Sister Friend

Sister Friend:

You gave me jigsaw pieces

and fully-formed reliquaries:

tortured scenes, stations of your

crucifixion. Beside you,

I mourned the agonies, 

and prayed dutifully

for your eventual redemption.

I laid a flower at your feet,

lit a votive, paid my tithe

for your incense and your

well-appointed life.

You gave me cups of holy water,

uncorked the sacrament

and by your vespertine shadows

you peeled back the shroud.

A jumble of fantasies, spoken

in several tongues, of extinguished

flames marked by ashes on

the eye of the beholder. 

You smiled, sister of flies,

black and devouring, eating

life and death alike, 

a spy.

Summoning your demons 

from a confusion of tears

you slake your thirst on innocence, 

and suffer no rebirth. 

Vampire in the eyes, your

wild parts knitting, scheming,

gaining, winning, stealing

morsels of truth, beauty, and love. 

In the web you weave

patter little feet, echoing

laughter and howls:

regret, defeat, vanity.

Speak and you will deafen

the hurricane, silence the 

thunder, and stoke the violent

tornado to fuse fault with home. 

Languid cheery liturgies

of effigies burning on

hot summer nights, where

the moss stroked gently, trembles. 

Sister of lies, your heart

is a maggot, thriving on rot:

voracious and becoming

a creature with wings.

But your eyes betray:

soft and tender,

crazed waif, finding the way

in the wilderness, making her way. 

So what of you,

sister of trials?

Woman, or child?

Lost and longing,

or luridly charming?

Am I to be your meat?

Rose petal flesh, 

a sycophant?

Are you blessed--

a wastrel seeking rest--

or a predator, craving red?

~

You gave me your 

jigsaw pieces, craving completion

and I fit them together, 

found their cohesion

and the scene revealed

a woman lain bare,

white and black and red

body, blood, and soul.

Threatened, repelled, you gave me

a glimpse, of pieces formed 

together, and torn apart. 

You gave me the means, 

and I read your meaning, 

reeling. 

You entrusted to me your

jigsaw pieces, held fast by

jagged edges that formed a whole

and I stole a look at what I loved: 

do I only love your inches, 

but not your mile?

You gave me your jigsaw pieces

and I dashed them on the floor

as I saw the scene they formed. 

You again became richly vivid pieces,

lying on the ground. 

I saw you for what you are

and I felt betrayed. 

Singly, your fragments 

intrigued, 

but the entirety…?

You gave me your jigsaw pieces

and bade me know you,

love you, understand and

accept you. Perhaps you’ve

done this a thousand times

before, and are forever 

condemned to repeat the

slow awkward retreat.

You gave me your warped

and ragged jigsaw pieces, 

worn from years of handling,

dusty, cheap, and baffling—

and I pieced together:

your tawdry character, 

your failures, shortcomings, 

your misdeeds.

And also the ways you shine

in your own broken way-- 

shady and alive, 

a lowly human,

of badness and goodness;

a bawdy fable, 

miscreant, 

tyrant,

angel--

suffer the middle ground

between heaven and hell. 

You gave me your tired, 

broken, hungry jigsaw pieces, 

and I fit them together

to form your imperfection. 

Horrified, moved, perplexed:

I decided 

I will still be your friend.  

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

Haiku of The Guard

Haiku of The Guard:

The poignant cynic

Factory man turned jailor

Poverty the tomb.

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

Wild Creaturing At Talbot

Wild Creaturing at Talbot:

Spontaneous 

beach day

dodging

lightning bolts,

with my shoe 

out to sea.

A buzzard,

a flock of

soaring seagulls,

an osprey’s chatter,

variations on the ukulele:

at the sunny center 

of the storm

surrounded by

bleached bones

of cypress

with my love:

bellies to the sky.

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

Gentrification

Gentrification:

Pie - apple, cherry

cookies baked

a Spring flower’s scent

the soft warm loam of Autumn.

A mandala, endlessly returning to its starting point.

A clock running endless circles

on gears, round and relentless

provoked by infinitesimal interactions

of electromagnetism 

with a silicon crystal:

quartz.

A seam in a rock-face

compressed by geo-logic

and time, collapsing chaos

into ordered structure.

~

The city breathes

its vitality in cycles of sleeping and waking,

of travel to and from

a job, a church, a school

a home to a home:

arterial rush, endlessly returning.

