"prenatal" poems
no emotionally ecstatic experience compares
to the seminal instance
whence spermatozoa
(from profuse *********** beget
the miraculous propensity
to procreate despite the steep odds
female fertility fosters potential impregnation
fusing the hereditary debt
of feral, fiery, fomenting friskiness
fueling fancy free footloose fornication
prior to seminal fertilization union
sans ova doth induce fret
full ness in tandem with
diametrically opposed exultant sensations
(biologically, embryonically, microscopically,
et cetera) seismic shocks inject
when deliberate intent arises to disregard
applying prophylactics choice
plying reproductive roulette let
which analogous fruitful uterine plain
bastes the "cooking" egg omelette
which impregnation upends cessation of "self"
first and foremost asper desire to breed
wrenching role of "me" as operative
of webbed world de jure upon
consummating that most miraculous deed
necessitating yet for the fecund female relief
from messy menstrual cycle
she becomes temporarily freed
that perhaps a novitiate (or even a gal practiced
in the euphoric family, she instinctually
abides prenatal signals that heed
without feeling debased, harangued, lectured
pedagogical, polemical, puritanical, et cetera blast
assessing copulation enjoyed gloriously,
ineluctably, kinesthetically
lectured by elder, especially cast
in thee reel life drama, that nine months
til offspring utters initial whimper
elapses exceptionally fast
emitting a radiant golden halo wishing
to bottle confluence of hormonal secretions last
ideally fully awake to the birthing process,
when juiced the first stage of maternity past
cuz every moment thee inconsolably
(perhaps colicky infant)
gets first dibs to suckle,
which round the clock nursing
consumes moments many vast.
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018 at 11:04 PM UTC
Bamboo shoots, cooked in oil,
we munched were delicious. The tender love,
we shared, in our sojourn, in the lodge
deep inside the forest, had complemented it.
She was a playful tigress, transformed
by the atmosphere, with a manifested ****** interest,
different from her usual demure self.
One thing led to another, we fed each other,
heady vintage wine, from our mouths,
till we found out, in such circumstances,
love would make us do things,
we never imagined we could.
The sketch she made depicting us,
as two wild elephants, in musth*
rummaging the bamboo grove,
eating shoots to our fill,
reminded *Shiva and Parvathi, his consort,
taking the form of elephants
indulging in every possible play amorous,
culminating in the birth of Ganesha,
the cute God, elephant faced,
the remover of obstacles.
Love drunk the song we both sung,
was one of innocence.
The booming wind in bamboo leaves,
suddenly changed tune, sounding like ankle bells.
Dense, dark, green womb of forest
and the flow of wind above, like a blood stream,
kindled the prenatal memories, from deep down,
and as the background score,
cacophony of unknown birds of many feathers.
We swam in the lukewarm water,
of a day so different, with joyous abandon.
A voice mysterious, spoke in my blood stream:
"Be like birds, wind on bamboo grove, elephants seeking what they want,
the love you share would bring, fantastic results,
the world, would look far more simple,
life and death cease to be riddles, just natural,
shadows vanish, no fear remains in deep caves,
everything gently flows, like a clear river to the ocean"
Apr 26, 2013
Apr 26, 2013 at 1:08 AM UTC
peach cobbler, that's what you remind of
the sweet, southern staple that everyone loves
but when the pom-poms fell from your hands
you told the girls in the van on the way to fun mountain
"I can't do those stunts anymore."
I still laugh at myself for my inappropriate and abrupt,
"WHAT!?!?"
but your collected calmness collected me
until i saw in the back of your eyes the collected fear
and realized the daunting fact,
that even though you were nearly 9 months my younger
in 9 months
you were going to have to be years older than me
we were raised to plan
but planning doesn't determine how life occurs
cause you never really plan to fall down
i know there were those who showed you love
but i'm sure being named "pastor's daughter" and labeled "cliche"
didn't do you any favors in the judgement days
and i'm sorry i only made you a dress to hide the bump
when you deserved a cape
to soar over that injustice
that no one has the right to serve
what its like to inhabit a body that is growing beauty
i don't know, but watching you
i have seen it can be ... a change
which, i'm sure, that doesn't even remotely explain ... does it?
no it's ... a Life Alteration of Volcanic Proportions
cause I'm sure, at times, you feel as if standing in the wake of an explosion
and sometimes the earth spews fiery filth at you
but i believe mothers are fire proof
cause they know they have beauty that grew inside
and when you look at that doe eyed, preschooler son
remember that love strengthens you
heaven is powerful
and you are both beautiful
Jul 23, 2012
Jul 23, 2012 at 2:59 PM UTC
Writing of a poem
Oh! How it can be likened
To having a baby!
