Heart Forward

A place for me to collect my poetry

[little-muses]

The Empress

Bare shoulders walking through the trees New green leaves feather-light against your skin Fruits ripen in your hands and you relish in their sweet juice as it drips down your chin

Your dark eyes are ablaze with a powerful nurturing warmth protection love Hair kinked and elegant Smile vivacious and wide

Sitting in wheat fields Demeter at your side Crops flow forth with a glance

Your skin is warm under your fingers belly round with life the sun fills your womb and it pulses with the life of the world

The two of you sit in a calm meeting your voices are soft but strong laughter full of mirth Every breath bright with the love you have to give

[little-muses]

An Elegy on the Death of A Child

There was a time where he laughed loudly, bright And unabashed there Roaming forests, voice alight Singing freely and passion flared

he grew in time with Spring’s green saplings Buds of selfhood blossoming How quickly he choked upon the frost How quickly that childhood spark was lost Voice breaking and song fracturing

The towering pines weep their needles falling on his little form blanketing his meek remains floating in his pooling pains Ice entrapping him - forlorn within his deep, forgotten tomb his tiny fingers clutch his soul

Before he crumpled under fear He cried and stumbled unafraid He made mistakes and shed his tears boldly, blissfully unashamed

When Spring still sang it's jaunty tune His voice was strong, unwavering Without worry that his words would turn and twist and make his stomach churn from Winter’s windy, roaring croon He could still trust himself to begin

For years his body sat and stewed in fear’s rancid and rotten broth he marinated in guilt’s sour brew Forgotten in some toxic trough

Murdered, silenced, beaten down Until his breath was soft and slight Unbridled joy that he had known Stifled under her icy fright

But now and then I hear his voice Whispering as wind through leaves I feel his small hand holding mine Telling me that I can shine Offering that fearless choice of blossoming through Winter’s freeze

I’m not yet strong enough to go and dig him from that darkened place But someday I’ll reach through the snow past the guilt and shame and blight to embrace myself and walk alight with His earnest smile on my face

[little-muses]

Dissociation

The cityscape is glassy Horizon too close Or too loud? The strings of traffic, footfalls fragments of conversations too loud, too distant Bowed harshly like an angry child  scraping across the violin

The world ripples sharp and jagged I could reach out and press my palm to its surface Like a pane of glass

Memories surface unbidden and drift away listless and oblique watered down

My senses fumble and fall everything static lukewarm

Drifting from hour to hour I don’t expect you to understand how could you? why would it matter anyway?

The violinist’s bow strings snap And in that moment I finally am

[little-muses]

Inherited Echoes

There are days when I remember The shtetl I’ll never see Great aunts and uncles I’ll never meet The dust and dark That choked my great-grandfather a coal miner the whispered prayers changed names the candles snuffed out

The hours weeks years spent pretending not to be

There are days I remember My own whispers The looks I got calling my father papa saying bracha before I ate refusing baptism with hands so small they could barely hold a pencil

I have inherited journeys years of wandering through deserts snowfields unfriendly cities I have inherited stories Songs of mourning bitter work hardship

But on those days when my great-grandparents’ voyage across oceans, across worlds feels closest I remind myself of the songs of joy of the challah recipes the prayers sung with voices loud and shaking, rejoicing

They never made it to the promised land they never got to see their candles standing proud on a shabbos table but I know they hear my voice now they see me on the bima holding the torah for all to see they rejoice with me in all our hardship

I have inherited journeys hardships sorrow but also the strength the joy the passion to stand up and keep walking

[little-muses]

Ancestral

Wrinkled hands hold mine Soft and weathered shaking but strong Our tears join, a sacred river flowing back through ages to its origin

For my fear is their fear my joy their joy We look out across an impossible earth sharing our eyes and I am grateful for my ancestor’s smile lines around my eyes reminding me as I squint and shake with joy that we have always laughed and loved

[little-muses]

The High Priestess

Silk and leather Ritual robes swath her form An elusive, many ringed hand slips just out of reach

I knew her once So long the memory is just a shade Every so often I just catch her in the twinkle of sun off water, a gentle breeze, a night of laughter, the feeling of a hand against mine

but she is gone as quickly as she came I reach for her jeweled embrace for her quiet wisdom she whispers tries to meet me but she is lost or perhaps I am

Somewhere deep I know what drove her to run What stole my intuition’s sly, knowing smile Melting, writhing fear choked her with its jointed, spindly legs Now she runs like her sisters years before finding little ways to show me despite the fear she’s still alive, somewhere

[little-muses]

Bodies

We are marble, carved and molded stone liquid like a river spry as young saplings

Skin as warm as candlelight smooth as freshly fallen snow dark and light shadows flickering

Do not hide us, shuffle us away Display us in our splendor folds and dimples, muscle and blood The hefts and stutters of breath Hips Mouth

I let my eyes flick over our naked forms like stones across a lake’s clean surface thinking “We are beautiful, who would dare try to shame us?”

