Special K

How Helpless

2011-12-16T18:58:00.001-05:00

like someone
in a foreign land
with a daypack
of only your own
provincial tongue.

Poems are meant
to speak in metaphor,
but this is your truth,
your horrifying truth.

I know you
only so much.
Even so,
this much I know:

Every atom of oxygen
you would have forgone;
deeply into alien earth
you would have sunk;
a ravage of tears
you did, indeed, weep.

All to keep
her breathing,
all to keep
her here.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

An Open Letter to Rachel Maddow

2011-08-21T15:47:00.002-05:00

I heard the urgency and longing as she started the autobiographical preamble that is unique to her but I am guessing you have heard – in various versions – many times before, prefacing the very same question, posed to you, the very same heart-felt dilemma delivered at your feet.

A vulnerable, “Can you tell me what to do?” A needy, “Will you tell me what to do?” An insistent, “Tell me what to do!” With its whispered underneath, “You are so clever, so articulate, and funny to boot! Please, please, just tell me what to do to save this world, tell me that the world might be saved in my life time.”

I am nowhere near as schooled as you, or brilliant as you; neither do I enjoy the wide acclaim your position in national media affords you. My life has, however, afforded me smaller-pond opportunities to dip into a similar pool of inspiration, of people holding what I say with some regard, that you seem to swim in so gracefully. I, too, have faced dear, confused, despairing people who have done good in their lives, have experienced both joy and pain, who hope for something more just in this broken, unfair world and who are stuck and sad and sometimes outraged, but often, in that moment, are full of urgent longing.

Like she was.

So I kinda felt for you up there on the stage. And I was kinda curious about how you would handle this tender moment. I watched how you held this woman, a good forty feet and many rows of adoring fans between you and her. You listened as she told you that she was marching in the streets long before you were a gleam in your parents’ eyes. She ticked off a litany of ways in which her 80 years had been spent working for social change, strong in voice which buoyed her stature that age had bowed. There, pleading, vulnerable – more vulnerable than I was comfortable witnessing – she implored, “Tell me what to do!”

Whether there was an actual hush in the crowd, I’m not sure, but my somewhat melodramatic mind has built it in. I’m pretty sure those of us there knew you did not have The Answer. Yet some of us rely on your analysis, your gift for “explaining the world” as you call it, so we were ready to hear an answer and we were ready to hear especially your answer.

And with that small, secret magical-thinking child still within us, perhaps we hoped it might be The Answer.

That’s a heavy burden. Even an unfair one, particularly in front of all these people, who are the people of your chosen hometown. I think it comes with the territory of having a public life, the territory of people giving your words more weight than they necessarily give to the words of others.

I am one of the people who, when you asked the room how many people don’t have a television in their home, raised my hand (as you did, which did not go unnoticed or unappreciated). So I am not like my beloved aunt and uncle, who watch you faithfully and nightly. So I have to fess up that I didn’t know that you are famous for your cocktail recipes: I’m that far out of the Rachel Loop. I did sometimes listen to your Big Breakfast radio show when you were still just a local celebrity. I noticed when you went national on AirAmerica and felt a little hometown pride. Then I sort of lost track of you until the past year or two, when you kind of became a left-wing sensation and a local hero.

Mostly I know you through Facebook postings: hand-picked by my FB buds, your insightful, searing commentary that make feel less helpless, less hopeless, in this politically-whacked nation. So I don’t fall under adoring fan or crazed fan or even I-knew-her-before-she-was-famous, not really.

I did know that you were smart. And articulate. And wicked knowledgeable. I didn’t know you got your doctorate in England or that you are writing a real book on a real topic. I did know you have a particularly wry sense of humor that sends wonderful chills up and down my spine. I didn’t know that you were kind and generous, but I was not surprised to find this out. I think I had heard rumors about that. The valley is still a small place and probably always will be.

I did not know, however, that despite your relative youth, you are wise.

I like to think of myself as discerning. So I think of my personal pop culture heroines and heroes as articulate, talented, politically progressive. But wise? I’m more likely to expect that they are the exact opposite: arrogant, self-engrossed, smarmy, aloof. Another thing that seems to come with the territory.

Maybe you aren’t wise. Maybe you are just good at acting wise. I’m guessing you wouldn’t cop to it and that your partner, Susan, might differ in the way that intimate partners know our shadow sides more than others and are less likely to make such grand and unilateral pronouncements. But really, you struck me as wise and I don’t say that about many people.

First, as this elder from our shared community stood before you, you listened to her question. You listened intently. First step of a wise person: listen intently.

Secondly, you knew that the answer was in how you responded, not in what you actually said. Because the fact is, there really isn’t The Answer. As unfair as that feels, it is nonetheless true. If you had indicated otherwise, I think I might have stood up and walked away. And if not walked away, then at least brought much more skepticism and disappointment. Though I’ve not read his work myself, I am awfully good at web surfing for awesome quotes and so I choose here to reference the French Nobel Laureate, Andre Gide, who said (long before Deepak Chopra tried to make it his own), “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

You say that you started off as an activist, intent on changing the world. At some point, you turned on some unanticipated dime and ended up explaining the world, instead. Though I do not have the skills or wherewithal to do what you do, I’m thinking that explaining the world is easier than changing it. I’m not saying what you do now is easy. ‘Cause, dear god, you make really complex, important, relevant things accessible. Just easier.

Plus, you’re pretty damn gifted at it and there must be room in the Beloved Community for all of us to live into our gifts.

Lastly, and this is what I hope you hold onto so that you can live long and prosper, what I imagine will be a daily choice you will have to make over and over, because your star is ascending and its arc is wide: you told us there is a limit of what you can give.

You did this right after you explained the seemingly ever-expanding world of Glen Beck and his whole empire and how his influence is not only deep, but wide and vast and dangerous. You told us of the many mechanisms he (and his ilk) use to extend his destructive influence, the crazy amount of hours he works, the subterfuge he employs to spread his message, the pay-per-view presence he has established on the internet after he left Fox.

Not only did you tell us that there is only so much you can do, you did so bravely and with empathy, in the face of our wanting more of you. You did so humbly, even as we did what humans do: “desperately grasp after people, places, and things, as if they can redeem us from our own suffering.”* You did it as we brought our fear of how dark the night is growing, and how we feel you not only explain the world, you illuminate our hopes. Talk about not easy.

You said there is no Rachel Maddow, Incorporated, and there won’t be. You said there is no Rachel merch (though I think you haven’t been on the internet then, cause there is Rachel merch, it just must not be you who is making a buck off it). And even though the Creamery will now have a sandwich named after you, there will be no Maddow internet channel (though there are several of your cocktail how-to recipes online, which is pretty nifty).

You told us that one hour a day on television (and its concomitant activities) was about all you could do. Though I must confess to the slightest shadow of disappointment, I am much more relieved to hear it. I think you are wise for such a choice. You are wise because it isn’t just how much we do, it’s how we do it.

And as if it were a test to see if I was paying attention to what you were saying up there, I want to let you know I heard you say that yes, making a one-hour tv show was enough, but I also seem to remember hearing that you are writing a book of substance on militarism in our country; helping to make a serious documentary what the wound of 9/11 and how our response to that wound has changed us; commuting between two dissonant homes, and sustaining a loving partnership that holds deep meaning for you. Maybe it’s not as flashy as Beck or as empir-i-manical as Rush, but it’s not chopped liver, either.

Not only are you wise for it, we all are better off for it.

Because you don’t have The Answer, even if you have some really good, really scathing, really real answers.

Because we humans don’t have a great track record of treating our prophets very well. Yeah, yeah, I know you aren’t quite yet at the status of prophet, but I think your arc might include it in a pop culture kind of way and that could get ugly on so many levels.

Because it’s not like you are making it up: for it to be done right, for it to be real, for you to do what you can do (rather than some ghost writer or some hired hand), there really is a limit to what you can do. Especially if you want to stay partnered. Or happy. Or just plain sane.

Because when I am swimming in my own small pond of weighted words and empathy, whether it’s when I’m social working or ministering, I will remember that people survive when you hold them and their uncertainty, their longing, their wish for you to be something that you are not while telling them that you have something, but not everything, to meet their needs. There’s always that momentary hush – even if it’s just within my own heart – but then we all breathe, together, and keep on keeping on.

And that’s what I’m wishing for you.

*(Stephen Prothero, God is Not One)

Karen G. Johnston

Makaila, Too

2011-08-15T16:12:00.002-05:00

Water! Mama got water!
His finger points to her cheek,
his arms, legs nest themselves
where she is bent over in the chair.
He cannot look at her long,
but he gives what he has,
a body when she is sad.

Why gurgles from her mouth,
thudding at her feet
with the sound of again.

Little sister has entangled her limbs
in the lap of a kind stranger.
She has done every task we asked,
or not, without a single glance at our faces.

I follow the rules, remind this mother
in her florid despair
we are no oracle of diagnosis.

But the fear she hoped
we would banish with our bag of toys
has become more real,
not less.

Yes, it is a shame
that this two-year-old refuses
all food from their homeland.
Sadly, this is not
her only turning away.

I leave them all:
first-born son
and now baby girl
in their own worlds
as their mother makes her way
in this new one.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

So Many Lines of Poetry

2011-05-30T15:30:00.001-05:00

So many lines of poetry
wander in and out of mind
as I walk s l o w l y, circumnavigating
what my then kiddles-now-nearly-grown
called “the Big Egg.”

Right now, I am a poet who is not a poet.

So I let each line go.
Several repeat silently for beauty
(three times if it is really good).

Mostly, they are gone,
either cast away or floating off,
by the time my right foot
lifts and settles, my left foot
lifts and settles.

Yet this one that you are reading
got caught in the strands of my hair,
like the leafy detritus I often find
after a morning of weeding and pruning.
Hours later, brush in hand,
buck naked before the mirror,
poetry falls to the sink,
carelessly settling
among toothbrush, hair product,
razor & random pen,

a chance for momentary ink
before impermanence
fades us all.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Breaking the Rules of Polite Company

2010-10-24T14:24:00.000-05:00

A giggle, so innocent
at your own social impropriety.
Giggle because you have called
yourself great, aloud.

You remember only just after
that there are rules about such things,
that we are not supposed to say
these thoughts aloud.

You correct your self-referential self,
“More true would be to say Alice thinks she’s great.”

I ask your age –
another breaking of social etiquette.
You tell me two possibilities,
plus the year of your birth,
which coincides with neither.

I say, aloud,
“Even more accurate would be that Karen thinks Alice is great.”

This delights you.
You giggle anew,
the girl you once were,
eight decades ago,
sitting beside me
when we arrive
at your destination.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Vanishing Alice

2010-10-24T14:09:00.002-05:00

These times
I am only what
we are together.

I am not
your daughter’s beloved friend
granddaughter’s mentor
your occasional preacher.

I am
car ride,
driver from one place to the next,
possibility of conversation.

I am
undemanding attention,
delight in the you of you.

And when
I drop you off,
at the place
of your arrival,
I am
no longer.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Let the Foul Harpies Starve

2010-10-16T13:30:00.006-05:00

The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves,
Do pain create, and for the pain an outlet.
(H.W. Longfellow’s translation of
Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XIII)

May their incessant
appetite remain unsated,
let them be sickened
at first taste,
let their feet catch fire
should they try to land
on the hearth
of your branches.

Let them find
sustenance elsewhere.
Perhaps among those
who damned you
without ever meeting you,
who taunted you
from afar and
to your face,
those who denounced you
before you were even born.

This knotting and twisting
we inflicted upon you
in this worldly hell,
forced within narrow confines
of who should love whom,
may it have ended the moment
you took your own life.

May you find the friends,
the allies, even the foes,
who know your true light,
and reflect it,
bright, shining,
blinding.

May you find
not only the peace,
we could somehow
not afford you,
not only the justice
we denied you,
but the loving lover
meant just for you,
meant to make you
laugh ‘til you cry
and when you are crying,
make you laugh belly-busting
hiccupping guffaws.

May you find that lover
meant to hold you,
to embrace the all of you,
the whole of you,
and most assuredly,
the queer of you.

Karen G. Johnston

Cosmic Contusions: How Small, How Tender

2010-08-01T11:42:00.000-05:00

My latest sermon can be found here.

Independence Day

2010-07-09T22:30:00.000-05:00

for Kate

There were early years
when it was not true
but I am your mother now.

