there’s a leap second coming tonight

Haiku

Crows gather, mine ants
Tuck wishes into their tails
Tell plum-black stories        

                             by Karen George

 ~ Found haiku composed from Lee Ann Roripaugh’s poem “Pearls”

Pokeweed, lady

of cucumbers 

and onions, reaches

slender white fingers

toward the misty morning,

her blooms gradually greening

into berries from the bottom

knuckle up. Original petals

never drop; they become 

stem cap to what comes 

next. 

—Melva Sue Priddy

He is

Our support- when no one else will, in all our achievements,

Our father- who gives us life,

Our love-when we feel unloved and left alone,

Our joy-the many abundant blessings he bestows upon us

Our energy-when life seems hopeless,

Our savior- he shed his blood on the cross for our sins,

Our protector- from the devil’s influence,

Our teacher- gives us the tools-the bible and Holy Spirit, so that our lives honor him

The list is endless, because “He” is worthy of praise,

And finally in the end, we can still do all things through Christ that strengthens us.

MERGING

In this moment
Have come together
The zero and the infinity

And my mind is set free
To be either,
Or something in between

I realize that I was here
Before my mother was born
And would be, in the year
Seventy three seventy three

In succession, faces change,
Also forms, shapes and colors;
As if in a kaleidoscope,
Scenes continually evolve;

Makes me wonder if, all along
Enchantment had been the intent
……………………………………………………..

I

A man picked a fig from the ground. One fig,
its siblings clung to the tree like koalas. One fig,
squat, plump, so plump the man felt sorry for it.
A man picked up a fig and wrapped it in brown paper,
placed it in his satchel. The man did not often pick figs.
He picked stray hairs, nail clippings, locks, teeth, bits
of other people’s food. The fig surprised him, its soft
underbelly, stem that tears without asking permission.

II

A fig fell from her tree, outgrew the dangling nest mother
had built; her fingers snapped, she tumbled stem over belly.
Her brothers and sisters chattered. Her uncles grunted sweetly.
A feral dog snapped at a nearby fence post. A cat padded past.
A man in blue wing-tipped Oxfords found her cowering
in fragrant woodchips, plucked her to the relative safety
of a satchel stuffed full of beard hairs, nail clippings, keys,
loose molars, and bits of pound cake. She thought this was home.

III

A fig tree swayed in the breeze, holding her many hands
like Christmas ornaments. The clouds closed. It rained.
Her children shivered, her leaves too small to shelter.
A preacher might speak of the Tree of Knowledge.
It’s the fig that really messed things up, when her twigs
outgrew her foliage, when she let her children fall,
bruised and battered, scattered to the jaws of Earth,
waiting to be picked up by a collector.

let’s dispatch with the niceties

& speak frankly:

you never had a chance.

speeding from little girl

to sexualized woman

grinds the gears, body

a manual transmission—

spend the rest of my life

shaving & waxing away the evidence

of womanhood.

enslaved by an army of voyeurs

trained by porn

that bodies are for spectacle & sport,

not free will:

a denuded pubis is

                                              childlike,

                                                              sexy.

“Everybody Does It” 

That excuse holds no purchase
with the teacher confiscating crib notes,
the patrolman writing speeding tickets,
the prosecutor investigating tax evasion.

“Everybody does it.”

And yes, we are all terminal.
Still – that’s no excuse!

Mary Allen

there’s no quarter given when it comes to tits.

whether made of           genuine girl,          silicon              or saline,

they’re the wrong kind

because you are not meant to              have a preference

but rather                                              to be a preference.

aureoles are always                too dark

or                                             too pink

& should be the size of a half-dollar.

no more & no less.

if you are                                  blue-veined

or                                               freckled

under your prison of lace-&-underwire,

for god’s sake,                                             be apologetic.

tweeze rogue hairs in secret.

gravity must not affect your tits.

nipples should always be slightly erect—

because you should                                       be ready

                                                                       & pliable

                                                                       & face outward,

not ever dipping down or relaxing.

learn all the guerilla tactics you need to survive

& steel yourself

every time you step into Victoria’s Secret.

do not delight in your tits

or take pride in them.

though part of your body,

                                               they are not for your pleasure.

this is something you will learn

in frontal assaults in the sheets,

the coup de grâce between hot & sticky,

                                               like they’ve seen in all the videos.

just say yes & pretend to get off; it’s easier that way.

you don’t want them to complain

                                              there’s too many politics in your bedroom.