Anahata Heart Chakra for a New Year
You can never lose what you give away freely.—Patanjali
Listen to your heart
Its color is clover
Bedding for lovers waking
To the hum of a television
Rocky Mountain Central Standard Time.
The news lady on the tube wants us
To remember our loved ones
Locked in cardboard caskets
Gangrene Hope Chests
Sealed with kiss-me-goodnight lips.
Words like love, forever, and trust
Might be Sunday morning dishrags
Thrown around without
Regards for meaning
Or concern of future plans.
Nature works without thought
Burrowing and perching
Shuddering and speaking
Inspiring our big brains to
Invent words and cultures and whole
Environments of meaning.
The heart’s color is green,
Not a decaying vault of finance,
But the husky limbs of a pine stitching it’s needles
Into the sun.
Open you arms wide
Like a drunk welcoming God’s great walloping punch
Shine yourself outward
Touch your hand to a shoulder on your left.
Touch your hand to a should on your right.
These are your exiled
These are your protectors.
Here is where
Your heart
Has always been.
Victoria
September rain fell on
Victoria Sam’s tiredofitall
She had her fill
of pleasing everyone
Just to stay in the game.
Vicky Sam went to sleep
Every night to the mantra
Never spoken aloud
That last single mom shudder
Before sleep.
Day came she packed up her
Kid and a loaf of bread and
Everyone piled into the blue
Toyota to feed some ducks
At Merrytown Lake.
She gave the bag of bread
To her child, safety-
Pinned a note to the inside
Of the child’s sleeve
“To whomever finds me.”
Traced her finger on the smile
That quickly disappeared to feed geese
And honked at the feathers flying
by.
Away from it all
Vicky snapped up a pill
That she knew would do
The job fast.
Popped it in
Like a mint
And watched clouds cover
The rage of bad decisions
with a softness.
Floating to wet grass, Vicky’s hands
felt flowers like sand feels glass.
Dandelions and their poofy
Wishes tangled in her hair.
Geese got to her gingham sweater
After the bread was gone
The child returned
To what was left
Overs wings and laughter
Feathers and blood splatter.
Geese prodding a woman
Who left the world
Long ago.
Amy Ouzoonian is a bi-coastal writer, software developer and CEO of MoodConnect. She lives in Phoenix and Washington D.C. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Your Pill, Foothills Publishing 2004, Found In Phoenix, Fly By Night Press 2015 and is the editor for six anthologies of poetry, Word, Fly By Night Press 2017, In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief, Foothills Press, In the Arms Of Words: Poems for Disaster Relief (Sherman Asher Press).
Image: Rudolphous, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