I have been for fourteen
of these much troubled years,
you just this year
in your majority.

As I always have,
I will hold you in my arms.
I will drive you to the doctor
or the shelter
or the drug store for condoms.

I will feed you dinner,
buy you groceries,
pay your heat bill,
brush your hair out slow.

I’ll help you write your appointments on a calendar,
I’ll send for another insurance card
when you lose the one I just gave you.

I will listen to your stories,
even when you repeat yourself,
even when you contradict what you just said.

I will hold my tongue when you rant wildly,
I will offer gentle wisdom just when you might listen.
I will keep my phone on all night,
will read your angry texts,
and promise not to respond in kind.

I will lose sleep,
just as I have
since you were little
and scared of the night.

I will be the most reliable presence
you have ever known –
that will not change.

I will laugh with you,
watch chick-flicks with you,
while I paint your toes orange.
I will cook for you,
pray with and pray for you.

I will tell my friends about you,
about you and me, about my love for you,
about the young woman
you’re becoming,
about your confusion,
and mine.

I was when you lived with me,
I am when you plead with me,
I am ever more your mother.

But I am
no longer
your home.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

I Loved You Before You were Tame

2010-06-15T21:25:00.000-05:00

before you knew
I was your mother
after the confusion,
before the trust

I wrapped
my arms
tight
my legs
entwined
yours
holding you
down
no way
to hurt
you, me

I loved you
when you were wild
when the bottom
was unreliable
I coaxed
the crooked way
straight,
tried to make
the rough places
plane

This day,
much later
we sit in
kitchen aglow
you laugh
at the stories
of then

oh then
was different
time

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

love, i think of you throughout the day

2010-04-19T20:17:00.000-05:00

sometimes conceptually,
sometimes viscerally.
love, i think of you throughout the day,
your absence is a presence for me,
a wrong presence,
because you belong here with me now,
a right presence,
because you are where you should be
(as long as you return).

love, i think of you throughout the day,
today, and the days before it.
i wallow in your absence,
a sow happy to have the cool mud
that comes from more time on my own.

and your absence stings,
a sore cavity awaiting your filling.
love, i think of you throughout the day,
today, and the days to come,
until you arrive here,
home.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

The Salve of Your Voice

2010-02-21T09:11:00.001-05:00

Moonlight concentrates
the salve of your voice.
Morning glories surface
pastel-light on your face.
Sweat behind my knees
simmers mutual desires:
one that is now between us
as sheets pile at the end of the bed;
one which will find us here old together.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Quarter-Century Friends

2010-02-21T08:59:00.000-05:00

Quarter-century friends
fumble virtually
towards conversation,
towards justice archaic
and utterly urgent.

I feel boastful one minute,
lesser the next.
Humility and determination
make such odd bedfellows.

One a reminder
of my soul,
the other
a manifestation:
each a dire message
that I live a life
not of my own making.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

The Big Lean

2010-01-31T23:26:00.001-05:00

The teacher says, we tend to lean into
the future, into the what’s-next, into
the make-it-happen.

Of which “we” she speaks, I’m not sure.
Wannabe Buddhists? All Americans?
Some Westerners? Upwardly-mobile people
who’ve been turned onto slowing down?

I know it can’t be everyone.
I went to high school with people
still on their glory-days chase.
They lean back, not forward.

Let me be more specific: I lean into the future.
By which I mean to say, I’ve spent my life leaning into it.
I’ve gotten pretty damn good at it:
I make a decent salary.
We have a roof over our heads.
I escaped the alcoholic haze of my childhood.
Some good has come of it.

The teacher says, we lean into the future.
When she says so, it’s clear it’s not the way to be.
Nevertheless, there I am: planning for the worst,
having learned – only later in life, and with great effort –
to hope for the best. All of it: leaning.

Today, however, I sit on buckwheat zafu,
eleven hours among comrades
in the being here, being now.
I notice I have been leaning
into the future and now, I guess,
it’s time to straighten up.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Dead, My Father

2010-01-24T22:12:00.001-05:00

Part I
My life has been easier
in these two decades’ absence.
A calmer, quieter urgency
to understand all that he brought.

Part II
I spent much of December
anticipating the date.

Even the first days
of the new year
had it on my mind.

Yet today is the tenth.
The day came & went.
Slipped my notice.

Another indication
that I am a better
poet
worker
wanderer
activist
committee member
mother
sister
housekeeper
lover
prize fighter
dog walker
liar
speller
baker
candle stick maker.

Nearly anything
than daughter.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Vanishing Alice

2010-01-24T22:09:00.000-05:00

I stand before her, talking pleasantries.
She does not recognize me.

She once sought out my poetic craft.
She once knew me as her daughter’s dear friend.
She once could place me without any effort.

No more.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Homage on the Occasion of a Church Engulfed in Flames

2010-01-24T22:03:00.001-05:00

Hand-me-down hymnals,
colors mismatched,
binding worn nearly bare,
pages yellow, soft. Gone.

Cushions filled with horse hair, straw.
So much more went into them ~
inadvertent blood prick,
graciously efforted sweat,
ancient and renewed tears.
None, not even remnant.
All gone.

Gone, too,
the pulpit,
the piano,
the pews.

Gone, the quilt
called stained glass,
called healing,
called blessed.

I am no lover of Christ.
Yet there are times
I have found myself,
wanting to walk with Jesus.
I have found him here
among you.

I had come
other times,
twice so dire
when divine calling
was too much
for these bones
to bear.

Now, in winter shadow
of single charred edifice,
the Parish House gathers
its motley crew,
some here since dawn,
others not seen in years.

Through distortion
of clear window panes,
the firefighters sentinel,
pacing the smolder
of what was lost.

Shepherd poet preaches,
We’ll keep our perspective.
(And the bell.)
No Haitian rumbling here,
yet the sound
of singing together,
of sighing together,
of seeking together,
is deafening,

making mute
any poem whispering
from this pen,
offered as tribute
to the gift
you are.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

How to Save a Life

2010-01-16T13:07:00.002-05:00

Place compost closer
to the house,
not halfway down
the halfacre lawn.
Let winter say fie
to the effort,
the rotting food scraps
will be gleeful
in their internal
near-combustion.
This year,
no worms will find
their fate as dry skins
on the cellar’s dirt floor.

Rake yellow asparagus
stalks away,
bundle-up
the blighted tomato
vines.
Do not burn.
Instead, place in
plastic bag, feed
the already-toxic landfill,
even if it sounds
very wrong
to do so.

How to save a life.

Get weekly news
from Peter Sagal and pals,
daily news
from Jon Stewart et al.
Laughter should outweigh
sorrow just enough
to keep the heart
beating.

Lay down sword
and shield,
lay down burden
by the riverside.
Then stop
the damn Congress
from funding more
troops to Afghanistan.

How to save a life.

CPR. QPR. DNR. RSVP.
(Okay, maybe not RSVP.)

Stay with him.
Comfort his clumsy
stumble-lorn despair.

Leave him.
Let him learn
the lonely lesson.

How to save a life.

Toss a coin.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Like Each Night, Wild and Inescapable

2010-01-03T19:58:00.001-05:00

do you not close up
in hopes of opening again?
Do you not open,
in hopes that eventually,
if only temporarily,
you will close?

Life is treacherous,
stinging like the surprising
winter thorn.
It is bitter,
coffee on cold morning lips.
Full of empty promise,
adhering atmosphere
with the weight of its void.

Yet, thorns,
even those hidden
in the yarn of warm mitten,
and soft aging flesh,
avail themselves
to the tweezers' pinch.

And bitter taste at lover’s kiss
is not unexpected, thus
melts into pulsing honey.

Breath breathes
over and over,
dark or light,
day or night,
open and closed.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Nitroglycerin

2010-01-03T19:44:00.001-05:00

Even refrigerated,
the little pills --
two-decades old --
can’t bring him back.

They do, however,
ignite my story.

I am clear-sighted enough
not to tell his widow –
her need for dead-him
stronger than her love for still-here-me;
my not-need strong enough
for what-she-can, what-she-can’t.

So, instead I sit
with the fuzzy-headed
newly tumor-free aunt.
She grew up
in the same fear,
different damage.
She surfaces,
her sister sinks.

My uncle,
her husband,
walks, talks
pontificates,
breathes.

The nitro
in his pocket
stands a chance
of working.

This is the one
worth keeping.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

There Is No Fixing It

2009-11-15T22:20:00.002-05:00

I have an eye that weeps.
It started a decade ago,
increases with each passing year.
Cold air sets it off.

It is a biologic process,
one not dependent upon tender feeling,
yet this poet’s eye cannot help
but see metaphor everywhere,
even when blurred by unbidden tears.

Should there exist
a medical intervention
to cease the steady flow,
I think I would decline it.

Why shouldn’t I cry?
Cherubic baby’s face emerges
from behind father’s shoulder,
so evident her dead mother’s visage.
Belligerent fifteen-year-old disappears
with her infant, having been, for years,
pimped out by her cousin.

Shouldn’t we all be allowed to weep?
Public radio matter-of-factly promises
to tell me about the corpse trade in Iraq.
Glow of the sun turns poison,
the least among us most harmed,
but none of us saved.

I am not supposed to allow
the luxury of despair
to leave me paralytic.
I will try.

Nevertheless, allthesame,
I weep.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Today’s Guest House

2009-10-18T12:43:00.001-05:00

I do not court disenchantment,
yet she is at the door.

I could shut her out,
close curtains, cut the lights,
sit in the furthest corner,
Pendleton wool covering my shoulders,
rocking back and forth.

Even the thought of it is soothing.

I could.

I won’t.

At the gesture of my open palm,
I wonder what she will do,
as she crosses the threshold.

I will not tighten my arms to my trembling torso,
but wrap them around her graceful waist,
usher her in with a ballroom twirl of surrender
to the mystery my teacher tells me to embrace.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Friends in their Forties

2009-09-29T21:32:00.002-05:00

for Tom

Shafts of Indian summer
warm your face,
my neck.

You speak
of your mother,
ever the parent,
even until the very end,
showing all of you
how to pass
with grace.

As we hugged good-bye,
I said with my truest breath,
we have only thirty years.

Only thirty years
to work out
some similar feat.

We should start
figuring out now
how to die.

I meant it.

I mean it still.
And I mean, too,
that maybe
we have
only until
tomorrow.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Ode to Otis

2009-09-24T12:12:00.000-05:00

Such joy, beholding this creature
attempting to scale river rocks
without success, yet he is not
one bit discouraged.

He and I have known
each other only
seven weeks now.
At first he found
all the gaps in our old
wire fence and he ran.

Ran he did,
just five days after we
brought him home from the shelter.
I spent a long hour in despair of his return.

Return he did, and now he runs less often.
We have repaired most of the escape routes,
but clearly not yet all.

Still he does not often run away,
he just lies in the fall sun, content.

This morning, Indian summer full upon us,
we walk along the pristine gorge.
Despite the sign’s order otherwise,
I have taken off the leash.
His harness and collar jingle ~
he is by no means a wild thing,
this boy who craves my love ~
but he chooses his own direction.

Much to my delight,
it is always
the same as mine.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Our Own Potter's Field

2009-09-20T21:49:00.001-05:00

Thick scaly bark, these trees are old.
Impossible to know just how old,
since yew boughs hollow as they age.
Three make a canopy of bright berries,
crimson constellations suspended overhead.
As guides, these stars aren’t much use.

All parts of the plant are so poisonous,
save the dark seed within each red star,
that after ingestion, symptoms leading to death ~
staggering gait, muscle tremors, spasms ~
are often missed before terminal collapse.
Horses are most vulnerable, none but birds are safe.

Next to me, the cold bench memorializes
the burial ground this serene hillside might be.
I can’t help but wonder about the dying patients
from the State Lunatic Hospital at Northampton.
No rapid onset: only slow convulsed demise, largely unnoted.

Just a few days ago, I marveled at how the next field over
used to hold an abundance of pumpkins in September,
then late October, a bevy of children learning
the fine art of New England gleaning.
How one year there was a ragged La-Z-Boy ~
some collegiate prank or attempted performance art.
Around here, you can never be sure.
Now the meadow rolls, four shades
of green, one dappled lavender.

Some will not even consider purchase of a house
on the village hill two over from this one.
The collisions of beleaguered spirits too much
for the harmony of hearth and home.

