Hello friends! Here are a few recent poems I’ve written, inspired by inner and outer events. The sweet little image comes to you compliments of the artist Beatrice Mallet (1895-1951)

To My Friends in the Press

I’m not in the machine
so I don’t know
if you have any freedom
to change the press
but you might consider
changing your view
for your own mental health
and the health of the multitude

Cover the change-makers
the odds-breakers, interview
a mermaid

If you won’t settle
for anything less
than the real story,
you’ll have to take
a dive or two

as I’m sure you know
it’s getting
harder and harder
to find a convincing
story of hope.

March, 2016

Glass Hill

Sometimes I feel
like the princess
who sits on top
of a glass hill
in a glass castle

I need you
to be so perfect
I need me to be
so perfect

It’s shattering
when you arrive
with your clothes
torn and your
hands bleeding

Not to mention
your radical refusal
of the morality
of my highness

Am I made
of glass? you ask
Or does red blood
run in my veins

I argue with you
crystallizing my position
There’s nothing wrong
with lofty goals
The world has gone
to the beasts
I’ll die with the
unicorns, shattered
by loneliness
but not broken

You insist the price
is too high
you want a lover
not a workmate—

You found the wrong
princess
you should not have
sought the one
made of glass
you should have gone
for the one who can’t laugh
you’d delight her
forever

Whereas I’m the one
who shatters, shocked
by every hopeless thing.

February, 2016

Opening Doors

If you feel shut out
reach out
to the one who stands
on the other side
of your own closed door
what better way
to end discrimination
in your great house
forever more

March, 2016

The End of Shame

What has she done with the poet?
Poor poet was put behind bars
years ago, edited out by
Lady Shame, who made her brain
fit to meet the tricks
of the modern age.

In her cell, the poet tried to remember
the smell of the verdant air,
the nostrils of the new deer
getting up on her legs
she toiled away at keeping the memory
of a thousand beings
organic and alive

“Write,” commanded Lady Shame
but she was never pleased
with the results
she wanted reality laid
out before her eyes
as facts – snack facts,
hors d’oeuvres that she could chew on while
considering how they might
meet her nutritional needs
or serve her advancement.

The poet disappointed her,
coming as she did from the
ancient world
remembered only in dreams,
where human meant
the capacity
to blaze with remembrance
so that other beings
would not forget.

“The animals loved us once,”
the poet wrote in a feeble hand,
knowing it would be
edited out
knowing her mistress
would not understand
how human knowing
can set the heart alight
and burn so bright
that the stars draw near.

Poor Lady, now she’s seen
the error of her ways
and she fears she has lost her mind
because she can’t find the key
to the door of joy.

She doesn’t care as much
any more about how she
is seen
because she, like her
whole generation,
is meeting invisibility
in the mirror

She is confronting the facts of age
stepping down from the board
wandering in city parks
wondering why the dogs
have become such a menace
and why she can’t identify
even a robin song.

The poet knows where the paths
of the Lady lead
and though all her warnings
have gone unheard, the poet
remains inspired, more-so lately
as she waits, watching
through the window
for signs of what stars foretold.

One day the Lady will want to know
something that can’t be
woven into cocktail conversation
or made into facts on toast,
one day she will not be ashamed

And she will find the key
in an old purse
stuck in the corner on a shelf
in the closet
with a letter the poet wrote
to her, long ago,
so that she would not forget.

February, 2016

Illustrations by Marianne Stokes (1855-1927)
and Walter Beach (1892-1966)