I love Portland
I hate the racism in Portland
Rainy overcast comforts me
Police Harassment infuriates me
Portland is progressive and liberal
Police brutality is pervasive
Economic opportunities abound
Police criminality steals my serenity
Christmas is a time of
Transformation
and
Revolution
Tied to the winter solstice
It is a natural
moment of change
Medieval alchemical texts
depict the ego as King/Queen
purposefully walking thru hell
and into a fire
Fire representing transfomation
emergning as a reunified being
This instructs humanity to willfully
take on the changes which life offers
and to emerge as newly
evolved beings
Thus peace and justice
will prevail
If you died today, not in 85 years,
if your last day on earth was today.
If you left this world before growing older and grey,
how much would they care of the why and the where,
if your last day on earth was today.
You might first wanna eat four or five dinners,
skip out the joint, and not even pay.
If then they threw you in jail, who cares,
you would be cold as a stone quite soon anyway.
If your last day on earth,
they came and hauled you away.
You could leave the county coroner
on the hook for your cremation.
They’d bequeath me to pick up your ashes
at the local train station.
Forthwith, flagged Fed-Ex to family crypt.
Having lived not so long, thus a lover got gypped,
of a true love to share. Tell me,
how much would folks care,
who'd really be there or
drinking it off somewhere,
crying cool, crocodile tears?
If you died today, not in 85 years.
I'm writing; Blackened images spread over,
the back of a printout on Chinese Foot Binding
found in a pilfered book, smelling of old paper
sweet scented and yellowing.
Foot binding, how apt!
God bless the poor old woman
whose toes lay flattened against
her twisted fleshy foot pad.
And not with sadness do I contemplate,
the photos of her feet.
She is probably blissfully at rest,
in her decades old demise.
And her memory resides,
within my poem, beside me here.
Set free, her soul lifted,
upward and away, away from
the riches of her station
from the binding of her ties.
My soul was once bound,
fed a diet of harsh untruths
held in check by a long
disapproving finger.
But, now that the night weeping,
has ceased, the wonderment
and humor has made its hesitant
reemergence in the light.
I can say I survived, I can walk away
and into the future with a smile.
When we stand in our own light
the cage becomes a nest
When the window becomes a door
tears return to the sea
When hearts open wide
stones become transparent to light
When fences fall
silent infinity swallows all screams
When we cross the threshold
the open sky embraces the world
When Eternity swallows time
when becomes Now
Sexy, sultry
Enticing, sensual enhancement
Aid, toy
Partner, love, sexual lover
Viagra, welcomed
Pleasure, pain
Inside, outside, all around
Lick, caress, perform
Be a lady
Be a man
Be none
Be in nirvana
Be OK
Be committed
Be complacent
Have a good time
However you have it.