With the copulation of fancy and thought,
Comes the moment of conception
It can happen any day
Unanticipated or planned erstwhile
On a star studded night
Or a rain drenched morn
It swims into you as a seed
So tiny… so inconspicuous
Once the pregnancy confirmed
Comes irritation, nausea
Lethargy and loss of appetite
Your stomach rarely growls for food
Clouds of words hang heavy and low,
Refusing to break into showers
They don’t gush or rush.
Ideas dry up leaving the nib parched
Lines crack n’ break
Depression follows
Discouraged, you feel fatigued
But all the while you begin to realize
That a new life
Independent of you
Has begun growing inside you
Then all the care taken
To foster the young life
You read…
You refer the lexicon
You withdraw from other works
Take rest, relax in solitude
Slowly the foetus moves
The first stirring of life!
With fond fingers, as you pat your belly
Your pen pats the paper
The first line…..
The first faint beating of the heart!
Then words….
Like little harness bells tingling
Fall in line, line after line!
Drawing nourishment from you,
The embryo grows limb by limb
The miniscule of insight
Grown after months of waiting
Into a mature body of illumination!
A stretch of your dreams!
A suffusion of light!
After the labor pains
Of scribbling and scrawling,
Writing and rewriting,
Deleting, adding and editing,
With time stretching and contracting,
A baby, no, a poem is born.
Whether cute or ugly
No mother can dislike it
She marvels at its birth
Wraps it in her warmth
She must have had in mind a name
Or seeks to find a name;
An apt name
Thus a poem with a title is born!
She wonders if her baby would lit a smile,
On others lips too
Or from them would flow,
Words of endearment as from a trickle!
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 11:39 AM UTC
Today will be retroactive; in penance to those times spent wondering.
The will they wont they has finally calmed.
We wont count today,
so I'm noting it now as an important moment left undiscovered and forgotten later.
Today something came into being that was already there.
The gestation cycle forgotten, we only count the time after birth.
Sometimes I like to think of myself as nine months older.
So, with that I say we were in womb before now.
Welcome to the world.
But for our own purposes we can count those months spent in utero.
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 6:21 PM UTC
no emotionally ecstatic experience compares
to the seminal instance
whence spermatozoa
(from profuse *********** beget
the miraculous propensity
to procreate despite the steep odds
female fertility fosters potential impregnation
fusing the hereditary debt
of feral, fiery, fomenting friskiness
fueling fancy free footloose fornication
prior to seminal fertilization union
sans ova doth induce fret
full ness in tandem with
diametrically opposed exultant sensations
(biologically, embryonically, microscopically,
et cetera) seismic shocks inject
when deliberate intent arises to disregard
applying prophylactics choice
plying reproductive roulette let
which analogous fruitful uterine plain
bastes the "cooking" egg omelette
which impregnation upends cessation of "self"
first and foremost asper desire to breed
wrenching role of "me" as operative
of webbed world de jure upon
consummating that most miraculous deed
necessitating yet for the fecund female relief
from messy menstrual cycle
she becomes temporarily freed
that perhaps a novitiate (or even a gal practiced
in the euphoric family, she instinctually
abides prenatal signals that heed
without feeling debased, harangued, lectured
pedagogical, polemical, puritanical, et cetera blast
assessing copulation enjoyed gloriously,
ineluctably, kinesthetically
lectured by elder, especially cast
in thee reel life drama, that nine months
til offspring utters initial whimper
elapses exceptionally fast
emitting a radiant golden halo wishing
to bottle confluence of hormonal secretions last
ideally fully awake to the birthing process,
when juiced the first stage of maternity past
cuz every moment thee inconsolably
(perhaps colicky infant)
gets first dibs to suckle,
which round the clock nursing
consumes moments many vast.
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 1:11 AM UTC
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─▄██▀█▌─██▄▄──▐█▀▄─▐█▀
▐█▀▀▌───▄▀▌─▌─█─▌──▌─▌
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**PERINATAL POETICS:
Prelude to a post-nuptial pre-partum event**
What is meant
by this prenatal parental lament?
Can the Spare-a-Dime shaft
upgrade to paradigm shift
as buzzwords replace the new jargon?
If the new synthetic empathy
is merely the same old pathetic symphony,
should we put away the flow charts when the show starts
to prevent a casual view
of the visual cue?
I fear this will only occur
when fast-breeding Other
becomes breast-feeding mother
even if her man’s fertility
is eclipsed
by human futility.
