Kentucky
has a way about it
that feels
both timeless
and impermanent
without ever
choosing a side
Categories
Tag: history
i put on some water for tea
then decided to mop the floors
of our new little nest
before the furniture gets carried in
before the rest of our lives happen
Murphy’s Oil Soap
water and sunshine into a bucket
carried through the echoing emptiness
of what will be
over original hardwood
placed there in 1941
i love to clean
the ritual of it
i write in my thoughts as i work
images painting themselves
into spaces around my gentle humming
spreading wet across the grain
seeing hands that mopped this floor
before me
wives husbands
fathers mothers
lovers and
put-upon teenagers
oh this house
has a history
built the year
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
it’s all still there
nailed down memories
layers of time entombed in wax
someone stood in that living room and heard
we dropped the bomb
we landed at Normandy
of a flag raised in Iwo-Jima
Kennedy was dead
Vietnam was a lost cause only good
for folded flags being handed to weeping mothers
Nixon was a crook
Reagan and John Lennon had been shot
the Berlin wall had fallen
i heard first steps
crying babies
crying widows
joyous laughter
say cheese
wine glasses clinking together
realizing with a smile
this floor is mine
the foundation of a family
and i will love it
then
the teapot
began to whistle
Categories
kill the radio
it’s your voice
that always got to me
you damned well knew it
causing me to explode forward
bloody haired
through the windshield
of our history
Categories
a poet is
a poet is a towering painting
in a sunlit gallery
of an ancient museum
gilded frame displaying
a livid angel whose face
gapes in horror at the past
fiery sword in one hand
cradling a cherubic baby in the other
whose innocent eyes glimmer toward
all hopes for the future
their wings raging
in the storm
of the present
bloody sword
hearts unfurled
he was
my Agincourt
there are but three
unchangeable forces
known
in our meager lives
.
history is indestructible
dying
and the passage of time
.
that having been said
no wrongful death
may be avenged
with the death of another
.
if history has taught us
nothing else
it is that
war
makes murderers
of all humankind
Categories
all told in an Altoid tin
it is in my heart to begin
to make miniature dioramas
a history of man
all told in an Altoid tin
creation
the discovery of fire
Eve tempted by the serpent
with a pomegranate
the day religion was invented
by deluded men
the battle of Agincourt
the day we discovered the new world
already had a civilization
occupying it
the coronation of Henry VIII
the beheading of Anne Boleyn
the day Powhatan gave Pocahontas
to white European men
Beethoven’s first note pressed into a piano
Shakespeare’s first play performed in The Globe Theatre
Custer’s bad decision
the trail of tears
the blood soaked magenta fields of Gettysburg
the assassination at a bad play
of Abraham Lincoln
i shall remember Wounded Knee
the day suffragettes won their cause
the first words Anne Frank wrote in her secret diary
allied troops arriving
on the five beaches of Normandy
the first time John Fitzgerald Kennedy
laid eyes on Marilyn Monroe
and the day someone blew his brains
all over Jackie
the Washington Mall on the day
the people heard Dr. King say,
“I have a dream…”
the day Maya allowed her caged bird to sing
the moon landing and small steps on the surface
to spite Russia
the moment David Bowie decided
to make Ziggy into Stardust
the day Lou Reed released Wild Side
the moment the last of Andy Warhol died
the day we discovered
government
is a lie
Categories
smoke rise
i am the seventh great granddaughter
of pocahontas
7th daughter of a 7th daughter
the smoke rise witch queen naturally reborn
as the vengeance
of a Kentucky prairie
filled with the blood
of 16 thousand dead cherokees
i have come for what was ours
i have come to dethrone unjust kings
this poem
just placed its fingers
to delicate collar bone
and looked at you in such a way
that only a woman who knows
her daddy was a well deposed king
may do
silently saying
were he not my father
i could love you
Categories
sepia toned lithograph
i find myself longing
to live inside
a sepia toned lithograph
from the civil war
.
you’d be shipped to the mysterious
far off north
while i embalmed bodies
along side Thomas Holmes
my apron covered with
the sins of man
on blood soaked battlefields of the south
.
after a thousand letters written
and lessons learned
you’d come back home to me
with half yourself blown off
so i would decide
as a good woman does
to love you
all the more
.