February 13, 2017 · 10:49 am
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
Tagged as conception, heart, hearts, love, poetry, romance, sex, spirit, valentine's day
October 24, 2016 · 10:58 am
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
Tagged as art, Business, cats, christianity, dogs, faith, family, feelings, frogs, games, Health, journalism, life, literature, medical, music, new stuff, news, poetry, politics, questions, Relationships, religion, science, sex, travel, truth, writing
March 21, 2016 · 10:17 am
How Art Thou Received? (a prayer for refugees)
Imagine: suddenly, without warning (because that is how war arrives) you are a war refugee! Simply running away from being murdered. And how are you received when you can finally stop running, when you are out of range of the guns, the bombs, the blood? No countries to take you. No one to feed you. You are a skeletal pawn in a skeletal game.
Embalmed corpses declare war on the living and fight for their “territory” against other embalmed corpses using armies of young people; embalmed corpses feeding on fresh, young blood.
I know something is very wrong, somewhere. It must be addressed, and addressed properly. Our prayer, our incantation, our spell to heal, must be more powerfully crafted, more distilled, more essential, than was the horrid spell we are trying to break: a tradition of might over right, strong but wrong, a spell of ignorance which has caused so much harm, and is trying to do more… powered by the love of power, the love of control over people.
The scarred parts of the heart can be replenished; the broken parts, glued; the weak parts, strengthened; the fear assuaged, the pain relieved. But the desire to change, to truly alchemize oneself, spin that straw into gold… the gold of the sun… the silver of the stars… the red planet… the North Star… primal navigation by looking not at the ground, but by looking up, to the sky… that kind of desire doesn’t visit often.
If you want to know where you are going, be sure your map is accurate, or at least doesn’t kill you. Migrating birds know this. Power & Liberation. Slave & free. Joy & Suffering. High & low.
Craving slaves, some are trying to roll us back to serfdom, only they can use our own science & technology to rape us! Serfdom: tied by birth to land. You are a pawn, a source of income; in thrall to your Lord and Master. Freeing serfs is always a struggle. Brute force arm-wrestles the human race, and brute force often pins people to the mat, but… you cannot keep people down for long. The oppressed will continue to spring up and defend their inalienable human rights. All people are created equal: including our ancestors, who existed long before the self-anointed first “private property” owners. Human beings are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, yes? The earth cannot belong to any one of us. Period. We own this planet. All of us.
Filed under acceptance, amerka, ancient history, anger, anthem, anthropology, apologia, apology, appeals, assholes, baha'i, beauty, bible, birth, black, blood, born again, buddhist, Catholic, charity, child abuse, child neglect, christian, civil rights, compassion, con man, con men, corporate states of amerka, courage, criminal, criminal behavior, criminals, daughter, daughters, death, development, dream, dreams, earth, easter, emperor, empire, enlightenment, eternal, eternity, eve, everything, evil, evolution, faith, family, father, fatherhood, fathers, fear, fish, flowers, for children, forgiveness, friendship, funeral, gay marriage, girls, god, good, grief, health, heart, hindu, history, hope, human beings, humanity, hypocrisy, identity, idiots, ignorance, jesus, jewish, judiciary, justice, karma, kindness, law, legal system, legal writing, letters, lgbt, life, logic, loss, love, mama, man, manhood, manifesto, marble, marriage, matricide, maturity, mea culpa, men, mitochondria, mortality, mother, mothers, mourning, murder, muslim, mysterious, nature, notes, parenting, passion, peace, personal responsibility, pope francis, pregnancy, rant, rastafarian, regret, relationships, religion, rome, Saint Teresa, science, sex, sisters, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, spring, star spangled banner, tea party mad hatters, teenagers, transcendence, transitions, travel, tribute, truth, ultra right wing loons, Uncategorized, united states of america, universe, users, veterans, war, warmth, wish, woman, women, wood, world, youth, zoroastrian
Tagged as abuse, ananda, blood, buddha, children, civil disobedience, civil rights, confucious, dead, death, dharma, equality, fear, forbidden, freedom, ganesha, hate, incantation, jesus, jury nullification, liberation, living, love, mohammed, peace, Prayer, purity, redemption, refugee, refugees, saints, sinners, soul, spirit, spiritual, stars, taboo, truth, unity, war, wish
April 12, 2015 · 9:22 pm
Pregnancy, a poem
(after Alice Neel’s painting, Margaret Evans Pregnant)
Puffy hands clutch the seat
of the ruffled boudoir stool
to keep the woman from tumbling
to the floor, injuring
more than dignity;
her cumbersome belly bulges
taut, looms over the
bewildered thighs
like a great question mark.