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 5:32 PM UTC
What’s left of you is in boxes,
Mother-that-kissed-goodnight.
Who introduced us to stallions and
Bullet hole portraits of John Wayne.
How to be on trail. Avoid poison oak,
Ivy. How to avoid horse buck.
Your parents stopped praying
The rosary after you went terminal.
Reader who believed in a book
For her and a book for the kids.
Stephen King and R.L. Stine.
What remains of you are stills. Above the refrigerator.
Beside the TV.
One of when unseen bass swam through your shins.
Rivers rose and drowned the lilly pads.
Sunk the cattails. You wore the geranium dress,
Murky up to your knees. A hand on the dog.
You’re coffin’s in the ground,
Kathryn. The prenatal nurse.
The one who brought hers to
Rainbow island for fish and family,
Not for lighting clap and sideways rain.
But don’t worry, never mind that.
Thanks to cancer, you are bones.
Some believe you were reborn a cardinal. Nested
To watch your children listen for bats at dusk.
Their echoes unconfirmed,
And your songs too faint.
Oct 10, 2017
Oct 10, 2017 at 12:38 AM UTC
I guess It's just warped.
It's all twisted around.
Pristine genesis corrupted thoroughly before it's own conception, prenatal chains and subliminal reception.
It's head is on backwards so it knows only then and now, now and then, like right now.
Feet and feat move it forward with eyes and mouth eternally cast down.
Sometimes It dreams it was free.
Sometimes it remembers it's me.
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 8:03 AM UTC
Do you find it ****
Or do you find it funny?
When a 30 year old man
Is in the kitchen
Snacking on a prenatal gummy?
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 2:55 AM UTC
It is in our nature to create dichotomies,
particularly in the grayest of the gray.
How do you debate en masse,
in the absence of either or?
And so we ask—
for example,
at Harper High School
in the South Side Chicago,
where 29 current and former
students
were shot
in a single year—
we ask, disdainfully,
How do we Learn
when we can’t Breathe?
On the question of need—
at a beautiful school
with 16 security guards
4 social workers,
and more than 15 surrounding gangs—
we refer back to Maslow.
I went once,
to a high school full of
“at risk” students
and discussed dropout rates—
as high as 80 percent in some parts.
We gave them cards and figures,
and asked them to contemplate futures,
for example,
as a janitor or an NBA basketball star!
Questions so self-righteous in their ignorance
my cheeks burned,
asked to faces
six generations descended
from slavery
& six decades from
Brown vs. Board.
Are we not awed by the
logic in their response
to a system with little
historical or contemporary
evidence of their success?
We are sustained more by the
business of answering,
than asking
the right questions.
So maybe the question of
basic needs versus pedagogy
was always a false dichotomy.
Maybe, in fact,
general revenue funding &
destandardization of curricula,
universal prenatal care &
a rebirth of the arts,
do not exist in hierarchy.
Do we dare ask the question,
to everyone,
“What would you do
to make your heart sing,
if you knew you could not fail,
if you knew you could not disappoint?”
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 3:11 PM UTC
I remember prenatal
The feeling of warmth
And mother puking
I remember six weeks old
And mother throwing me
Down a flight of stairs
I remember one
When mother threw me
Out of her VW's sunroof
I remember year two
When her mobster
Boyfriend ***** me
I remember three
When I was locked
In the basement with the rats
I remember four
And moving
to Nevada
I remember five
and Kennedy
Dying
I remember six
And learning
Sin
I remember seven
And learning
Heaven
I remember eight
Mother beat me
With a belt buckle
I remember nine
and lying there
Dying
I remember
Mother
Happy mother's day
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 10:13 AM UTC
When juiced a spore sized embryo, early in utero; fetus
evinces atavistic miniaturization,
where nascent differentiation wrought
physical resemblance to - seek reachers,
sans Tarzan and Jane forebears,
or exemplification of religious embodiments writ upon taut
lee helical real to reel strung nano deoxyribonucleic acid,
where dome min ant
ander recessive traits pop sic cull, and/or mom genes sought
took comb hing gull, where foxy fiery hander chrome hat tick
microscopic threads ineluctably
hired bot to weave warp and woof for naught
heard interpretive soundcloud issue onomatopoetic beat,
whether as:
the Marseillaise, muezzin, or reveille blown in the wind
by alimentary mechanic, *** killed in all manner of ought
tow mobile craftsmanship, which possibly inflated and made pregnant,
when one seem n
thrashes within timed zona pellucida drawbridge,
hooping an ova to snag,
though odds stacked against the most basic cell fish competition fought
in the **** z of evolutionary biology informing **** sapiens
one errant or defiant game gamete perhaps hinting a gamine
tubby wonderfully woven with wisps viz The Idler Wheel Is Wiser
than the Driver of the ***** and Whipping Cords Will Serve You
More than Ropes Will Ever Do a ha at last that renegade oocyte
nabbed, analogously the Michael Phelps re: among the flagellated
madding crowdsource qua squirming sperm-faction caught
thence the commencement when trappings for a newborn bought
years later reviewing prenatal sonograms with grown son or daughter
pointing out how ***** editorialized, epitomized, and exemplified
in miniature (no bigger than any letter of the alphabet),
and closely resembled many creatures extant throughout the briny deep
such as an amphibian, reptile or Argonaut.