Unsure if this is meditation or lamentation,
I set down novice feet, one after the other.
Heel, ball, toe. H e e l, b a l l, t o e.
Underneath: collapsed dirt has wended its way
from bone to soil, sinew to loam, flesh to earth.
I wonder how to make luminous these toxic rubies:
those just over my head in the sentinel trees,
those deep below my feet in each and every unmarked grave.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

At What Moment does Shadow Define Light?

2009-09-16T13:26:00.001-05:00

Fox bisecting field
along snow-spattered wall.

Breeze moving lanky willow wisp,
trail of effervescent grey
on pond surface below.

That night, long ago,
when I held her hand,
long after the other
had given me her heart.

Some say
one does not exist
without the other.

If true, is it
each time I avert
my eyes from
a seeking suitor

or
my earlier betrayal
that makes more brilliant
this fidelity to you?

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

I am a Fool Touched by This World

2009-09-16T13:06:00.001-05:00

When all the girls,
green and blue both,
drop to one collective knee
until the downed player
catches her wind,
stands wobbly but sure,
amid the applause scatter.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Peace Pagoda (September 16, 2009)

2009-09-16T13:03:00.000-05:00

Brackish water
mottled with lily pads
the color of green beans,
rust, day-old dog shit,
goldenrod.

A cluster shimmies ~
one, then the next, shakes.
This one pulses,
that one acts like a cog:
brief urgent forward,
only to settle back.

The Jesus bugs
are here, as hoped,
skimming water,
barely a ripple
reveals them.

The longer I look,
the more there is
to see.

Frogs I thought
curiously absence
are, in fact, not:
Just my ability
to perceive them
until a half hour
has adjusted me
to the quiet
of this place.

Decay, too, is here:
soothing and ominous.
Pine needles lost
from their mother tree
are now spindly floats
that will eventually sink.

Down is where
I cast my eyes
to find suspended forms
of agile orange
wend their way
in the water.

A single dragonfly
just entered
and exited
the scene.

And always ~
always ~
this wind,
this breath.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

The Partial Will Come to an End

2009-08-23T06:36:00.001-05:00

1 Corinthians 13:10 (NSRV)
for KBW

In grief’s suspension of reality,
disbelief blooms floridly.

Stray sense of right, of wrong
fills the void when breath catches,
when tears well, just before overflow,
when moan is only bitter taste
about to ladder its way out.

Fleeting interval of partial forgetting,
suggests that death is not what it is:
commonplace, ordinary, everyday.

Second only to birth, and barely that.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Something is Broken

2009-07-28T20:36:00.003-05:00

It is not bone.
Not my heart.
Not a beloved’s body,
not even a stranger’s.

Unfamiliar peace below
as shards tumble
in this latest ocean:
now stormy,
eventually calm,
always and ever moving.

So much collision
becomes sea glass.
It cannot help itself.

All broken things mend:
bones knit,
skin scabs over,
hearts love anew,
or they don’t.

Even shattered glass
finds its way
into mosaic,
different from bottle
but still,

translucent.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Bread & Roses -- Star Style

2009-07-25T22:27:00.003-05:00

Here is the service/sermon that I crafted as part of the Youth Chapel held at the International Affairs Conference on Star Island on Friday, July 24, 2009.

As part of my love of Star Island, I volunteer direct a week-long youth program (60 kids ages 18 months to 18 years!) and get to create a chapel service at the end of our time together.

Deftly Hearing Music (REDUX)

2009-07-12T14:55:00.002-05:00

Today I gave a sermon -- recycled, and I'd like to think improved -- from a homily last summer. T

No Proportation In Love

2009-07-10T11:21:00.001-05:00

…no justice in it. (Gilead, Marianne Robinson)

Bear stunned:
tranquilizer to hind side.
Agile scientists scurry close;
opportunity to collect data
diminishing.

Before any tagging
or temperature taking
or blood titrating,
an ocular smear.

Narcotic that pacifies
does not shut the eyes.

Just you try
to keep your eyes open,
nineteen seconds,
or a mere twelve.
Evolutionary blink,
mammalian protection,
against corrosion,
burning, damage.

Say a humble hosanna.

Love bursting on the scene,
we said eyes wide open.
On our second date, you declared
not only your smitten state,
but most all of your serious foibles,
including this one, now,
abrasive in our midst.

Where, then, dearheart,
is my smear?

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Simple Intention, Muddled Implementation

2009-07-10T10:53:00.000-05:00

Hour drive together.
Door slams, peace abraded.
Swollen boy eyes, try once again,
He goes his way, I go mine.
For both, salve.

He’ll sprawl a few hours on crusty couch,
Amid arms, legs of other 15 year olds.
Enough joy to shout the shadows away.
Today.

Me: right place, wrong shoes.
Water laps, birdsong, mosquito thrum unabated,
Breeze dances green before my eyes.

To each, salve.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Inbetween Times: Who We Are For Each Other

2009-06-01T19:53:00.001-05:00

Here is the link to my latest sermon, which I gave yesterday: http://leamon.org/kj/index.php?itemid=39.

And here is the link to the Reflections by Lynne Marie Wanamaker, who also gave a sermon as a part of the same service:
http://www.mindbodymama.com/2009/06/worship-inbetween-times-who-we-are-for.html

For My Love Who Finds No Sleep

2009-05-21T13:23:00.000-05:00

There is no hour
on this ragged jewel
when someone
is not sleeping.

Except you.

On, off, on, off
then again on,
the world sombulates.
It is the hum that undergirds
triumphant kingdoms,
frenzied chaos,
installations of kindness
cruel skirmishes.

Yet, dawn is the seep
at your bedroom window
finding you awake.

You seek this muse
who recluses herself from you,
amoral in her absence.

Your long story together
is one of tentative attraction
though the past few months,
more enmity manifest.

Sometimes I think of you
as unrequited lover,
all thumbs, all left feet,
stumbling as you try
to win her affection.

(Your courting of me
more winning
than this fickle paramour
whom you need
so much more.)

I am not jealous.

Were that I Cyrano to your Roxanne.
More the Steve Martin version,
with its Hollywood happy ending,
than the original French,
which is heartrending,
through and through.

I could be vehicle of words
which would marry you,
perfect intonation
of mystical incantation
begetting your bedding beside her
each and every night,
start to finish,
dusk to dawn.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Our First Weekend Away (Cortelyou Road Station)

2009-05-21T13:22:00.000-05:00

Luxury discovery
of new islands
in this archipelago
lava evolving life
we are encrusting.

Weekend’s abundance
affords us afternoon nap.
We needn’t be fucking
or watching the telly
or conversing
all the time.

There is time enough
for bamboo shades-drawn siesta,
bodies naked and at ease.

I have just discovered
that you do not fall off
to an easy forty winks,
the slant of urban sky
precursing spring dusk.

You chortle at the day’s small delights.
You rail against the stupidity of others,
you heavy sigh at the dumb luck
of avoiding the Bridge of Snarled Traffic.

Momentarily,
I leave the skiff
we’ve steered here –
just long enough
to fill the brown notebook
you find so charming.

I return to the bed we share,
breath steady from your mouth just ajar.
I rub the rough studded line
from your skull to your bottom,
palm of my hand curved and content.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Metal May Well Revert

2009-03-19T22:03:00.001-05:00

for Naomi

to its natural state.
Rust, oxidation, salt hastening
its back, back, back to earth.

Bone is less exact.
Fractured, yes, even broken,
it returns: bone to bone,
parts to whole.

It is written
dust to dust.
So it is with bone,
shards turn porous,
devoured by bacteria,
time, our fading memories.

Shattered, however,
it becomes metal
not via its own volition,
but surgical intervention.

Carbon composite,
eventual, actual stardust,
the stuff of which heavens are made:
one moment expanding nebula,
same moment elderly mother’s broken hip
all night on cold linoleum --
she didn’t want to be a bother.

Her stardust does not heal like it once did.
Her mind does not recollect like it used to.
All that iron, zinc, copper, nickel trace:
once loamy soil, then homegrown kale,
then heart, tendon, lung, bone.
None of it, what it used to be.
Until she reverts back
to her natural state,
Alice remains.

Turns out we are all
scatter and combine,
the dust she once was,
is now, ever will be.

The time will come,
when you will grieve,
your tears will make mud,
your fingers smearing
the stuff of her body,
the life of yours,
the whole of the universe
on the wall of our mutual world,
marking our coming,
marking our going.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Personal Detritus (A Love Song in Five Parts)

2009-03-15T08:01:00.002-05:00

I.
Skin cells scatter.
Toe nail chips.
Stray hairs cling to shirt fabric.

I am falling apart.

Each year, a little more.
Each day, each moment.

So are you.

II.
Fear is the fluid
you swim before sleeping.
Yet sleep eludes you,
leaving you long alone.

I find you heroic,
suspended against
persuasive pull,
aiming to assemble yourself
on high dry ground.

III.
I cannot be all that you long for.

Simple, tinged with regret,
what I offer may well
feel meager to you,
but it is, nevertheless, true.

I will give you all I can;
I will not let you suck me dry.
You have so many worries,
so many doubts. Let this
not be one of them.

IV.
Oh, that I could convey
all of this, any of this
without inevitable sting.

V.
Pieces of you,
elements far flung,
proximally dropped,
have Hansel & Greteled a path.

You are collecting --
recollecting –
your own flotsam.

I offer my jetsam.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Belly Beguile Swell Swoop

2009-03-10T08:48:00.000-05:00

Swell of paved hill protrudes,
but does not block
what damp night reveals.

Underarch, swoop, concave --
insulated cables monkey swing
from one once-tree to the next.
Tarnished bright by headlights,
distorted in the mist of once-snow,
light dances the stillness.

I think aloud in a whisper:
I have never seen this before.

Hard to believe
given more than forty years
on this giant geode.
Forty years
in cities, towns, rural lanes.
This cannot be new.

Like this love is not new.

But is,
like the crossing
over, through, beyond
I found in your bed
mere hours ago.
Your cradling my middle-age swell,
belly so beguiling to you,
glow dancing between
our stilled, shared breath.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

menstrual amnesia

2009-03-06T09:58:00.001-05:00

every sunday morning
engaged 12-year-olds thrill me
with their ambivalent absorption
forcing such compelling questions:
would i be the same person
if my gender/sex were different?

invisible hormones seep
they mount monthly attack
reliable like clockwork
yet always surreptitious
catching me off guard
each new moon

last night was involumable accusation
such force it still shook the telephone line.

this morning brown spots
cotton between my thighs --
all i want to do is apologize

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Karma

2009-03-01T22:32:00.000-05:00

You tend towards secrets
so secretly.
Such is the secret,
this time around,
you keep it even from yourself.

I’ve met you before,
though we’d not been introduced
til we kissedcaressedfuckedsighed
this time around.

I always meet you.

You are my inevitable, indisputable, irrefutable proof --
should I need any this time around --
of karmadharmamettadivineuniversalenergy.

This time around,
I ruminate perseverate infuriate compensate.
A dog chasing her tail --
endearing foolish futile holy puppyhood.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

My Valentine to You

2009-02-14T15:32:00.000-05:00

after Marge Piercy

The pain is intolerable.
I can’t do it, you say, it’s killing me.

Implosion moments away.
End approaches,
Death hovers,
Personal apocalypse taunts.

Yet your veins still pulse
Your heart beats,
Lungs inhale.

Perhaps out of spite.

Perhaps merely to fortify you
For the next round of heartache.

Thomas Moore offers words of consolation
About the bounds of sorrow and heaven’s place.

They fall as flat
as the greeting card
on which they belong.

Your equanimity long gone,
Even Buddha’s thoughts seem over-rated.

You surmise
they lived too early to know true suffering.
that among its many accomplishments,
modernity must have advanced emotional misery.

Then your dear friend’s words
land absurdly near you --
Celebrate Valentine’s Day:
The day when a saint was beheaded
His severed body dragged
Through the streets of Rome.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Equilibrium

2009-02-06T10:03:00.002-05:00

I believe in the power of equilibrium in nearly all things.

Though my horoscope means blather to me, I find there is something to the Libran symbol of the scale. I see it in my two adopted children, once nearly stolen from each other. Even when I first met them and they were still little – one just two, one nearly four years old – they unknowingly balanced each other. They still do:
• When one is having an foot-stomping meltdown, the other becomes the epitome of perfect progeny.
• Where one feels the need to wash his laundry once per month (at most), the other loads the washer nearly daily with clothes barely worn but somehow in need of sanitizing.

