You, with your everlasting sorrow mom
deserve nifty hands and healing ways of
You,  who always loved with the truest calm
now sit bereft of food and needs God's glove

You, the womb that bore consecrated Zen
sit still with your emptiness praying that  
You, will once more be as fertile as a hen  
fresh as the ocean in God's special vat  

You, who have given us bounty with grace  
have birthed a sapling, a seed, and the bud
You, Mother Earth whos honest clean faced
has always provided with substance and sud

They, who have loitered and taken your fresh,  
are caught in a web, they cannot dis-enmesh.

this was a song that lingers in caverns and
caves, scented by sea rose and anemone,
lost kingdoms where we dream of the sea.

this was a song like a whale shivering
through the water, diving into the
impossible dark, with its huge tail
waving, flag-like and star-hungry,
its skin the moon's lips, in a world
with no moonlight, no brightening pools,
and only echoes of a forgotten sun.

how deep do we dive, seals of ink
and overtures of unanswerable
dark? our eyes have been betrayed
many times and the water buries us
whole, takes us to the staccato rhythms
of a ghostly tide, takes us back to
a womb woman whose prayers lie
like whispers on the water, who tells
us to hush and we hear our mother's voice.

these are wild notes that press into the
waves, and i am frightened of this song,
it is dissonant and gathered from the
rivers of night, her tombs overgrown with
wild flowers and the bones of the sea,
and she cries for the lost,
for those that were taken from her,
and she will cry for all eternity
and her tears are like breath of ice.

winter buries her flames,
buries whispers of river and leaf,

the sea wraps turquoise into bronze,
everything is full of white bones,

the sky is an illusion of clouds,
her petticoats blue rags,

the day is as heavy as a paperweight,
as brittle as a glass flower,

the light is as naked as the trees
gold could not be more cold,

the sunlight reflects in the snow,
her amber eyes gleam,

nothing flows, nothing flowers,
nothing flows, nothing flowers,

and your smile is the sun,
a ghost as faint as watercolour,

the brush dipped in daylight,
a little part of me.

Pretty girls get listened to
Fat old ladies are ignored

A lovely face will unlock doors
A homely face will find them closed

A shapely figure’s always noticed
A shapeless one’s invisible.

This is the way society works
Not even pretending to be fair

How do I know about these rules
I have lived by them - Three out of six.
ljm

11/20/24
ACTRESS

My life is a show
that I’m putting on
for
the audience of all those around me.
I strut and preen
and
I prance on life’s stage,
but
the script that I learned’s
not the show that I’m In
and
I’m always stage left
when I should be stage right.

I drop all my cues,
Can’t
remember my lines,
and
almost tripped over the footlights.

What
am I doing on this giant
stage.
Do the words I say
Have any meaning.
Do my
dance steps convey any feelings
to the
audience
made up of those who know better
and oblige me this turn in the
spotlight
ljm

I used to think chastity
was a five year old who
knew nothing about ***.
The kind of innocence
I longed for as an adult too much.
Now a ****** who knows everything.
I still hate that to this day.
Yet what’s wrong  with
a tiger striped dove?
Fight in the flight or visa versa.
A lot of people in our culture
view purity as something *****.
Yet a lot of people in our culture
view the ****** as way too cool.
Where is the balance?
There has got to be one.
Chastity to me is staying
true to the one you love.
There is so much more!