Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul … and you answer.” Terri Guillemets

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In solidarity with all women and their children I offer four of my “women poems” written and originally published here and elsewhere between 2011 and 2017

returned to bite through the umbilical of tradition,
to flick her tongue
and cut loose the animus-god of our parents,
like a panther she roams the earth, she is eve wild in the night,
freeing minds from hard shells
and hearts from the confines of their cages,
she’s entwined in the woodlands of our psyches
and offers her silken locks to the sacred forests of our souls ~
naked but for her righteousness,
she stands in primal light,
in the untrammeled river of dreams
the yin to balance yang
the cup of peace to uncross the swords of war ~
through the eons she’s been waiting for her time
her quiet numinosity hiding in the phenomenal world,
in the cyclical renewal of mother earth,
whispering to us in the silver intuition of grandmother moon
watching us as the loving vigilance of a warming sun ~
she, omen of peace birthed out of the dark,
even as tradition tries to block her return,
her power leaps from the cleavage of time

I Read A Poem

I read a poem today and decided
I must deed it to some lost, lonely
fatherless child… to embrace her
along her stone path, invoke sanity

I want to tell her: don’t sell out your
dearest dreams or buy the social OS
Instead, let the poem play you like a
musician her viola, rewriting lonely
into sapphire solitude, silken sanctity

Let it wash you like the spray of whales
Let it drench your body in the music
of your soul, singing pure prana into
the marrow and margins of your life

Let your shaman soul name your muse,
find yourself posing poetry as power and
discover the amethyst bliss of words
woven from strands of your own DNA
Yes. I read a poem today

I must deed it to a lost fatherless child

A Madwoman, A Madonna, A Medusa

What’s it to me? …
A knotted and nasty old poet of introverted time
wearing five-dollar sweats
dressing in black on black like a fly
with silver earrings tinkling softly in the winter breeze
What’s it to me? …

A Madwoman, a Madonna, a Medusa
Traipsing neighborhood streets, city parks and country lanes
Nibbling on sharp yellow cheese and glossy red apples
Sitting down on some wayward curb to sigh in wonder at
noisy birds and children, wizened old men, whiskered grandmothers
Dogs walking their humans by the side of the road
Feral cats scratching out a living of pigeon stuffed with stale bread

Muttering, muttering, whispering, watching, writing
Writing long poems and short about what it was to be us
through clocked days trapped in pointless, punctilious youth
Enjoying now the wild, gnarly randomness of life
and the music of our dusty blue souls jingling as we walk …
What’s it to me? What’s it to this so lately untamable me?

The Scent of Onions

Seriously, she considered murder by food,
sausage, potatoes, and Boston Cream Pie
Gleeful, she stuffed his arteries with salami,
used suet in pasties and plum puddings,
sought quietus from onions fried in bacon fat
Strategizing slow-death by Swiss fondue,
she dreamed of being single while sharing
broccoli trees with the toddler on her knee

– Poems by Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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