It is not just in my children with which this instinctual, natural, unavoidable tendency manifests. I see it when groups are smarter than the individuals in it. I see it in what we are calling a “recession”, when, in fact, we are coming ‘round right after too long among the irrationally exuberant.

Another example, as certain as Swiss timing: should I stay up until midnight three or four nights in a row, one night to visit with my beloved, another to write a poem, the third to waste on insipid, yet enthralling, computer games, surely a sore throat and clogged sinuses will dog me into an early bed time. The more egregious the late night foray, the more likely a sick day from work will become necessary. The body craves health and demands its due.

The only place I do not see the pull towards equilibrium at work – and this is where my fervent hope and prayer come in, that my vision is limited by my earthy humanity – is peace. Out of defiant resignation, I only see us careening away from her, not arcing back towards what some say is a patient woman, awaiting our begging forgiveness.

I would like to write otherwise. I would like to write something to warm your (and my) heart, give you real sense of hope, give it to myself. But it is out of my purview and sometimes, even out of my imagination. I fear we’ve tipped too far this warming planet. Sad to say, I believe more the reports that say we are already over the edge than the ones that give me tips for reducing my carbon footprint.

Yet, somehow, -- and this is where Mystery enters in – this has not stopped me in my strides for peace. In high school, I began collecting quotes. Phrases, paragraphs, poems, passages which caught my attention. By college, I came across this passage by Elissa Melamed, the origin of which has been lost to me for several decades now:
I don’t know how long we have. We have to do this work because we believe in peace and in building peace. We start with ourselves, our communities: our circles get larger. If the bomb falls tomorrow, there’s something so valid about living this way, that we would live this way anyway.
I suppose that’s the rub, the saving grace, the zen koan. I still ride my bike, with its panniers to carry my groceries. I still buy many of my family’s clothes second hand as an act of recycling that also meets our need for frugality. I still garden organically, buy locally, keep the heat low in the house, write on scratch paper, write to my senators about Gaza, about bailouts, about government-sanctioned torture.

If the world is going to veer wildly towards its own implosion (something long ago depicted in Hindu legend…), a sure tipping out of balance, a ship’s bough rising skyward before certain plunge seaward, somehow I am one of those passengers running against gravity, sometimes racing frantically, sometimes ambling measuredly, in hopes that my little efforts might tip the ship back onto buoyant water, back to balance.

I pray to meet you, and many others, there.

Karen G. Johnston

Don't Pick the Scab

2009-02-03T13:30:00.002-05:00

And see how the flesh grows back/ across a wound, with a great vehemence,/
more strong/ than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses, /when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh.

(Jane Hirschfield, For What Binds Us)

I didn't much like you when we first met.

Enigma you were, you remain.

Drawn to you, yet, your tendency

towards shock for shock's sake

seemed self indulgent,

self-centered, self serving.

You are anything but self serving.

Don't pick the scab.

Momentary flicker of involuntary love,

diluted in the unkept promise of shared dance floor,

distilled in later spark of idiosyncratic poem.

I cannot help being anything less: air, freak, control, knob.

You, either: chaos, volume, noise, nondescript.

No rosewater to soften that scab.

Leave it on. I want that scab to stay.

I want to wrap the scab,

no common gauze but rather

linen bleached by sun,

softened by grit and grain.

I want to wrap you, your scab,

every inch of your proud flesh.

Hard-won, raised flesh.

May your skin may never thin,

may it never burst, be injured, explode,

freeze, collapse, implode.

My murmured blessing to you, Captain.

Don't pull off the scab.

Yes, you fall in love.

at every check out counter

I see this in you and praise it.

Knew that once I was your cashier

and blushed.

I see this in you

and I praise all of you.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

January Outrage (Poem for Oscar Grant) -- text

2009-01-21T06:51:00.001-05:00

January Outrage (Poem for Oscar Grant)

Tell me something/what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy/then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man/then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower/subsequently?

(Poem about Police Violence, June Jordan)

Do we really believe
having a Black president
is going to keep city cops
from kicking off the new year
by killing another 17-year-old Black kid,
prone on subway platform,
one officer's knee at his neck,
another’s gunfire in his back?

For real?!?

Once he's sitting behind that ornate desk,
Oval Office all oval-y around him,
after he for sure closes Gitmo down
on that very first day,
is the next decree really gonna be
No more murders of cops,
No more murders by cops?

I think of the late, magnificent June Jordan –
What if for every one of us, we get one of them?

Seems like Olmert listened,
but he mixed it all up:
What if for every one of us,
we massacre a hundred of them?
What if for every one missile landing here,
we raze all of Gaza? What if?

Suppose we apply some similar logic
to the No Banker Left Behind bailout:
what if for every ten Wall Street louts,
we save one Joe-six-pack from foreclosure?
Just one. What if?

This morning I spied
graffiti on a passing train,
Islam Sucks! stung my eyes.
Here's some presidential decree,
I'd like to see
No graffiti unless it builds us,
not builds walls among us!

or

Not one dime
‘til it’s counted
& accountable
& twice as much
flows to the bottom
as rises to the top.

or

Empire, schmempire.
Let’s learn & love & laugh & lust & labor.
Let’s keep it juicy, let’s vibrate.
Let’s dance & delight. Let’s disarm.

What if?

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

January Outrage (Poem for Oscar Grant) -- YouTube

2009-01-21T06:44:00.001-05:00

Here's the YouTube version of the poem. I hope you enjoy it.

Role Modeling for New Meditators

2009-01-11T21:38:00.001-05:00

Perfect posture.
Lotus position.
Serene countenance.
Motionless hands.

Silence. Stillness. Equanimity.

Not.

Startling to sound.
Distracted and distracting.
Scratching my butt.
Restless feet, hands.
Eyes shut,
then open,
then closed,
then one last peek.

Clumsy. Unfocused. Imperfect.

Sure message:
If I sit here,
you can too.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

So Many Odes to the Full Moon

2009-01-11T21:23:00.001-05:00

Or the fingernail crescent.
Even the moon so new,
it remains visible
to none of us.

But what about this moon?

Shining over the Hess gas station
illuminating soiled snow,
the stippering drunkard,
my mittened hand?

It is two days past whole --
uneven, warped, imperfect.

More lovely than any I have ever beheld.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Blood of Christ

2009-01-05T14:10:00.002-05:00

With the enthusiasm of a red-corpuscled drunkard
in mystical Irish pub at closing time,
the priest in full vestments
drains the last bit of the blood of Christ.

How unabashed!

Amid prim & proper parishioners
up & down & in unison
as sanctioned by centuries
of utterly correct bishops.

Below polished crucifix,
before entire congregation,
ablution concludes
with unadorned cloth.

Yet, what else to do with the last bit of messianic remnant?

Would it not be worse
to empty it elsewhere,
this liquid lifeline
to the true believers?

Better to whet the gullet
of the white-robed priestman
than dribble down the sides
of any ritualized receptacle,
perhaps made holy by the wine,
but nevertheless, wasted.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

How Are You?

2008-12-18T14:56:00.001-05:00

It’s a long question. Then you say,
Well, it’s a short question with a long answer.

A bubble has burst,
the one inflated around you
and around all near you:
the bubble that you might
be able to lick this thing
that really no one licks,
just endures.

You apologize
for being bearer of bad news.
Such a perverse dynamic:
the sick, who are living it,
become caretakers of those
who must only listen to the news.

The bed is now downstairs.
(Sure sign, not lost on you,
but is it spoken aloud?)
I state stalwartly
I will re-up my letters.
I say you can read them
if you are so inclined,
disregard them if you choose.

I am always inclined to read your letters.

I say, I will come on Friday.
That I don’t care how miserable you are,
you needn’t apologize for having bad news.
Be as miserable as you like.

You laugh.
It has little breadth,
little breath.
That’s okay.
Sad, but okay.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Consider This Withered Apple

2008-12-01T21:27:00.003-05:00

rusted crimson, leathered skin,
hanging by single stem,
rigid leaves turning to dust
at winter’s early claim.

There is nothing in this field
that will not tend toward decay.

Like the crooked orchard branches,
my finger nails curve to the right.
Echoing my great grandmother: sturdy lace,
corrupt disdain, early stroke, her cut crystal.

One of which I broke this past holiday --
lack of care, lack of grace
they intermingle, they muddle,
they conclude in cracked glass.

Lack of grace,
consistent thread in my life:
penchant for physical clumsiness,
tripping where there is no stone in the path.

It is exhausting to remember
that generosity and open heart
are still worthwhile in the face of rancid lies,
my own words turned against me.

Wintered-over properly --
sequestered in dry root cellar
or canned in speckled pot
atop steaming stove –

apples entice the tongue,
tart burst of wistful intrigue,
back one autumn, promise of next:
demise, opportunity, dense package

blossom, fruit, rot.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

At the Passing of Miriam Makeba

2008-11-30T21:50:00.003-05:00

Don't label me
Don't you dare brand me.
She seethes fire,
her voice of years ago
now over the radio
on the day her heart stopped.

Shout South Africa to freedom!

Taken from this world
not at home, but abroad,
not home that had once been
three decades stolen from her.

Dance South Africa to freedom!

Yes, Mama Afrika seethes fire,
breathes fire, sings fire.
Also earth, air, water --
water that shimmers light on rock wall,
pounds the temples as it falls.
Air that shakes acacia leaves,
melts snow on pine boughs.
Earth that swings the hips,
clay dense under foot.

Sing South Africa to freedom!

She made it home, thirty years later,
a better version, a better vision.
Still flawed, yes, but all
air, water, fire, earth
belonging, finally, to all.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Miriam Makeba died November 10, 2008 at the age of 76 years.

Ode to Joy (Scene One)

2008-11-21T10:38:00.004-05:00

Pull into friend’s driveway,
emerge from car crooning
top-of-lungs loudly.

See unexpected carpenter
straddling slanted shingles,
grinning at the tone-deaf singing.
Awkward moment, must decide:
embarrassed or joyful?

Choose joy.

Greet the stranger boldly,
despite timid tendency.
See other workhead bob,
initially hidden by roof slope.

Turns out his scruffy head
belongs to the guy you chatted up
at a friend’s wedding
five years ago,
a hundred miles away.

You danced
full-blown
hippy-dippy
with him,
discovered you lived
in the same town,
gossiped long
into the tipsy night,
never saw him again.

'Til now.

Karen G. Johnston

Hatless Courage

2008-11-13T22:44:00.000-05:00

toward a new kind of love your life has never allowed
(Adrienne Rich)

As I read other poets’ words,
you sat in the pew,
your hat off,
your head bald,
shock of white hair gone.

I felt such love for you,
for you and your hatless courage
in our holy house.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

How We Met

2008-11-02T07:52:00.001-05:00

At Kate’s recent 50th birthday party,
her story of how we met
differed enough from mine,
it left me confuzzled.

The first time I saw Naomi,
then pregnant with twins
who are now thirteen,
I imagined such fun
to befriend her.
It came years –
and one failed marriage –
later.

Like the woman herself,
the conceptive moment of friendship
with Diane is concrete and clear,
traceable to one set of circumstances,
no grey area, no shade of doubt.

Even with Lew, who has been
so many things to me --
teacher, lover, ally, sustainer, foil,
and above all, friend --
there is one moment
of initial connection
neither of us can dispute.

Now that you are gone
it is left only to me
to name the how and when,
as well as the why.

I’d rather it otherwise.

Oh, just to sit across
the dinner table,
a fine tug of war
over soft butter & sourdough
from the Hungry Ghost,
Sandy as playful referee:
I’d gladly cede any right
to name how we met,
If only you’d come back
to hash it out with me.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

My Unsettled Uncle

2008-10-31T07:25:00.007-05:00

It was the last time I saw my friend alive.
She lay her petite clothed body
along the full length of his lanky one,
machines and tubing his newly-hatched limbs.

It is an elemental moment.
Also a sensual one.
She caressed him, cooed at him,
she even stroked his chest.

Why was that?
To show his arousal
at her barest touch
even while in coma?

To hold on just a bit longer?

I found it shocking. All of it --
his hardening nipple
her lavishment upon him
my witness of it all

I have shared these poems
with my adoring, aging uncle.
He too found himself uncomfortable voyeur,
party to something he shouldn’t be.
perhaps this intimacy is not totally
for me to know about.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

First Impression

2008-10-27T21:40:00.001-05:00

Candles at the altar
Await long strides
To bring your flame
To their wick.

