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.
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