The Dying Democracy
My Country, ‘Tis Of Thee
1111.2010
A country with two right feet
staggers en route to injustice,
eating generations yet to come.
It travels from the eye of the pyramid
to senate seats emptied by companies—
ensuring emerald presidents in profusion.
It passes down to the gathering poor,
the plebs,
paying for the lie
of a dying skin color and its belief
before being trapped
and disposed of.
Refusing to walk the middle—
neither left nor right—
it blindsides its own citizens
by becoming something darker—
The machine:
I see the way America’s media detonates—
a dead man’s switch on rhetoric,
its factitiousness misleading ignorance further
as it hunts belief in the idioms
of spiritual ghosts.
“For which it stands.”
Who can, by a hair’s breadth, know what comes?
Not once do I make heads or tails of it—
not as I stand under attack,
balanced on the back of a machine
whose left cogs rotate barely,
barely oiled—
whose name used to be Republic,
whose cross to bear was integrity, not God’s,
and whose children were raised evenhanded.
Its death is neither right nor left,
but a fall
with two right feet.
m.c.f.
Love’s Rituals
Sunday Morning
0306.2010
You have this ritual.
Sunday morning.
You wake quiet,
to water dead skin
and rinse away scales.
You’re tall and lithe—
one of a pair
slipping down the hallway,
wearing long legs,
ivory skin,
and coughing lungs—
the cough enters the bathroom,
your face still attached.
But when you move,
out of reverence for me,
you become a soft parade—
leaving my body
to restore itself,
its sex still moist,
knees crumpled,
hair slick and a little wet,
as you go
from used me.
And even with eyes closed,
I always know.
Hours later,
I’ll rise and dress,
the floorboards
singing to my feet.
Then down the stairs—
an old woman
with a creaking spine,
palm rasping the banister,
trying to wake
what’s left of my breath.
And here is where I find you—
my statue:
one leg crossed over the other,
like two snakes,
perverse and regal,
sipping tea,
looking the part
of the English schoolteacher.
We spend the morning
reading,
drinking tea,
eating pastry.
Sometimes
we make love.
Then you leave—
full,
satisfied on silence,
and me
left shaking.
m.c.f.
Contrition
Regret
0128.2009
Regret has signs:
some ache beneath the ribs
that dares not name itself—
only a need to fix,
balancing its weight
against well-being,
and winning.
Each morning,
she looks down at her hands,
avoiding the mirror
above the basin.
She will walk the streets
facing forward—
refusing to turn—
shun the streaked glass
mated to concrete erections,
those stupid structures
of obedience.
In May,
flies slip through her open doors,
through the windows left ajar.
They lay their soft, silver seeds
in the mouth of the sink,
where her dishes bloom
with rot.
And then—
she will always asks:
why do the maggots come?
They are so hard
to get rid of.
(But she already knows.)
m.c.f.
Sorrow’s Gravity
About The Moon & Flowers
0629.2013
Only a little was understood
as the moon wandered off course,
lifted into air, hung by the minutes—
she brandishes fields and buildings,
turning them into night's argentum.
So pale in the pitch,
one can see veins beneath her skin.
She is day's destruction—
an end to all brightness;
night’s expansive unfolding,
waning inside me
like the final curtain
on my will’s last stand.
And I've gone missing within these hours,
wandering somewhat worthless,
until finding myself on a silver road
so long and twisted it has no end.
It doesn’t offer left or right,
only pulls me downward.
It says I’m colorless.
It asks:
Whose hands are fruitless?
Meaning: I'm unspoken defeat,
a life trembling askew,
a dread too easily maintained—
it states it plainly.
After this and lingering years,
my face is dry desert ravines,
the quiet stars in my eyes
are little wishes flashing their deaths.
I’m dazzlingly brain-dead.
Tomorrow, I’ll rise challenged,
repeat today’s motions—
maybe even hope, because.
Yet tonight, the flowers bring fear,
all because they appear different—
because I've thought too much.
They bloom into beauty
and almost immediately fade—
Woe, they haven’t got a chance.
In irrationality,
I think:
the moon’s death-light
is slipping through my window,
entering my soul—
that people are murderers,
who think nothing
of altering natural things,
even less to thank them
for never complaining.
