They are the good time gals.
They are the women who make the world,
Who come in many forms,
Who cross all boundaries,
And struggle against stacked odds.

They are mothers born and goddesses chosen:
Some warriors, some healers,
Some brutal, some savage,
Some kind, some rude

• All equal.

This is an ode to the feminine form
in all its guises,
To the women who made my world.
Not all of them birthed me
But all shaped me
All equally,

Equally beautiful
Equally monstrous
Equally stormy
Equally righteous

Some were a passing light
Flittering across smokey windows
Some were lingering lanterns
Guiding the way down twisting corridors
Some were pragmatic nurses
Closing the dead eyes of fathers.

They are the good time gals
The women who remake this world
Who propelled us as a species
And might help us tear it all down.

I love you, Mom,
As you panhandle for golden lollies
and scab cigarettes off passersby.

You were beautiful, once.
You were as pretty as the faded floral dress,
hanging, gimbaled, off your bony shoulders.

Unlike most sons, I see you every day.
I watch you bleach and fade and loosen.
I watch your flowers go a little more gray.
I pass by your usual bench
as I walk to work.
You still wear the fuzzy, mint green slippers,
From a Christmas,
eight years ago.
You occasionally bark crude solicitations at the young men.

Yet, you never solicit me.
Even, if your milky eyes only perceive
a motion blur of pinstripes and briefcases and silver wrist watches.
You never bum a smoke.
You never ask for change.
You never say, “Thank you,”
when I press a fifty into your thin hand.

I love you, Mom.

An alphabetical analysis of anxieties

Prologue

When you are gripped with an unknown fear

or get spooked in the dark night

Remember we all have our worries

And can suffer from a fright

The first step is understanding why

so you can accept the cause

Whether you suffered from a trauma

Or a reflex gives you pause

You are not an odd aberration

Or suffer alone in this

Remember we all have our worries

Some are detailed on this list.

“A” adopts ablutophobia

when you are scared of the tub

and grabbing hands are moist and lathered

and getting ready to scrub.

”B” brings about bogyphobia

And bogeys beneath your bed

Grabbing you by your appendages

To start chewing on your head

“C” comes with some Coulrophobia

The feeling that clowns can bring

after that prestigious profession

Was ruined by Stephen King

“C” contracts coronaphobia

As an epidemic spreads

If only everyone wore a mask

Our Grandma might not be dead

“D” drives deep the dromophobia

that huddles you by the street

waiting for the crossing sign to change

so the bus misses your feet.

“E” embeds enetophobia

when pointy pins prick your feet

piercing along your pained phalanges

and puncturing through your meat.

“F” forebodes felinophobia

and the clowder that follows

as cats are hissing and conspiring

to hunt you from the shadows

“F” finds foniasophobia

When a killer’s on your road

Your heart beats fast and your breath comes quick

As your brain squirms like a toad

“F” finds foniasophobia

As mass murderers go free

Like they haven’t caught the Zodiac

With his cyphered mystery.

“G” gives you Geniophobia

a concerning of the chin

of mandibles and protruding jaws

And the rows of teeth within

“H” hemorrhages hemophobia

a pulsing fear of the blood

seeping slowly down your pallid thigh

to commingle with the mud

“I” inflicts insectophobia

as bugs crawl across your skin

Stinging you with their envenomed tails

and burrowing deep within

“J” just has no phobias that jar

But there’s a few that won’t do

They’re antisemitic and racist

And full of a wrong world view

“K” can kindle kenophobia

a fear of the void of space

from free falling through the nothinginess

to vanish without a trace

“L” lurks with Lachanophia

A timidity of leafy greens

Of choking on parsnips or carrots

or an allergy to green beans

“M” metes out some mottephobia

A fear of fluttering moths

Chewing through your linen wear

Gnawing holes in your wash clothes

“N” nettles with Nyctophobia

Those nightmares that stalk the dark

With shadows that are following you

When you are lost in the park

“O” occurs when orinthophobia

draws black birds to every branch

Gathering on their lofty perches

Waiting for their pecking chance

“P” picks with pediophobia

Abhorring those porcelain dolls

Watching you from your mother’s cupboards

Judging you with glass eye balls

“Q” quavers with quadrophia

A qualm of the number four

Certain cultures think it sounds like death

And can bring it to your door

“R” rains down Ranidaphobia

A revulsion of green frogs

that are croaking in your swimming hole

And lingering under logs

“S” serves Syngenesophobia

When your relatives come by

They’ve brought their bags and are moving in

And won’t leave until they die.

“T” taxes with technophobia

A terror of new machines

For they’re coming to enslave us all

With their batteries and screens

“U” unearths Uranophobia

A fear of heaven most high

Where gods and goddesses sit and judge

Unheeding your mortal cry

“V” vexes with vestiphobia

When your clothes refuse to fit

And your patterns have clashing colors

With sweat stains in every pit

“W” whets wiccaphobia

When wild witches curse your name

Stirring spells into their cast cauldrons

And manipulating thanes

“X” exhibits xerophobia

A despair of drying skin

When no moisture can ever slake you

As you wither from within

“Y” yokes you with ymophobia

When you contradict some creep

Even when you know you’re right

Conflicts always cost you sleep

“Z” zeroes in on Zemmiphobia

Worry of the great mole rat

Crawling naked with tremendous teeth

From it’s native habitat

So when you stare into your own abyss

And feel your guts drop to your feet

Remember we all have our worries

And that’s what makes us complete

I want to tell you everything.
I want to be vulnerable ala Brenee Brown
I want to cure my toxic masculinity
By embracing my “femininity”
And exposing trauma so deep you can drown.

After all, you have the degrees
A veritable mistress of butterflied psyches
Schooled in pin boards and dichotomies
joined on the patriarchy.
Motherhood meets mastery and empathy.
Listening without judgement
While leaving me to a jury of my own peers,
Erected egotic edifices eroded by the winds
Blowing through cryptic crossroads
that challenge me to slay my father.

Be my therapist.
I want to tell you everything.
Let me cry into your arms.
And hold me with the strength
that I will never know.

Creator of Worlds

You make art.
You summon emotion from a featureless plane.
Your slender hands guide indelible ichor.
through unforgiving curves
Where perspective means everything
And assumptions nothing.

A picture is worth a thousand poems
Regardless of the brevity of the imagery
I can describe a hand with allusions and allegory
But you start with a base of originality
You can sketch a hand that people can see
The same way we all see hands.
You can stipple in textures
Showing the callousness of over worked fingers.