You speak of long dead mother
Gratitude and longing
The ache in your heart.

In the center pew, five rows back,
A friend with long hair whispers in my ear
Now there’s a decent soul.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

October Prayer

2008-10-08T09:53:00.006-05:00

for eem

Each steadily darker morning
offers sure evidence of autumn.
Sometimes whole, sometimes eviscerated:
proud trophies of hunter cat.

There was a time I elected to join palms
to these once sentient beings.
Perhaps I should begin again.

Ravenous chaos permeates the air.
Wall Street disemboweling Main Street?
Illusory election with extreme right
playing for centrist, centrist for liberal left?

Scrappy rudebekia & spidery cosmos
still campaign from garden soapbox.
Sharp blade to those with beauty left to offer.
Whisper of gratitude before metal snip.

Hard to know whether the nation will persist
with this course of heady cruelty, greedy death.
Don't wish too hard -- it might hurt too much afterwards.

Is this so-called hopemonger any true friend of the Poor?
The last president from Hope enacted welfare reform
that had nothing to do at all with the Poor faring well.

My friend says a nation will always
elect the leaders they deserve.

I join these hands now and pray it is not so.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Regret

2008-09-30T20:35:00.002-05:00

I stand before the squall in the crib.
All others in the house sleep deeply.

Too deeply, her parents
for they do not stir
even as squall
becomes tempest.

Though I have two children,
here among the deep sleepers,
I did not know them as infants in cribs
crying out in the middle of the night.

I stand helpless before this tempest,
unsure how to calm the storm,
how to be eye of hurricane.
In this middlenight darkness,
I am unsure of nearly everything.

Everything, except the barren truth
that this gale of an babe
is the closest I will ever come
to babe of my body.

Unlike her diminutive older sister
who is her mother –
small in form, large in stature –
this one is a tank of a girl,
her father’s stout frame in miniature.
Though her hair is the black sheen
that tops her mother’s head
the rest is all Papa:
nose, head, movement lacking grace.

She is the one human being
who most resembles the child
I almost but never conceived.

There is so little I am sure of in the middle of this, or any, other night.

I do not trust myself
to hold this downpour,
for fear I will never let go:
never let go the baby
I thought I’d never meet.

Except here she is
and I, the only one
who can take her up,
who can hold her,
who can calm her stormself,
can give her what she needs.

Instead, I wake her parents.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

to be bread for one another

2008-09-21T20:55:00.004-05:00

holy, holy the small edifice
with its creaking floorboards

you left your half century of home,
a pilgrim questing for the true

landing at this truth
full with a riot of flowers

their bepetaled crowns
rising sunward all summer

you said we aren’t meant to be alone

now is equinox
and they descend to soil

to next season’s cacophony
and you seek solace

no longer just in the company of harvest, fallow,
then furrows with portent of could-be and not-yet

not just among old friends whose pluck
you let pull you north in the first place

but in the company of a woman
who is simply smitten with you

a woman who might be,
one day, bread to your bread

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Not Yet Gone

2008-09-21T06:53:00.003-05:00

Today I place my wrinkled palm
on my daughter’s shirted back.
She’s dressed in soccer garb,
matching-green everything
adorning a nearly thirteen-year-old body
moving with enviable verve.

My hand passes smoothly
as I stroke her back.
I notice something --
not the thing already gone,
but the thing before
imminent absence:
No undergarment
as sartorial speed bump
to my finger circles of delight
along her shoulder blades.

That day will come:
Gone flat chest.
Gone smoothed fabric.
Gone baby-mine.

So many days
pass unheeded,
but not today.
Today is not
one of those days.

Today is a day
not yet gone.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Letting Go

2008-09-14T08:36:00.002-05:00

Forget me she entreats.
I do. Everyday I forget you.
Forget stubbed fingers
never reaching piano keys properly.
Disregard the image your lips parted,
chin raised to meet me.

Let me go she pleads.
I do. Every day I release you.
Release the recollection of hipsway,
let loose skirt’s subtle shadow
of where your thighs meet.

Be done of me she implores.
I am. Everyday I am done of you.
I close the book holding scant keepsakes
of our few forever-days together.

Everyday, I open it anew.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Molten Joy

2008-09-03T21:00:00.000-05:00

Crucial is molten joy,

burning me into the ground,

scorching pampass grass

still sharp as ever.

I walk in its midst,

slight nicks at my ankles,

calves and shoulders

sing in the sweat.

Not lullaby, but the blues,

high-pitched, momentary,

til what I’ve done

is walk clear out.

A yellow-throated warbler

chastises as I pass under her.

I can’t tell day or night,

the light is so muddling,

my heart is that open, that hidden,

anything seems probable.

No matter:

I put tongue to wrist,

suck at the sour salt.

Anything probable?

When feet brand

their own footprints,

the only answer is yes.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Making the Most of Muck

2008-08-10T11:32:00.003-05:00

This morning I gave a sermon as part of the lay-led summer services at the Unitarian Society of Northampton & Florence. The text of the sermon can be found at this link at the blog with my sermons. Namaste.

Twilight Offer

2008-07-27T10:04:00.003-05:00

Isn't every twilight

a resignation, an offering?

Mosquitoes buzzing

not merely

pitiful existence,

but also

no separation:

my blood,

their lifeline.

Each red swell of itch

remnant of our joining.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Deftly Hearing the Music

2008-07-26T22:18:00.002-05:00

I delivered a homily (the word I use to describe a brief sermon) as part of an intergenerational chapel service on Star Island last night. You can read the homily by clicking here. The homily is built in large part on a Pulitizer Prize winning article, which can be found at this link.

rapid fire posting

2008-07-13T21:04:00.003-05:00

it's not that i've had some great unblockage of writing energy and all of a sudden, here is a multitude of hot-off-the-press poems. nope. i'm just cleaning out some computer poetry files from the past few years, stuff that i hadn't been ready to post for one reason or another. so though it may look like july 13th, 2008, will go down in the history books as karen's most productive poetry day ever, it is a farce, an illusion. just enjoy the stuff (or not)... KJ

The Morning After

2008-07-13T21:01:00.001-05:00

This is how I will pay.

Not with insidious STD,

unplanned procreative outcome,

nor tremulous hangover.

Not even with

will-you-respect-me-in-the-morning shame

at just how and where and when

and how loud.

No, for the rather lively late night,

I will pay

with the steady stream

of grating utterances

otherwise known as

reasonable questions

from my loving,

world-curious children.

Ahhh ! That one could fuck all night

and not be too tired to parent in the morning.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Again & Anew

2008-07-13T20:56:00.001-05:00

I would like to do, again & anew,

What we did & didn’t yet do.

On top, below, askance, askew:

All about me, all about you.

Unexplored territory, the tried & true.

I would like to do it all again & all anew.

Not too many tricks; just a few.

Perhaps a new stance, a different view.

I’m being candid; my words are true:

I want many more, not just a few.

Toes a tangle, clothes all strewn,

The motion, the moan: in sync, in tune.

Let’s not wait ‘til the day is through.

Let us go, without further ado.

All again & all anew, I would like to do

what we did & are about to do.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Juxtaposition of the Tenderest Kind

2008-07-13T20:45:00.004-05:00

I wrote this a few months back and it refers to an incident one year ago nearly exactly. The fact that I am considering posting this -- having never considered it before -- is a sign to me of healthy distance from an intense moment of suffering for me and my loved ones. Blessed be for that. KJ

The night after

my beloved boy

intentionally

scraped skin

from his flesh

The night after

he ran from home

the first time,

me raging

at the unbidden cop

who spooked him away,

me crying hours

unknowing

The night after

he sat tight-lipped

in the well-past midnight ER,

obstinate in the face

of the social worker

a kind man, a sweet friend, made love to me.

Never before.

Never since.

Never again.

Surprise!

2008-07-13T20:41:00.000-05:00

How devastatingly urgent this compulsion --

this can’t not --

as I rummage through my bag

which is acting all passive aggressive & withholding,

like I don’t know all it does for me:

lets me carry unnamed & uncountable detritus around.

Sitting next to me, in the supposed-to-be hushed pew

my dear friend -- also a writer --

knows just what I’m jonesing for.

She dives into her own voluptuous sack:

unzipping resounds in the great hall,

loud the crinkling paper,

for what seems like the rest of the service.

At last, I see success on her face.

She extends to me her open hand:

in her supple palm,

not the sought-after pen or pencil,

but a pristine tampon

that nearly interrupts the sermon

with our mischievous delight!

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Perfect, Where I Am Not

2008-07-12T20:49:00.002-05:00

My friend admires

her daughters' lithe bodies

while cursing her own,

all hip, belly, & thigh.

She remembers too well

how she once looked like them,

more twig than trunk.

Though there is grief when I behold

my daughter's burgeoning shape,

knowing I had nothing to do

with its creation,

I also feel relief.

It is not that I think her perfect,

where I am not.

I know acne will scar her.

Lack of symmetry will follow her.

Body hatred is female legacy

not even pure motherlove

can fully displace.

It is just so much easier

to love her flaws over my own.

Karen G. Johnston

Inexplicable

2008-07-10T21:48:00.001-05:00

It doesn’t roll off the tongue.

A poet friend suggests excising it,

since stumbling is a sign

of wrong word choice.

Yet inexplicable belongs in a poem.

Belongs in every poem.

Is a poem, in and of itself.

Inexplicable.

It’s why I bother to put pen to paper.

It’s the reason for ragged keyboard rhythm,

late night blue screen blanching my face.

Inexplicable.

How we rise each morning,

instead of burying our heads

under bedcovers,

sewing them shut.

Why we keep on

welcoming babies

with bone-deep joy

to this sordid world.

How we fill burlap sacks

with grit and gratitude,

our hands shredded

as we drag one over the other.

How we refuse the daily pull

towards greedy dark,

keeping at least one toe,

some of us whole torso,

in the light.

Inexplicable.

It’s what makes a poem

worth writing, worth reading,

worth flooding the world

with redundant, flawed attempts

at explanation.

It’s just the way it is.

There is no other way.

Stumbling every time,

practice or no.

Just part of the bargain…

the unavoidable,

intractable,

inexplicable

bargain.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Precious

2008-07-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

I am rumble strip, waking you
from lethal lethargy.
I am flaked salt
among heaped ashes,
left for void
but lush with promise.

I am precious, not convenient.

I am leech, seeking blood
among folds and hollows
your skin holds
but you cannot reach.

I am precious, not merciful.

I am eventual saturation,
but not til you yearn to drown,
beg for the more that is me,
bittersweet on your tongue,
trembling against your mouth.

Your body is hidden hush.
I rock you with reckless rush.
I lurk, I loom, bring you full bloom.

Your body has wisdom only I can distill.
You had inkling of this until we met;
now you have urgency.

I am precious, not satisfying.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Declaration of INTERdependence

2008-06-28T11:46:00.004-05:00

This being the last Saturday before the 4th of July, I joined the stalwart group of anti-war activists who spend every 11- 12noon on the corner of Main, King, & Pleasant Street in Northampton. I haven't joined this group in so long, it feels like it was my first time, but more accurately, I've probably joined in there three times in the past eight years (they protested the sanctions before the war). Anyhoo, inspired by the guerilla poetics of Nathaniel Siegal and Susan Brennan of Brooklyn, from whom I took a workshop called "Off the Page & Into the Streets," while I was a the Split this Rock! Poetry Festival -- I handed out quarter-page sized documents (on parchment paper) that said the following (I'm hoping the elaborate script [black ladder font] comes through on the posting, but I don't think it will...):

Declaration of Interdependence

I am

(not at war)

with you.

X __________________

Date

Thank you, too, to my etheral friend, Roy at Return to the Center, who has become a regular dude on the Saturday morning anti-war scene in Newburyport and describes his experiences there regularly on his blog. I found it very anxiety producing to be there -- not because I was worried about mean pro-war forces. Nothing noble like that. This anxiety was totally social. I actually rode my bike in this humid soup of weather, got there, walked around scoping the place out, and almost left without staying. Then I gave myself a good talking to and forced myself to join the group of but strangers. Since I can be a bit of a misanthrope, joining a group of strangers is a highly anxiety-provoking experience for me. Well, I stayed. Yeah for me. -- KJ

STR! links to Sweetest Hangover

2008-06-27T06:54:00.003-05:00

Is it way too self-aggrandizing to write this post, which is about a web site's link to my poem, Sweetest Hangover, an earlier post on my blog? Alone in my house for a few precious hours, I'll say the jury is out on that one...

