TL Boehm - Writer

Some of the writing on this page may be difficult to read, incendiary, or graphic. I make no apologies for words that burn....

Skeletal babies too weak to cry
Hollow eyed mothers
Fractured families scratch pits in fallow ground
Earth and hope
Dust scattered chaff
Rice in bowls for dirty hands
And hungry mouths
Cracking smiles optimized
"Mister Christian" done a good thing
Sign your name and look away
Feed a family of four for the price of a gallon of milk
Minimize your guilt
Clinking trinkets in a rusty bucket
Change the channel
Change your mind
Envision God and mother Africa
Doe eyed and grateful placing the crown of the faithful
On your generous brow
While another woman silently screams
Integrity leaking
In the baptism of red earth
And urine
She sleeps outside tonight
No shame for you the miniscule
Separation of virtue and flesh
The seeping reality
Scarred body and mind ravaged to feed
The baser needs of a man
Who will no longer have her
Worthless animal that she is
Brittle field unripe for planting
Seeds of life burst the seams
And she only dreams of a day
Unstained.
Untainted
Waste no meditation on the knowledge
She won’t bring another child into THIS world
For you
Insular in your indignation
Recoil at the colossus of poverty
Knuckled clicking at your heart
While you coddle your conscience
With spare change offerings
Consider dignity
At what price
Small sacrifice to you
Another mother sentenced to desperation
Crosses her legs and prays
While her integrity leaks away
TL Boehm
061108

while I am not addressing well intentioned givers - or Christians who donate money to worthy causes - I am often deeply disappointed in those who "throw money at" a situation - and then consider the minimal effort sufficient. Yes, we need to feed hungry children, but we also need to educate young males on the difference between a wife and property. We need to help women who's bodies have been ravaged by constant famine to take better care of themselves before, during and after pregnancy and we must destigmatize conditions like HIV and fistulas that cause women to be shamed and further abused. This poem specifically addresses birth related fistula - a condition in which the bladder or colon is torn during a difficult birth - usually attributable to other conditions like constant malnutrition, immature (underage) mother or a baby too large for a safe vaginal delivery. The fistula results in incontinence for the mother....
 

See the two agencies below for further information. or google fistula foundation - or clean birth kit. 

www.fistulafoundation.org
www.path.org

Peace

while I am not addressing well intentioned givers - or Christians who donate money to worthy causes - I am often deeply disappointed in those who "throw money at" a situation - and then consider the minimal effort sufficient. Yes, we need to feed hungry children, but we also need to educate young males on the difference between a wife and property. We need to help women who's bodies have been ravaged by constant famine to take better care of themselves before, during and after pregnancy and we must destigmatize conditions like HIV and fistulas that cause women to be shamed and further abused. This poem specifically addresses birth related fistula - a condition in which the bladder or colon is torn during a difficult birth - usually attributable to other conditions like constant malnutrition, immature (underage) mother or a baby too large for a safe vaginal delivery. The fistula results in incontinence for the mother.... 

See the two agencies below for further information. or google fistula foundation - or clean birth kit.  

www.fistulafoundation.org

www.path.org

Peace

Autumnal Eyes
Like October skies
Lights wane in the fading son
This abyss of blue
Drowns the child in you
And the shadows find me undone

What could I give
Bless the life you live
Build a fortress against the pain
Yet a stone or two
Wont shelter you
The deluge crashes down again

What spares the child
Unreconciled
To the path laid at his feet
Even as I pray
I can’t love this away
If your heart refuses to beat

That babe in my arms
Once fragile and warm
Grows colder by degrees
Slipping away
Like a summer day
This chill before the freeze

Is it worth the cost
Sweet seconds lost
Opportunity slips softly by
Cling fiercely to you
As mothers do
Chase more than tears from autumnal eyes.

10/09/07
TLB

- writtenfor my eleven year old son who was threatening suicide.

Slender sapling slips
Verdant birth
Lithe arms lifted
The gentle caress of spring rains
Cascade from new leaves
To nourish earth

Summer thundered skies
Dreams and days fly by
Branches dance
In the whispered wind
Dreams and destinies
Begin

Summer cleaves
As children run like puppies
Through autumn leaves
standing strong silent
Wicked words waft in the slanting sun
And so it has begun

Destructive DNA
Twisted things dangle
From weathered limbs
Mock gallows for the masses
Earth swallows the blood of a brother
Prejudice coiled has struck another

The bite of metal
Hammered home
Dreams crackle and peel
Fatal fire
Leaves only ash and sadness
No resurrection after madness

Rough hewn lumber
Bore the spikes
Torn flesh and bone
To satiate this death
Baptised in blood and sweat
And we have not learned yet

....the tongue has the power to murder or to build
When we speak out in stupidity we kill those to whom we speak...

Alice Woodward: White Supremacy and the Jena Six

segregation - wrong
slanderous words - wrong
racist references - wrong
retaliation - wrong