Women's History Month: Saturday, March 6, 2021: Three poems by Heather Schubert

CA

The sea is where I belong.

Where the rocks melt with the sand.

The majestic,

California coastline.

 

Poppy sprinkled cliffs give way to the foam below.

Towering trees border spiraling dirt highways.

Mustards and dandelion greens sprout from under their shade.

Dainty periwinkle wishes whispering on warm breezes.

 

There is a solitude of soul,

Amongst the ragweed and frothy salt slime.

Out here; on the divine,

California coastline.

 © 2021 Heather Schubert

 

 

 

Religion

 

Personality is a complex conglomeration of various tendencies,

Dichotomies in each individual.

Temperamental Gods rage through my veins!

Goddesses ride the mood swings of the artificial hormones this fucked up society has caused my body to crave.

Initiation excites your chakras,

Energies, or some weird fringe of your twisted up subconscious mind.

Causing material chain reactions within you.

 

I will not emulate your deities any longer.

For I am secure in my own right.

This is the fury and wrath of God!

This is the pissed off voice of reason.

 

I have swallowed your pills of religion willingly 

And now I shove my fingers down my own throat.

And force the regurgitation of this myriad of promises

all recurring and changeable

 

Puking up these oaths

along with the bread and salt of your cynical phallocentric secret societies.

Freedom and enlightenment fall on my head

Like a brick -

Of reality.

 

Every symbol contains its opposite

And we are the serpent swallowing his tail

Sucking in his own feces and sustaining his own existence.

Cannibalism tinges the metaphysics of my being

As I lash out at this gaping hole within your systems,

I will not fill it with my soul.

 

This degradation into a dogmatic society

Does not deserve my devotion.

My heart and my sex are sacred.

I will not slash my skin and scream with you.

 

Inspiration is sweeter than the pain of devotion.

I am my own Angel.

My own God.

And my own,

Religion.

 © 2021 Heather Schubert

 

 

 

Survivor

 

Stacked on top of me

I don't have time to breathe,

Chasing friends and losing sleep.

Too much drama,

And second-hand stress.

The wheels of emotion keep turning

On this carousel of crazy.

A maelstrom of nuts and flakes.

Surfing in the eye of a hurricane every day,

I dance naked in the storm.

Chaos is my music;

Disaster, the air in my lungs.

A bloody-jawed eater of civilization,

Goddesses of destruction

Possess me.

Pulled up from the depths,

A survivor.

No one needs to know the rest.

© 2021 Heather Schubert

 

 -

 

Bio

 

Heather G. Schubert is a writer, visual artist, ceremonial magician, teacher and mother of many. Her written work and art have been published both online and in print. She is the editor of The Daughters of Babalon Anthology Series, she writes for Hermietic.com, and does book reviews for Spiral Nature Magazine. Heather studied classic literature, philosophy, psychology, religion, anthropology and early childhood education. Her interests lie specifically in applying the Waldorf and Montessori teachings of the therapeutic aspects of creative play across many scientific disciplines and philosophies as they relate to what cultivates thriving childhood experiences.

Sunday, March 22, 2020: National Women's Month: Heather Schubert's poems "Wound Tight", "Woman", and "Insomnia"

Wound Tight

All tied up in knots

A yarn ball of raw emotions

Wound tight

Spun strong

Cork stopped

Waiting to burst

Erupt in a single fashion

Of colors and dye lots

Shades of blues and greens

Spilling emotions

Onto the blank pages of my mind

I dip my brush into those watery hues

And glide free.

© 2020 Heather Schubert

(Previously published in the anthology called Little Letters on the Skin, published as a partnership between the Cleave: Bay Area Women Writers Reading Series and The Liminal Writing Center.)

Woman

Red paint drips

From stained glass lips.

Cracked, broken and shattered

Sapphire eyes like

Swallowed jewels

We cry,

Into the deep well

Of a bottomless soul.

Gouged out through cages made of ribs.

Hanging on by the skin of reality’s teeth.

One breath left,

To tip,

Woman over the edge.

Divinity beyond design.

Then, in the end,

Her heart stops her dead.

© 2020 Heather Schubert

                                                    Pinky on Detroit Ave by Marie C Lecrivain

                                                         

Insomnia

It’s 3 am in my ancient digital land.

How can I lose myself,

When GPS won’t let me?

Social medial festers.

Yet I’m alone,

Though everyone knows my name,

Tweets my pics and likes my page.

