Stones for Michael

Stones for Michael 
     and Tammy Jean

You told me
that people were bringing stones
from around the world

for your collection
from the places your 17 year old
would never get to see. I brought

a common, garden rock
a little fresh earth still clung to
from my own backyard

a place my own son--so close
in age to yours who died--no longer
visits but still thrives.

I cried reading your poems
again today. Excruciating elegies and
mother's grief, for both of us.

Spider Lessons for Barbara Southard

Spider Lessons 
     for Barbara Southard

I asked one of the monks
at the local buddhist center
right in front of a piece

of the original bodhi tree
how to make the little knotted

bracelets they give us
as a reminder of mindfulness.
He pulled out the string

in long draughts of three
gathering tensile

strength in a graceful
orange-robed ballet.
Suddenly I burst out

Spider Lessons! Transformed
I became--all at once--

the little, laughing spider-monk
his mummified cocooned prey
and his shimmering web

in the moonlight
anticipating the sun's dogmatic return.

But who taught the spider his craft?

Spiders don't teach
their young to weave and spin.

They give them life and tools
those that survive learn somehow.
In my vision my little spider-monk
is smiling, laughing, spinning.

Red Queen Meets the White Queen at an Open Mic on meeting Jane Lecroy

Red Queen Meets the White Queen at an Open Mic
     on meeting Jane Lecroy

O! You are a force of nature--
Never start a journey on a full moon
but on a winter's night at the cafe
Lewis Carrolls Red Queen meets
the White Queen
one looking for her child
the other living her life in reverse
at a poetry reading
in Amityville
of all places anti-parenthetical and
anti-poetical

For one night they are
evenly matched
living outside the pages of a book
admire one another's talents
and ambition
share love of poetry
in front of a painting
of the Red Queen
dancing in front of a full moon
by a Pagan Painter and Dancer
and for five minutes

We only get five minutes!!

They are equals and alive
as myths can be
forces of nature
and divine energy
flowing in all 7 directions

The Red Queen
catches a train
back to Washington Heights
back to her teaching job
her computer tech husband
her three children
and her life as domestic goddess

White Queen hops in a white pickup
rides back to the country
both where they do and don't belong
the end and beginning
of the journey
started on a full moon.

Barren
     for Tom Stock

Blog Addict

Kitchen Table Gods

Kitchen Table Gods

            after Sacrifice by Mike Krasowitz

I pull a fifty dollar bill

from a donation envelope 
out falls two small wooden girls

in ceremonial offering.

If you are nice to him you will get $50.

She meant only talking

not what the others endured

But Mother, you said

you hated him and I believed you—

even before I knew the awful truth

of the man you called your father—

what he’d done to all of you.

I took you at your word that he’d

been simply cruel, like you.

My other grandfather

gave pennies to fill a cider jar,

Indian heads for my collection
walked with his dalmation

played cards and checkers--

never once did I fear him.

I didn’t like the way

that crisp new $50 dollar bill felt.

Fifty dirty, wrinkled singles I earned

babysitting were cleaner, came

without secrets or shame.  You said

money had power, but I learned

that this is another lie--

its a tool that can become a weapon
people like you and him
learn to load and shoot.

Tree of Life

Hello to Blog land this is my virgin blog here goes
yours truly
kelly jean







Tree of Life



With your Michaelangelo hands

you try to imitate the divine inspired by an infinite mind

with concrete convex finite edges.



I introduce myself. Primordial, yet cordial.



Sometimes you bear fruit that tastes of Adam

after the eviction

seasoned with a fallen angel or two

and the end of days



I am Diana I say to a falling, nodding branch

a goddess self contained

you say just wait



you must race Narcissus first

restore Echo her voice

to her own body.



Only friend to a lonely girl

a white swan still in cygnet garb

waiting for her prince

and the tragic russian ending—



she tied a yellow ribbon

in your hair because she heard it in a song

of the time at the crossroads

of Celestial Lane and Farm’s Edge

address of the plane

of man and all his failures



a girl who hid in closets

her grandmother had been locked into

by her faith

for writing with the wrong hand.







You will write with both hands full and a question you tell her--

You will be safe from anger by locking your heart away

by becoming a vessel of unexpressed emotion

gypsy made of old gossamer

curtains and rags



harps of gold and light

buried in your roots

away from a tax on the music

flutes and cellos play ancient songs in the wind



I sought you out--

the size of a thought dancing on the head of a pin

thimbleful of mortality

in my heel where my mother

held me to the fire

like Achille’s mother before her

burning away

my immortality instead



squirrel food half-eaten

half offered to gods of our own making



worshipping

a sky father and earth mother

the others the barbarian Mongol hordes

will poetically call fingers on a hand