Moonlight Hike
Early evening gray
Summer’s sister begins her shift
Don’t fight fading light
Stars reveal a hidden path
Thorns, answers, and more questions
Image description – a small stream surrounded by trees at Pocahantas park. The later afternoon sky is overcast, and the water is muddy yet still offers a clear reflection of the surrounding trees and sky above.
Former forest
steeped in fog
takes one last breath
before the concrete smothers
hidden roots and hearts
lungs and streams
For the moment, the river and sky
sleep
Underground dreams
travel
After a few years
nightmares of metal-mouthed equipment subside,
and the birds wake the seeds
Above and below
Indestructible roots and limbs strangle
billionaires’ dreams
Today I looked at the news again (instead of hiding inside a heavily warded blanket fort of ignorance) and damn, the giant rock we live on just continues to roll downhill towards a pit full of scorpions, broken glass, credit scores, and other such miseries. Despite having an ample number of empty houses in existence and the means to grow the food supply in relatively safe ways, those who believe themselves to be the unequivocal authorities over all that they see have chosen to hold everything behind a paywall. The lock only turns for those within the groups that don’t really need anything but want more than they can ever reasonably use.
Unlike the hopeful vision of the future proposed in Star Trek, the current reality is that technological advancements and their capabilities will not be used to benefit you or me. Cities have begun mounting a i cameras on the back of trash trucks, not with the intent to keep the drivers safe, but instead, to search for code violations in homes in areas where people have limited ability to pay useless fines. Municipality revenue-generating cameras on trash trucks was not the story I wanted to read today. Or tomorrow. Or ever, really. But if I choose to stay awake and aware, then I have to hear some absurdity or another, every single day. The price of knowing these things is anger that burns, constantly, to some degree, in every facet of my being.
I just wanted to go outside and enjoy the parks and beaches, and to be left alone and enjoy my privacy. But the forests are all being torn down to make way for ugly gray warehouses that drink all the water and breathe smoke into our air. Data center parks and data center villages replaced all the trees, but “no worries,” we’re told, we can still look up digital images of forests. A sacrifice for the greater good. I can’t figure out what’s great about it, though.
Robot eyes in the skies assist our phones in spying on our words and purchases. Companies line up to pay for the consumer data, because we’re just numbers with wallets to be exploited, and that’s not even the worst use of our information. The electronic spies report our habits to programs designed to fleece the people bare before the billionaires create their dream of an everlasting winter, leaving us no option but to trade years of our futures for the chance to survive the manufactured cold for a little while longer.
Concrete Screams
Data havens spawn through forests
multiplying into cities
devouring homes and family farms
The concrete warehouses wreck the air
with their discordant screams
that sing
the rivers dry
Image description – a photo of part of a forest that has been destroyed in preparation for a building project that will overtake land once filled by old trees and streams. A piece of destruction equipment sits behind a path in a wooded area that has been cleared of trees.
At the moment, nowhere feels safe from the imminent threat of data centers and overdevelopment. Beautiful, old trees and creeks and streams are being destroyed at an alarming rate to make way for things corporate overlords are trying to convince us that we need. City and county planners know that people don’t want these monstrosities but somehow, approval gets pushed through. Money has a lot to do with that process, I’m sure.
Money and greed play a large role in overdevelopment of land without proper infrastructure to withstand all the new homes and businesses. The money, though, is something most of us will never see. We work and pay taxes, and yet, those in political power seem determined to keep the majority of the money paid into the system for themselves. They toss the majority of us mere scraps and tell us to work harder, blaming us for their hoarding of resources that should have been shared. Sharing money was the original agreement, the promise, after all.
Taxes were meant to be shared for things that benefit us all. Data centers are the personification of greed and hoarding behavior. The centers collect our personal data, to be utilized in ways that maximize profits for the corporate overlords. The centers drink massive amounts of water and drain the power grid, offering us common people nothing in return, and yet, the hideous warehouses are multiplying everywhere, because the uber wealthy benefit from these monstrosities.
The monoliths that seek to box people into a perimeter of ever-dwindling opportunity must fall to make way for a system that benefits the land and allows people to thrive instead of living under the constant threat of manufactured scarcity.
The marketing director for the department of Everything is Fine
cuts out the disconnected, the supposed blight
Anything and anyone that deviates from the flavorless version of their ideal
must be eliminated from the glossy brochures that assure
shareholders along with obedient pitchfork and torch raisers
that the conditions under the rule
of the United Corporations are great and getting greater
Newscasters for the grifting enterprise
smile and take the bribes
They tell us to be quiet about the violence
but silence is a slow death
and being cooked alive on the low setting is no longer enough of a reason
to keep on being
an ant
marching to the tune of a song called “comply or die”
Time for the pieces to connect into a picture that can’t be denied
The song changes
The wind carries our words
and shifts the tides
A broken toilet, disconnected from the plumbing system and separated from any place it could be useful, is forced to occupy a space where people passing by become angry that the scenery is marred, yet nobody moves it- because we can’t be late to work, because we don’t have the right equipment to lift and move something so heavy, because alone, we don’t have the resources to fix the problem.
