How Helpless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My latest sermon can be found here.

Independence Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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