Category Archives: faith
Conceived on Valentine’s Day, a poem
Conceived on Valentine’s Day, a poem
In the beginning, I almost hated them for bringing me into the world…
alone as egg, one floats weightless, drifting peacefully like a helium balloon,
and as sperm, one swims in ever-widening circles with serene joy.
I never approved the union: his tiny-tailed kamikaze wriggling to oblivion,
smashing headfirst into the mammalian membrane of her egg.
But now I love my frail universe; evidence of their short, fraught marriage.
They cooked me in the kitchen, first upon a midcentury, glitter-red dinette set,
then on gleaming, spotless black & white linoleum. I remember my mother
at that exact moment, the way she arched dizzily beneath him half-clothed…
her strapless formal askew, her silk stockings awry, her feet bare
after kicking off her spike heels. Barefoot & pregnant in the kitchen, she learned
quickly to live with organized madness. A love collision, a soft accident, birthed me.
She opened her soul to my father like a flower opening to the sun & he did the same;
my hands, my feet, my face suddenly called into existence by heat & explosions.
Filed under beauty, childbirth, daughter, daughters, dream, dreams, eternal, eternity, evolution, faith, family, father, fatherhood, fathers, heart, hope, love, mama, marriage, mortality, mother, mothers, mysterious, nature, parenting, passion, poetry, pregnancy, relationships, sex, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, transcendence, tribute, truth, warmth, wish, woman, women
Pretty Young Women, Playing A Game, a very short story
Group of beautiful young women strolling on a beach
Pretty Young Women, Playing A Game
The stupid party game I suggested that night was called “the worst moment of your life.” A half-dozen of us were playing, sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor. The prettiest, Kelly, resembled a long-past period of fashion, with her trembling dusty-yellow curls, her sharp little chin — her eyes were bright blue, her frame delicate. We had been up all night; the sun was close to rising, but the birds hadn’t started their relentless cheerful, spell-breaking noise.
Kelly didn’t want to play at first, but the rest of us insisted, figuring what? That not making head cheerleader was her life’s worst tragedy? That’s what happens again and again to women like her, they try to explain why they don’t want to talk about it… but no one listens.
The second prettiest one, Vicki, was pale and fleshy, moving with a clumsy, yet charming, slowness that made the rest of us wonder if it was an act… or could she really be that dumb? Across the undersides of her velvety forearms gleamed a network of thin white scars… the baby she’d left at her mother’s that night was not her husband’s. Mistakes get made; the child’s father was never heard from again.
Oh, but now Vicki wanted to get remarried so badly it made every other woman in the room flush with embarrassment just hearing her mention her latest lover’s name. We knew because of the kid that wasn’t his he would never agree to marry her; but she was so beautiful… scars, sad eyes and all… that he couldn’t say no to what she offered up nightly.
So, after being pushed & pushed & pushed & pushed & pushed into participating, Kelly narrated the worst moment of her life. Her twin sister was in the middle of a divorce. We never knew she HAD a sister. A few days before Christmas, the estranged husband called — he had lots of presents for the kids. She agreed to meet him at a gas station down the street. The only thing he gave her was three bullets — one in the spleen, one in the right lung, one in the throat.
“At least he had the decency to shoot himself too,” Kelly says sobbing. “How does marriage turn into murder?” The rest of us watched tears plop out of her eyes like clear glass pearls; we heard the birds finally, blessedly, began to chatter, bringing relentless life back into the world.
Filed under blood, compassion, courage, criminal, criminal behavior, criminals, death, development, dreams, enlightenment, eternal, eternity, evil, faith, fiction, friendship, grief, human beings, loss, love, marriage, mortality, mourning, murder, relationships, short stories, universe
Ruby Bridges, Civil Rights Icon
Filed under beauty, birth, black, born again, buddhist, Catholic, christian, civil rights, compassion, courage, dream, dreams, earth, enlightenment, eternal, eternity, everything, evolution, faith, family, federal judge, flowers, Uncategorized
Hate crimes against Muslims rose 67% last year, FBI says
Filed under civil rights, courage, criminal, criminal behavior, evil, faith, fear, god, grief, human beings, humanity, hypocrisy, identity, idiots, ignorance, jerks, judicial branch, judiciary, justice, karma, mourning, murder, peace, personal responsibility, politics, religion, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, united states of america
Giant Redwoods, a poem
Giant Redwoods
(Statements in italics taken from Ethics, by Baruch de Spinoza)
Look farther and farther toward thin blue sky, until the green feathery tops of the trees are like the northern pole on some dream planet. Put the anger back in its bottle. These trees are generous. Hatred can never be good.
