Dormant Tomorrow

Buried in darkness -
Dormant, asleep -
Growing in secret,
Preparing to rise,

Past selves are reborn
when new voices shout,
demanding peace
as only the young can.
Tomorrow belongs to them.

And us?
The gray ones
Weary with wisdom
And life
And loss
And the slow ticking pace
Of our worn and beating hearts?
We step with soft footfalls on this earth,
behind the stomping feet of their warrior dance,
tending the next row
of sleeping seeds.

Disembodied Endings

Dying in this furtive world
Illuminated only by breath
Seven dragonflies dance across the sky,
Each one a sin, and a virtue.
Make mine bold, glittering, aquamarine.
Bring nectar and ambrosia to the farewell feast.
Our days are numbered like the hairs on your head, or the
Diamonds that float across infinite waters.
In time, the world will float, too.
Endings are like that -
Dire and magnificent.

Right Now

Right now birds are singing.

Tomorrow I may fail
or you may die
or earth may burn

But right now birds are singing.

Birds are singing
and the air is cool
the oranges are sweet
and the coffee is warm.

Later, tears may come
or fear
or broken bones and promises

But right now birds are singing.

Birds are singing,
my heart is beating,
my lungs are breathing,
my home stands,
and love lives.

Right now birds are singing.

My Heart Cries Havoc!

My heart - oh, my heart -
cries Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!
"Unthinkable" has vanished.
All, all, all is thinkable:

Waters poisoned forests flaming islands drowning -
Wolves at our doorstep with teeth of bullets -

And the children -
God, the children -
Dead, dying, futures mortgaged
Shot down in schools
Homeless in hurricanes
Motherless mobs with
Jackals as nursemaids.
A cage, a cage, for their tender age!

All, all, all is thinkable -
imagined, enacted, decreed and designed -
Locked
and
Loaded.

In a punch in the gut on the morning commute
A bumper sticker flaunts two stark silhouettes:
"Your son," the figure on the restroom door,
"My son," armed with the rifle-death-machine.
"Come and take it" demands the man
With the banner of death by the hotdog stand.

Oh, God! God! God!
What threats are here made,
taunts are here laid
down at our feet?

What will we - can we - wear to shout
our pain - shame - defiance - unity?
What rainbows? What colors? What ribbons?
What orange vests with lists of death?
What shroud, sackcloth, or ashes would be
Enough?

Enough.

"Enough" - an impossible word.

God! Oh, God! Has this world ever learned?
Do we need another flood
to wash clean our sins
of cruelty, violence, greed and despair?

Oh, God! Havoc! Mercy and kyrie!
My heart! oh, my heart!
Break my heart, break!
Oh, Absalom! Oh, fallen sons and daughters!
Fallen on the battlefield of these
thinkable tragedies!

And you who watch and teach and lead -
you who stand and speak and rule
you who make and buy and spend
and end your days when you begin -
arrest your beating hearts.
Drop into time's abyss with me
and see:

In this yawning moment
Your next words matter -

the way light matters or air
or the sun, stars, cosmos,

or this green earth that we
burn so callously
crumbling its nourishing dirt
into garbage dumps
and choking its living waters
with plastic poisons
that suffocate sea turtles -

Oh, god! Can't we see?
Every death is mine-yours-ours.
We choke and gas
ourselves
We massacre
ourselves.

We are the ones
who swallow the plastic
who immolate our souls and our futures
under this brown, sulfurous sky
while children fall - pop! pop! pop! -
to the thinkable tragedy
of our indifference.

"I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?"

Cyberspace is a place where nobody hears,
A soul-less Beast - all mouth and no ears -
An impotent hydra with infinite heads -
A machine made of fury, a furnace for a heart
Gorging on our madness
While we, the blind, gouge out our own eyes,
Bash in our own skulls.

Oh, God! Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!
Let poets scream and wail!
Let artists paint with blood
and writers carve warnings on living bone
while teachers count carcasses
from dawn to dusk.

Hearts of mercury, lead, and fumes - awake!
Wail! Wail and break.

Is there not one soul living to heal the wounds?

My heart - oh my heart -
cries Havoc! Mercy! Kyrie!

Before and After Sandy Hook

Before

Everything here shines.
Light winks off the polished tile floors
and loafs in cushioned walls
and pours around the arcing library
dancing on the picture books.

Windows are everywhere!
A world surrounded by sunshine,
a transparent place.
Even when Oregon gray fills the sky
light fills these halls.


After

Today
   windows are the enemy
Today
    light invites death
Today
    sunshine leaves us
unprotected.

With every step the outside world
   threatens attack.
Every shining tile
   is a dead child.

Bullets shatter glass.
Transparent worlds give
   no shelter.
Light brings
   no comfort.
The hallway has
   no end.

I will double-lock my door,
draw the shades and my little ones close.

For the next eight hours,
their lives, their thirty lives,
depend on me to shield them
inside a glass box.

Summer Communion

Accept its gifts as wafers on the tongue:

the grounded freedom of bare feet on stone
the kiss of sun on my hand's back
the secret breeze at the nape of your neck
the taste of ripe berries ready to fall
the shadow of roses on a wicker chair.

a single fuschia flower petal
spins suspended on a spider's strands
as bowing hydrangea blooms
dip their heads in dappled water

and somewhere over my right shoulder
a songbird has outlasted the crows

A Place Where Birds Come

May this be a place where birds come
where songbirds come
trilling resistance to hoarse despair

where determined dandelions press
through the broken back of concrete
and moss moves to meet them
while berries bob and hang
heavy with ripeness and ready to drop
 
where spiders find the needed stillness
to weave their winking strands
and monarchs ride the breeze
etching their shadows on lifting leaves.

Come into this place of birds and bees.
Notice the texture of living things.
Drink the sky and eat
huge helpings of sun-glazed air.


-CJM summer to fall, 2017