Court of Empire

Featured image is the painting “The Laocoön” by El Greco 1610-1614

August 18, 2020

I wrote the following poem in 2018.

Court of Empire

Oh shining City on the Hill,

You must know by now

the price for a seat on the Court of Empire

is paid in the brown skins of refugees

and the bones of their children which lie

bleaching in the Sonoran sun.

The mothers and fathers carry their little ones, anyway –

this crossing means they must travel at night,

they walk with care,

to escape the gaze of El Pozolero

they risk all through darkness and death.

In the day, they take their rest at churches

hidden in the creosote scrub

and receive the manna

left by Samaritans.

Food cache

(body of Christ, the bread of Heaven)

and water jug

(blood of Christ, the cup of Salvation)

gathered and prepared for those

(suffer the little children to come unto Me)

who journey to reach the promised land.

When these oases are found by Pharaoh’s long arm

border agents pour out the water

and trample the food.

We all must face these facts tonight

face something dark tonight

go down into the abyss tonight —

(Lord, I am not ready to receive you…)

We’re all facing something dark tonight,

facing facts tonight,

going into the abyss

tonight –

(say the word, and I shall be healed.)

Portulaca of the Ancestors by Michele Montserrat

Soul On Deck

“…One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Do not be ashamed of the fear, the worry, the anxiety. Do not feel that your heartbreak over what is happening is misplaced, or wrong, or out of line. These promptings are voices from your inner compass, the gyro that keeps you stable, the inalienable center that is YOU. These feelings of injustice and outrage against the seeming shamelessness of those who engage in the fearsome practice of eating from the table of our sisters and brothers, of our children. These inner promptings are invaluable, and the seed of power. They will carry you far, if you will have courage in your thoughts about how to respond.
I would encourage you to lean in, see what the most insistent fear is for you right now. Listen to this turmoil in your heart – not to be overwhelmed or swept away, but to lean into the most bright spaces of fire. Look calmly, take time to listen, then experiment with the idea of putting yourself at it’s service. Give some time to hear and understand the message. Find your unique way to answer the prompting at the center of your fear.

Find a bucket, a basket for this and begin to carry it with you, A gesture, a word, a poem. A walk around the block. Use any way that occurs to you spontaneously to begin to move with it. You are finding your personal way to answer the call that is hammering away within.

Attend to the places where it seems your fear becomes lessened, where you feel it brighten and the flame steadies in peace. Those are the forks in the road, the little outcroppings where you can set up camp. Unexpected treasure caves may be revealed, for you to discover work to be done to liberate this energy into purpose. When you do, a gesture of power will come to you. This gesture will begin the process of moving your energy to the best direction for you to do the most good.

Don’t get hung up – there is time, although not too much of it to be sure, so begin moving. By leaning into what the energy is telling you, and moving with it, you become a container for the force that will serve to free us all. The energies are shaking you, perhaps because you have the exact convergence of powers and loves to respond. It’ll be bumpy at first. But you will gain precision and finesse as you move along with it. I would love to hear what you are doing to help keep this world, as Keats would say, “a vale of soul making.”

Featured image by Michele Montserrat

sunset ship boat sea — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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Puerto Rico, still Preciosa.

“…Y así le grito al villano yo sería borincano aunque naciera en la luna ” -Juan Antonio Corretjer

(“and so I shout to the villain: I would still be Puerto Rican if I was born on the moon”)

Omar Z Robles

Carla Sofía Curet

“Preciosa te llaman lo bardos que cantan tu historia, no importa el tirano te trate con negra maldad…” – Rafael Hernández

I just made it back from visiting my home country of Puerto Rico. It is the first time I get to visit since hurricane María swept through, almost exactly 5 months after. It was an incredibly emotional and difficult trip. I found myself fighting the tears more times than I can recall. Five months after the hurricane and my island, my people, my family still carry open wounds from that horrendous day.

During my visit I gathered so many terrifying stories from my friends and relatives about their experiences during and after the hurricane. They told me about how they stayed up all night holding doors and windows for hours as the wind was about to burst into their homes. About how the extreme heat wave…

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Making It and The Fall

Making It and The Fall

“If you’re so smart, why ain’t ya rich?”
Why do we mock those who can’t make it in life?
And by that, I mean, make it in the life in this world we’ve created,
that’s actually anti-life, anti-love, and anti-beauty?

Probably because, we all know, deep inside,
that if the game of Shoots and Ladders is abandoned,
we’ll be really pissed that we spent so much time propping it up,
getting ripped off and screwed over,
that we’ll feel really STUPID when we realize we were played
and that we played along with all of this.

So we pass that pain along and down.
Makes it easier to stomach
the daily pint
of pure petroleum-based rot-gut
we call
MAKING IT AND THE FALL.

Albany Cops Sound Like Abusive Spouses in Teen Workshop

“Resisting arrest and fleeing may be illegal, but THEY ARE NOT CAPITAL CRIMES, and unless the person fleeing is running toward someone else trying to kill them, then killing them is not an acceptable tradeoff for keeping them from escaping.”

Mjoy

There’s this pattern that happens with abusive spouses. They often explain to their victims how to behave so they won’t get beaten up again. All the victim needs to do is give them proper respect, not burn their dinner, remember to leave out their slippers at the right place, never buy the wrong brand of toothpaste, never make them feel like they are being laughed at, never give them attitude or make them mad. And then, supposedly, they’ll be safe.

Of course, the abuser is not actually owed any of those things in the first place. And in any case, it’s always a lie. It’s a losing game. The abuse will continue, because periodic reminders of control are necessary and because the abuser will keep finding new things to add to the reasons they were “forced” to administer a beating.

This was one of the first things I thought of when I heard…

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