Spring Monsoon

We're number one!
Flag-waving champions blown to shreds in the March winds
Blowing players off the board game, our turn has come
Up to bat, bases full, pandemic epicenter, invoking useless authoritarian powers
Trading one loss for the other
They make us think in the language of war
Invisible enemy growing stronger in the unknown, untestable
Like a Pacific typhoon grown preeminent
Our lungs are the target, organ of grief and of metal
Collective imbalances, expressed in microbic mushroom spores of sadness blowing
Slowing down together, a global chrysalis of shared personal introspection
On what is essential after all
Transforming this communal lamentation into something more

Take the dog for one last walk
While dark clouds collect on the neighborhood periphery
A known presence, Biblical plague,
With what do you paint the frame of your door?
Lock the shutters its starting to pour
Contaminated tears from the Atlantic
Tsunami rolling  quickly from the East
NYC, Detroit, all along the Mississippi
Coming from the Western California cities
Two tides from both sides run for the Rockies like a refugee
We are all asylum seekers now

Governors in their mansions race for time and hoard supplies
From each other like the shoppers in the stores
While the Big Apple rots by the sea abandoned
We ride out the hurricane with windows shattering, leaking
Flooded floors, whistling sirens in the cracks
Huddle together on the sofa trying to sleep
Find a little peace in the turbulent night

Wake up to discern
The typhoon hatched into a Spring monsoon

The Coronavirus Blues

The world's shutting down imploding extremes of
Want and gratitude, necessities, and greed exacerbating inequalities you're still in denial to
A revolutionary's wet dream of possibilities, the capitalist politicians the first to gain
As people sneeze openly, don't wash their hands, don't believe the TV when it disagrees with how they're feeling

Global typhoon germ warfare spreading like a sigh, last goodbye, a mist of fear
The collective atmosphere, cloud pockets of death, unknowns, and false news
Dolphins and swans have magically appeared
You made it somehow a battle between faith and science
Adolescent defiance, sucking the geriatric teat,  Dementia tweet of misinformation
Bury your primeval head in the sand of unawareness

God's grace is bigger than your cowardice, but that won't stop the people from dying
It won't stop me from trying
To be a better human being, we have to do our own thing together

Canceled our Spring Break holiday in DC
Cherry blossoms bloom alone at the Tidal Basin quite oblivious to
All those eulogies and white marble totems
Vacant cities, abandoned national treasures behind chained gates, capitol lockdown
People's vernal dreams flying in ghost flights, hollow planes forced to turn around

More people are praying, fingering the rabbit foot, crossing toes
The banker prays to his Bull market deity, while I cry
For nonrefundable travel memories that couldn't be, the fragile line of poverty
Toeing the line, the balance of panic and preparedness
Hoarders still take as they please, pitiful emptiness carried away by anxiety

Colossal mythology, end of the world pathology
A throw of the dice, of numbers, Russian Roulette when the governor just invoked
The Grim Reaper in his state address
And Kenny Rogers just died, passed the night before
His last hand as The Gambler, a reminder of chance

The cosmic dance, daily yoga practice of self-quarantine and community
Isolating for morality, connecting to the righteousness in me
Crossing to the other street when I see my neighbor
A radius of 6-foot bubbles, bouncing like ions charging either way

Taking care of me taking care of you
Coronavirus blues, under azure Rocky Mt skies

Mirage

You're a false rumor of rain, a dream of mist, chimera in the barren dusk
All is rolling millennial dead ocean and you're the mirage in this wasteland.

Each parched grain once the body of living coral, antiquated anemone
Recycled fragments like a snowflake in its perfection
Desiccated to death, incessant scorched wind chiseled skeleton
I look at you never clear-eyed, sick vision stared too long at the sun
Surrounded in sand drifts and you my solitary hallucination

All around are ashes, decomposing dust,
The mummified neighbors and their pets greet us
With their brains and hearts enclosed in porcelain jars
They slave their lives for the construction of communal crypts

I lift my veil under a black moon, black coal lined eyes watch
Stars kiss the dunes in every direction
Waiting for you mirage in the desert, I flourish
Like Narcissus in love with his own watery image
I'm just a brambled Echo calling you across the badlands
Hear my faint psalm in the sand storm

I hum fragrant floret melodies of bubbling brooks of shared date and honey cakes
Mineral waters curing the weariness out of the vagabond

Remove your shroud quench your lifetime thirst
Inside me are lush rainforests temperate and forgiving
I'm a desert flower in bloom among the thorns
Speckled stone circles in holy groves kept secret
Ancient trees taller than pillars still hidden in this open horizon
I'm your intimate oasis in this wilderness
The crescent to your sun

Dirge for Anthony

Out of uniform reach for my hip
Self identify, whip out a badge or weapon, you decide
React in swift self-preservation
Man-child murder the law in its optical organ
Meth wild-eyed  in Texas on a sticky night  with sticky tears
Regret every day in this life sentence.

Parents' circled prayers, incensed swirls reach heaven's gate, not fate that
Restrained the hand of the lyncher, limp dick governer
The highest court rules mercy always
Any other sentence, a disguised decree of partiality

Groan a dirge for Anthony Haynes the cop killer
Kincaid the good cop ever in danger, his kin still hum his requiem
Ruled a capital crime, so stumbled the ignorant child
He's served his time, no societal danger, just too tired to appeal

On death row and nowhere to go but under
Elude the date with the executioner no longer
I pray for your contrite soul, no chance to live the life your mother conceived
To marry, have children with long black eyelashes full of heart, and father intended
Just hope for another judicial review extending
Your dead life in this purgatory cell

A coin in the pinball machine of justice for profit, the cop on the beat,
The black boy drowning
In crystal panic attacks, converging prism sorrows of his ancestors
Throw a pretty penny in the wishing well of vigorous dissent.