Ribs

2008-06-25T06:37:00.002-05:00

for Pat, now Patrick, from a long time ago

Stroking the uneven fret board

that is the rise and fall of your breath,

my finger finds its perfect indentation,

where sides, right and left, become center.

There, a generous hollow

suggests essential absence,

which I fill.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Fragility

2008-06-25T06:22:00.002-05:00

Abrupt heart flutter,

adrenaline’s lash.

Twisted ankle at topmost

pitted concrete stair

damp from morning’s

thunder letting.

Half vision crumpled below:

instinctive headshake, image gone

except behind closed lids.

Solid each foot,

grounded heel to toe.

Mindful of body borrowed,

still mine

for now.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Ever the Romantic

2008-06-12T22:22:00.002-05:00

I think this sounds better aloud than just read. It's not deep, just personal. KJ

How long his forehead pressed to glass,

could it be the whole school year past?

Boy waving on bus from home to school,

hoping that someone, me or you’ll

cotton to the notion and mirror the motion.

Did he start in September, back in the fall

which is when you & I met, not expected at all.

I remember your fingers strumming,

me, you, your guitar humming.

I placed my palm on the small of your back,

the heat from that momentary contact

still tingles my hand, sensation grand

& utterly unplanned.

It would be so easy: call it mere crush.

Aren’t I always so quick to rush?

The impulse to discount the attraction,

deny the chemical reaction,

degrade to pleasant distraction.

Then in February again we stood

together at the pagoda in the wood,

all fleece collar & knit hat,

talking this, talking that.

Your restless hands on café table;

me, both full & empty, not quite able

to do more than sip ginger tea,

everything coming out awkwardly.

The sun blazes, a time to cheer;

school’s sweet release is near.

Summer promises everyone, pass or fail,

a chance for adventurous tales.

Soon at your home I will appear,

behold you in your own sphere,

my heart full of both hope & fear.

For some reason, my heart is patient for you.

What is between us? Friendship? Love so true?

At this point, there’s no way to know,

only the prospect of seeing time flow.

Now is not the moment, it’s clear.

Children must grow up not there, but here.

In the meantime, I’ll flirt with more than a few.

Probably take a lover or two.

Definitely get a third tattoo.

Not really sure what you will do.

Yes, these feelings may disappear.

But what should I do? Shed a tear?

I choose to be that hope-filled boy

waving with undemanding joy

to the urban indifference,

waiting for a moment’s chance

that someone will be brave,

return his wave. And it’s true: I do.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes

2008-05-27T09:02:00.001-05:00

No matter
how contagious
the lyric,
I’m not sure
what it means.

Diamonds on the soles of her shoes?

Sounds luxurious,
mysterious;
makes sleeping
on the street
romantic,
rather than
desperate.

Even though
I remain
in the dark
as to what
it really means,
I’m pretty sure
it doesn’t apply
to me.

Unwanted scuff
where I’ve been.
My mark,
nothing like
shiny diamonds.
If I’ve got anything,
it’s common coal.

Not even
mundane mica
flaking off
a Hanzel & Gretta trail,
so you might
one day
find me.

Too often
there’s dog shit
stuck in the treads
of my unremarkable shoes.

On better days,
it’s mucky mud
insinuated in the soles
of this lonely soul,
now & always messy.

Dead Beneath his Rescue

2008-05-27T08:45:00.001-05:00

Dispatcher voice becomes
cold blood, sweat, then pulse.
Sending him too close to home.

He pounds his father’s chest.

Inexplicably, his arms lengthen.
He is cartoon, the lop-headed drawing of himself
and the small Saturday-morning boy, jaw agape
at the doomed hijinx on the screen.

He is both compromised tether
and hard ball that rings the rusted pole,
wound ever tighter. Cut. Burn.

His force is certain, striking,…impotent.

Once he had been tremulous infant
in the arms of that crumpled man:
musk offering solace so deep
there was not even language,
just coo sinking into sinuous arms.

How dare the heavens demand this of him?

Heart chamber, now blue sanguine swell.
Broken ribs to brittle in furnace.
His own flesh, dead beneath his rescue.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Just Practice

2008-05-16T22:35:00.001-05:00

He misses the gemstones

that brought him here.

Lapis lazuli, topaz, tourmaline.

Their crooked path intersperse

with crushed eggshell, rotting bark.

He sees through the glass pane,

palm sweats its own moist shadow:

once-there traces of once-there him.

There is little left but to laugh.

It is a hard game to play:

This love me now,

love me forever…

‘til I vanish.

Like the whole world isn’t listening,

she whispers, just practice.

Who is he to desire more volume?

His head is endlessly empty

except the beat of her pulse,

thrumming just under his skull.

Just practice and he imagines

great cities gleaming,

her thighs glistening,

a place to rest

after the waves sweep

the beach clean.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Passion Seat

2008-05-16T22:16:00.001-05:00

Is it between your lips

all teeth, tongue, & gum,

tender soft, bone hard,

in the wide of your open mouth?

Is it in the crook of your neck,

stark hollow that surfaces

as you strain, then rage?

Or the crevice of bridge & nostril,

that place that makes your face

your face?

Where is your passion?

Where does it sit?

In the groove, the fire

beneath your own finger,

curious, furious, alone?

Under the hard arrogance

of steady foot to heel,

brisk, troubled

in the night’s diamond pigment?

Or can it be found

between thick thumb

with square nail armor

& the calloused tent

of your index finger?

Pen leaking shambled messages.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Ultimate Snapshots

2008-04-27T21:03:00.000-05:00

Leap up.

Flat palms:

snapping jaws.

Snatch,

fall to ground, upstanding.

Twist, then sent disc gone.

II.

Pivot.

One foot cement pole.

The other,

nervy amusement park ride,

centrifuge gone willy nilly.

III.

The cleat offers no assurance:

slip he does

inadvertent limbo

beneath the aloof disc.

IV.

Fade. Psych. Send.

No bit of elbow,

just ricochet wrist.

Flop.

Fall.

Pound ground.

Disc does not notice.

VI.

Surge. Sink. Grace.

Lends itself to flight,

air and gravity’s proof.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Artifact of Provocation, Mischief video clip

2008-04-15T19:53:00.003-05:00

On April 12, as part of the Middle-Aged Freaks of the Spoken Word: Poetry from the Gut reading at the Invisible Fountain in Easthampton, Massachusetts I read this and two other poems (also on YouTube). It was a fun night with many poets from the Florence Poets Society reading.

New Same Grief

2008-04-09T21:10:00.003-05:00

She does not yet

share my curves.

Nor will she ever.

Another woman’s bodystory

best guesses when first blood

will engorge, trickle, then seep.

She will wear the echo

of some other woman’s body.

Its reverberation is the one

that chimes my daughter’s bodyclock

of egg drop, of bud burst.

It is the new same grief.

Like when I couldn’t name her,

she who came to me

two days past two

and quite already

the whole of her given name.

It is the new same grief.

Like when I had to reply

I don’t know

What was my first word?

When did I learn to walk?

I don’t know how come

she couldn’t be a live-with mommy?

Blood. Bone. Body.

These bounded things

that wither away.

My solace –

large enough,

and more:

though body

may forever

be mystery,

not she.

Not her love.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Murder by Broken Heart

2008-04-07T20:53:00.002-05:00

“Gorillas in zoos around the nation, particularly males and those in their 20s and 30s,

have been falling ill – and sometimes dying suddenly – from progressive heart ailments.”

(Associated Press, April 7, 2008)

So many have died.

The newspaper offers

a litany of names:

Mopie

Kuja

Pogo

Tumai

Akbar

Sam

Michael.

For their own good

they said.

To save them from lost habitat

they said.

To keep them from poachers

they said.

So that we might protect them

they said.

Heart muscle,

increasingly constrictive.

Halting lifeblood,

increasingly bound.

Over and over again,

pernicious pattern,

zoos all around.

So they invented a big name for it,

all latin cognate, scientific jargon:

fibrosing cardiomyopathy.

Pretense of tragic disease.

Highfalutin, fancy-ass, gibberish.

Who’s kidding who?

We don’t need a poet

working wonders of metaphor

to see that this is nothing but

murder by broken heart.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

MLK Jr. haiku

2008-04-04T12:06:00.003-05:00

now forty years on
still spring weeps poverty, war
King is dead and gone

blind white

2008-04-02T21:07:00.000-05:00

blind white, not descending fog,
manufacturing murky mess,
but melting snow
caught upward
dissipating
mid-solid
on way
to liquid
not nearly
vapor

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

The Poet in Time of War

2008-04-01T21:47:00.005-05:00

…except that blood tends to obliterate words.

(The Poem in Time of War by Sherman Pearl)

Visiting from out of town

a local overhears

the reason I am here.

She asks so you’re a poet?

This statement never fails to stymie me.

I do my best to respond,

eeking out the correct gradient of humility.

Unimpressed with my self-involved stammer

she generously remarks

…but everyone’s a poet, right?

I know the polite reply

is benevolent laugh,

easy approval

of this naive truism.

I don’t buy it.

Hitler may very well have written

love poems to Eva Braun,

precise in meter, correct Germanic syntax,

but that does not him a poet make.

Radovan Karadžić was published –

children’s poetry no less!

Not so good, I hear, but that matters little.

If there were an exclusive society of poets

he could be safely drummed out.

Though the poet’s tool

is pithy word use,

Dick Cheney’s retorts,

no matter how

pared past essentials,

could never

ever

constitute a poetic

element.

What then is a poet? What then is a poem?

Sherman Pearl says it is a brief on behalf of the living,

a paper megaphone for the voices of the dead.

I say a poet draws a line

with words & images & metaphors,

simile thrown in for good measure.

I say a poet creates possibility

with repetition, alliteration, rhythm.

A poet places a flower

in the rifle’s barrel.

Poets do not waterboard.

Some have been & always will be

soliders in war, but they do not wage war,

they do not rage war.

A poet whispers, states, screams

No more!

Never again!

Not in our name!

A poet may not always use facts,

but always tells the truth.[1]

Poets craft word, after word, after chain of words,

as we step into night seeping around us,

our hearts pulsing crimson fists.

Poets offer what we have. No more, no less.

With uncertainty, out of dire need and with every intention

that no more blood flow in the streets,

that no more words be obliterated.

[1] A quote attributed to Maya Angelou.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Sweetest Hangover: Ode to Split this Rock!

2008-03-25T21:17:00.010-05:00

Don’t you hear this hammer ring?

I’m gonna split this rock

And split it wide!

When I split this rock,

Stand by my side.

(Langston Hughes)

Could have swapped spit

with the cute wild haired poet.

That’s how high I was, how happy.

He’s the one who sat up against me,

shoulder to shoulder at the open mic,

amid the expanse of open seats.

Who said I’m not coming onto you.

Said I’ve got a girlfriend at home.

He followed me to the Metro station,

said he didn’t. Still, there he was.

Me, I’ve got a poetry hangover.

If there’s a cure for this, I don’t want it.

If there’s a remedy, I’ll run from it.

I’ve got the sweetest hangover.

Not an ounce of liquor in my system,

no smack, no maryjane, this is the real thing.

Got drunk on Mark Doty & the murdered gay boy he brought back to life.

All sugared up on Naomi Shihab Nye’s mamool cookies,

still wiping away the powdered sugar, dates, nuts

from the clumsy front of my blouse.

Boozed up on Snookie Johnson’s wiley shit at the military recruiters’ office.

I’m no Diana Ross

singing some silly disco trash.

(That might be Regie Cabico,

but I don’t wanna say diva shit

when it’s not mine to be saying.)

I’ve got the sweetest hangover.

I don’t wanna get over

Sweetest hangover.

Intoxicated by Patricia Smith‘s smoldering self,

tingling with sex & sanity & righteous rage.

Martín Espada’s baritone repeats, resounds, rejoices in my head,

like I’m fumbling & stumbling en la calle San Sebastián.

Dennis Brutus, his real life story splitting real rocks,

not metaphorical Langston Hughes poetics,

nearly sobers me up…but not quite.

Poetry is what got me sloshed, pissed, got me hopped up.