The current system was designed to be an obstacle to any type of progress that doesn’t benefit the wealthy donors who have purchased politicians’ favor. This system is only workable when we are merely individuals, trying to exist and endure, but when we step together and organize, we become something the system of oppression can’t survive
The Return
The highway finds me broken
and broken free from the mountain’s grip
bleeding from a fight with the clinging trees
Distance restarts my heart
Each mile is another beat
At the edge of the ocean
my breath and my dreams
return to me
No Kings
They came at night
and hollowed out the trees
then told us what our damaged forest needed
Messages broadcast through empty shells masquerading as
the heart of the land
polluted the water and some minds
But the wind, she collected
the outrage
the broken dreams
and the agony of every being
that the hollow shell of the wannabe king
tried to silence
The wind screamed
“We will not bow to kings”
Each of us a became a raindrop in the storm that tore down
the emperor’s gold-plated castle
I’m thrilled to have The Wind is the Only Thing (a collection of four poems) featured in the anthology, The Heart of Us. This anthology is a collection of poems and stories by women and mothers about the joys, pain, and revelations of love. To love takes strength and courage, and the journey makes us who we are.
Image description – image is a pale pink graphic. On the right is the book cover for The Heart of Us. It features the outline of a woman’s face. Her hair is created by love-related words and a rose graphic. On the left side are the words “as women, mothers, and storytellers, we live from the heart, and it shows in every word we share. These pages hold our joy and our sorrow, our victories and defeats, our laughter and our tears. Each piece is a reflection of what it means to live, feel, and grow with heart. This is the heart of us.”
The Heart of Us- a moms who write anthology is available on Amazon and all proceeds go to the American Heart Association.
https://www.amazon.com/heart-us-moms-who-write-ebook/dp/B0FCBT8SQ7
Song Behind the Trees
Beyond the tree line
music beckons
Keep reading for the two possible endings to this poem
Ending 1 –
Past the threshold
no trail awaits
The stars can’t breach the canopy of leaves
A chorus of vines wrap around me
I’m a present for everything that stings
Venom lessons leach into blood, muscle, and bone,
Wolves wait and rabbits
scream
Over the crickets’ wicked laugh
I hear the stream
whispering
that the forest doesn’t go on forever
The music is gone
so I write my own
Ending 2-
When I cross the threshold
leaves swallow me, doing their best to hide me
from things that steal and sting
Whisper of the stream
guides me
off the path
through briars that cut into my leaves
piercing muscle, clawing at hope
but the sound still calls
I hide from spiders and walk with snakes
through the rain
over places where the earth
split
Stars and fireflies stay true
And the night’s butterfly takes me through the last miles
to the heart
the symphony
the beginning
of everything
Image description – a photo of somewhat barren trees at the edge of a forest. The sky is overcast, and a layer of fog gives the trees a hazy appearance.
Why two endings for the poem?
After I wrote the beginning of the poem, I started thinking of two possible endings- one more sinister and one with a more joyous outcome. I remembered reading those Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid and thought, why not have two endings to this poem?
A song, a promise, a path- hidden except for the first few steps- could be a trap, waiting to ensnare any who dare to enter. Will the price to move past the trees be cuts so deep that souls and bones need to be pulled back together with a needle and thread? Or is the hint of the hauntingly beautiful song a prelude to something wonderful?
The threads binding our souls and bones remember the agony of past lessons, yet the stitches come alive with curiosity. In stillness we dissolve. Beyond the tree line, we find reasons.
The Electric Doors Never Stop Eating
Earlier than necessary
electric doors open wide
ushering in employees who either
drank the corporate-issued devotion-to-policy brew
or chose a regular cup of coffee and steeled themselves to slog through
another day of being under the eye and thumb of
cameras and software packages designed to report
each word
each keystroke
to measure productivity, to predict loyalty
to the almighty company
Corporate mission statements decorate walls and computer screens
Remember:
Positive attitudes only
Daily emails politely warn
that questions come with a penalty
When bodies drop under the weight of unattainable goals
and crack like stones
No blood left to squeeze
The boss with the broom sweeps the old dust out
so the doors can welcome in
younger faces ready to bleed for a company
that will demand the impossible
then sweep away the broken pieces
with a broom
Image description – photograph of high-rise businesses overlooking a rocky section of the James River
About the poem:
As rights for workers and conditions for workplace safety continue to erode, the reality hits hard that lawmakers are not coming to help workers. Nobody in politics is coming to provide actually legislative help because their pockets are being lined for staying silent. Since nobody in power is coming to help, it’s up to us to set a precedent, to draw lines, to set limits, and to be loud and obnoxious when we can if subtle strategies and quiet subterfuge fails. Otherwise, the spineless, manipulative, ass-kissers who have sold their souls for the privilege of serving their corporate overlords will continue to perpetrate wage theft, require unattainable goals, tout unrealistic expectations, discriminate both overtly and covertly, and cause unsafe and/or inhumane working conditions.
Life in a Bottle
Plastic bottles inhale
breath from the river
Corporations sell
life
and take it
without regret
Image description – A photograph of a narrow, winding section of the James River surrounded by trees on a sunny, spring afternoon
About the poem – Corporations have been given the rights (for the right price, paid to hungry politicians) to bottle up water from waterbodies that people depend on, both in the United States and in other countries. These soulless corporations then sell the bottled water to the people whose streams and rivers the corporations have claimed. There are so many short-term profit tactics that involve destroying water and land for temporary gain. Politicians who allow the land to be polluted and destroyed are often working under the assumption that the aftereffects won’t catch up to them in their lifetime. They assume that they will always live in the protected, fortunate areas where such things don’t occur.
The earth can’t protect itself from shareholders and CEOs or from smiling lawmakers bent on getting kickbacks for passing along environmental destruction laws, all so they can send their kids to the good schools and have summer homes by the river (in the sections the corporations can’t touch, of course), so we have to respect and protect the earth.
Earth Day is a chance to remember and appreciate all the beautiful parks and natural landmarks, but it’s also a reminder that we need to be active in the fight to preserve them.
