Women are a sisterhood of might,
warriors with truth in sight
who love with lust and passion
and in ecstasy’s delight.
Women are the robins of the nests,
nurturers warming all within their light
who love with care and comfort
and in blossoming insight.
Women are the lions in dark night,
protectors with fierce might
who love with strength and power
and guarantee our rights.
Filed under POETRY
I asked the question on my mind
to Mom and Dad long ago.
How did you not know
the Germans were rounding up Jews,
and Gypsies and dissidents who cared
that their nation was being overtaken
by Nazis who sowed despair
in Poland, Austria and France?
How could America divert her glance
from war looming on the horizon?
I did not understand then.
I do not understand now
why until Pearl Harbor
Americans shrugged a brow.
Not Dad, he enlisted long before Pearl.
He saw that war knocked on our door
as he escorted ships full
of lend-lease goods to Britain’s shores.
Like Ukrainians, we hoped Britains
could forestall a world-wide war
that Americans must fight.
Out of mind, out of sight
seems to be not only a universal dodge
but an eternal one as well,
lasting across generations
with shallow memories.
As then, now, we have fascists here at home
with white supremacy guiding their views
and politicians pleading their cause
as the nation’s own, ignoring American principles
of freedom and equality
as they burn books and block votes
and bind women to their side
that they may attack children
and threaten life with weapons
of war in schools, churches, synagogues
and even grocery stores.
Are such threats truly unseen?
Are such threats overcome by entertainment T.V.?
Americans know the score
on Dancing with the Stars and Housewives
from too many cities to keep count.
And, yet, have no time to explore
candidates and policies before they vote,
if they do vote with raised brows
at a ballots’ surprise of choices to be made.
So, they stay away, and let war descend
without raising a hue or cry.
Soon to be come a nation occupied
by foreign notions from foreign nations
who did not even need to raise a gun
to destroy democracy for every American.
It need not be this way.
Get to work and learn the truth.
for once, put aside your play.
Then go vote on election day.
It is the least, the very least
you can do.
The world is counting on you.
Filed under POETRY
How can time get away
when it stands still so much of the day,
encased in memories of yesterdays?
I know I should be doing more
but what more seems
too tentative to explore.
Batteries charge in the sun as do I,
walking block after block
avoiding clouds’ shadows
avoiding stepping on cracks
lest I break my mother’s back.
I often wonder if she knows
I still follow her path
and watch her back
to find my way;
and, if she
still watches me.
If so, I know, she is the wind
pushing me along
and keeping me strong.
The wind washes clear
the fog of discontent
and lackadaisical malaise
that seems to come
with greater age.
I am my mother’s child
wily, wise and wild
still able to get up
off the couch
and run, and run, and run.
Women fret and stew because they feel
with blood and sinew, hands and heels.
Each breath they take is a timeless hold
on the history of family and friends so bold
it carries all aloft to a future filled with bliss.
The nesting instinct is nothing less
than continuation of species and best
embraced and supported as what it is;
our best hope for survival in peace,
in world fractured by power and greed.
Women seize their freedom in both hands.
Women march and take stands against tyranny.
Women need never ask for self-rule of their bodies.
They already hold their own agency.
Only blind men fail to see
powerful women could set them free.
WE ARE THE WORLD
While children here sing
“Rain, rain go away.
“Come again another day.”
China seeds the clouds above
and firefighters ask for aid
to battle flames that spread so wide
there is no place for lungs to hide.
Fragile systems bend and break
as I lie in my bed alert, awake
to all the trauma in the world;
clutching hands which hold out hope
to help heal damage beyond their scope.
All that seems real are nerves afray
and hands held in prayer for better days.
For days when birds again find their way
among the butterflies and bees.
When war engines fall into disrepair
and children frolic and play free
of worries that hide
in thoughts of suicide.
We are the world. The world is us.
the world hangs in the balance
of hands held in trust.
Reach out your hands enjoined to others.
Earth’s survival truly depends on us.
Filed under POETRY
My hair is so thin
and so fine,
so unstructured
by aging design.