Still poetry-drunk on the late subway ride,

a homeless woman asks for 75 cents.

Out of my pocket, three coins;

I place them in her soft palm.

As I do, she admires my ring.

I give that away, too.

She thinks I’m shitting her.

I tell her I want nothing in return.

She rummages her bags, intent on reciprocity,

so we engage in sweet Southern barter, sweet Southern banter.

Call it what you will: plastered, besotted, soused.

If there’s a cure for this, we don’t want it.

If there’s a remedy, we’ll run from it.

We’ve got the sweetest hangover.

For this imbibing

in politics & people & poetry,

there was a hammer ringing,

but no splitting headache.

Instead, we split the rock;

we split it wide.

Karen G. Johnston

References:

Mark Doty read his poem, “Charlie Howard's Descent,” the actual STR reading can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28AYjytJHvE

Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, “Gate A-4,” is from the book, Honeybee (2008); she read it as her parting gift on the first evening of the festival.

Snookie Johnson is a character that Kenny Carroll has invented for his poem, SNOOKIE JOHNSON GOES DOWN TO THE RECRUITER'S OFFICE NEAR BENNING ROAD & STARTS SOME SHIT, which can be found at http://washingtonart.com/beltway/carroll.html

Martín Espada read marvelously his poem, En la calle San Sebastián, from his book, Alabanza: New & Selected Poems

Dennis Brutus is a poet from South Africa who organized to ban that country from participation in the 1970 Olympics because of the Apartheid regime. He was jailed for his actions, imprisoned on Robbin Island with Nelson Mandela, and had to break rocks as part of his imprisonment.

Patricia Smith is just plain kick-ass. More about her can be found at http://www.wordwoman.ws

Regie Cabico was one of the STR! festival organizers and ran the open mics with grace, humor, and no small amount of liquor.

I Am Not a Jew

2008-03-25T09:11:00.004-05:00

My first father
sired three children.
Raised nary a one.

A different mother, the oldest,–
the only one to keep the Jewish surname –
is born-again Christian.
Go figure.

My older brother --
with whom I share
the same adopted Scotch last name
(not only cuz it was our new dad’s ancestry,
but his preferred drink of choice) --
he’s the most observant Jew
I’ve ever met.

Keeps Kosher,
keeps Shabbat,
keeps going to Israel.

Ditto go figure.

Me? I used to say
I’m the most Jewish goy
you’d ever meet.
The highest compliment in college?
I keep forgetting you’re not Jewish.

Now, you ask?
That’s not my path,
not my point
on the odd continuum
of Wasby progeny.

I’m Unitarian Universalist,
with Buddhist tendencies.
Meditation,
more than prayer,
is my schitck.

Though my politics
are nowhere near
middle of the road,
I guess my faith is.
Somewhere between
support for killers of abortionists &
support for walls around Palestinians.
Somewhere between
only one chosen people &
only one Father God.

Still, Pesach –
Passover for your Gentile types –
remains head & shoulders
my favorite religious holiday.
I love the story of liberation,
I love the horseradish.

I love that there are Souls on Fire,
that Judiasm encourages believers
to rail against God.
Given what this world dishes out,
anything else would be farcical.

I love that the red-Commie rabbi,
who oversaw my brother’s conversion,
told him it was okay to be agnostic:
he would be joining a long & proud line
of Jews who question God.

So I guess you could say --
and you wouldn’t be wrong --
though I am not a Jew,

I am Jewish.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Albert Einstein Memorial

2008-03-23T19:50:00.003-05:00

This is my favorite place in all of Washington, DC. It was the first place I went after I arrived in DC on Thursday for the Split This Rock! Festival: Poetry of Witness and Provocation (which was kick-ass, in and of itself).

I spent an hour sitting with this bronze larger-than-life guy, offering to take photos of the few tourists who found their way so that everyone in their group would be in the picture, writing, trying to find a sunny, comfy place to sit since the wind was so darn cold.

This place is special to my kids, too. The first time I took them to it, we arrived around midnight via train, they were SOOOOO wired, so we went to the statue. Of course, it was dark. It was April, so the temperature was comfortable, even that late. Both were ABSOLUTELY convinced they saw Albert actually move. Then, a few years later, we discovered that the statue talks back to you, if you are standing in just the right place.

At the risk of over-using the concept, there is a sacred energy in this little courtyard with the scent of boxwood wofting about. I think the statue amplifies it (the sacred energy, not the boxwood), but I'm guessing it was there before, and is made more so by the gathering of people to this lesser-known monument on the National Mall, quite close to the Viet Nam Memorial.

Offered Nonetheless

2008-03-17T20:11:00.000-05:00

In the crush of winter air,

my humble bow

to the oblivious universe

otherwise unnoticed

except the 15-month old

tottering cheekily,

peering boldly,

through café curtain.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Season of Shooting Stars

2008-03-13T11:17:00.003-05:00

We lay upon acorn-strewn lawn

still vibrating with the day’s early scatter

of gravel under reckless pick-up truck,

dumb-happy golden retriever in the back,

all nose and tongue and tail.

On the other side of that long orchard driveway,

we slept between lichen-covered farmhouse

and ancient privet hedge that topped out

at the same height as my grandfather’s buzz cut.

Our bodies splayed upon grass that had been day-green,

but was now a hue mixed by rural night:

something darker, moister, not wholly unrelated,

but something altogether different.

Not so much sibling, as first cousin.

Like we were: evenings without curfew or bedtime.

In the midnight air, crazy cousin confessions,

so yeasty we kneaded them into rising goose bumps,

so tantalizing, we shivered from spine and skull;

we owned that and every moment.

She was daughter of an unstable farmer,

beauty queen looks, commensurate depth.

Me: daughter of one who escaped,

pudgy, plain, curious about the world.

Like strawberries in June,

or corn on the cob and fireworks,

I thought there was a season for shooting stars.

We’d spend those warm August nights

in hand-me-down flannel cocoons,

watching for what came every year,

like clockwork, like fruit-bearing trees.

Flat on the ground, the privet our new horizon

the oak loomed with its back board attached too high

unless one of the uncles lifted us straight up

for the slam dunk, ball back to earth with loamy thud.

Deep sky yielded flaming lights

over the Lower Place,

over Grandpa Ralph’s across the way,

over our heads.

Way over our heads.

There was a time I was convinced

I stood a chance of plucking –

all on my very own --

at least one luminous streak

from its cosmic fabric.

Could capture it in my favorite pail:

sun-paled mint green plastic,

discarded Tupperware,

the rim melted on just one side.

Proof that someone, somewhere, somehow,

had acquired the magic meteor,

had burned the bucket before,

probably hand singed in the bargain,

and set her imagination on fire.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Narrative of a Friendship Late in One Life

2008-03-06T10:11:00.002-05:00

Today marks the yahrzeit of John Brentlinger. One year ago today he died. One year ago yesterday I said good-bye through his comatose haze. I do not know the Mourner's Kaddish, but today I wish I did.

One says metta for all sentient beings. Can one say it for a someone who has died?

John, may you be safe and protected. May you be peaceful and happy. May you be healthy and strong. May you have ease of well-being and accept the conditions of the world.

This compilation is a series of "letters" I wrote to John as our friendship began to take root. I never sent them to him. Something about the friendship between us inspired writing of all sorts: these "letters," a series of poems (a few of which John was aware of). It seemed a fitting way to mark this day by posting this.

Narrative of a Friendship Late in One Life

Diagnosis & Response

When I first read about your diagnosis in the church newsletter, I cried. For several days, not constantly, but each time I sat to meditate, each time some stillness entered my life. I did not know you – still do not – in the sense we had never spent time together, hardly exchanged words in person, and yet we knew that we orbited the same precious atmosphere. How is it that we knew this? It remains a mystery to me when I try to put words to it, though inside of me, it makes perfect sense.

So I cried, sometimes small tears, at least once weeping that brings on a rocking back and forth that I do to try to self-soothe. As I remember that particular rocking, I can still see the late spring light coming through the attic window. I see that light and myself rocking, but can’t quite feel it. Makes it sound disembodied but I was not. Maybe just the memory is.

I cried for you, because lung cancer is such a scary phrase. All couplings of words that end in “cancer” live on the continuum of doom, but I think those that start with “lung” and “ovarian” have a special place. An infamous place.

And I cried for me because, it turned out, I had a story line running in my head about how our lives would meander together at some point in the future, that it would happen of its own accord, because we had found we were kindred spirits. It would just happen and I didn’t need to make it happen. And as one of my spiritual tasks is to live into letting things happen, rather than making them happen, I thought I was doing the right thing.

But here was this diagnosis and my chance to “let” it happen was being stolen – really it felt like the chance for any friendship was being stolen, decimated. I felt robbed – which goes to show how self-centered I am, that I hear about a cancer diagnosis in another person and I feel robbed.

I think it was one of those moments, in front of my altar when the idea came to me. I might lose the chance for a friendship, but not the opportunity to connect to this precious gem of a man and to offer some light in a time likely dark and heavy for this family. I decided that I would write out quotes and poems and stories and send them, send a plethora of them, send them written and printed on bright colored paper, not send them all at once, but send them daily, so that there was this sense of abundance, perhaps a joyful anticipation each day that mail arrived at your house.

I am so glad that these gems have not only brought you light (in the form of laughter and reflection), but also that it has brought us together and resulted in our date for coffee later this morning.

Maybe Early October

I saw you in between services, waited (not really patiently) as you spoke with Brenda. I just wanted to say hello, because when I see you, I light up (I think it must be visible on the outside) and though I didn’t have anything in particular to say to you, I wanted to say hello. I just wanted to be closer to your orbit. I waited patiently, I’m not even sure you knew I was standing there as long as I did. Then you interrupted your talking with Brenda, you turned and said, pointing to me as if to introduce me, “This is one of my angels.”

You couldn’t have made me happier in that moment. I mentioned to you that in a few weeks that I would be doing a sermon and I hoped you would make a point to come. You said you would.

I wanted you to come because I felt inspired by you, by who I thought you were, and by your sermon on traveling. And once the sermon was nearly finished, it turned out that you lived in several places in the sermon I had just been writing. At first, the sermon seemed to want to be about the difference between helping professions and activism, but too much judgment came out in between each line. Thankfully, the sermon found its true message – not all writing does. As I’m sure you know.

A Sermon with Feet

It was a good sermon – good in content, good in delivery. As I am finding, now that I have given more than a few sermons, people want to share with you how they were moved or, sometimes, offer unsolicited advice. This aspect of sermon giving is a double edged sword for me, one that leaves me uncomfortable. I understand and want to feed that dynamic of being moved by someone’s words, of sparking off them, of expressing gratitude. I feel a bit uncomfortable being the focus of that gratitude, both because I feel modest and because I hunger a little too much for the compliments. Anyway, I am curious about how my words move people, so I listen to what people are willing to share with me.

There were two positive comments that stood out for me:

“A thing happens to women in our 40s. Our voices get stronger. Your voice was strong in this sermon, even stronger than just last year, when you gave your first sermon.”

“You really get him.”

The former is from an older (well, to me, she is older; to you, she is younger) long-standing member of the congregation. It was kind and unexpected.

The latter was also unexpected and filled me with great joy. Isn’t it wondrous that just four words can do that? As you know, the second comment was from your wife. Even now, it makes me so happy. I could spend the time in figuring it out – but I think I won’t. I’ll just let it be.

Make, not Let

At one point, I sent you an email and said that I would love to get together with you sometime for coffee or conversation. I felt hesitant, not wanting to intrude in your life, knowing you were tired and likely busy with all the things attendant to having lung cancer and seeking recovery.

You responded somewhat strangely, perhaps vaguely and the date I proposed didn’t seem to work for you. I took this as a clue that I shouldn’t pursue it too strongly. I let it go.

Then at the sermon on Sunday, you said, “Let’s find that time to get together.” That opened the door for me. But do you know what pushed me through? The source of my current romantic confusion/heartache – David. He is a computational biologist who is currently working at MIT on cures for childhood leukemia. I have told him about you, about my connection to you, about the spiritual meaning it holds for me. I do not know if he knows this because of his work, or from the time he once volunteered for hospice, but when I said that your doctors are so impressed with your recovery, he didn’t seem convinced. He said, “Lung cancer doesn’t have a cure. It’s mostly 6 -12 months from diagnosis, a few who make it a couple of years. But there are always those one or two who recover and for no reason we can figure out. And that always gives hope.” His tone made it sound like a fool’s hope, but true nonetheless.

