Tabitha Vohn's Blog, page 6

Poem of the Week: Lead

The heaviest regret is silence
anchored in my core thicker
than cement the tissue has
grown up
around
and attached
it is rooted
a permanent fixture
in all those
words I never said
made manifest deafening in
consequence
like when Fear was a clamped hand
over my mouth its bony white fingers
I imagined were the skeletons of your
threats, little did I know
that twenty hours
Skittle handfuls of Zoloft
a box of syringes hidden behind your
desk
the pink flesh game of chess you
rip-skin played on the canvas of your
arms and legs spelled the necessity
that I
in my coward's clothes
was unwilling to shield you with
I abandoned your vices to your own
devices
the lie I whispered through stitched lips
said my warning would make it worse
that stiff breeze would shift your dangling
feet off the precipice edge what it failed to
tell me was that your toes inched slowly
one bloodied day after another
in silence I watched you suffer
shuffle to the mantras of your own
incessant whispers
soldered in and I convinced myself
that I was the best one to help you
in me you trusted
to me you handed those ashes
you said spit in them and I will see
again
but my Messiah's robes were
counterfeited by coward's clothes
no faith
to turn your wine to water with
no faith
that with my outstretched hands
you'd walk on it
instead of swallowing all that salt
I tread riptides of regret
its serrated tips pierce my tongue
and I swallow tsunami oceans
of all you went through.

Poem of the Week: Ode to Happy

Green
a teal Brew Thru Crew
tee you've had since
you've known me
faded
unlike your love
you survived more
humiliation than I was
worth you made us work
swath of hair the color of
jade sea fallen over eyes
that've seen too much
it was that wave I loved
after the violet of winter
faded
taken on hues of blue
you
the girl I never had the
courage to be and
proudly envy
with breath beats like
lion's teeth you pour
out raised fist honesty
in overflowing anthems
of unabashed joy you
give hugs like its
the first time you've
seen me in years it's
the best feeling ever
that color etched
into the sunshine folds
of a faded blanked
I remember your
gangly legs and the way
you forced your too long
limbs to contort in my lap
saying "cradle me"
we read The Wizard
of Oz when you were
eight years old and
I said what the hell am
I reading you laughing
as hard as twss jokes
drove you into mock
fits of horror we'll
always have if the
Sabbath's a-rockin
don't come a
knockin'!
shapeshifts into
those moss-webbed
woods where trees
are the hue of childhood
peace like everything is
just okay or the emerald
piercing I waited eighteen
years to get I chose you
to represent belated beauty
envy is it too late to join
the senior girls at the
study hall table my 7th
grade self still asks and
join the sisterhood of
begrunged hippies I in
my yard sale flannel and
un-ripped jeans wanted so
badly for you to see my
kinship colors behind frizzy
curls and pastel imitations
of normal got lost in black
but we found green in those
back roads we drove for hours
radio so loud the wind
covered its ears and it was
beyond dearest treasure
to have those summer hours
with you
I am now grown in
my spirit's skin and happiness
is in the details I couldn't feel
their joy fully
while I was living them.

Poem of the Week: Harbinger

for J.D., S.S., & H.K.

I follow the needlepoint
from your wrist to the
elbow
embroidery of
a memory quilt meant to
tell the stories you need
me or someone to trace
the lines of
this patchwork
too primal for words
pieces
sewn crooked that hurt when
they play in the red room of
remembrances
you hear the
reel wind up but can't look
away
screens on every side
like there never was anywhere
to hide
hostage cries that
paralyze sleep
and tear your heart satin
tatters ragged as if this
moment was as actual
as the first time his hands
on your body made it factual
that unwanted education of what
torn seams seems like each
thrust a ramming rod stuffed
your tenderness farther out of
reach
child eyes sunken in salt
sea beyond recovery they are
treasure jars in the backyard of
your young self buried for safe-
keeping
and your aged fractured hands
cant' remember where to find her.
So you send search parties
re-tracing steps through pried-
loose flesh
it's a labor of love
to find what was erased like
maybe
when the sutures in
circumlocution
unwind the missteps
that brought you here
maybe when Novocain nerves
don't need open wounds to
breathe easy
maybe once these highways
stop stretching towards sunsets
like a second death
you won't need to
forge these rapids of blood
to silence the needle
of broken records.