[little-muses]

The Magician

A spark, a hand reaching out into the fire grasping at embers building a home

Discover the magic of creation once again Shine like Apollo bold and irreverent

Let the flames touch you liquid and hot get drunk off their smoke unknowably dark

For deep in that fire creativity blooms energy dances Calling for you

So grasp that reaching hand tanned from holding the sun run with Apollo and sing all the while

[little-muses]

Pages

My pages are worn and bent, Tattered, spilled on, crumpled up, Overfolded again and again, Shoved in pockets, hanging stuck Withering in shadowed dark or bleached by harsh, uncertain sun.

Fear stamped over what used to be, My small handwriting old and sure waiting for someone to see through all the mess and wear and gore to who I used to be before and to the affectionate doodles and notes put there for me to see But I closed my eyes long ago Unable to bear the wretched score

I tumbled out of my own hands And sprawled all tangled across the floor Out of order and fanned out I’d stooped but only fumbled more I stared unblinking, bowed and blind overwhelmed at the mess mislaid

I felt the thick, oppressive stain of judgement pressing down like rain Melting away cover and spine till I was raw and pale and shamed afraid to lift my wounded head and collect myself up to be read

So there I crouched, red-eyed and sheer looking away for all those years when I found the strength to look again to smooth myself and pick up my pen my fingers creaked and split and bled for I’d been folding all those years, tight and stiff to hold their words I’d forced myself to bend and crack so that I could barely hear

And now I sit here on the ground Sorting through the mess I’ve found. Sometimes it’s too much tight and wound and the tears from my open eyes fall to break their thick ink down My words are there, still legible I’m still learning to be vulnerable enough to see me there collecting my pages slowly tear by tear

[little-muses]

With You

Sink with me Share my breath and let me taste yours

When you reach into my chest Be gentle So I may feel the texture of your soul

I may flinch and pull away but I promise I’ll come back to feel with you again

[little-muses]

All Words

Take every word A dead man spoke in life And form it into song

We are all poets Simply taught different ways to sing

[little-muses]

At Home, Aloft

I have lain crystallizing staring up at the smooth felt sky so close my fingers graze its subtle soft surface

Pinpricks of light shine through Holes left over from stitches pulled free And my mind tries to peek through to the other side of the stars Searching

Hands, feet, neck eyes all fall away - left behind I’m on my way across that tide, A breath from breaching A thought away from time

But then a flash captures my eyes and holds me close Arching and white-hot

It intercepts my wandering mind Passion flooding my discarded bones Movement, feeling: Paradise. It’s gone as quickly as it came But I remain, buzzing anew We were fleeting but I saw you

Now my breath comes flooding cold and crisp Fixing my body back to me Burning through my vast expanse And standing small and filled with light

Those words had always echoed through soft and strong I’d held on tight But I stand loose and swaying now Surface tilting and aloft And I repeat the words we shared - “You and I - we’ll always move.”

[little-muses]

A Visit

I want to find my way to you See you, touch you prove that you’re still real

I want to find my way to you to see if you’ve forgotten me or maybe make sure you haven’t Thought I know there’s nothing I can do if you have

I want to find my way to you make you smile, maybe or read to you or just sit and know you’re there

I want to

but I’m afraid to see you frail and small to remember how you were If I see you, then you’re real

Maybe it’s selfish It feels selfish

The garden is is wilting but the grass is green

I hope you have flowers.

[little-muses]

Blue/Grey

A grey wash What used to be electrifying Empathetic folds over to nothing

I don’t recall what it looks like so it’s difficult to miss But blue still feels the same when it hums through me In the brisk light of morning or the rippling of the waves

[little-muses]

Is This Life?

A jumble of thoughts and fears Standing to fight the battle again and again every day

Is this life - always bracing for the next hit, readying the rebuttal staring down the barrel

What if I am tired of fighting against life?

What happens when life wins?

[little-muses]

Hairbrush Blues

On the toilet in the bathroom Legs swinging I had run away fast as I could but now I’m caught

Sitting on the toilet Long-necked sink in front of me Mother between us

I wasn’t allowed to hang on the sink It would break, she said

The knife comes out With all its bristles And its rubber-gripped handle

Try to curl up Or move your head away if your please it won’t help

In she goes to cut Feel it rip, tear at your curls No blood pours out but it hurts all the same

You’ll scream You always do So loud she shouts at you to quiet down or the neighbors will hear But you don’t you want to but it hurts it burns

Tears wet your cheeks is it blood? Kept captive until the torture is through clumps of curls stuck in the blade

Sensitive they throw it at you Over-reactive she scolds, knife still in hand shame that cuts you

Now you know Even with a sensitive target Cruelty is still cruel and pain is still pain And you try to throw away that knife stained with your tears and hair

[little-muses]

Hold Tight

Walking down the street I hold your hand Skin warm against mine Sun between our palms

Their eyes are on us I hold your hand Why should we let go? Our grip tightens

Stares weigh heavily I hold your hand Fast against the fear Will they approach us?

Frantic, I falter Where is your hand? I can’t lose us In all their attempts

But I am not always strong

Their eyes are on us And you take my hand You hold me And in their vitriol their sick, twisted souls can’t see us But our eyes meet Our hands hold tight