From the sky to the sewers

the liquid breath of oceans, of clouds

condensing over updrafts

baked into humidity

by cycles of unrelenting sunlight:

the bright distant plasma flare

of a near and energetic star.

Lift into the heavens, satellite

and beam us dreams and greetings

from the ethers.

Endless cycles of orbit

tiny frail boxes of gold, aluminum, steel

that shape our intranet.

~

Word spreads on insta-vines

clips of the ebb and flow of people

their ordered lives, lived colorfully

or in soft gray stills

of their candid moments. 

Claims staked, they come to ply the mine

for insta-gold, 

the prospectors of the most hip,

most highest ode to hype.

Storytellers, they swarm to commune

with that which is most holy:

a place worthy of a story. 

To them, they gather an audience,

these insta-tellers, speakers of the truth

of a place. They name the holy sites:

a pub, a bar, a diner, the park:

building shrines of devotion 

to a spirit carefully cultivated. 

And some of the audience lingers, 

gets their bearings

in a rich and splendorous utopia.

Full of the vision, they stake their claim

in the fever of finding

a gold lode

within their grasp. 

A woman’s skirts, 

when adorned with too many sequins,

will lay flat and not bell before her.

And so, with the weight 

of a thousand times a thousand

glittering sequins

the spirit of a place collapses.

The holy sites become haunted

and the dying breath of a place

escapes

to become the silence that follows a gasp.  

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

The Need for Sweetness

The Need for Sweetness:

The need for the sweetness

of just one ecstatic embrace

pervades every sinew and every stroke

of my dancing.

I am graceful, I am lithe,

I am the serpent, coiling

Can you feel my form circling

your steps, fluid, our shapes joyous

our love, boundless?

The drums are calling,

the rhythm grinds, lower, 

beckoning…

a storm and a bird song are we.

Forward, we are passionate motion—

until we can move no more further

save down, into the soil

onto the ground

remade into the likeness of One

We are holy, and natural.

Clasp me, I am diving,

catch me, I am spinning

reckless in my potential

and helpless to the whims of my spirit.

I am sweaty, you are musky

we are animals,

laughing

at the strength and beauty of our skins.

Release me, we are wild

and neither subject to the other

nor the law of the world:

we are timeless.

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

 

The Price

Everyone likes to talk about love

how it fills a place in you,

makes you more than what you are alone:

how it fills you with wonder, 

with strength,

intensity, 

devotion, 

peace.

Love is surely the most powerful force in the universe: 

songs are written about it, 

people aspire to it.

Generation after generation

have spent their whole lives

yearning toward finding

this elusive, yet intrinsic, part of life:

this sense of wholeness and completion,

of unity.

…and yet...

when love goes wrong,

really wrong,

when something so heinous happens,

...when you are not simply just angry,

this is no simple disappointment,

no collapse into sad, miserable, loneliness.

No,

this is a transubstantiation

of epic and mythic proportions,

when hate takes root in your heart:

it fills a space.

To hate another human being takes energy,

it is fierce and alive,

it requires life force to sustain it.

When the devil spawn of hate

well and truly bursts forth from its hideous seed

upon the fecund soil of your heart:

it has meaning,

it has a purpose;

...perhaps and ugly one, 

true,

because to hate is to harness

every fiber of your being

into the hurling of all the venom

and curses

your pitiful body is capable

of coagulating at any given moment,

and aiming it like sputum at the suchness of another. 

…and there are many things we say we hate, 

but let’s be real, 

you don’t really hate brussell sprouts, or raw broccoli.

You might possibly hate the DMV, but surely not Target for not carrying that shoe in your size. 

You don’t really hate Netflix for never having that movie you want to watch. 

You may loath getting stuck in traffic,

but loathing and hate are two separate experiences.

To loath is to detest, it is of contempt, 

you loath that which is beneath you. 

...but to hate is more.

To hate is to selectively turn every ounce of your existence

into a laser beam of destruction,

a spiritual ICBM, with your spiritual finger

hovering 

poised

ready

waiting

a micron from

the utter annihilation

of your bitterest, most mortal foe

with no possibility of regret

but rather delight

in their every misfortune.

You smile when they fail,

they are your nemesis;

everything they say or do 

your very existence

redirects

to slay

to lay waste

to repudiate

to make war upon

this creature who dares to walk the earth:

this affront to your own precious existence.