Poem of the Week: Idol Worship

Tell me that you
will always love me
as fiercely
as you do today
as you did when you
penned that verse I pour
over like prophecy
drink in like prayer
Come on
let me have the lie
from your mouth
so I can remember the
way you voice gravel-
whispered the way
your skin smelled
when I think back
to this moment
when it was true.
After you've forgotten
what it felt like to need
to be saved
recall through opaque
haze heart dementia
vague when you still
wanted my wings
to be your home
before the feathers
fell out each celestial
scar a proof to prove
to myself that once I
was heaven incarnate
to you I plucked them
out to cover your tears
in swan kisses
neverminding the blood
it took or the inner peace
I pried loose when I welcomed
that sting willingly for you
those interstellar sacrifices
sufficient in the moment but
dissolute as fallen snow or
an overplayed piano you will
recall the notes but cease to
feel its tune in your bones
When I have given all
and you have taken most
when I am just the crescent-
shaped scars of a needle
you plunged to feel the fix
of a high you said could
only be my
hearth's fire
I fear I've loved you blind
and while you worship
at the temple of other
goddesses my altar will
gather dust the incense
no longer burning sweet
not forgotten
worse than forgotten
outgrown
when I am become the one
that made you see the sun
but covet the moon could not
give you her midnight caress
or Venus' unbuttoned dress
when I find myself tracing
feather paths back dead ends
presence of an empty sanctuary
listening to the echo of faraway
songs penned to other goddesses
I'll remember
that you told me
you'd always love me
as fiercely as you do today
I'll think back to this moment
when it was true.

Poem of the Week: When Relationships Suck Because You Can't Own Another Person's Pain

I am a weather vane
Inconstant
Moving with your wind
In storms I am merely
The evidence of ur ever-
Changing black skies you
Reign heavy on my tin skin
Your anguish I cannot
Soak in I am dependent
On your light for the calm
When I can just be
just Still love
Until the moon pulls you
The pollution corrodes
You
And I
Spin again.
My breath hurts
Every inhale an anticipation
Of the direction your
Current will force me
Today I ache for you to see
How exhausting this Dance
in your raindrops Is
where I am merely a
Fixed spot hovering between
Ground and you
No rest and You
Hovering
above your Warmth
just out of reach
Those clouds that neither
you Nor I control
Smother
And I long to be Desert again
An impartial catalyst
Of your heat
Where the sage brush burns
And the water runs off.

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Gods at War: Poem of the Week

Apollo and Dionysus are exhausted
and my bones are weary of their war
When the grape-glutted god itches
at my fingertips, blinking green lights
make my heartbeats pulse pound to
the tune of his battle march his archers
slay with mono-syllabic responses and
silence.
He laced the drinking water with white powder
until the thirst became unquenchable
still Apollo tries to remind me of the
sweetness of blue against my tongue
when water was a calm sea He steps
lightly amongst the dismembered limbs
calmly he presses my heart to temper
the fix of those affections to dispel the
midnight rites under the orchards that
only ever end in blood
because there is love
and there is all the broken god shrouds
in imposter robes
leaving us as empty
and ravished
as his body scattered
beneath the branches
and if I am ever to survive the immensity
of this love I have for you
then I better choose a side
and clear my body of this battleground.

Listen to a Reading: Poem for Wounded Knee

You can listen to a reading of the poem here: http://tabithavohn.com/2016/06/for-wo...

For Wounded Knee

I wrote this poem while I was sitting in the Cedar Pass Amphitheatre in Badlands NP, watching a red sunset. The air smelled of prairie warmed by the sun. It was beautiful; I couldn’t get Wounded Knee out of my head.


My husband tried to prepare me. The majority of the people there live in extreme poverty. Tourists have complained about locals wanting to share their stories and then asking for money. We need to get permission before we take pictures of anything.


I was immediately uncomfortable, but more because I felt intrusive. And because I’ve studied our country’s history and have—arguably—a more educated, less propaganda-influenced awareness of our country’s origins, I find it hard to swallow the idea of political pride. When my ancestors committed genocide in order to get it. When we praise our freedom from oppression on the Fourth of July yet neglect to acknowledge that we were not only oppressors but thieves, rapists, and murderers, who not only nearly drove an entire culture into extinction but choose to “sweep it under our patriotic rug”. I find it hard being a white person and visiting Naive American reservations, speaking to the people, without feeling the weight of my ancestors’ shame and guilt.


However, the people of Pine Ridge Reservation could not have been more kind, gracious, or endearing. J and I asked politely if we may walk through the cemetery that houses the mass grave where hundreds of men, women, and children were slaughtered, shoveled in, and forgotten. Sound familiar?? The gentleman we spoke to smiled shyly and said of course. Take all the time you want. When we asked if it would be disrespectful to take a few photographs he said no, and most tourists don’t ask anyway.


