Carolynn Staib

Friday, August 3, 2012

Sister Night

Sister night

Save the world

While nobody’s looking

I won’t tell

And dawn is dead

None will wake before you’re done

Swallow us whole

Let us grow inside your womb

Blind and warm

Sew the flesh back to our bones

Heal

The broken world

Wake

The sleepwalker

Sister night

Push us out

Into the open air

Hear our cries

The shock of life

For us to begin again

Embrace us

Push new breath into our lungs

Give us sight

Bring the birth of a new sun

Rise

Fellow man

Love

Submit

And learn to love again

Dusk

When clouds as shadows dress to woo the fading sky

and black trees cut from paper stand stark against the light,

When bells on tiny legs bid the sun goodbye

and lighted wings like lanterns adorn the coming night,

When all I see goes still and window panes glow gold,

sounds cease, wrapped in fleece

and the breeze turns cold.

When the buzzing drone of waking is swallowed into peace

Is when I feel you breathing and pray to never be released.

(Dis)comfort

I say I want contentment

I lie.

There’s no healing for the healed

No recovery for the sane

Flaw is required for repair

Resurrection’s for the slain

To find perfection is to die,

Immortality the grave

It’s through humanity we grow

Temptation frees the slave

Wisdom and innocence cannot coexist

Which do you want to be?

There is no purpose without struggle

We need to lick our sores

For to be content is to seize up

And improve no more.

One Day

We may not be acquainted

But we’re made up of the same

I may not laugh with you

But one day you’ll know my name

When this world’s run its course

Long after we’re both gone

Perhaps we’ll love each other

In not so very long.

Lament

Bodies die

Magic hides

Fairies are only fireflies

Health goes

Wonder slows

I wish I didn’t know

Greetings From Michigan

How proud your mother must be, sword-bringer

And strange how often I wish she were me

I can claim no credit for who you are now, or who you’ve yet to be

Still, I fancy us scraps of the same tablecloth

Where yellow daises dissolve inside the mouths of moths

Rest, little tanager

I want you to be well

And to steady the light that pierces your shell

I’ll crash on the couch, you take the bed

Or hide in my soul and let it cradle your head

Futile devices though words may be, and I’ve no steel in my name

I hope you’ll listen to me

I see you wither with pain and loss

And deny your desires at any cost

Loving only through film-reels that burn in your brain

Of lakes and kisses and sunburns and shame

And while happiness is fragile

And fulfillment is death

The idea of you hurting stabs me in the chest

You’re right

You were not made for life, not on a rock so full of cracks

But the world is lighter because you lift it

All five parts upon your wasp-bitten back

You’ll be the first invited, little Atlas

To the parade among the trees

Your soul is the least impossible

Irrefutably (and if I accept you, so will he)

Friday, April 13, 2012

Rant - Religious Email Forwards

I'm assuming everyone has one (or a few); a family member or friend that constantly floods your inbox with email forwards. You love this person so you don't want to tell them to shove off but get so sick of the ill-informed, self-righteous hoopla that you debate deleting the account altogether.

Being that I was raised in a very rigid religious home, the majority of these emails I receive consist of temper tantrums over gay marriage or alleged edits to currency, the pledge of allegiance, and basic court room practices (all surrounding the use, or lack thereof, of the word "God"). It's the same people who complain about the dangers of Middle Eastern theocratic diplomacy, and yet somehow find it justified to call for theocracy here. This is supposed to be a nation of religious freedom, not religious exclusivity, and I legitimately have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that another adult can't see how a Muslim American (or member of any other non-judeo-christian faith) would feel just as uncomfortable in a "Christian nation" as a Christian would in a Muslim one. How is it possible to reach adulthood without forming a basic level of human empathy?

Freedom does not mean everyone must support your beliefs, it means no one can impede your beliefs. - So you don't believe in gay marriage. Fine. No one can force you into one. Does that mean everyone else must abstain because you don't approve? No. You don't believe in contraception. Great. Don't use it. No one can make you. The second the government forces you into using birth control or starts rounding people up for mandatory sterilization, I'll jump right in and claim religious persecution, but until that happens please shut up (I said please?). No one has the right to control what you do in your personal, religious life. That's freedom. Or rather it's only freedom if everyone has it. So stop trying to control how other people live. How is it even humanly possible to not see the hypocrisy in this situation?!