Monday, March 19, 2012

Appetite

I drag my tongue

Across effervescent speech

And trail its indentation

Onto the page.

Combinations of genres

Of subjects

Of lands,

And the spices

Brought by camel caravan

Spark in my tummy

And send up an urge

To devour the whole

Rosetta Stone in one splurge.

Why There are Doors: In Praise of Nudity

Doors hang more clearly than shame.

They were our first loin clothes

and our first captors.

When did nature become

this external?

I rely on the night,

Which leads me outward

into the forest.

Felling the moss lined ground

under our feet

I and other women

dance naked around logs.

God is not unhappy.

He sends down to us

the lighting of fireflies

so we can see more clearly.

It was not He who said

our bodies are our secrets.

Who would want his own creations

to be ashamed?

It was man who handed woman

the first apricot leaf.

He hid his woman from God,

for he thought

whomever could create

such blisses as full bloomed breasts

and round ready hips,

must be lustful.

Man’s fault was in

lust’s creation.

Why There is War

The flag doesn’t hang

On Sundays,

But on every other day

The girls wear their crosses, their veils…

And boys their yarmulkes, their turbans…

This separation of church and state-

Where church can impose upon state

But no religious organization

Can be touched by the power

Of government-

Is a problem.

The warring exists on all levels.

Within one country,

Every party is against the next.

Even where there is but one party,

Harmony flees the corruption.

Nations pin themselves

In war.

Then there are the states

Who fight other countries,

Because the preachers and the imams

The rabbis and the shamans

Don’t preach about

A world of people.

There is a race of humans,

The human race,

But it’s been divided

By a tonation

So insignificant that

Genes do not even store a record.

Why is this,

The last information

We know of ourselves?

It comes to us when the problem

Has already developed,

And nobody will take the time

To slow down

And listen to one another.

Mutated Writer's Block

The indentured scribes

Who place their calligraphy nubs

To the parchment-like

Walls of my mind

Reach out

With their crooked and stained fingers

And attach firmly

To the stem of my brain.

In a painful cascade

Of ink,

The virus they write

Finds itself

In control of thought.

My body functions,

But separate, very separate,

From my mind.

Resting above the paper

In a grip every teacher would approve,

My pen and hand

Await their command.

The line is gummed up,

However,

The virus

Oozes thick black ink

From the nervous system.

What comes through

Is but a senseless signal.

The hand is no mind.

It cannot stop

The jerking of a feverish brain.

Out flow words

Of nonsensical derivation.

Cross-outs ought to follow,

Even the whole page tossed out,

But a sickly wax,

Blind belief in each word,

Prevents me

From seeing and amending

The mess.

About God

I’m not convinced that God is in the clouds.

It’s awfully cold up there.

But if you find him riding cumulus nimbus,

Mercy me, for disbelieving.

I only know how most people get

Once they are all ashiver.

That spirit

Whom our prayers harass,

I think I have a pretty good idea

As to where he is hiding.

The God I know climbs trees.

He takes baths in rainforest wells,

And eats of nature’s plump offerings.

It’s always warm around him.

Imagine him tan

And sunning on the beach,

For warmth creates forgiveness

And charity.

What, you don’t believe me?

You believe your God

Sits on a golden throne all day

Developing throne-sores

And leg stiffness?

I can’t imagine that.

If I were a person

From a frozen country

I would, perhaps,

Look up when I thank God.

Because the snow and sun,

Are livelihood.