May 27, 2017
May 27, 2017 at 8:24 PM UTC
My grandmother's boyfriend ***** me at three
They thought that I liked it. No, I said please
Leave me alone, you're not funny, this hurts
Then I would have to wear sicko's hot spurts
This, added with prenatal memories
Left me scarred for life, an e'mergency
Case of I'll get back in time. Do you hear?
Now that I've killed you can call me a queer
Just 'cause you said it don't make it true
You'd probably hurt me more, make me eat glue
Imagine one day that this happened to you
And know just how much I am permanently *******
Dec 7, 2015
Dec 7, 2015 at 12:31 PM UTC
she carries the sun
with her bare
inexperienced hands.
she smatters the sky
with stars for you and I
and the birdsong
in the early hour
and the berries
flowering on the mulberry bush
in this hush, serene scene
that she was responsible for.
she has lived on this Earth
but two decades
though the daisies in her hair
imply longer;
and the babies in the field
in her prenatal dreams
explore a learnéd
old soul to be reckoned with.
the child is her saviour
though she is but a child herself
Mar 27, 2018
Mar 27, 2018 at 4:17 PM UTC
You have a smell
That I try to put myself inside.
Wear it like I wear your t-shirts
When I've given up on fumbling for my own
in the darkness.
I like that in bed I can see your face
illuminated by a scurvy-ridden moon.
I have to bite my lips
and yours
to keep prenatal words in, sometimes.
I wonder how big a part of my life
you'll have been
once you're no longer a part of it.
Maybe I love you, or maybe
you just smell safe.
Dec 20, 2019
Dec 20, 2019 at 4:29 PM UTC
Vitamin D. Prenatal vitamins. Gauze. Paper-tape. Pregnancy tests. Ghirardelli square wrappers. Anti-septic. Band-aids. Small strips of paper towels. Anti-biotic wound care. Disposable masks.
My nerves are showing up in the cracking of my skin, in my eyebrows, between my eyes, and down my nose.
My hair's growth is stunted by my sporadic picking at the ends.
Now is not a good time. Now is the only time. Now is the worst time. Now is the best time.
Feb 5, 2021
Feb 5, 2021 at 10:50 PM UTC
A triangular table built with friends when I
was twenty, carving wood and hammering
nails between statistics lessons, laughter,
ouchs, cigarettes and uncountable glasses
of wine. Dark red rivers misted in smoke,
clouded memories drowned in fumes, as I
watched and encouraged far more than I crafted,
the construction of a project pervaded
with great expectations. A distinctive telltale
air pertaining only, to those beginning life
with a deep gut feeling, suggesting endless
possibilities and naught limits a strength
strictly reserved to youth. Fell in love
with one of the makers, summer affairs in three
months turned, into a family. Dined on triangle
every night until, I graduated and bore
my first child Plato. Moved to the other side
of the city leaving behind, the artefact
in co-builder’s hands and lover’s best pal,
he who impeded prenatal doubts with candlelight
monologues on change and importance until
he too left, for Mexico newlywed, to my old-time
school friend. History intertwined and table given
to another witness of manufacturing days living,
by the Roman lake. A new wave, of dinners
reuniting friends between marketing campaigns,
laughter, feeding bottles and uncountable glasses
of better wine. Table metres away deposited
in the garage as I, conceived my second child,
Eleni on a New Year ’s Eve neglecting
its presence. Splitting up from my lover to bond
a little further, changing house once more
to grow. Moving to France as lake inhabitants
moved to Sweden, kids’ father into their home,
keeping an eye on the rotting triangular table
for two years to fly by and see me return,
harboured by he who never lets me down,
a year to recover from adventures
and deceptions, new friends hardly replacing
those who left, gazing at the table to reminisce,
promising I would bring it back to life as soon
as, yesterday came and so did strength, for me
to retrieve, clean, polish and place the relic in
the centre of family abode, and write this ode.
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 2:28 AM UTC