"Every survivor of ****** assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported."

Rainwater of
the Elysian fields,
you assuredly do
like to drown your winged heroines?
You write them as strange
bitter narratives,
spurious to the calling
or as a bit of
bloodletting go.

The history formed around either
her breaking at the seams
upon the witching hour,
and her own home village
pillaging her claims
in the bonfire;
Or the arcane notion
no woman shall give testimony
against a neighbor
on the occasion he's a man.

Yes, she cried 'no' at the temple gate
Yes, she repeated such entreaties
But she'd also been into the ale
and wore an overtly
fetching carousal dress
you incensed.
Let her dam break
Let her try and flood us over
you mocked.
She was only a wayfaring angel
one reckless bird of passage
What type of wounds
could she inflict?

How easily you lost sight
of her will & halo
becoming stronger than fright.
Down she poured in antipathy,
until covering your gaping mouth!
It wasn't rain that killed you,
for you were the rain,
it was her blood calling out
that finally did you in...

Sunset is a washwoman's stream of rubia dyes
And the crushed scales from the Kermes insect,
While the loosened garments of life slide
Over the ancient liquidity of the hills rolling
As the mountains rolling as the seas rolling
As the clouds rolling as the graves rolling
Like eyes rolling back to sleep.

I am pressed for lullaby,
Not the pillow-clap of thunder or the ether songs of Persephone,
Biding by her asphodels with icen fingers from plum-colored hell.

But press my ear in my mother’s lap of ancient sun,
Of peplos and himation and stola,
And listen to the vines and bunched grapes
And all of heaven sink in its commodiousness.

Press my ear to the sun-fed heart that flows
To the furthest span of the cloth-seas of man and
The solemn songings of the ever-deepening sky.
My mother all along smoothing out the wrinkled sheet of sunlight.

Death surrounded her
Bombs falling captured the stories inside her head
Real life tears fell over blood-soaked mornings
Screams pierced right into the reality she called life
Friends, limbs missing made her look abnormal
Laughter left the country vowing never to return
She watched the burning figure running towards her
Collapsing before her, pleading for death
But death didn’t want him that day
He wasn’t one of the fortunate ones
She climbed into the basement seeking solace
Clutching the doll who like herself seemed to have survived in one piece
But something wasn’t right
Dolly was living a lie
She pulled one arm and one leg off
Dolly smiled
And the world became normal again.

In the park, soft-study of sands and swings,
Where the birds while away the unabridged air
Like rains on green, copper roofs ~ their wings.
So I have touched my rainy fingers on the fountain’s surface,
And tum-tumed at the dumpy belly of a dog,
So I have felt the vendor’s balloons like cantaloupes for freshness,
So I have a pocket-change of smiles for all.
At the fountain’s edge,
Like green-molded quaystones feather-singed
By the touchstrokes of the arcing wings of the sea,
Or like a saucer of warm milk
For the alley-cats to drink the milkiness of sun
And then with their paws,
Plink at overturning the day into porcelain shadows.