If you’re gonna pass laws that force women to
Birth and raise the babies they get knocked up with
        Make those laws also include a neonatal paternity test,
        After which the father has his income attached
        To the tune of seventy-five dollars a week for 21 years,
        Adjusted for inflation.
Then Enforce that law every bit as rigidly
As you enforce your new abortion bans.
         It takes two to make a baby, after all….. and
         Fair is still fair, isn’t it?    In what Universe?
                           ljm

I don’t remember checking out
But when I came back that afternoon
Someone else was in my room
And all my luggage was out in the hall.

I knocked and didn’t hear a sound
Until I banged again much harder
Then I heard the rustle of approach
And locks turned as the door was opened.

My fists were clinched, my throat was tight
And I had vicious anger at the ready,
But shock drowned out my burning ire
When I saw who was facing me

She was very old and somewhat fragile.
Not the beauty she’d once been,
But dressed in jammies and a shawl
With fuzzy slippers on her feet.

She didn’t hear the words I said
And seemed to not see me very well.
She smiled a very gentle smile
And asked what she could do for me.

I told her she was in my room
And I had scads of things to do,
With projects to take care of
And chores that needed seeing to.

She stepped aside and let me in
Where I could see things were a mess
The furniture was rearranged
And my stuff stacked up in a corner.

I pushed on in and desperately
Searched for my deadline-diary -
There were things to not mess up
And errors that I must not make.

But nothing seemed where it belonged
And I could not remember where
I put the most important notes
That got me where I had to be.

The elder lady tried to help
But searched for words that would not come
And bumped against important things
That rocked and tumbled with a crash.

Beside myself I spun around
In desperation and despair,
Looking for something to grasp
To tell me I was not insane.

I turned to ask the Granny’s help
But couldn’t find her anywhere.
Like smoke in wind she’d disappeared
Even though the door was locked.

Exasperation then took hold
And I flailed around in circles
Til I caught a movement in the mirror
An stopped to take a better look.

I stood before the glass and gaped.
The dear old girl gaped back at me.
How did she get inside the glass
And where had my own image gone?

What happened to the visage of
The super-girl who juggled knives
And kept plates spinning in the air
While never dropping one.

The knives, I saw, were on the floor
Underneath the sagging couch.
The plates that I had kept aloft
Were neatly stacked beside the kitchen sink.

Astonishment became dismay
As I tried to reconcile
The me who went to work this morning,
Primed for conquering the world,

And the someone I came back to find,
Not certain where I left myself
Or even where to start the search
To see if I existed.

Bereft of thoughts and lost among her words
That float around and won’t be caught
I puzzle how this came about
And I don’t know the answer.

But I can not avoid the fact
That it’s my face in that mirror.

ljm

The writing on the wall is not graffiti.
It was not put there by rebel hands.
It’s written in an obscure language
Few will take the time to learn
And even fewer heed its warning.

The writing lists the reasons
For the coming of the Horsemen.
The steeds that carry avenging riders
Wearing mantles made of
Fire and flood, earthquake and war.

The writing on the wall is flaming
With incendiary anger at the people
Who will not read what’s written there,
Having armed themselves in black chain mail
Forged from avarice and greed.

They shed no thought for fellow man
Or for the world that holds them all.
They lust for power that money brings
And dollars are the only God they worship.
They’ll never read what’s written on the wall.

There is a whinny on the rising breeze
That carries smoke from nearby fires,
And subtle poundings on the ground
Foretell the coming of the herd with
Flaming brands that match the wall
ljm

i am the best
version of myself
when i am comfortable
surrounded by my loved ones
and knowing there are no time restrictions

Not allowed to be part of her life
Only a casual bystander
Feeding on the crumbs of her
Tossed to me by others
ljm