No More Politics. Just the Prophetic Poetry of Bob Dylan

We are all capable of hypocrisy.  What’s infuriating about politicians is that they act as if they are not. In their activities there’s always someone else to burn down, someone else’s character to examine, someone else to hold up as the sum of all evil among the opposite,  and there is an alarming lack of self reflection and humility–an alarming amount of self promotion as the sole bearer of light and potential.  Yet the scroll of surprising offenses from the present continues to unroll.  And as the scroll unfolds and the offenses jump off the page, the sick perspective that individuals should be born onto the scene as perfectly evolved specimens with no flaws is tiresome and perpetuated ad nauseum.

So keep your heads friends, as you ponder the impending political vortex of 2020. The humans setting out to claim their qualification for presidency are just that…. humans. And if they claim to alone hold the answers–to alone be worthy of holding the torch to light the way, well, there is something to be very, very, weary of regardless of their party affiliation.  I’ve struggled to align with any one political identity because of these things.  I think I’m finally ok to accept and proclaim that I put more hope in the prophetic poetry of Bob Dylan than in any one iota uttered by any one politician.  Keep your heads friends. Propaganda, all is phony.

Happy Nurses Week

I wrote this poem in April, while taking part in NaPoWriMo 2018,  in examen of two different supposed dichotomous “identities” of my life: being a poet and being a nurse. For most of my time in healthcare, I’ve never felt like I could have a tender poet-side AND be strong nurse. I’ve felt silly for having a side that wasn’t evidenced-based or life-saving or practical. But lately, I have come to know that the most hidden, most tender parts about a person are also the parts that make them brilliant at what they do, and help them be present to the people they care for. The tender and hidden parts are the parts that whisper for you to pause in what could be a life changing moment. I have seen those parts shine through on the faces, in the hearts, and within the actions of the nurses I have worked alongside during my nearly eleven years being a nurse.  So guess what guys, you are all poets and you didn’t know it! Or maybe you do know and you embrace it.  That would be even better…..

On Being A Nurse

Eyes in the interstitial

Holding space for the untouchable

Fine tuning intuition with what lives and breaths

See, hear, smell, palpate, seek

Peer into physiology

All senses keening

Flourish the world with healing.

Intuit the liminal

Hold space for the unnamble

See. Hear. Smell. Palpate. Seek

Peering onto the world’s underbelly

All senses keening

Flourish the world with prophecy

NaPoWriMo Day Twenty Four: Night Blooms Redux

For day twenty-four’s inspiration, I drew on a previous day’s prompt. You could call it the read and answer prompt. Keeping the whole of an already written poem covered, uncover the last line.  Then, answer that last line with your own line. Working your way up the poem from last line to first, repeat that process until you get to the first line of your inspiration/established poem. Your line-answer to the first line will be the last line in your new poem. I quiet like that exercise as it reminds me of action poetry–and it feels good to tap into creative-like-mindedness. Especially when I really like the poem.

Many years ago, I wrote a poem inspired by the print “The Night-Blowing Cereus”. At the time, I asked for feedback from a fellow poet. What he wrote was a gorgeous revision, and almost an entirely new poem. We told the same story, but what he wrote was masterful.

Today, I used his revision poem as my inspiration for a last line/first line exercise. And although, it is one of my favorite poems, I hadn’t read it in a while.  Thus safely keeping my writerly instinct and conscious clear.  First you’ll read his revision poem (forgive me Michael, the line breaks……), and then my NaPoWriMo version to follow

Nyctanthous anthem II

By Michael Aziz

O night absorb

The me of the day,

The salty symptoms of my pain.

O cucullated moon absorb me,

Gather me

In your cloaken folds,

Baptize me in glittering starlight,

Your constellations shuttled

Through my veins,

Brightening my dark prognosis

With the perfect peace of light.

But I will never know peace

Until my body burns

And the ashes of my limbs

Are smudges sealed

On another’s forehead

Absorb me O black blind night,

Absolve me this endless toiling instant

O seasoned star

Lurking in the autumn sky

Like a tiger

Pacing the lines of a village,

Come down to the riverside,

Here by the winding shore,

To quench, to bathe, here

Where my tall flame burns.

 

 

*******

Night Blooms Redux

I am but a blank space waiting

I take in air but leave no shadow.

O, trail behind me love

A prowling heart does wait, tending

each still breath with a step.

A far away planet gleams cold,

O, remnant rock remember me

in your vacuous

atmosphere.

Take me in, as you.

Too smooth to tell

are oils anointed,

Take on deep onyx as I burn

Until the all of me is malleable.

White now and muffled still

are the starbursts of deprivation.

And deep behind my eyes

are the wanton maps of dreams.

From deep to deep

So that I may shine,

I rest I am folded.

Take me in as you,

O cold and gleaming remnant rock

You are the nacre, you are the scale in my eye.

Prowling with each still,  blinded breath

until the all of me is malleable