Vinyasa Sequence Dedicated to Emma

Emma was an animal lover, gentle by nature and I wanted to use some animals she was particularly fond of, as well as some of her hobbies. She was the epitome of temperance and being pulled by two opposing forces, hence some of the more difficult balances. There are some subtle heart and hip openers that really burn through some deep cobwebs of emotion. After a few rounds of flowing (of the easier flow), I felt lighter, as in heavenly light breaking through some of this grief, even for just a moment. Try flowing to this playlist.

Dedicated to my loving niece, free spirits must soar.

EMMA 10 1/2 Poses Flow

Child pose w/prayer hands

Puppy Pose

Rabbit Pose

DD-Humble Warrior/ Peaceful Warrior- Swan-Fallen Star Vinyasa (R/L)

Archer’s

Tortoise

Fish

Happy Baby

Shavasana

Intermediate Version

Child Pose w/ prayer hands

Puppy Pose

Down Dog

DD Twist R/L

Humble Warrior- Warrior 3-Peaceful Warrior (R/L)

DD

Fallen Star

Visvamitrasana- Revolving Half Moon- Swan (1 Leg Vinyasa R/L)

DD

Hands Under Feet

Standing Pigeon-Toe Stand (Padangustha Padma Utkatasana) R/L

Vinyasa

Pigeon Twisted R/L

Rabbit-Tortoise

Vinyasa into Boat- Seated Forward Bend- Archer’s R/L

Half Lord Fishes R/L

Fish Pose

Happy Baby

Shavasana

+Swan is Eka Pada Hamsa Parsvottanasana

A Year Ago Your Hair Was Flowing

A year ago your brown hair was flowing
Your green Tigerlily eyes glowing like the Indian ocean
A year ago, the new year started full of hope, clean slates and plans
A strand of pearl future holidays, eventual birthdays on a delicate tomorrow chain
These past 365 mornings became a cruel century, displacing a former era
Ripped sheets in the beginning of a story
This new reality, heart poverty,  a missing seat at the table

Juevinile hopes full of reunions, fingers crossed under blankets for parental communion
Snowflake good-night kisses, flurries fallen upon closed eyelashes
Safety is an illusion, a brittle mirage that
Cracks the early chill dawn with a sigh and you're gone
Icicle memories, tears frozen like broken clocks
This bitter legacy torments me in the darkest January

Fall through the ice, knees to the terrain, drop the receiver, knife in the belly pain
Screaming to the spinning horizon your name- God with Us, barely a decade
Seasick on landlocked ground, in shock and confusion we drown in disbelief

Grasping for summer memories, last souvenirs of you here
Recall which songs merited your quiet content, the times that you giggled
In my lament replay videos of you laughing, devour your chuckle
Inhale traces of scent memories that still linger
Hell is being helpless in paradise without you

Our heavenly flower girl, eternal tween
Dropping us celestial love gifts like the petals in a wedding procession
Fragile flower sprinkle us more hallowed tokens to treasure
How you left this world, jubilant hibernation, blissful slumber
(I won't speak of the maternal betrayal)
Cherish how angelic you slept while I watched you dream

Sense you everywhere nearby, a hush, a gentle whisper
You wait to comfort our winter with Spring

Reflections on Censoring Democratic Discourse

This poem is inspired by the 7 words banned from CDC's 2018 budget report:


Teachers once taught refraction and dispersion in a class called science
With a sword purge edit, slice the direction of a lexum wave

Droplets sanitize in an arc of seven

Blackout the sun and remove this human spectrum experiment American

No longer shining quite as bright, once I thought I had seen

A dazzling color spectrum

Hide what is weak, cover all tears, conceal fears of inner feminine exposure

Under animals hides of authoritarian repression

The blood life color bleeding

Red from the vulnerable vulva, open heart wound, susceptible girl muscle

That tender inside story

Fear the right of Other, the power to be liable

Covering mouths, cutting out tongues, one phrase at a time

Blot out some part of themselves, erasing letters, imprison the child

Abridging their own maturation by not serving, making moral choices

Choose to champion the voiceless,  to be a complete human prism

Instead wear your title banner yellow crown of seized entitlement

Bronze wielding swords on horseback stealing common pasturelands

Dam the rivers, poison word wells, privatizing shrine groves

Pre-emptive claims to sanitize our articulations in one mammouth, federal mansplain

Orange is my coral fetus, amphibian soul salmon egg

Attached to the cantaloupe womb wall

Wash of two pigments

Red vulnerable mother and yellow groom privilege

Like a little carrot, root vegetable handpicked (or not) by it’s

Child- bearer gardner

Gender is a verdant field, flourishing with every kind of herb and grass, moss and vine

Preferential bloom of one’s perennial essence

I’m my own ego sod as you choose your own turf, we quintessential alternative meadows

Blue is the evidence based of a cloudless sky

Fear the day an Emperor makes us call the sky anything but that celestial hue

When we whisper in secret what is true

Because one day he erased it all in a nuclear monsoon

Regret the time it began with the censor of

Seven hues from our democratic rainbow vernacular

Safeguard the science-based indigo evolution of research and examination

Bipedal hominids painting ocre magic under stalactites

Brewing beer, yogurt, by observation, peer reviewed trial and error

Fascination of absolute zero to Hubble Space Telescope missions

Require the experts and poets to hypothesize, measure our orientation

Make a sanctuary for the royal purple of diversity

Multifarious mindsets and a multiplicity of complexions

A medley of judgements, experiences and suspicions

Preserve that prism curve rainbow perception

Septuplicate of words illuminate

Our protesting hands a rising covenant banner

After this storm

We cheek by jowl radiate parts of these seven visible light waves

Supernumerary bands against this cadaverous censor