No wonder the moon has died.
No wonder the flowers say,
never mind.
m.f.c.
Becoming One
Making Love
0130.2010
Tonight, I will die.
The death will be delicate—reasoned.
It will happen in seconds
that slip outside of time.
You will thrust your sword—
the vein of your fate, gleaming—
into my womb,
where your temperate pollen
spills white.
The twisted roots of our bodies
will tumble together—
ribs, lungs—
wet leaves pressed
in the garden of our bones.
Yes, I will die.
And you will murder me.
I will let you—
and again,
and again.
This is the only death
where I say,
“Yes,”
and
“Please.”
Where I look at you,
grateful,
and return the act.
m.c.f.
༻❀༺
On Frenemies
Machiavellian Guest
0505.2010
For the one who mistook my kindness for weakness.
✥
You are no longer welcome
through the gates of my garden—
no more bluebells nodding
at your borrowed grace,
no wild rose trees
shedding red at your arrival.
You may not enter
the hush of my home
to sip from my supper,
to lift your glass
and toast “endurance”
with a mouth full of schemes.
When you leave tonight—
the last time—
your departure will already be
etched in your smile:
fat-lipped from devils
you fed with both hands.
I loved you.
I did.
But only enough
to bow my head
and say goodbye
like a woman
who no longer believes in saints.
I admit—
I rehearsed your leaving.
Chose the night.
Polished the silence.
Laid the linen of restraint
over the coals of rage.
An old neighbor warned me once—
he who swept the ashes
you left in his hearth.
He called you Machiavellian Princess—
said you crowned yourself
in charm and ruin,
praised my generosity
while eying the matchstick,
sang at my threshold
and salted my roots when displeased.
I did not listen.
But tonight,
when you cross my door,
I will not cry.
I will not curse.
I will only watch
as you fold into the dark—
a slender bird
devoured by a velvet sky.
And I will thank
the night
for its appetite.
m.c.f.
The Ritual of Love And Leaving
Abuela
0227.2009
We rose before the sky undressed its night,
watched morning pluck the stars—
one by one—like thorns from a wound.
We drifted like echoes across the dew—
little silver-bellied beads
sinking into earth beneath the heat’s
indifferent jaw.
Cotton rows uncurled at our feet,
their pale tide blooming toward
some distant, unspoken end.
We walked not to finish,
but to enter—together—
this quiet origin of a shared breath,
and under the saffron hush
of our unnamed and unlived day,
we shaped our mouths into
“buenos días”
as the women passed,
their faces open to the light.
Mi abuela made a ritual
of flour ghosts and the crackle
of green fire—
her old palms bending at the joints,
slender fingers folding
morning into dough.
The peppers coughed black
in their metal beds—
she and I coughed too—
as maize peeled back
to reveal its silk-laced children
curling in their golden sleep.
Apricots, bruised by sweetness,
let go their stones—
and from scratch
she built the kind of pie
no one teaches—
only time can knead
into your wrists.
Now Abuela nears ninety.
The moon pulls dusk across
the eye of her long life.
I see her—
since the blazing dog days left us—
her hand curled like mine
in the bend of its leaf.
Her eyes cradle me.
She says when I remember,
“I wish you a very good life.”
She kisses the white swan
neck of my sorrow.
Her heart weeps
for the edge of its time and ours.
I cry,
breaking her small bones.
m.c.f.
Stillness & Touch
A Man and a Woman Lay Side by Side
0902.2013
You sleep lightly,
as if morning itself fears waking you.
And somewhere between closed and open,
like a command from the sun,
your body stirs—
and your waking smile
becomes a tender kiss,
returning to my eyes.
Without thought, without words,
our hands find one another—
two hearts wearing skin and bone,
reaching, clasping, remembering—
content to remain entwined
for an endless hour.
m.c.f.
The Muse
What is a Muse?
0424.2025
A fire burning too bright
before smoldering into ash—
a hunger without a body.
I’ve grown wary of muses.
Wary of their perfumed voices,
and sugar-spun illusions—
but most of all,
the careless gesture
that unravels the spell.
What is a Muse?