Around her delicate knees
are small white dimples;
the pulse in the blue vein
revealed within a pale breast’s
transparent skin
taps in dreamy rhythm and
though her hair is unkempt,
her eyes gleam with gentle
confidence, patient sureness
that she will pass through
the coming ordeal of body
unharmed, spirit intact; that
everything in the world,
all the movement both inside and
outside her flesh, will emerge
from its hiding place at last….
Filed under alice neel, art, baby, beauty, birth, childbirth, poetry, pregnancy, women
Tagged as alice neel, art, baby, beauty, birth, childbirth, poetry, pregnancy, women
August 18, 2014 · 6:20 pm
I.
Sometimes, I ask myself why I didn’t give her back sooner. Would it have been easier then, before I knew her personality, the sweet meaning of her every sound, every movement? Already I loved her smell, the weight of her small head on my chest, already I’d soothed and fed and washed her forty days running. That other mother gave life, I gave only touch, warmth, comfort. I couldn’t help it; I fell in love, it happens like that, quickly, without thought. I didn’t know how it felt to be someone’s mother. When I couldn’t become pregnant, I cried for days. My insides felt soft and hollow, like an empty purse. This little girl loves me, I know she does. She reflects a rainbow back to my eyes, in her smallest toe resides a perfect universe. I lie next to her at night, breathing the rich, salty fragrance of her hair, feeling her body growing, expanding to meet mine, and over our private nest flows time, but for as long as we can we rest outside death’s pull, allowing all that to pass by, content with this lovely darkness, this small sliver of heaven.
II.
Sometimes I ask myself why I gave her up in the first place. It wasn’t easy, not even then; I haven’t held her since the day she was born, but I know her, like she’ll know me, without thinking. I began her life, I walked with her body in mine for nine months, we were never apart, not for a second. I called her my daughter. That woman has taken care of my poor baby for years, but in her heart it’s only me she’ll call Mama. Any fool knows this, anybody with a brain will tell you adoption can be a mistake. It was a crisis of self-esteem, more than anything. A momentary weakness, where I thought maybe I wasn’t strong enough to keep her safe. Once, during all this trouble, I almost gave up. All I had in my hands was a pink plastic bracelet, but I couldn’t forget holding her, I couldn’t forget how her toes curled against her foot, so small, so much like mine. Now she’ll never have to wonder whether I loved her, she’ll never have to discover where I live. The time we spent apart will soon be forgotten; she’s young and there’s plenty of time for our life to weave itself back together, to re-create our lost paradise.
III.
Sometimes I ask myself why I couldn’t have had them both, forever. Is love so smart that it can tell the difference between one drop of blood and another? Being born was harder the second time, though life at home smells just as sweet; the weight of this new mother, her reassuring size, pressed against me like a sheaf of autumn grain, harvest of all dreams. Dimness is where part of me lives now, the part that slept near the warm shadow-woman of my first days, hands that held fast, then let go. Dimness, and a lifelong vocation to tell people — remember, I have no patience for fools, none at all — nothing is as simple as it seems. A child’s soul can fill even the most tortured shape imaginable. God knows, when I have my own daughter, she’ll ask how it was to be torn apart for love, and I’ll have to tell her: it was a beauty and a terror and a fiery cross, and gaining the knowledge of good and evil has a price… and those of us who’ve paid it don’t for a minute regret our sacrifices. Yes, it hurts, yes, it left scars, and yes, now and again I have trouble sleeping — don’t we all?
Filed under acceptance, adolescence, apologia, apology, baby, birth, childbirth, childhood, compassion, daughter, daughters, dream, dreams, family, girls, grief, human beings, humanity, justice, law, legal system, loss, love, mama, mother, mothers, mourning, poetry, pregnancy, soul, transcendence, tribute, woman, women
Tagged as #adoption, babies, baby, children, conundrum, custody, family, grief, kimberly mays, love, mistakes, poetry, pregnancy, solomon, switched at birth
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 