I knew that I had to make a date for coffee with you then and there. I emailed you that evening and when I didn’t get a response, I called you a few days later on the phone.

Our First Coffee Date

What can I say about this luscious 80 minutes with a near stranger who couldn’t be more familiar? How thankful I am that you had the energy to drive, to sit and stay awake in our local vegan coffee house! How you made this effort for me, to be lucid, to take on meeting a new person who was, as far as you were concerned, known to you already. What have you seen in me to make it worth your while, your heavy effort?

Maybe it was easier because it wasn’t meeting someone new. It was renewing an old acquaintance. I’m not a believer in past lives, but maybe we share some energy from the same approximate region of Emerson’s Oversoul.

I like that idea.

The flow of conversation – even with your hesitations and attempts to mask memory gaps – was fluid and reassuring and striking and sonorous. Why is it I felt at such ease? Why did I want to share bits of each part of my life? Delivered two of my poems for you. (And gratefully accepted your single critique, which voiced the only discomfort I had with a line in the poem. It is changed now and each time I say that line, you are there.) Told you of my latest romantic quagmire. Drew you out, getting to hear stories of your quarter century of trips back and forth to Nicaragua.

Your question of me about politics – I didn’t get it at first. I got stuck on it being so close to the November election. I wanted you to think I was radical, not some soft liberal, so I voiced my blasé opinion that it wouldn’t matter if the Dems took Congress. But you didn’t want to know my analysis of encroaching fascism (I said it like I had been the first to name it – I am amazed and embarrassed by my arrogance).

No, you wanted to hear the story of how my 10 year-old daughter sees sexism and racism and privilege in advertising and questions it, because politics is personal and deep and that’s how I’ve raised her. I had trouble telling the story to you because it’s so deep, I forget it’s there. Deep. Organic.

Like I think you live your flawed life. Like I live my flawed life.

And that was our first date. Let us hope it is not our last.

Hatless Courage

I think you came to the poetry service that I co-led over Labor Day weekend. I didn’t read any of my own poetry, but I read aloud the poetry of some wonderful others. The theme was Love, but not sappy love. It was called after a line in one of Adrienne Rich’s poems: “toward a new kind of love your life has never allowed“.

I think it was at this service that I saw you take off your hat, show your bald head. I was embarrassed how, earlier, before I knew of your diagnosis, I had mentioned that you had your hat on, you took it off, and your shock of white hair was gone. I didn’t know what to say. I wonder what I did say, if you remember my reaction, which was probably not especially graceful. I fear it might have been “John, your beautiful hair is gone!” like my appreciation to your hair was the center of importance. I wonder how many times you encountered – still encounter – reactions like that. Not unkind reactions, but ignorant ones. Because at that point, I didn’t know about the cancer and didn’t guess it either.

Anyway, it was after that I heard about your diagnosis, understood what had happened to your hair, and cringed in self-recrimination.

Then there you were, as I read poetry about Love, and your hat was off as you sat in the pew and I felt such love for you and your courage to sit hatless in our holy house. I think I wrote you a card and told you so. A card (I hope) or an email (at least). I hope it emboldened you.

Thirty-three Years Difference

Thank god you are as old as you are. If you were thirty years younger (or even 20, given my proclivities) I would have a wicked crush on you. And that would mess things up, I’m pretty darn sure of it.

Be as Miserable as You Are

I haven’t seen you around much and though that’s not so unusual, I sensed something was up. I don’t really have a true sixth sense, the way my friend Hanneli does, some kind of special key to a different plane of existence. So when I get one of those feelings, like I know something that isn’t rationally knowable, it’s usually just a sublimated wish. Like the thousands of times I have become smitten with someone and said, “Oh, he’s the one…” Wrong. Just wishful.

But I called you tonight, which felt forward, fearing intrusive. I called, put on a casual voice like it was okay to be calling. Asked, “Is John around?” when Sandy answered the phone. Sure, just a minute, who’s calling? Her friendly, welcoming tone when I said my full name put me immediately at ease. Somehow, I have entered your circle. I am welcome. I guess it’s my angel status.

I ask, “How are you?” and you say, well, it’s a long question. Then you say, it’s a short question with a long answer. I already knew, even before the how are you, it wasn’t good news. How could it be? Yet I feel like a bubble has burst, the one you have tried so hard to inflate around you and all who are near you: the bubble that you might be able to lick this thing that really no one licks, just endures.

You say you are fatigued. I know there is more. Do I wait for you to tell me or do I ask? I should wait, this is your life, this is your death, but I can’t. I don’t feel like it. I ask why, I ask if you know why you are so fatigued. And when I do, it’s not me setting the pace and you being dragged along. It’s our pace and so we talk.

The damn thing has invaded your spine. Two weeks ago you found out. New course of radiation. Trips to Boston. Both which wear you out. Your son from California is here today. I know one had been up from North Carolina for the last big holiday a month ago. I wonder what your relationship with these children, grown adults still older than me by at least a decade, is like – what it was like before the diagnosis. What, if anything, has changed.

You apologize for being the bearer of bad news. I chide you for such a worry. I understand that perverse dynamic: the sick, who are living it, become caretakers of those who must only listen to the news. It has the potential to be transformative, but too often it is a burden and is tiresome, spiritually and physically. I do not want to be this kind of person in your life.

You are tired. Friends are taking care of you. Food is taken care of. You are trying to read and rest. The bed is now downstairs. A sure sign, no doubt not lost on you, but is it spoken aloud? Dare I say it? And the point would be?

My offer of food declined, I say stalwartly that I will re-up my letters. I say you can read them if you are inclined, disregard them if you so choose. Sweetly, and truthfully, you say you are always inclined to read my letters. If we had been in the same room, I would have blushed.

You say I am welcome to drop by. Really? I am so pleased at the invitation. I say, I will come on Friday. That I don’t care how miserable you are, you needn’t put up a show for me or apologize for having bad news. You can be as miserable as you like, I wouldn’t have it any other way, or else I won’t come. You laugh, but there isn’t much umph in it. That’s okay. Sad, but okay.

So I will see you in a few days, man who has become this dear friend.

Driving on Interstate 95

I sent you new notes with new quotes on vibrant paper, planning to visit you a few days later on Friday. Inbetween, a few days away with my kids – off to Mystic, Connecticut. On Thursday night, as I was driving on Interstate 95 South, from New London to Fairfield, a poem came upon me.

Already dark, we were heading to friends to have dinner at their home. All I could do was drive on, keep one hand on the wheel and use the other to write what I hoped was legible scrawl of words that might become lines sometime. It’s actually something I’ve become decent at, was inspired to perfect after reading a wonderful poem about the very act of writing in the dark so as not to lose a dream image.

And so in a state where it is not legal to drive while talking on your cell phone without a headset, I paid attention to the letter of the law, not the spirit. And wrote. Wrote legibly. Wrote legibly about you. Wrote about you and this latest cancer. This one in your spine. This malignant lace.

Memento Mori

I am unsure. How to go about this death thing has me a bit stymied. I have always, as long as I can remember, been at ease talking about death. Long before I began working with kids with murdered parents, dead parents, grieving living parents. Before two of my clients in the homeless shelter died. One, an overdose of heroin. One, frozen to death on the sidewalk under the watchful, and inept, window of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Long before my two uncles suicided, one by shotgun and one by yet another drug overdose.

It just doesn’t scare me. Which is to say, it does scare me, but not talking about it scares me more, makes me more uncomfortable, makes me ill-at-ease, makes me feel as if I am being complicit with some dangerous secret.

I grew up with enough of those that I try to steer clear.

So I wonder what it will be like if I send this latest quote to you, this one from Alice Walker’s “Living by the Word.” Will it feel like I am not being the good cheerleader that everyone is supposed to be, rallying behind life in the face of overwhelming odds? (And then shunned, kept out, because I didn’t play along, didn’t play by the rules?)

Or will it be a sweet release, the festering sore let free of its insidious pus, painful, but relieving? The truth spoken, unafraid, named and therefore, not so threatening, not so menacing?

Or will I join a hearty (perhaps even brazen) company of men and women already sharing your orbit, already conversant in substantial care of you? Good people already fluent in Memento Mori : “the constant awareness of death; acceptance of mortality and dedication to life regardless”

May it be so.

Three Newspapers

How can such ordinary objects hold such sinister anticipation? In conversation with a mutual friend, who knows you a little less than I do but whose partner knows you much better, I hear that he tried to call you yesterday, that your voice mail was full. He did not know of the latest occurrence and so I told him. Him, whose own mother has been battling cancer for three years and is hosting dinner parties, from whom he just returned after a holiday in Florida with this new partner, his fiancée, who met you years ago in Nicaragua and is on her way there now.

Like you are supposed to be. Going to Nicaragua tomorrow, January 4^th. According to Tom, you are expected there, no one there in the southern climes of Florida-on-the-way-to-Nicaragua knows that you are sick again.

So I went by today. Had planned to go yesterday but it didn’t work out. Went by expecting (hoping?) to see you, not really giving much attention to the comment about full voice mail.

When I arrived, there were three newspapers in the box. Four days’ worth. No mail in the letterbox, but that’s not a surprise. No mail in three days due to a planned holiday (New Year’s Day) and an unexpected (in my opinion, unwarranted) one to mark Gerald Ford’s funeral.

I knocked. No answer. No car in the driveway. I pushed at the knob; the door opened. It does not surprise me that you leave your home open. I called out your names: “John? Sandy?” Nothing. All in meticulous order. No break in. No sign of what would turn out to be the emergency unplanned trip to the hospital, though I’m not really sure what the tell-tale signs of that would be.

I brought in three now-sinister newspapers, left them on your couch. A note in my handwriting, with my name and number at the bottom, perch atop, wondering what comes next.

ain't that sweet?

2008-03-03T11:04:00.003-05:00

Ain't that sweet? My friend, Roy, sent it to me. (http://returntothecenter.typepad.com/the_center/)

Neither Does the Moon

2008-02-22T22:01:00.011-05:00

Even after all this time, the sun does not say to the Earth, “You owe me.” (Hafiz)

It hangs low like it knows

the too much on my mind.

It just hangs til you notice,

then carries its own skyward rise.

The moon is accustomed to loss:

single ant immolated by magnifying glass

in the hands of a much too eager six-year old.

Whole anthills, colonies as tall above ground

as they are below, drowned with greedy poisons.

Fresh water pearls fall down drains.

Cheeks are slapped, lies told,

languages unspoken, music unsung

into memory’s deepest chasm.

The moon will wait.

Weeks, eras, epochs:

not an ounce of impatience,

its whole and partial sheen

expecting nothing in return.

No reciprocity, no pat on the back

for the gravity of such witness

found nowhere on earth.

There was a time my daughter would stop breathing,

six seconds at a clip, over and over, all the while asleep.

Did the moon ever wake her?

Re-rhythm her breathing

to properly oxygenate

her baby brain?

No, that was the surgeon,

who removed the obstruction

and in its place, an absence

that rings her voice with the sound of tin.

Still moonBuddha rises each night,

not waiting in the sky

but weighting the whole improbable thing:

equanimity repleting the ink heavens,

as I make of myself a light.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Simple Flesh

2008-02-07T21:50:00.000-05:00

Not the perfect aim of a professional knife thrower.

Or golden ticket wrapped ‘round a Wonka bar.

Certainly not false promises of national security

through fascist or any other kind of might.

Not position, possession, or power;

neither immortality nor fountain of youth.

No single bullet in answer to terminal diagnosis

or wooden stake in the midst of marauding vampires.

Not penning the most perfectest poetic phrase ever turned.

Not the winning Powerball ticket

after months, ney, years, of no winners.

Or everlasting offering of full body massages

by the most adroit of all masseurs.

Not endless poker chips

for the tables at Caesar’s Palace

or immunity to Kryptonite or

the secret recipe for either KFC

or the philosopher’s stone.

Not the rescue of steady tow truck

for the 3 AM flat on deserted stretch of highway.

Not brass lamp with genie of three wishes.

Not fame, not fortune, not physical fortitude.

Not breakfast in bed for a hundred days,

accompanied by the waft of the copious lilac

from the neighbor’s backyard.

All I wish for is

the simple flesh

of being with someone

I love

when the end

suddens.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston