Days long past with brie and crumbled feta
Topped with parmesan and grated cheddar.
My stomach cries “enough!” Refusing milk,
Its myriad children. Something better
Shall be found in almonds, oats and soya.
But my heart pines for youth’s mozzarella.
My head is
A tree trunk
Hollowed by a thunderbolt
The rain soaks its branches
And the bark groans for relief
Keep your head down
Be useful but not smart
The knives are coming
Don’t set yourself apart
We both stammer, you and I
We both know our role
Given what we don’t want
Living the unbearable
Old King Log
Shall we float on
To a kinder age?
Every morning
My bedroom is a void
Struck like a set
To prepare for a new show
Every morning
I wake to a new sun in the sky
Wear unfamiliar shoes
Drive streets I don’t recognize
Every morning
The world is reinvented
And I must learn it all again
Tuna swims the frigid waters of the northern pacific
Mercury fills his veins
He is a thermometer
Of the health of the ocean
When all the small fish disappear
And the corals bleach
And the water turns to acid
His veins will burst
And the humans who eat sushi
Will all go mad
This is not a children’s book
Does a virus have a moral?
Does an epidemic have a happy ending?
Does it end at all?
Do we learn our lesson?
Are the ICU wards illustrated in pastel watercolors?
Can we put the book down and read something else?
The soul is
The broken egg that pulls itself together again
No matter how much yolk has been spilled
It finds its way into the shell
eventually
Shortly before my departure from my church last year, I asked for counsel from a good friend about this decision. She suggested I make a sign that said “choose health,” put it somewhere I’d see it frequently, and follow its advice. In that context, it meant prioritizing my mental health over the demands of a toxic congregation.
Now, as I’m practicing social distancing — working from home, living with just my cat, going out only as needed — “choose health” has a very different meaning.
Like many teenagers, I wrote poetry in high school. I cobbled together a journal from spare ruled notebook paper and a used binder, hand-sewing and gluing the spine. The pages were deckled (not intentionally) by my inability to cut straight. I filled this upcycled journal with confessions, story snippets, and poems.
I wrote far more fiction than poetry in the years between, but I indulged on occasion. I used to post Wednesday poems on this blog some years back. I’d mess around with metaphor and meter in my stories, but not to great effect. (Rhyme was always hard for me.)
Since my writing block last year, I’ve struggled to find ways to put words to screen. I practically reinvented my writing process twice, but that didn’t seem to fix things. Even blog posts have been difficult and sporadic, though to be fair my topics have been difficult, deeply personal, and met with a great deal of hostility.
Earlier this month, unsure of what day exactly, I started writing poetry again. The first poem was excruciating to write, like turning a rusty nut off a threaded bolt, but the threads caught and subsequent poems have been easier.
Short answer: not as it exists right now.
Long answer:
It’s no secret I left my UU church last year. While my specific grievances are personal and partly confidential, I can speak to an overall trend that I’ve witnessed in other UU churches.
Mainstream denominations are in big trouble, and Unitarian Universalism is no exception.