Crayoned Heaven

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Elea Lee

think of the worst book

Each page, each word, each sentence

Awful for a long time until

They are re-written

With the simple line drawings of a child

Obscuring words and pictures of

darkness, evil, or moldy and stained

garden-varietal venality

With the loveliest trees

Birds in flight /charcoaled nimbi

Outlined halos

Their feathery heads tilted

Ever-so-slightly-quizzical

Asking why are you sad?

Each page of darkness

Transformed by this

Ferociously tender

Child-

Light, where there used to be all those

Terrible monsters

Crayoned over/ into heaven

By this poet-redeemer

word spoke to life.

Already Rome.

Posted on November 12, 2016 by Elea Lee

I am not much of a pro-sports fan, although I try sometimes for the sake of my partner.

I feel less inclined to try now that the famously laconic Gregg Popovich had words for this recent election and the folk who voted red.

So many things you said worth noting Mr. P, but the one that stuck out the most? Like if I could only pick one thing you said to comment on–You are afraid we are Rome?

Long been Rome, I would say.

We have not only tolerated legalized infanticide for the last 43 years through Roe v. Wade, we now allow the concessions which provide the service of salting, vacuuming, dismembering, and dehumanizing small, voiceless humans through the months of their development in the womb both federal funds and deep privacy in order to abort and also harvest the bodies of these exploited children.

If you were to ask an ordinary person, say a woman or a disabled person–would you rather be verbally belittled or carefully vivisected for spare parts?

Belittled, thanks very much.

The latter-death by legal and medical caveat. Pretty disenfranchising.

To be clear, very clear–we, the citizens of the United States, have long been Rome. Infanticide is infanticide is infanticide, Mr. P.

How many millions of female, minority, Muslim, immigrant, disabled American voters did not vote in this election because we legalized their murder years ago?

No words will bring them back.

Weighted Blanket

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Elea Lee

in a fit of unease

she has an out-of-body experience

Rising above the squalor

Imagining what it would be like

To live inside the perfect house

Instead–she dusts the counters and all the edges

with cinnamon to deter the sugar ants

Beats the air with questions

Washes and re-washes clothes, stones, teeth

Delays bodily functions

To search for

-The weighted blanket-

Surrogate mother/synthetic comforter

Lyrics/verses

of a lullaby sung softly by the

Real One

Protecting the guilty?

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Elea Lee

Viola Davis has recently joined the long list of celebrities who have spoken out against sexual assault–rape, often in the context of their own victimization.

I could write a list of the men and women who have helped other victims by speaking out as sexual assault survivors. I could not give you a list of the names of the perps.

Why?

The ongoing controversy surrounding abuse allegations made by Corey Haim before his death gives us some clues–

Victims are often related to their perps
The perp has power in the community
Fear of exposure
Fear of legal action

And yet if we are honest, we all have a list–the creepy uncle, the duplicitous coach, the father who harms his own child, a neighbor, a brother-in-law, a once-beloved actor. People we know abused someone because that someone said so, maybe at great personal cost, maybe with no positive protection of the law.

Keeping silent about predators gives them freedom to continue to abuse.

So here, a name–

My adopted son is short, overweight, ginger, born February of 1994. Last I heard he worked at the automotive center at a Walmart in Kansas City, KS. His name is Charles Allen Lee.

He has sexually abused very young children. He has exhibited cruelty toward animals. He can be very persuasive and does not tell the whole truth.

And if you asked him about me? If you ask him about me he will tell you I just bring the drama.

And if you ask him about him? He will not tell you the whole truth.

…because the whole truth is…

Devastating.

Little Sister

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Elea Lee

for seven years

in the back of my head

there has been a terrible

Terrible story

started a long time ago

When a 15 year old boy

hurt his little sister

(Bad)

and then…

Our paths separate at this point.

And I only know the story of the other 15 year-old-November-16-2009-boy

Because I talked about you, Charles, my-used-to-be-son

All the time

Until tonight I did not know your doppelgänger’s name–

Jamar Pinkney, Jr.
Or the queasy details

No, not the terribly private awful

…the public strange

—don’t call a child molester “Teddy Bear” or put his face on your t-shirt

Ask instead–

How in God’s name…

Is his little sister?

