Tag: Awareness

February (1893 Poem)

A #FlashbackFriday February Poem Share (plus background supporting the likely metaphorical nature of today’s poetry selection).

February

Gay lucidity,
Not yet sunshine, in the air;
Tingling secrets hidden everywhere,
Each at watch for each;
Sap within the hillside beech,
Not a leaf to see.

Katharine Harris Bradley & Edith Emma Cooper
(They, as Michael Field)

Katherine Harris Bradley and niece Edith Emma Cooper wrote poetry together, and their name Michael Field “was their way of declaring their inseparable oneness”.

FURTHER FLASHBACK READING

Awareness: The Year 1893 in LGBT Rights

Washington, United States
Homosexual activity becomes illegal (imprisonment as punishment):

Responding to STATE v. PLACE, the Washington State Legislature adopted the common law definition of “crimes against nature” and established a penalty of “imprisonment at hard labor in the state penitentiary for not less than ten nor more than fourteen years” upon conviction of sodomy.

EQUALDEX

List of American Films of the 1890s
American modernist poet Dorothy Parker born 1893

Poems & Poetic Prose

Featured photo via CC0 @Hippopx.

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Heat Wave 2022

Not Just Hot—Dangerous

Burdensome heat stifles like damp heating blankets
natural defenses smothered; oily sweat glossed over
barriers diminished; worldly infection vigilant
prepared to fill voids energy deficient

heat so hot forget it, stay out of traffic
there it’s hot, like fire: make a mistake, regret
vitality sapped mentality snapped, just like that
underestimated, deadly and dangerous, all mussiness:

countless places and positions to be found, caught up
—infinity, filled neverendingly—
affected by conditions over which exists
little to no control of the elements

best to do, get cool; don’t underestimate
nature’s power to invigorate behavioral
components born of all the wrong emotions
normally reserved for nothingness.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge #240

Featured image public domain via Pixabay.

*Thousands of humans and livestock worldwide have succumbed to heat wave 2022. While processing this devastating reality, it’s important to also beware the dangers that exist beside this ultimate price—loss of life—of heat stress affectation. Less-often detailed in media and likely to not be considered in such moments if unaware, it is known that rising heat induces stress and that daily interactions can easily spiral out of control when under this kind of added stress.