Whatever atrocity they committed,

they have earned

this unmitigated,

white phosphorus hatred

that you fan 

to a slow burn

to sustain it. 

When someone says, “I hate you,”

you either think, pff, no you don’t,

that’s stupid. You’re a little shit

that can’t use your words right; 

or

you know

you KNOW

they’ve been hoarding their essence

in their poison glands

waiting

poised

ready

to jettison their vitriol at you

like a cannon load

of steaming hot, biohazardous shit

they have collected and crafted

into a projectile 

especially for you...

...and you know...

you know

they really mean it. 

…my mother taught me about hate,

deep in the night

on a porch

on the coast

on the fourth of July.

Three words,

I hate you,

sworn like an oath

repeated like a mantra

a terrible truth

invested

with all that is vile and unholy.

I hate you.

I HATE you.

The impotence of words

of a fist

she dared not let fly

but rather

she christened me

with blood

right between the eyes

by the blade 

of a crumpled beer can

she launched at my face.

I HATE you.

My mother taught me about rage,

about the ancient parts of my brain

that operate my limbs

without comprehension or will;

about disappearing and reappearing

from one location in space to another,

fist raised

poised to destroy.

Do it, she said.

…and then how to turn away.

To pivot, and exit,

leaving the battle field,

the battle lost,

but the war to wage on. 

I hate YOU.

But hate takes energy to sustain. 

It is a weapon, it is a shield,

it is both a friend and a lover,

and when it leaves you,

the loss is perceptible. 

The absence where you kept

votives burning

at a corner on the alter of your heart,

where once the black thorned blossom bloomed,

it hath withered and died of its own volition,

for it is alive,

and nothing lasts forever. 

And you can choose whether or not

to reincarnate it.

To resurrect it like Frankenstein,

a hideous monster

cobbled together 

from parts of memories

and wisps of distant misdeeds.

You can choose to see it reborn again,

an infant, it grows, gains in complexity,

matures, ages, 

like a a musky cheese

you savor as you roll it around your mouth.

We choose to hate,

to truly hate,

just as we choose to love,

to really love,

open and willing,

vulnerable,

our hearts beating to the music

behind the fabric of existence. 

So choose wisely,

should you hate,

or fumble through life just as we do with love. 

It’s nothing to me, 

but it’s everything to you:

what you choose to dedicate your heart to. 

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

Lover Haiku

Lover Haiku:

Yesterday, a rose: 

Then unfurling melodies

Plucked for my yoga

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

 

Spring Haiku

Spring Haiku:

Breeze-ruffled wind chimes

A squirrel chases its tail

Orange juice sunshine

Buds burst into leaves

Squirrel chases bird on trunk

Orange blossom sun

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

 

Glider

Glider:

A shadow cast

on perilous branches:

a requiem howls

at rot, 

climbing toward 

the center,

hope 

a finger tip’s breadth 

out of reach.

You are not alone,

whispers the leaf:

trembling, 

separate, 

but linked

to a vein,

a hollow through which

life flows,

a cavern of need.

Condensed, 

we 

shuffle and trip.

A tiny voice,

is this it?

A louder call,

surely we have fallen:

made worse 

by the convictions 

of many.

But a flower 

questions not

its way of unfolding,

and an ant not

 its driving imperative.

Only towering minds,

feeble and violent,

lay waste 

to the order of things. 

The color of love is honey,

which, built into reservoirs,

sustains.

The first pollen taken,

the bloom fruits

round in circles

spheres, 

spirals,

fractals:

the taken gives,

the taker rewards,

but broken hands 

yield no promises

and despair 

offers only regrets. 

A mantra of intent

yields a movement

and by each step,

forward and back,

a dancer’s numbered steps

reveal 

broken hands 

can still reach. 

Should it be 

dark or light,

measured by 

passion or precision,

a ponderous body

becomes grace

when the weights are lifted

from the feet. 

For while driven down,

bound under pressure,

wracked by gravitas,

defiance lifts,

rebellion loosens,

as life is meant to glide.  

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

Southern Summer

Southern Summer:

cicadas and mimosa

heat 

like a weight

bearing you down

into murky waters 

of the wide river

virginia creeper

chokes the sun tinged

wilting roses

sunlight 

a burnt yellow

magnolia blooms 

and crepe myrtle

dark clouds

dim the sky

hues of grey

with the broken promise

of rain.