A moment’s infatuation,
a gasp held a second too long,
a silhouette mistaken for a soul.
It is projection—
not presence.
A borrowed pulse.
A mask draped over the ache
of your own unmet becoming.
It is the ghost of a self
you almost dared to believe in,
the corner of an ideal
you touch—
afraid to let go
in case it is entirely real.
A muse is a liar.
But not at first.
At first, they are a promise.
They raise you in soft light,
then drop you
from a greater height.
And when the echo fades,
you are left with your own voice—
sharper, lonelier,
and finally true.
I’ve had a handful.
None stayed.
They never do.
Like love, they vanish.
Like fog,
they resist the grasp—
and in trying to hold them,
you learn to roar.
In the end,
they are a beautiful betrayal.
More trouble than worth.
Less than myth—
and no offering
for the woman who rose
from the silence they left her in.
— m.c.f.
Futility
Ghost Wings
0426.2025
The sun sings me awake
with its voice of salt and gold—
it folds sorrow into the sea,
drowning it beneath the oldest bones.
I’ve unstitched every thread,
its pride wearing me
like rusted armor—
its cruelty coming
in too many kind voices.
It’s killed my desire for breath,
to taste life’s honey,
to try, and…
I’ve released the thread—
the thread of a ghost-winged dove
sent soundlessly
through the hush of my tears.
I recall the spell hope can cast.
I watch the shape of its leaving.
I hear the wind moan behind its face.
They say breaking apart of things,
was all mine—
but the fracture,
like the blade,
was always in their hands.
m.c.f.
On Emptiness
The Gate, The Vine, The Exit
A triptych for the unread
0425.2025
⸻
I. The Ghost Garden
✿❧✿
I have wandered through the garden of this world
with my hands full of unopened letters.
Not from lovers,
but from ghosts—
those who looked at me like a star they could name,
and then vanished
before the name was spoken.
They called it love.
They said care.
I called it weather—
storms that smelled of honey
but left salt in the soil,
destruction in their wake.
✿❧✿
⸻
II. The Vine and the Gate
❦❁❦
I have learned that, for me,
love arrives with a key—
only to lock the door behind me
when I travel.
And there’s a vine that holds my ribs,
promising my fear its blossoms,
then withering
the moment they bloom.
No one stays. Not really.
They gather petals,
sip the nectar,
then drift away
before they can touch the root.
Now the garden is still.
The fountains dry.
The statues haunted.
❦❁❦
⸻
III. The Final Flower
•❦❁❦•
I no longer wait beside the gate.
The air has grown too still.
My hands are stained
with the ink of unsent letters,
and the keys I was given
have led to empty rooms.
Let no one say
this was about a single man.
Let no one say
this was about family.
Let no one say
this was about friends.
This is about the ache
beneath all my thresholds—
the promise made in childhood
that someone would come,
and stay.
No one did.
And so I will leave with grace.
I will dissolve like perfume into night.
I will press one final flower
between the pages of this story—
not for them to remember me,
but so that I can forget
the ache of being unread.
•❦❁❦•
m.c.f.
What It Means to Love
There is a mirror each of us must eventually face, not to critique, but to see. To see what shame has hidden, what fear has silenced, and what love—when it is real—can forgive. Only when we walk through the brambles of our own vulnerability can we ever truly hold another. Not out of need. Not out of guilt. But out of presence.
This is the kind of love that asks nothing in return. It simply says: “I see you. And I’m still here.”
Many never reach that place. It is easier to avoid, to distract, to pretend. But to look inward, to tell the truth, to feel it all and still choose love—this is courage. This is life. And some will miss it entirely.
But for those who choose it—even just once—it changes everything.
Because placing the people you love ahead of your guilt, your shame, your story… that, too, is love. That, too, is integrity. And that, too, is the beginning of becoming whole.
—with love,
Marni Fraser
ꕥ⪻ ✿ ⪼ꕥ
On Overcoming
The Single Point Of Love
0423.2025
We are all children,
moving alone through rivers—
breathing doubt as we swim,
drifting downward
when what we crave
is flight.
We seek warmth—
a single hand,
a slow caress,
an embrace
that folds around us
like shelter.