The grief that hangs in the quiet of that cemetery is nearly oppressive. It is powerful to feel. I have never been to the concentration camps in Europe, nor have I been any other place where such crimes against humanity were committed. I often wondered how people could be moved to tears by just the memory of a place, but the earth remembers. It’s present. And it took all of my self-will not to weep as if my own family had been slain there.


I wrote this poem for the people of Pine Ridge. For their ancestors. For their continued suffering. For all the injustices—least of all my still living on lands my people stole from their people—that can never be righted.


For me, Independence Day is a sober holiday. I hope that if my readers will hear these words and give a moment’s consideration to the true Founding Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children of this country, then perhaps the next time we wrestle with fear or indifference, we will see families not savages, cousins not slaves, fellow human beings not enemies—and remember that we are no different.


For Wounded Knee:


How do you apologize

for something

like that? I think as the

bones click softly in the

desert sun breeze over

the grass ocean once the waves

were only yours to see. You speak

almost apologetically; most people

don’t know what they’re looking at

you say. And I imagine your ancestors

marred in bloodshed

bloodshed brothers

and bloodshed mothers

thought the same

as they watched the last prairie sunrise

the red sky reminded them of their

spirit god

the earthen wool once kept them warm

His body scattered to four corners

those lifeless masses shipwrecked

in that golden sea

your murderers whaled for them

before making you the trophy of

their Manifest Destiny

the crimson paint on your cheeks

smeared black

black as trailed tears

black as the hair they cut

black as the homes they burned

black as the bones they buried and

the ground remembers this

Tatonka remembers this with every

stupid white body bearing a camera and

a dream that He gores

a recompense for all those white ghost devils

with dreams of native cries dancing in their

phantom heads

those spirit songs rise, quietly, and linger in the

smell of sage and the rainbow of prayer cloths

and the click of those bones

as quiet with proud dignity

as your gracious air and they ask

what they have always asked: Great Spirit,

Have mercy on us! Take us back to the place

we called home! Restore the hope of our people!

Even as they know

as you know

There is no going back. There is no going home.

Poem of the Week: Summer Rehab

Trying to climb back into
the what was before
like constricting my skin
into clothes that don't fit anymore
It's hard to believe that nine months
could manifest such emptiness in
spaces that didn't exist before
But you came into my life
like a gift un-foretold
blessings I didn't earn
so shocked to discover this
hold they have on me this
infinite yearning to take care of you
sketched into my life oceans
of meaning heretofore unclaimed
watching you fight those black days
so familiar to my own unforgotten
nightmares I held my affections out
with incredulous fingers figuring
my love a paltry thing ineffective as
gauze to a gunshot I thought would
never ease your pain but had to try
had to let rhymes and oils and paint
do what my arms ached to had to
acknowledge all the beauty I see
in you and I will forever be on the
quest to be the one who doesn't
disappoint you to be a fixed light
in a starless sky to honor this love
I'm entrusted with to do right by this
gift of your kinship I find I am pained
that circumstance is such a fickle bitch
that time is the fix I can never force
through enough veins to sustain the
high your smile gives just know that
my heart-strings will stretch galaxies
in symphony with yours and if it hurts
the symptoms are worth the source
that you are precious to me that soulmate,
mother, and brothers aside I have not
been so afraid to lose someone not
been a slave to that resurrected dread
that the wound would (once again)
be almost too much to bear
so I cling to what I know is true
that God does not give us gifts to
be cruel that our story is destined
to be beautiful and the joy is in the
journey and for you, Blood Brother,
my devotion is as unfailing as the
current it flows from my spirit's song of
freedom from the monsters that crave to
haunt us I love you from a place of calm
of peace amidst the storms of quiet amidst
the mourning I'll take your hand and we'll both
walk this path with heart-strings stretched and
syncopated steps from present endings to even
greater hereafters.

Poem of the Week: Rose-Colored Glass

An antique metal remnant
preens at the end of a
lonely drive for one of those
houses untouched by decades
takes you back to those fifties
fantasies of families yours could
never live up to
imagining backyard barbecues
sharp chlorine scent from pristine
blue waters and the mosaic patterns
that glitter like shells under painted toes
pick-up games in the yard
she remembers
surrounded by coral bubble glass
and a turquoise kitchenette
eighty-years old she stares
out yellow curtains
remembering what was
Her son has busted out the
windows of that antique car
and filled them with rose-colored
glass
I wonder if
to sit
behind that steering wheel
with the scent of brown leather
and Camel cigarettes
he can hear his father's keys
dangling against the dash
I imagine that
staring through that
magenta haze--
as the ting ting ting
of silver makes its own melody--
is as startling
and overwhelming
as memory.