Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Lie Around and Get Zonked Out

4/9/2023

Blessing Tree by Michael Zieve
www.artworkarchive.com/profile/michael-zieve

If we were smarter, it would have been enough
that just one great Prophet would have to make
a personal appearance on earth.

He or She probably could have easily fixed some
important things forever, written a book that
really gave us the total lowdown...and that no
right-wing fanatic dare edit.

God in human form, as some called the Avatar--
or World Teacher--seemingly could have easily
shown us some tasty herb cocktails

that could cure any illness humans would ever
know. But looks like it does not work that way.

And what of us mules who like the harness? What
would the workhorses in this world do without
some imaginary cause--or situation--we felt
needed to be championed, or scotch-taped?

Heaven forbid, everyone might become happy
doing basically nothing

except to lie around and get zonked out on the
wonder of our being.

- Hafiz, trans. by Daniel Ladinsky

Wild Tenderness

4/2/2023

In a Dark Wood by Michael Zieve
www.artworkarchive.com/profile/michael-zieve

There is a place in my heart
When I sink down and in
Where I am surprised to discover
I am already whole
My mind is suspicious
Yet it is undeniably true

There is a place in my heart
When I sink down and in
Where I discover my problems
Are not actually problems
But places of wild tenderness
Where I find myself again

When I sink down and in
When I slow down inside
When I trust enough
To melt

I find
I am only ever meeting
Myself

And this meeting
Is the truth
It is the secret desire
Inside all desires:

All I ever really wanted
Was me

- Maya Luna

Innocence

3/5/2023

"Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough."
- Annie Dillard

At some point you make peace with it
Your life as it is, with all it offers you

Like an early evening walk, half moon
Hung in the tiger lily sky

Black cows heading to the barn
Bemoaning the end of day

Hundreds of blackbirds screeching
Live as the wire they perch upon

My long-time friend zipping by in her van
Waving. It’s after all the whining

And stomping of feet, of course. After dreams
Blur with real life. After the pin-pricked

Pop of the inflated ego. What joy
Mysterious. What humble innocence.

- Julie L. Moore

Mother Raven

1/8/2023

We cannot live without the night,
gossamer veils of emptiness.
The Goddess is black,
but each pore of her body
emits a rainbow.
Motionless, she watches
beyond care, yet flows
like a river of healing.
Doesn't dark energy circle us all
like Mother Raven?
Take root in your grief.
That is where the sun is born.
Ascend through a bolder falling.
Her womb is immaculate silence.
Her void is moist with stars.
Yet she who cradles them all
has become your breath.
Haven't I told you there is wine
in the void between thoughts,
Joy and sorrow mingled in one cup?
Now taste, and who knows
if tonight you might not finally
embrace the fierce beauty
of your beaten heart?

- Alfred K. LaMotte

What a Jar Can Hold

7/3/2022

Art by Cindy Wood
www.cindywoodart.com

I've been seeing beetles lately.
Big and small--scary ones that only
emerge from their underground roost
to lay their eggs on my stairway;
junebugs, loitered into July,
who don't like letting go, even in death.

The little ones, metallic, remind me
of grabbing handfuls when I was ten
from the roses they loved to snuffle and chew.
Mr. Ingber would pay us a dime
for a pint jar full of their copper
and opaline green. Packed
and freighted for death, them smelled
the way that people smell when they begin to cry--
rain on hot pavement--ozone, rot.

I was old enough to know
what Mr. Ingber would do with that jar.
I should have let them go.
And now I open that jar, in me,
gasoline evaporated, beetle bodies dust,
my small repentance, late.

Maybe love is never lost.
If so, it might collect somewhere:
Mr. Ingber's love of roses,
my love for the beetles here,
all packed inside an empty jar,
waiting to be opened.

- Chuck Madansky

Bearing Witness

9/5/2021

Art by Andrew Ferez

Sometimes we are asked to stop and bear witness:
this, the elephants say to me in dreams
as they thunder through the passageways
of my heart, disappearing
into a blaze of stars. On the edge
of the 6th mass extinction, with species
vanishing before our eyes, we’d be a people
gone mad, if we did not grieve.

This unmet grief,
an elder tells me, is the root
of the root of the collective illness
that got us here. His people
stay current with their grief--
they see their tears as medicine--
and grief a kind of generous willingness
to simply see, to look loss in the eye,
to hold tenderly what is precious,
to let the rains of the heart fall.

In this way, they do not pass this weight on
in invisible mailbags for the next generation
to carry. In this way, the grief doesn’t build
and build like sets of waves, until,
at some point down the line--
it simply becomes an unbearable ocean.

We are so hungry when we are fleeing
our grief, when we are doing all
we can to distract ourselves
from the crushing heft of the unread
letters of our ancestors.
Hear us, they call. Hear us.

In my dreams, the elephants stampede
in herds, trumpeting, shaking the earth.
It is a kind of grand finale, a last parade
of their exquisite beauty. See us, they say.
We may not pass this way again.

What if our grief, given as a sacred offering,
is a blessing not a curse?
What if our grief, not hidden away in corners,
becomes a kind of communion where we shine?
What if our grief becomes a liberation song
that returns us to our innocence?
What if our fierce hearts
could simply bear witness?

     - Laura Weaver

Here for Life

8/15/2021

Rafael Jesus Gonzalez at Vandenberg Air Force Base, 1983;
first blockade of MX Missile testing

I am here -
I wear the old-ones' jade -
it's life, they said & precious;
turquoise I've sought to hone my visions;
& coral to cultivate the heart;
mother of pearl for purity.

I have put on what power I could
to tell you there are mountains
where the stones sleep -
hawks nest there
& lichens older than the ice is cold.

The sea is vast & deep
keeping secrets
darker than the rocks are hard.

I am here to tell you
the Earth is made of things
so much themselves
they make the angels kneel.
We walk among them
& they are certain as the rain is wet
& they are fragile as the pine is tall.

We, too, belong to them;
they count upon our singing,
the footfalls of our dance,
our children's shouts, their laughter.

I am here for the unfinished song,
the uncompleted dance,
the healing,
the dreadful fakes of love.
I am here for life
& I will not go away.

- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez

Here for life
Sacramento, CA, 2015;
blockade of mandatory childhood vaccines

Here for life
Stratford Ontario, Canada, 2021;
blockade of experimental mRNA gene therapy

Here for life
Colorado, USA, 2021;
blockade of harmful mask mandates

Here for life and we will not go away
Dublin, Ireland 2018

Lie Around and Get Zonked Out

Wild Tenderness

Innocence

Mother Raven

What a Jar Can Hold

Bearing Witness

Here for Life

Archives

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Lie Around and Get Zonked Out

Wild Tenderness

Innocence

Mother Raven

What a Jar Can Hold

Bearing Witness

Here for Life

Archives

Categories

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