I want to understand

What glues me together

And what sets me apart.

Demons swell in my throat.

As words shoot straight from my soul

Things you won’t find on Google, MSN or Bing.

But the internet won’t let me forget,

No matter how hard I try.

That I’m just a carbon copy,

No better than a lie.

© 2020 Heather Schubert

Bio: Heather Schubert was a writer in residence at the Liminal Writing Center. Her poems, articles and other writing have been published in a variety of books, newsletters and magazines for the past 25 years as well as online as part of an anthology series. She has an essay and poems in the anthology Little Letters on the Skin, which is a collaboration between the Bay Area Women’s Cleave and The Liminal Writing Center, and can be found on Amazon.com. She is currently working on volume two of the Daughter’s of Babalon Anthology series, a collaboration of collected poems by Aleister Crowley and a book that delves into the spiritual aspects of orgasmic birth. Daughters of Babalon Volume One can be found online at Lulu.com. She is also a visual artist who works in various mediums and has an online store, LittleBeastlings.com

Saturday, March 21, 2020: National Women's Poetry Month: Viola Weinberg Spencer's poem "For Better or Worse"

For Better or Worse

Could I not love you, want you again

Across these many ragged miles?

Is there something on the road?

Be it rut, choke or shabby ditch?

What keeps you from these arms

I know I was never the thin one

The young one, the shy one

With head bobbing like an apple

But look, I have loved you through

Chemo, through all the things they

Did to me? Do you not want me

As I sit here, bathed and oiled

But not precisely the same

Nor will I ever be? Do you not

Want to find another way that

Would make us whole again?

Is there not a way?

Won’t you tell me, my love?

Won’t you caress my white head

And nuzzle my hairless parts

Until our hearts beat like bongos

Until our hearts twist together

Like hands clasping, grasping

For the juicy meat of better or worse

© 2020 Viola Weinberg Spencer

Bio: Viola Weinberg is a poet and writer, and a survivor (thus far) of Stage Four Renal Cell Cancer, a rare cancer without a cure). She was the first Poet Laureate of the sprawling capitol city of Sacramento, California, where she "rode circuit" as a literary ambassador to schools, libraries, state office buildings and gatherings in parks and cafes. In her earlier writing life, Viola was a radio reporter with a seat in the Capitol Press Corps. 
Widely published with ten books of poetry, she is also the founder of the Tough Old Broads, a group of four close friends who share 200 collective years of writing. The TOBs produced a collection of their works published by Cold River Press called Tough Enough.

National Women's Month: Viola Weinberg's "Dear Pablo Neruda no. 335"

 You’ve always said to face your fears
            to charge forward
            to see them as they are
You said that about fascists
You said that about phobias
You said that about death, Pablo

Some battles cannot be won, you know
But today, sitting on the edge of the pool
            where lately I have tried to
            grow comfortable in the water
            my fear suddenly surrendered
I listened to the great ebb and flow of it

One boundless organism that shimmied at the surface
I saw the oneness of it, the unified field of it
I saw the allure and rapture of it, I saw it all
            and felt something new, pleasure
            with the prism of it, delight in its mighty wave
I let go of the side and dropped, wanting to be covered in it

Once in, I saw a thousand other things
            and heard the songs the sirens sing
I understood fish and salamanders and swimmers
            for the first time
I observed the eddies, ridges and swells
            of water’s immense lens

I saw the rings of motion in a swimmer’s arm
            lifted in unconscious sync
            turning like Buddha himself spun the wheels
            around and around in cataleptic flow
            fingers poised and elegant, heads turning
The swimmers took their miraculous, measured breath

I slipped under lane lines, I went to the middle
I saw my own ripple in the ever-growing circles
            still holding my head high, I sighed
            and fell into something mystical and greater
            I found my purpose— to go nowhere and everywhere
I felt my lungs open and relax, my hands unknot
  
As I did, you moved under me, moving me
            to your beautiful island
            graceful on your course
And I, unapologetic and full of idiot grace
            moved my legs like a frog
            and chased the water’s ruffled lace

© 2017 Viola Weinberg

 Viola Weinberg was the first Poet Laureate of Sacramento, CA (2000-2002). She was named Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poet at the 2008 San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival. Published in everything from prayer flags to the internet, she has four books of poetry, including the traditionally styled Japanese "Enso" with Mario Uribe. Viola Weinberg lives in rural Sonoma County with her husband, photographer Peter Spencer.