Revenge Play

In the creator’s brutal universe,

gentle exceptions seem abnormal.

I dwell on the fate of my departed friends,

live out their love affairs in my imagination,

bolt away when I hear their steps behind me —

the dead shouldn’t engage in my game.

My shiny hair is tied back in a ponytail,

theirs is unkempt and decayed.

They try to invent 

ways to be heard and revenged,

but I am uncommitted and detached,

now trying on their fates in my mental fitting room.

Nothing mysterious under the veneer of humans.

Prince Hamlet isn’t the only one

who speaks with his father’s ghost;

ghosts camp in my overheated head in the night,

complain, whine, and demand revenge.

I put a lot of stock in ghosts’ sermons,

but see no practical use for their revelations.

Burdening Hamlet with his pending problem,

using his son to get even with Claudius

makes the royal ghost an unreliable authority —

I renounce such a heritage.

The tide was in, the tide is out

on the shore at Elsinore.

We are all unavenged at the end.

Our sons are unburdened,

freed from our lament.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2017

Prince Hamlet kills King Claudius
by Gustave Moreau
from Wikimedia Commons

Who Is This Woman?

I am from Cinda and Fred who created the union

I am from my ancestors who brought me forth to enter the world of many dreams

I am from the joy of laughing clouds of energy that flow into the river of loving

I am from the world of loneliness as I seek to touch all that surrounds me

I am from women who had to bear burdens and children and those not meant to be

I am from another world that gave me life and many centuries of queens and kings

I am from nurturers of the world who seek the laughter of passionate tears

I am from souls who wander in the world to seek a place that feels like home

I am from the freeing spirit that must fly to seek the free flying winds

I am from words that must pour out and yet hands that prevent them from coming

I am from phrases thought but not placed on paper because the mind says not now

I am from you and me and us and we and all that is and will be

I am from the earth and the sky and wings of birds

I am from all that is and wants to be

I am from a place I called home and I will call home and a place I now call home

I am from the sunrise and the sunset and all that is in between

And only a moment in which I am from all that is and yet to be

And so it is that I am the woman who loves to be hugged and cared about

Who feels alone often and yet can walk among you

I am the woman who aches to be cared about but can’t ask

Who wants to reach out to the world but can’t take the step

I am the woman who wants to be there but not quite sure where

Who walks among you but doesn’t always feel there

I am the woman who feels gratitude for being and surviving

Who dances through life and yet needs to be rocked

I am the woman who wants to cry out loud but no tears will come

Who asks, “Who am I?”

I am the woman who walks with purpose but wants no goals

Who comforts but wants holding

I am the woman who knows how to give but can’t quite take

And so I am the woman that many know but don’t know who I am

I stand before you reaching out on paper

Because I am the Black woman who must hold up her world

But know that I am the woman whose strength covers her deepest pain

And so send me sprinkles of joy and laughter I can grasp

Each time I need my heart to sing

“It is well.  It is well with my soul!”

        © Hilda Ward, 2017

Birds on the wing
from Pixabay via Wikimedia Commons

As Water We Have Options

These stagnations that come from low water -

where once was excess, remnants lie in stillness, 

shrinking, draining, breeding stink and mischief.

Don't live there.

Live, when you can, in the ripple that holds its place

Even as the river flows fast through.

Live in the fluid rise that's elevated

By the complementary forces of

Forward motion and

Surface tension.

Stationary, stable, yet rolling and always new,

Sometimes so full it has to sing,

Sometimes so full it's bursting 

to let go its toehold and join the formless flow

on down the river.

© Laura Seale, 2017

Rippling Water
by Siru7887
from Wikimedia Commons