Poetry
For Cora
Shoes: Independent Devine Substance
A rambling voyager on a deliberation of destruction
She arrived on a vast wave of caustic embryonic fluid
An arachnid that spindled her orbit on a naive household
With these stones may she pay her way to the other side
With the emblem of misfortune on, her brittle cheek
Invalidating her dam and emasculating her sire, her stimulus
Death on a celestial pinion that scrapped away zest, her source
With these stones may she pay her way to the other side
A tote of adversity remaining as payment for their passion
Crevasses too large for their mortal bodies and minds to breach
Solace in the pilgrimage from each other’s predicament
With these stones may she pay her way to the other side
With a bronze inscription they indexed, her place of rest
Dazzling like the primal and frigid like the archived, her memory
Confessions of the barbarous discernment of their malady, her lineage
With these stones may she pay her way to the other side
With these stones of green and blue, I call to you
With these stones of yellow and white, I call to you
With these stones of black and red, I call to you
With this sinew and hide, may Cora walk gentle on the other side
Aman
How do you make
a man, is it bone and flesh?
Do you start when they are young or is it prenatal?
Do you teach them not to feel,
think or speak until
their minds go numb?
Or do you explain that it
is more important to run,
jump and tac-----kle each other?
Do you say I love you just as you are,
as long as you own a big new car.
Do you
tell them
that part of being a
man is to go to
war or fighting?
Do you ask them if they
want to save
the world or be the
one who has to ask?
Do you make sure they get knocked
down so they learn how to get up?
Do you say it is ok to have all your feelings
as long as they are the ones I want?
Do you walk with them in the dark or
teach that fear is not for a man to have?
What do you say to them when they open doors,
walk on the outside or give up the
chair?
What do you do on the day they
fail the test and lie in their own pain?
Do you want a nice gentleman or
do you ask what he wants?
Do you
teach them
to ask
for help or
that to stand-alone is their place in life?
We better start real early because they may not get it
Make movies and write books, Have mothers give dirty looks,
Have fathers
call them names,
Make heroes of
those that die
and punish those
who dare to cry.
And most all
Women only
date the best
you can say
anything.
but love is the test.
Biography
Rickie Ussery
I'm 47 years old, A veit nam vet, a father of three and a lover of one.
I have circled the world but my best trip has been into myself. I have
only recently been able to share my poetry with others and feel this action
will help me heal. Cora was my niece and died at the age of three months.
I was honored to make the moccasins she wares on the other side. I have
never allowed myself to be angry at her and this poem is about the family
after she crossed over. I wrote this as if she intended to cause the
devastation that accrued after her death.
