Writings

• Butterfly/love (A short reflection on change…)

  I put this on Tumblr in January, reposting here so doesn't get 'lost'. 

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  When push comes to shove,

  I often find myself on the receiving end 
  of stubbornness:

  My own resistance to change,

  to life’s attempts to rearrange 
  my tidy kingdom.
  
  

  I swat away helping hands:

  demands, however gentle they may be,

  wear like sandpaper on my skin;

  thinly veiled reprimands

  issued from soul to self:
  
  

  “Don’t be so needy, so greedy.

  You can stand on your own two feet,

  Alone.”
  
  

  Yes, but once I’ve learned to stand,

  there is no shame

  in leaning

  on friendly arms

  the harms of bad relationship

  are not to be found here.
  
  

  Today is not yesterday.

  I am more than I was.

  We are settled in space,

  a kind of lovely sweet grace,

  that embraces this new be-ing.
  
  

  Full of gratitude,

  Wishing for latitude to be granted

  from and to my ornery self

  I sit in silence and take it in.
  
  

  My life, all life, hard won.

  I will not will it away - 

  no matter how tempting the old ways.

  Today’s a better place

  and only just begun.

• As the "news" rolls by..

  Every day - 

  day 

  after

  day

  after - 

  like the worst ticker tape parade

  you can imagine - 

  the headlines roll by
  the massacres

  the injustices
  the childbrides

  the sextrafficking

  
  Then like a paint bomb
  the latest ridiculous

  outrage

  of some minor 

  celebrity

  washes up over the screen

  obliterating 
  that which we would prefer
  not 
  to have seen

  anyway.
  
  

  I've felt it myself

  "fatigue", they call it -

  Tired of hearing about war,
  we are tired

  of all the bad news 
  from abroad;

  we change

  our channels

  dull our minds as we sit in flannels

  sipping hot chocolate
  and eating ice-cream.

  But what about the people on the 

  other side of 
  that screen
  the ones 

  wearing fatigues

  the ones whose bakeries are destroyed
  under the theory that bread is life

   -  if you destroy their access to

  bread

  you destroy their life
  
  

  I don't know what

  I can do about all this

  what can we do about all this

  is life really all about this

  how do we allow this?
  
  

  Sometimes at night I dream

  I am running, screaming

  hiding

  I wake,wonder if I'm bleeding

  from the bombs others are feeling

  is someone reaching out to me

  from their dreams?
  
  Halfway across the world

  yes, believe it or not it's the same world

  even as I sit here listening to Ella Fitzgerald,

  "they can't take that away from me"

  right now

  A could-have-been me is losing, has lost

  everything.
  
  

  Even here in my own town

  Freedoms I squander for granted
  are supplanted by our very own human traffickers

  out of sight
  under our noses

  rarely are we supposing

  it could happen *here*

  but  -  it does.

  Amanda, Gina and Michelle

  what kind of hell have you been 
  through

  just a few miles away from 
  where I live?

  All too easy it is not to "see"

  all too easy to walk down the street

  ignoring the signs nipping at our feet

  like mongrels hoping for scraps of our 

  attention.

  My intention is to be different.

  
  What is yours?

• "We are but dust"

  Continuing on in random poetry vein:

  
  

  “We are but dust”

   

  But the dust is beautiful

  Tiny grains of ever earth

  All that is human

  Animal

  Flori-mineral

  Beautiful.

   

  A handful blown into sunny motes

  Contains a thousand trips

  down highway six,

  the remains of 

  family vacation

  meals on the side-away

  byways

   

  powder from your mother’s compact

  resin from bow of brother’s bass

   

  tiny smashed down bits of Christmas trees

  and rosemary needles

  from fancy dinners

  crystal shards

  of broken windshields

  worn down,

  winking in the starlight

   

  We are but dust

  But dust is every thing

   

  Ashes to ashes

  Dust to dust

  Formed out of everything

  To everything we return

   

  To nourish the land of our ancestors

  To sustain the hand of our children

   

  As a nation is built upon

  the detritus

  of its history

  So too are we created and recreated anew

  Out of

  (dust)

   

   

  Liz Huff May 25, 2013

• Back To Zero

  Once upon a time

   

  I thought I knew

  it all.

   

  Men - I had your number

  in slumber or in waking

  I had you quaking in my boots

   

  Job, I had you in my hand, 

  the broadband of employment at my enjoyment

  next move unplanned.

   

  Didn't matter, I could disband and

  move into my dreamland 

  any time I wanted.

   

  Once upon a time

   

  I learned I couldn't do 

  it all.

   

  (Now I ) Gotta reboot, reshoot

  the vision of my life

  I ain't nobodies's wife and 

  that's okay 

  but someday

   

  I want 

  to  want a man 

  who wants to stay.

   

  Career in arrears

  I've sheered off a few years

  I coulda used to make my mark

  it's stark, the difference between

  what I thought would be

  and coulda been 

  and how am I here again?

  Once upon a time

   

  I thought  - you only get one chance

  at the brass ring or the romance

   

  But now I find

  with a little tarnish on my game 

  I can tame

  the crazy, the lazy, the whoops-a-daisy

  no shame in the future being hazy

   

  I do what I can do 

  today

  because

  I've been broken 

  and pulled apart.

  Now I got a

  fresh start.

  Amateur hour 

  ain't nothin but a

  good heart learning 

  the hard way

  about the right way

  that's the art that

  sets us apart

  and pulls us together

  the tether 

  between the me and 

  the you.

   

  So now I set it back to zero

  I'm nobody's hero

  but I can begin 

  to learn now

  I got the burn now

  can discern what I want and can do now

  I'm the intern on the upturn now

  ready for what life's been waitin to show me.

   

  Don't you shoofly me

   

  I can be

  just about anything.

   

  Just watch me.

  (Now you've seen the twist

  the turnin'

  the lazy Susan

  I'm usin

  to rewrite hist'ry

  this silly myst'ry

  of living - 

  This acrobatic syllabic musing

  I hope

  is not bruising

  or contusing

  if we shadows are not amusing

  remember we are just cruising through,

  with friendship infusing

  this thing 

  called life)

  Liz Huff copyright 2013 (written March 22, 2013)

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