Your carsickness from the ride up the mountain begins to fade, leaving behind a breathless, weepy echo not unlike your first religious fervor. Hatred is increased through return of hatred, but may be destroyed by love.
When have you not been afraid? The random can be scrutinized for meaning, the puzzle solved, when surveyed long & carefully enough. Anything may be accidentally the cause of either hope or fear.
These trees have plenty of time. As a child, you stared at Jesus’ sad face for hours, wishing you could marry him — wondering what it was that made him love you. Could you sacrifice yourself for the sins of the world, if it was that simple & necessary? Cathedrals turn us small and vulnerable again, for reasons both blessed & cursed. Devotion is love towards an object which astonishes us.
Vague, starry eyes like yours feel at home here; the air is weighty, burdensome & solemn. You’ve loved trees before; this is different. These trees have plenty of time – more time than you. If we love a thing which is like ourselves, we endeavor as much as possible to make it love us in return.
Your nerves are suddenly frozen, by the unaccustomed richness of perfect light. Your guide is tall & slender, hesitant to speak. Her mother has the tattooed forearm of a Polish Jew of a certain age. The knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an idea of joy or sorrow. Sorrow is [a hu]man’s passage from a greater to a less perfection.
These trees have plenty of time. She touches your wrist, and for a moment, you, too, want to grow taller, leaving the surface of the earth behind forever. Shyly, she picks up a tiny pinecone, smaller than a toy. You both laugh when she tells you this is their seed. Joy is [a hu]man’s passage from a less to a greater perfection.
These trees have plenty of time. And all around, their wise, fallen, hollow bodies litter the ground like the bones of saints. Childlike, you understand a wish to die here, never to leave this hush. They’re only trees – your neck bent back as far as it will go; only trees, yet wondering if the giants can hear your thoughts. Love is joy, with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Love and desire may be excessive. When the mind imagines its own weakness, it necessarily sorrows.
Is there anything we have less power over than our own tongues? These trees have plenty of time, growing wise as the Buddha, in their silence.
Filed under absent father, acceptance, addiction, adolescence, adult children of alcoholics, adultery, alcoholism, anthem, anthropology, apologia, apology, appeals, art, art history, baby, baha'i, beauty, bible, birth, black, blood, born again, boys, buddhist, Catholic, charity, child abuse, child neglect, childbirth, childhood, children of alcoholics, christian, civil rights, compassion, courage, death, development, dream, dreams, earth, enlightenment, eternal, eternity, everything, evolution, faith, family, father, fatherhood, fathers, flowers, for children, forgiveness, friendship, girls, god, good, graduation, grief, he, health, heart, hindu, history, hope, human beings, humanity, humor, jesus, jewish, justice, karma, kindness, law, life, logic, loss, love, mama, man, manhood, manifesto, maturity, men, mitochondria, mortality, mother, mothers, mourning, museums, muslim, mysterious, nature, parenting, paris, passion, peace, personal responsibility, personification, poetry, politics, pregnancy, prose poetry, rastafarian, redhead, regret, relationships, Saint Teresa, science, sex, sisters, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, spring, transcendence, transitions, travel, tribute, truth, universe, warmth, wish, woman, women, wood, world, zoroastrian
Conjoined Twins, a poem
Conjoined Twins, a poem
Her entire pregnancy was uneventful until the second stage
of labor. Mother pushed and pushed, but we babies could not
budge. Surgeons came, made quick cuts necessary to disengage
us from the womb — found our joined skulls, an impudent topknot.
Mother wouldn’t let them separate us, she said the risk
outweighed the benefits. We learned to walk as best we
could; I, the taller, faced front in hopeful arabesque
while Sister followed. She didn’t mind, droll legatee
of my cranium, girl I never see. Despite our closeness,
we live in opposite ways; I view her face only in mirrors,
with my one good eye — our skin melts together, flawless,
pearly. A nice thing is, we never suffered night terrors.
We have never been alone. When they say, look, Siamese
twins, I want to scream. That is not the proper name for
our arrangement. Sister says, let them talk — I think she’s
crazy to let it pass, but I don’t say that. A big furor
won’t help at all. One trick we are good at is peace.
