By: KJ Hannah Greenberg

Poems

Poems are emotional doodles,
Word friends whose presence
Comforts, harangues, equally
Evokes tucked away feelings.
Bits and bobs of sentiment,
Those assemblages of motes
Arouse the best memories,
Over and above the foulest.

If only mere language could
Return sunny moments, else
Provide time for enough tears
To thoroughly clean hardness.
Nonetheless, lyrical referents
Can’t really return profound
Experiences to us. They just
Revisit incomplete acuities.

###
 
Love in Tranches

I linger circumspect when love, served up in tranches,
Gets touted as merely redacted feelings of great affection.

Rapacious others tend to reach for larger and larger portions
Of otherwise protected initial premises, smiles, seasonal tears.

The morality of meaning’s nothing if not a means by which to
Supply methods of exploration between hearts, among relatives.

Not every grandbaby affects our creativity, our self-concept, our modes
Of transmitting our beliefs to our descendants or, nevertheless, beyond.

Sometimes, communication ethics get in the way of broadcasting
Familial interdependence, of extending one’s viscera outward.

On such occasions, it remains prudent to grasp at all possible
Modes of encircling dear ones with arms, kisses, and words.

After all, the muddling of individual roles, like rotting fruit,
Poisons quickly, leaves behind a series of bad outcomes.

###
 
Gainsay

Symbols’ designative, legislative, and judgmental sovereignties allow us to
Explore rhetorical empowerment, authenticity, exclusivity. Probability, not
Scientific certainty, becomes synecdoche plus philosophy, formulates clear
Constrains in feuds, trade, literacy, social formation’s effects, hypothesizes
The morality of meaning, produces illuminations of human experiences and
Possets in three part harmony when not swinging off mature wisteria vines.

“Enlightening” responses, regularly fashion tensions spawned by parleying
Communication ethics’ limits, establishing or reifying epistemic constructs,
Categorizing propositions, incorporating conventional plus unconventional
Paradigms, practicing oratorical acts, providing cereal dinners, intending to
Resolve customary renewals.Obstinately uncooperative attitudes regarding
Authority rarely aids folks whilst denying/contradicting execrable dealings.

Unfortunately, cultural behavioral rules, moreover, people who enact them,
Remain biased. Incest survivors, assault victims, veterans, once attempting
Integrating pasts & futures, must function within, also beyond, surrounding
Patterns to heal. Tasks of identity, creativity, belief systems become altered,
Occasionally reaffirmed. They struggle to formulate feelings no matter how
Deservedly recalcitrant are their congregations of creeds. Reinvention hurts.