"Transient Communion," "Memory Is a Woodpecker Tree," and "Thought Police"
Transient Communion
Compassion animates
human codes for being:
a twisted cliff tree
in a salty breeze
or maple in a red fall
Every word is benediction
waterfall verbiage
sensating fleshy souls
Every joy tickles the skin of stars
Memory is a Woodpecker Tree
We snuggle down for the cold
joyous greed and mercy
in carols of nebulous infinite love
and slaughter
where Biblical Yin-Yang
produce branding codes
tethered to 12 layers of selves
half of them lovers
half of them trees
unnaturally used for torture
and cartoon sweetness.
Zen
gelatinous cauliflower magic
constructs reality as a river,
illusion with no legs
where everything is wet
and not one drop matters more
than another.
Trees with holes
leak sap eaten
and recycled by birds
who nourish life underground,
life that eats our death
when the coffins rot
and what we thought we were becomes
feces from thousands of worms.
Thought Police
(for Ashraf Fayyad, poet, facing execution)
You offer vacancy
where something mattered,
put chains and locks
around the clouds
stockpile guns
to kill the sea.
Your Doctrine of fear
wrapped in myths
bigger than God
lip serviced for peace:
Insanity.
Where freedom is stark
and has no home
thoughts are seeds
in by wind,
songs of birds,
pebbles on the beach
where water flows
as one Being.
Beside writing and publishing for decades, Belinda Subraman was a Registered Nurse for 14 years, mostly in hospice. She’s also an artist working in ink and acrylics. She’s a member of several drumming groups and has been playing African rhythms for over five years taught directly from African masters. She also has a daily yoga practice and a book of poetry called Left Hand Dharma published by Unlikely Books in 2018.
