and this is what happened. Florida is on the front line for climate  and political change. A fragile beauty that continues to be destroyed on land and water. 

Broken Men

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                             Image courtesy of: PictureQuotes.com

We suffer at the hands of others’ inadequacies

The ones whose original wounds ferment and smolder

like cans of old fish and slow burning peat

The air is saturated with their stench of self-hate

Their fathers were tough-minded tormentors and serial abusers

Tyrants at the dinner table

They swallowed supper in shrinking, sullen silence

Broken men who turned to God or the Devil

One adorns himself with the armor of false piety

but he is a disciple of those brothers from Kansas

(He got lost on his way to Nazareth)

His aim is your body:

Submit and have children

The other is a con

A wielder of counterfeit deals

Your body is a tool to be grabbed and discarded

Submit and be paid in millions for silence

Yet they aren’t the ones holding the Aces

They are held up by others with skin in the game

Enablers and Expenders

Inebriated Indolents and Posturing Posers

Beware of the ones with more secrets to hide

They are the bona fide criminals in our nation’s homicide

Day 15: A piece grown from the word “inadequacies” that sprung from my brain while standing at the kitchen sink!

The Running Manifesto

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Image Courtesy of: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/190628996699364479/

 

Her mind is restless.

She is living with a sense of foreboding that she finds difficult to escape.

Running:

the welcome release valve,

the essential respite,

the place to gather thoughts and make sense of things.

Running gives a woman positive bodily integrity.

The sheer act tells the story of how a woman won’t be controlled

by restrictive laws or narrow thinking

that seeks to put her in her “place”

or shames her into choices

that someone else is making for her and her life.

She controls the pace because it is her race to run.

So why  run?

Run to stay empowered.

The goals?

To remain a free and self-determined woman.

And what is she training for?

Her Life

 

Day 14: This poem has pieces from a post of mine “Freedom of Movement” that I wrote on November 6, 2015- the year before election night. I must have had a sense that changes were approaching. In reality, they were already underway; the widgets were set in place in the 1980’s. 2016 was the beginning of the overt onslaught.

 

Host Bodies*

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 Image courtesy of: https://visionaryartistrymag.com/2016/02/afshin-naghouni-beautiful-images-ugly-truths/

 

What is the sanctity of life?

When does it begin and when does it end?

Whose life is sacred and holy?

I hear that the state of my  body in your state will have no exceptions.

Incest and Rape: Criminal conceptions

 Six week legality is out of touch with reality

You care for the “Innocent”

Yet spare no regard for a woman’s predicament

Born Female

Born with no human value

Born to temper the impulses of our own personhood:

Education

Self-determination

Independence

Sexual Expression

I live in fear of the pitchforks of Oppression

Intent on seizing Political Power and Unholy Ascension

 

 

* Title inspired by the idiotic comments of Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva who used the term to describe pregnant women five times during a recent interview. He later apologized but we all know the subconscious mindset has a truly ugly way of revealing itself.

Day 13: Recent state laws passed extreme abortion restrictions with the intent to get their cases before the Supreme Court. Such an ugly contest that doesn’t take into consideration ANY situation and does not have any medical or scientific basis, just right wing Christian religious belief disguised as a means to protect the unborn when in reality they don’t protect the living.  Their agenda is female subjugation and dehumanization, period. Jesus would be mortified.

 

False Self/True Self

On By buildingalifeofhopeIn Independent Woman, poetryLeave a comment

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Image courtesy of: http://studiomuku.com/works/red-warrior-woman-painting

 

Don’t try too hard to prove yourself

Your posturing will become a self-fulfilling prophecy

Others will notice your overt preening,

that missed aim at pleasing.

The past is just that

Remove the emotion

Remain steel-eyed and unbroken

The moment is small

 It will not be your downfall

  The Warrior Woman is

Herself

Most of all

Day 12: There will always be forces out there that stray into your path, obstacles that attempt to block your growth, ideas, and momentum. The challenge is to keep your head and not let your emotions rule or past experiences serve as the means of responding to them.

Never Victim, Servant, Or Beggar

On By buildingalifeofhopeIn poetry3 Comments

Image result for strong woman in artImage courtesy of:Linda Ryan https://lindaryanart.com/tag/strong-women/

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet ~ Ghandi

I can choose to walk like a wounded warrior,

allowing the scars of old battles to reopen and fester.

I can choose to act like a servant,

the invisible maid that cleans your messes,

only known to you when I leave behind my dirty rags.

I can choose to be a supplicant

the one that begs to be heard,

while you stand over me

the master of rules and the keeper of keys

But I won’t be a victim, a servant or a beggar.

I will choose to run unscathed

by the arrows that attempt to slay me.

I will choose to be the mistress,

a visible force that refuses to feign a lowly existence.

I will choose to be my own sovereign nation;

one who raises her voice, stands up and never kneels.

 

Day 11: This is for anyone who is or has been in a situation or position where another or others treat you as their inferior.