The Maenad's Bone Garden

This was written December 25, 2020.  A year ago today.  Endurance?   ‘It’s all the same babe’ Bullets and bottle rockets.   New Year’s Day No matter where I live, East Dallas, Everett, or San Jose. Zippity bullets - are you going to come my way? Just some girl dying 100 feet away Music in passing, Lenny Kravitz. People without assets, meth heads maskless,   indulging in habits Behind the local bus stop, a small flick of rabbits. I want to shelter, to keep them safe But can’t just part of the world I cannot save. A lesson to be learned in January not March, April, or May. Hunger pains make the lessons stay. Here in the ghetto, it’s just another day,   that’s What Vallejo say. Don’t worry babe, Christmas day, New year’s day, it’s all the Same day after day after day

A maenad princess picking Bitter Crown from her Garden   Blue December, creeping, these are old and lost phantoms, abandoned, stirrings.    Yearning.   Needing to be distraught once more. Needing to take you home again.   Yet thorns are needful things Without them no bloom, No rose or rye, Nor dawn or moon Thorns that grasp and Catch, bite their prey Here is your bitter crown o princess Wear the thorns and See You are made just like me And to die, Here in this This Garden Where all my friends stay A metaphor but it Might as well be A real place It’s quiet here, at last Out in the world No one takes more risks No one looks at your shit Or care what risk you took This time There is no perimeter, no edge, no limitation To the colours, shapes, and thoughts you see,

  2020, the Maenad From the Bone Garden (unpublished) 

My mother was, before she ran away on a magic bus to California to become a hippie, a hill child from Appalachia. I spent a fair bit of time there when I was very young - in a lot of ways it was a primal time, lots of things.....imprinted.   I have not been back there now in many a year. I would love to but I would need to be a bit better prepared for such a trip.   And maybe a small army.   That's just if I encounter family.   Being a mutt, all of my ancestry is buried below the surface where you can't see....and honestly 99% of it means nothing to me anyway.  But I am ashamed of nothing about where I came from and what made me.   I am the product of whores, and hedge witches, border jumpers and hillbillys.  All of this lives in me.  The Old Coal Miner Taking the particles Inside of me Apart even as my will Struggles to hold it together Decay is how time is measured Spun, reckoned, and cut   Angels in...

 I wrote this for TDoR last year. I make no great claims to it's quality as a piece of work but this was not about that.  - M. Another Saying Good-bye  ( Dauun) I had a dream about you You’re mostly the product of my head now you see Two weeks and out Thirty years of ambiguity I saw a little what if An imagined visitation Had you broken the curve like me And made it past goddam 33. Not what I   - or you maybe Expected but never rejected. Very Norwegian power dyke.   Nice, but you.   First memories, last.   All speak to the power, screaming, of what could have been and maybe somewhere could still be In some kind of real Alternate world capacity.     I dream not of the bad times now, or all the bad things Also, not just on what could not be But instead – I dream only of you now, just out of bed Having somehow gotten better from being dead And stopped by for coffee, to see what things bring I am ...