Tarot: The Hanged One

 (c) 11/16/2021

When the quarantine hit, who knew, left to my own devices

I’d eat pecan ice cream and binge murder shows every day?

Violent images blurring and blending into each other

until I couldn’t remember what I’d watched already or not.

A kaleidoscope of killings that left me anxious and physically ill.

 

Who knew I’d quit reading, more or less. Quit writing

or thinking beyond polarizing news and self-recrimination.

Who’s masking, who’s dying, where is the air better or worse?

Terrified of breath and breathing. We’ve all been here,

hanging in limbo while our worlds shut down.

 

Who knew that left to my own devices

I’d lay knotted on the love seat wondering

if I was developing deep vein thrombosis.

The indoor garden would brown and flower.

The in-home gym abandoned to sloth.

Crafts all boxed up on the highest shelf.

Who knew that I’d be consumed by dissatisfaction.

 

What do I even care about enough to take up or to keep?

Does it matter who I think I am if who I thought I was is incorrect?

Tarot: The Star

 (c) 11/14/2021

The Star is undeniable beauty

and is surrounded by lesser orbs,

by flowers, birds, even glossy-backed beetles,

and fuzzy bees.

 

The star balances jugs of water the way

the mature among us balance our emotions

preferring neither one or the other.

 

I was a star once, up on stage

and in one hand I held a pitcher of fear and anxiety

and leaned forward to hold back the nausea

while in the other hand I held a pitcher of gratitude and self-love.

For a moment I was bright and beautiful.

 

Somedays the bucket of fear weighs more

than my meagre gratitude can balance.

So much resentment for other things moves in

like earthworms doubling up

eating away the resolve to love myself.

Other days, I shine.

Repetitive Dying

(c) 2019

My average age at death has been thirty-five and in some centuries

that has been long enough. This time, I feel behind the mark,

like I've lost something, have been buried one too many time.

All these recurring cycles and all I have to show is loss and fragments

of memory like pieces of broken mirrors. I recall

sitting on the stoop, wearing my favorite red and blue stripped jersey,

marbles in hand, scattered jacks. I was six, freckle-faced

and all I wanted was to play with my big brother, to not be left out.

When his basketball bounced off the backboard and rolled into the street

well, how could I have seen that car? 

Once by car, once train and previously a carriage.

This world is crowded with people hurtling nowhere fast. 

Of course I was a witch. What woman wasn't?

In Germany. In the house of MacDougall of Lorn 

they nicknamed me Chorra thon du, the Black-bottomed Heron,

and accused me of turning my husband into a wandering spectre

after his death. In Ireland, in France,

and especially in Spain. In America I was a witch. In Nigeria.

I did not drown when they dunked me. It took the branding,

the burning, it took the rack to get me to confess.

Yes, I cavorted with the Devil, embraced the incubus and succubus both.

I did not drown like normal women do, but when they lashed me

to four other women, and lit us, I burned just like a woman.

Incarnation after incarnation, and I am constantly struggling for life.

When I was widowed among the Igbo

my husband’s family confiscated the house and land,

and kept my children to work in their homes.

I performed the traumatic wailing, as was expected. I beat my chest,

flung my arms, hysterically calling the name only I knew him by.

His Umuokpu did not find me contrite enough.

They barricaded me in the house with his corpse. Flies buzzed

at his open wounds, at the moisture crusting at his mouth and eyes.

At sunrise his sisters roused me with icy water, beat me

for not lamenting loudly enough.

The sister who shaved my head had not even had the time

for her own shaven hair to grow back.

For twelve months I was isolated from the village, subject

to a rigorous ostracism, a mutual vow of silence taken against me.

I mourned, not for my husband, but for me.

Influenza, small pox, the guillotine, ritual sacrifice, childbirth.

I keep hoping for comfort, or better, for strength enough to overcome

the pervasive sorrow, the residue, of those other incarnations.

Once again, I fail life. I sit in the dark, nursing gin.

The way I am smoking, I’ll have emphysema by 9 p.m.

It will match the cancer in my breasts. The way I figure it,

I am already dead.

Tarot: The Tower

 (c) 11/14/2021

I can’t shake him, my ex. Twenty-years

after the divorce he still occupies my dream houses,

knocking legs off the table, littering his foul moods

for me to pick up.

 

I am tired of his consistent returns, his heart

a shoddy foundation, mold and cracks up every wall,

the crawl filled with stagnant water that will never

make its way to an aquifer.

 

My Ex has paid for nothing.

On his good days he struts, proud

of my accumulation he still feels is due him

simply because he chose me as his mark,

some star-crossed Rapunzel who let him in.

See how He shies from open window and doors,

clinging to archways?

Finally, I suspect he fears my dormant strength.

The thunderbolts I could summon.

The volcanic rock 60 feet below.

If only I weren’t still trying to be nice.

 

I have let the Universe shake it in its own time

refusing to own either agency or anger.

So many disappointing men and I’ve made sure

they all  land softly, nothing broken,

blind to any light that might come in.

A false wholeness.  

 

The promise of a brighter future hinges

on my ex being gone. Now it seems that my house

has become my heart’s grave.

 

Come daylight - how afraid we all are

to draw the Tarot Tower.  Epiphanies hurt.

The familiar, whether wanted or not

dislodges and then what is there?

Tarot Trio: Sun, Judgement and the World

(c) 11/13/2021

Reckless as a naked babe riding a horse without reins,

abandoned to joy with the welcome Sun

weighted as a Sherpa throw across my back,

this is the season I’ve done nothing but receive.

The past is a wrap, the one where I dotted every “i”

where I crossed the “t”.

 

Down the street the town’s water reserves overflow

like a loved heart at the end of the day. Orchards pulse

flowers and fruit. The dog comes running when I call.

My favorite of all favorite seasons. I savor it

even if it arrived late and is brief.

 

Then the yard and the small field out back

fill with flittering things, butterflies, dragonflies

and great white moths circle the porch light.

Aphids invade the Foxtail Barley. The ranch cat’s kittens

have matured and found new homes.

Like bullhorns, dust devils, thunderstorms, and the voices

in wind convergence all trumpet their call

for the child within to crow and grow.

This has happened before.

So many summers require a discrimination

that often is beyond me.

So many Awakenings, some fruitful,

some dead soon upon arrival.

 

And The World.

Sometimes (s)he comes as a pit of vipers

creating the infinity eight and sometimes

eating their own tails. Sometimes

The World holds you up on a pedestal.

Sometimes it mires you in mud and maggots.

 

Can you be like the bees? Industrious and pollinating

all the plants in the kingdom, encouraging next year’s beauty?

Can you ride the wind or surf the tides? Can you disarm the beast?

Show The World your skills and talents.

 

When The World is ready to call it a day,

or a period, or a phase, when The World is ready for you

to return to your own rough beginnings

(S)he will show you that what is final, is at last final.

You, Fool, you are at the beginning, not the sidelines

still immersed in thought and one red scarf

submerged in the heart of your own true desire.