Mad Mar Walker

Mad Mar Walker (Mistryel): poet, painter, performer, singer-songwriter, founded and edited the lit e-zine Bent Pin Quarterly. She has two chapbooks: Inverse Origami the art of unfolding, (1998), and Tabernacle of Bees (2011), and an digital album of songs - These Broken Years. She was a competitor in the 2011 National Poetry Slam in Cambridge, MA on the White Plains, NY team. Her poems have been published in ta variety of venues online and in print. She served seven years in local print journalism, and is a graduate of Charter Oak State College. See her blog at mistryels.blogspot.com       Blood Brothers Hemoglobin shovels O2 into the furnace of this flesh, Mt. St. Helena hot in the veins, the blinding burn of 'mortalness': Volcanic Serb and Croat erupting Christian, Muslim, Jew, Tutsi Hutu spew fire and ash, Skinhead Treader of the Shinning Path, smoke and vent like Irish Catholic and Protestant pro-life bombers, policemen with plungers unemployed militiamen with fertilizer and fuel oil We all wear the white hat and god is always on our side as hungry and hissing we blister to flame ---- and blood flows always just as red as the time before. Whatever cause we cite, there is another and we avert our eyes --- In each generation the ancient animal wakes anew, the sleeping mountain rumbles, metaphysicians mumble incantations, the people bring their offerings to the craters rim: learning and law compassion and tolerance forbearance and forgiveness. These spread their opium salve and the Blood-beast dozes a while under a gilding of grace. Pick the scab of blessedness and blood roils forth once more. Some new Pompeii’s burned or buried smothered in sulfur, an ocean boils but the mountain does not care for blood has no age of consent no theology nor dogma blood holds no point of view no nationality, no vote no academic certification no credit rating, no latex condom. And the blood dries to a crust, ugly smudges down the pages of every sacred text. Cain and Abel were brothers blood-brothers. O blood without end -- Ah men. *The poem Blood Brothers was included in Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding (1998 from Puzzled Dragon Press) and also in "We Shijin Book I" (2004 from Hanover Press)

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