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

The Dancer

The Dancer:

The lady moves, wild and sensual,

rhythmic and anticipatory

in the dim lights shrouding

a dance floor.

She has come here to unburden

a pent-up heart and will:

muddied with the moneyed way of living.

She has come to commune with heart beat:

to allow her feet and hips and hands

to appreciate song

and to gesticulate her reply

en motion.

She has come to the night

for release:

from grief and screaming;

rage, hatred, disappointment, and frustration.

Her body is the cauldron

and her dancing the transformation

of a thousand mini-deaths

into joy.

She has come to find

in her dancing

her own soul

and its connection back

to the source.

The dance is her religion.

She does not dream 

of fucking

when her wings unfurl on the dance floor.

In fact, her mind is so clear

she thinks of nothing:

allowing the music to consume her.

But the dance floor is a public place,

perhaps unsafe

for the remembering of the sacred.

Perhaps the soul needs confining

within the neat wing-choppings

of conformity and institution:

to protect tender women from

the predatory natures

of wild, lustful men.

Perhaps this woman sins

when she dances freely.

Perhaps she has no right

to sweat and sway

to laugh and leap

to stalk the wayward beat

upon the jungle that is the dance floor.

But maybe she

is wild as a panther,

wicked as a crow

who snatches what she sees as beautiful.

Maybe she has no recourse but to dance

lest her lover be devoured by her anger.

Maybe her dancing keeps Kali at bay,

and Durga in check:

keeps the Medusa within her

from turning her heart into stone.

Would you kill the bird that sings?

This dancer has wings.

And within her intricate movements

she recounts the breeze trembling the leaves

on trees and the glide of the creek over stone.

She obeys the will of the Mother

whose pulsing heart thrives in life

and keeps the Great Love flowing.

Though she may be plagued

by restless demons 

desiring to impede

the fluidity of her spirit:

she remembers the great darkness

that sought to steal the grace and magic

of her mothers.

The dance is her light in the darkness,

her holy and blessed communion

in a world of men gone mad on profanity,

The dance is her reunion. 

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~

post debate poem (Trump vs. Clinton)

I don’t have the answers

to a thousand flea bites

that bleed me of my attention

to focus on where to begin.

I’d rather, in this numbness,

slide into distractions

and take politics off my list

of topics of interest. 

Instead, my weary analysis is

we are the joke, the people,

who accepted this yoke 

as it was woven

of infinitesimal strands

of compromises we made, unnoticed. 

And as our journalists were bought

at a dime a dozen,

to become entertainers rather than 

the brave watchers in the night,

in the bright lights

a pageant was staged, 

and everyone watched the magician’s tricks,

and were amazed at

his slight of hand, in plain sight. 

In plain sight,

as towers fell,

and war was waged, 

and true tragedy waved

as a banner to follow,

our ideals were cast

like so many holy works into piles,

and set ablaze. 

And here we are now. 

Watching in fascinated horror

as two closet dictators vie

for the helm of our future. 

And in our hearts we know

that a great wrong has grown,

and that either way leads

to nebulous peril.

There are precedents. 

We are not stupid. 

Written in history,

inexorable as the continents move 

against each other, buckling and subsumed

We will be ground to dust

and extinguished

to be renewed again 

in some distant age. 

The ugliness at the core of each of us,

that we are singular and powerless,

prone to pleasure,

averse to pain,

is the intimate weakness

that brokers our extinction. 

And while we could wage a war

of love

that might very well repair

this divide

is it so easy for a broken heart

to battle its own disillusionment?

In the twilight

a rose old in the summer

drops her petals

and does not swell at her hips,

as no bees came to visit her. 

And a woman who works

for a fraction of a man’s worth

bears down in labor 

and dies

because in Texas they don’t believe

poor people deserve medicine. 

In Oklahoma, a man’s broke-down car

becomes his death knell

as he is gunned down

by his protectors

who claim to have found PCP. 

Our heartland is broken.

As hatreds simmer,

fear builds a wall

and anger makes us irrational,

unable to center. 

A little man cowers in the eyes

of millions watching.

They have hope on one shoulder

and desperation on the other:

to watch two facades trade colors and lies. 

And this is the beginning:

a brave new awareness of our decline,

as tight between our excesses

we show our own true natures

as people:

Hungry, easily hateful,

blind or just uncaring,

maneuverable like a tool

in the hands of an infant. 

Do we dare take ourselves to the stars?

~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~