Negotiation has been our forte since that first incomplete
division; the moment each cell refused the other’s release.
We have minds of our own, thank god, and life is sweet
when you know where you’re bound. I go off to work,
Sister goes too. I sing while I type up my data, she reads
her mysteries, we break for lunch. My boss goes berserk
every once in a while; he’s got the same kinds of needs
for perfection we all possess. The one worry I have
not tamed is which of us will die first. I hope
it’s not me — how would she walk? I am the brave
one, the one who catches bugs. I would try to cope
without her. Once, in the night when she fell sick
with the flu, I held her until the shaking stopped,
until the fever broke. I wondered then, all dyadic
jokes aside, what if we had been cut apart, clipped
early into two separate forms? If it ever comes, will life
on my own be any easier? I’d save some of her long hair,
for sweet remembrance. She’d be a sharp phantom pain, a wolf-
gray stone with my birthday — my head a floating solitaire.
Filed under courage, faith, family, hope, human beings, humanity, identity, life, loss, love, maturity, mortality, mysterious, nature, poetry, relationships, science, sisters, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, transcendence, transitions, tribute, truth, universe, woman
Happiness At My Fingertips
Simple happiness.
I’ve looked within myself
curious as to what I may find.
I’ve managed to bypass the secrets and unhappy days,
jogging to the good memories,
and jotting down my findings.
Unpleasant things I’d much rather forget,
laughter and love I open up like presents.
I’m surprised by the little it takes to make me truly happy.
A roof over my head.
Clothes on my back.
Shoes on my feet.
Food on the table.
Surrounded by families and friends;
feeling loved.
Yes, this is what happiness is.
This is what happiness should feel like everyday,
before and after the hustle and bustle of
working my fingers to the bone,
trying to make ends meet.
Latin Epidemics, a poem
Latin Epidemics
Everyone’s caught this bug, talking to the dead, palms upturned.
Hope, long dead, the naked white bones a comfort; leaving homes,
wives, husbands, dreaming toward love; signs of birth.
People so disciplined, so filled with the rules of grammar; staying
married for life, or at least a day. A good day, kiss-filled; warm,
moist lips, not bloodless, cold & grey. How did we catch the fever?
Dreams uncatchable, passion withers; too much hope, too much
trust. Not much honesty; not much logic; a man wanted his wife
to talk to him. A woman wanted her husband to stroke her cheek
with his finger as if she was a flower, a child wanted her mommy
to drink less, wanted his daddy to stay longer… words come easier,
etched on lead sheets thrown into a sacred spring, asking favors of gods.
May he who stole my dog be plagued with gout; may she who
laughed at my husband grow warts on her nose… in a millennium,
nothing has changed except the curses, the fashion, the cheese & wine.
Filed under anthropology, development, dream, dreams, eternal, eternity, faith, family, fear, heart, karma, life, logic, loss, poetry, relationships, religion, rome, transcendence
Surveyor in New England, a prose poem
Surveyor in New England, a prose poem
And so, since there were no detailed official maps, he named small lakes after himself, solitary hills, even shy, dusty lanes marked only by the great thumping hooves of his horse — a patient, taciturn beast, dun-colored, remarkable mainly for the seven white spots on its flank, arranged like the constellation Ursa Major.
Back then, a hundred years ago, electrical-survey men like him sweated gracefully during summer, their cheeks burnt into dark Scotch grain, their hairlines preserved white as milk under the dimpled felt of U.S.-issue hats. Though he was the youngest of the crew, his moustache grew enviably broad and full, waxed close at the tips, bowed under his classical nose like the extended wings of a pigeon.
Reining to a stop, as he slid down, he pulled from the saddle-bags yet another wooden stake flagged with a length of wrinkled red muslin, kneeling to pound it into the rocky Vermont ground, leaving it there for eternity.
As he rode on farther north — past the tall flowering weeds around Lovell Pond, the drunken bees bouncing off his boots — continuing along the route he’d laid out for the electric poles to follow, he thought of his mother: the way her fierce blue eyes glittered on foggy mornings, the way his father caressed her wrist at the dinner table, and, above all, how skillfully she ironed, gripping the rag-wrapped handle, fluttering the heavy, blunt-nosed tool over the damp white cotton of his shirts in rhythms as comforting and certain and lovely as the slow tick of a butterfly’s wings as it feeds from the bright center of a blossom.
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 