Jacob Wetterling

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Elea Lee

they say you should not

look directly

at the sun

ignoring the real possibility

that it is the night

that has already

blinded us

To the scared, cold,

Ordinary child

In each photograph

Owned by

This oddball monster

While the dying sun,

Claw-handed scribe, failing light,

Scribbles justicejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejusticejustice…justicejusticejustice

Into one kind of eternity

Or another

Minotaur

Posted on September 4, 2016 by Elea Lee

these stories we tell

of bartering children for the status quo

are older than the Minotaur

dark, iconic monster

who most resembles our complacency

As long as the child sent into the labyrinth is not my own

we mutter, a sotto voce offering

To the god of what it would cost to save them all

He, unlike the Minotaur, is a natty dresser

With advanced degrees and a split-level colonial

He tsk-tsks about the rising price of safety

Rams our collective shame into his artisanally-crafted

Italian briefcase

pets his children and standard

Poodle

with the same idle indifference

Ignoring the growing sport

Of hunting children

In the labyrinthine

minds of men who have traded

The suffering of this human child

For their own eternal

Souls.

The Real Girl

Posted on August 25, 2016 by Elea Lee

You always used to say I was not

Your “real mom”

And I say,

“Tropes!”

What you really need to study are tropes.

For instance–

all the insinuating places

Fairy godmothers turn up:

Mitigating curses
Magically changing the appearance of the most ordinary pumpkins
Mending what has torn and broken
Saving a girl from “steps” of one sort or the other

(…Or in your case just your own lost-girl soul)

Changing epithets into flowers
Or mirrors into enchanted doorways for the…

The forever, the divine, the set-free, the

Real girl you

Should recognize in the faces now of your own

Bewildered children.

(Wake up, sleeping beauty…wake up)

Among the Dead

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Elea Lee

just moments before the blast

There were only living

Breathing children, women, men including

one who knew the truth about the vest, the explosives

wrapped around the heart

of time about to turn

A wedding into a bouquet of broken

Body parts everywhere the survivors said

The ones who could still talk

remember the calamitous before and after

But few will acknowledge the lie at the heart

of the chest-wired-to-slaughter

-grim wedding of deadly injunctions-

You, child, whatever they promised you they had no

right to say these empty things

Imposters all scorch, blood, and bone

Before the implacable throne of the hereafter

Trauma Litany

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Elea Lee

I have swaddled my hands, wrapping the knuckles and the wrists, the wrists, palms, and knuckles again until they are bound. Then I have pushed these bound, mummified fists into gloves curved, padded, slightly weighted.

I don’t swing at people. I have, I can, but when I do I hold back, talk too much through my mouthguard, obsess about trauma.

Agent-causing-trauma. I-am-the-agent-causing-trauma.

On the bag I do not hold back. I aim for speed then alternate with power punches, slugging at the heavy, impassive face of a leather bag filled with sand or rags. Its resolute, anthropomorphized gut, its impassive reserve.

I do not worry unduly about traumatizing the bag. I can–am allowed to–wail on it in repeated, staccato acts of catharsis.

Because of trauma.

Because when you live long enough you have stories.

Stories linked to the pain of a very broken world.

The puzzle of trauma is the why and the injustice.

So I will call the why the jab and I will call the injustice the cross.

You see where I am going with this–the cross. The strong-right-arm move of a superhero God.

Whose go-to power punch so far was allowing the trauma to wash over him.

The trauma of the trial.

The trauma of the desertion.

The trauma of the betrayal.

The trauma of the kangaroo court.

The trauma of the beating.

The trauma of the spitting, the mocking, the shame.

The trauma of power in the hands of bad men.

The trauma of the broken-hearted God.

The trauma of the family.

The trauma of the thorns.

The trauma of the nakedness.

The trauma of the carried weight.

The trauma of the pierced extremities.

The trauma of the hours.

The trauma of each breath.

The trauma of blood loss.

The trauma of being forsaken.

The trauma of out-poured wrath.

The trauma of the grave.

The trauma of hell entire.

The prophet Zechariah gives us a picture of how we will respond to this trauma–

They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child

This litany of blows. This way that we must walk through the swaddling, the trauma, the raw lonely pain.

Because when He said it is finished, He meant it. In the oddest k-o win ever, the victor takes the blows, both jab and cross and appears to lose it all only to give each of us the power to

Fight trauma

Oh-Rescuer-God-

Jesus.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: crime