A blanket woven
from my hair
could not warm
a body cold
from aging blood
flowing so slow.
All of a piece
are these changes
noted and coded
to bring the message
that life is also this:
so fine and
unstructured
except in my mind.
I brush my hair and
watch it fall
loosened from its frame
like my muscle and bone.
The stories it tells
as it catches the light
separating so many colors
into memory’s delight.
If this be aging
I welcome it close.
Aging brings wisdom
to bear each loss
before the final
loss comes and I
am finally bald.
Filed under POETRY
Saving face
By creating truth
Is the only means of escape
From harsh reality
For those whose core
Is thinned and weak
By lack of moral exercise.
Bread and circuse
Did Rome in.
History ignored
Is repeated evermore.
Distraction through attraction
Diverts the gaze, the ear, the tongue.
This is who we live among.
Doing what is correct
Does not reflect the Right
Constantly claiming false
It’s moral might
Over those whose outrage
Threatens their control,
Their wealth, their privilege.
New faces in new places
Where they were not allowed before
Distort the world view
Of the autocratic few.
It takes strong core
Muscles to stand tall
Before the attack of falsehood
Destroys us all.
Filed under POETRY
GRIEF LINES ABOUT THE BROW
1-15-2022
I held grief at bay
in tightened fists
determined not to allow
its escape, until I lay
it down upon the page,
Where it sapped my strength.
Taking up the pen
is little help today
when the nib etches lines
of grief about my brow,
too close to allow the flow
of ink upon the page.
Democracy means more to those
More recently saved upon its shores.
The lands of autocrats and hypocrites,
we thought, had been left
behind, beyond our pained sight;
now resurrected by the Republican right.
A Right reinforced by clerics bent
on reasserting ties long rent
between church and state,
Now reinstated by the Court
and pro-life misogynist dictum
making women victims.
The Right backlash to Obama
is a fierce and hateful trauma
which dares to take away
our diversity and our vote,
our personhood and culture,
our history and democracy.
Grief is still heavy today
but less than yesterday.
Today ink flows steadily,
freely, hopefully daring leaders
to find the courage to save the vote,
and this beloved country.
annarino writes 
FALLING FROM A MORE PERFECT UNION
Alito’s words stilled my own.
A falling body has no time
to waste on words when breath
is so precious and undermined
by space displaced by diving
thoughts toward a very dark place.
It is not just Roe which falls with me;
but, likely Obergefell, Griswold
and Loving, too. So old,
I recall them all. The sacred tome
which gives the rights owed humanity
is our constitution which gives privacy a home
of safety, freedom and security.
Alito steals them all from me.
The greater fear is that he would say
mob rule would bind our hands again
with state’s rights to up-end a nation’s democracy.
The word privacy does not exist, so he says.
Nor does the word slavery, nor contraception,
nor sexuality, nor women’s and persons of color’s
right to vote and have a say in lives they own;
because they don’t in the words originally
written for white land-owning gentlemen alone.
But that is the point, one no longer hidden.
White male supremacy, and protecting the wealthy
is Republicans’ true north. Which is why
even women support letting democracy die.
Why even kind men still vote for extremist
candidates they know can save their wealth
by telling the most outrageous lies.
Stolen election is not the first lie.
The first was that women and Africans are less
than any white man of wealth could allow
to be free, for fear their fields of wealth
once shared, would lie fallow.
I thought I could no longer write poetry
while my love for country makes me cry
knowing my beloved Law is often denied.
The law is sacrosanct, you see.
Alito’s words mean the courts are no longer free.
And that will be the death of the rights
of you and me, and perhaps the world
whom my country once led toward democracy.
The world is falling along with me.
I am not alone if you join me and vote
for those who would protect us as we fall,
and right the wrong words which stand so tall
we can no longer recognize truth at all.
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Filed under COMMENTARY, POETRY, POLITICS
Tagged as constitutional rights, end of democracy, extremism, Griswold, Justice Alito, Loving, miscegenation, Obergefell, ROE V. WADE, rule of law, slavery, VOTE, voter suppression, white supremacist, women