Always,
we stand at a threshold,
dressed in the blood
of our becoming,
leaving behind
each lesson
like small red gems
on the road.
Time turns.
We endure—
carrying our shadows,
chasing their vanishing shade,
asking why
through the sad exits
of our mouths.
Because—
we were made to bear it:
to find one point of love
and make it bigger,
louder,
bright enough
to eclipse the ache it rose from.
A love so vast
it follows us into descent,
only to lift us—
until we have no choice
but to swallow its sun
and drown
in its light.
— m.c.f.
The Sun
Easter Sunday
0418.2025
In the quiet of Sunday morning,
a soft light sings of beginning,
and then there’s the scent of wild tulips—
somewhere in the world,
a child finds its prize in an egg,
and this wonder fits their small hand.
I love the human hand—
lifting another from the dust,
offering safety to the damned,
the forgotten,
the afraid.
What is a god?
Perhaps a hush that moves between us all—
a voice in the blood
that whispers:
“love one another—
and mean it.”
If Christ ever walked,
let him be a man who fed the hungry
with bread and time,
who wept without display,
and spoke not to be praised—
but to remind us
we are not alone,
how we are loved
and love.
I do not need a rising of the sun
to know what it is to begin again.
But for those who do—
may this morning
open like a soft gate.
For the children—
may their laughter be real,
their baskets bright,
their eggs warm in their hands,
their fear vanished.
And for the rest of us—
the wanderers, the watchers,
the ones who love in quiet ways—
may the hush of this day
bring a small peace,
and the gentlest permission
to keep going in love’s light.
m.c.f.
Friendship
I’ve had many friendships in this life, but never imagined one of the most profound ties would come from a culture long portrayed as distant from my own. It’s remarkable how deeply propaganda—both political and spiritual—can shape our fears and close our hearts.
This friendship has quietly transformed me. It’s given me a reservoir of symbolism, emotion, and lived experience to draw from. I know, without doubt, this connection was meant to find me.
These poems are a tribute to that culture’s New Year—a celebration I once saw only in images, yet somehow felt deeply in my soul. I will never forget the beauty I witnessed, nor the quiet love that marked it. I am changed.
____________________________
❖
In the Shadow of Cypress and Stone
(For A.N.)
0325.2025
Somewhere in Persia’s quiet hills,
the earth begins to wake—
brushed with thyme and honeyed light,
stone warming under the weight
of memory and feet.
He walks among the almond trees,
their blossoms like shy confessions
to the sky.
His breath folds into the wind,
into the hush that gathers
between pine and prayer.
The new year rises not just
from the Haft-Seen’s sacred table,
but from the stubborn green
pushing through cold soil,
from rivers swollen
with what winter could not keep.
The mountains do not speak—
they listen.
They cradle the songs
of women long vanished,
and the dust of grandfathers
settling into root.
If I were there,
I’d carry silence like a lantern,
let the cypress trees
translate what I cannot say.
And maybe then he’d sense it—
not just the path beneath his feet,
but someone walking just behind,
quiet as breath,
and just as full of love.
m.c.f.
______________
The Gifts
(For A.N. & His Family)
0325.2025
And I,
gatherer of signs,
read his omissions like scripture—
do not need to be named
to be known.
I do not need to be touched
to feel him unfolding
in the space between the truth
and the one he’s not ready to speak.
He gave me his mother’s quiet gaze,
his father’s timeworn pride,
his nieces hands—
Glass-colored, aching with vision.
He gave me laughter in his smile,
and the dust of old men
gathered like roots in the center of the room.
He sent me the new season—
the soft riot of a New Year offerings—
pomegranate seeds and sweet wine.
The table was set with silence and grace,
amber glasses circling like moons,
around the weight of his lineage.
And he gave me himself,
not in words,
but in the shape of what he left untouched.
m.c.f.
❖
✵ Outside, the cypress trees swayed in slow confession, offering quiet comfort in place of questions.
❖
✦ AI-generated conceptual artwork
✦ Created to accompany poetry
✦ Not for commercial use or sale
Synchronicity
Dàimh
0427.2025
Have you ever glimpsed
the first breath —
and the final silence —
of a soul you were sworn to?
Then felt the instant
you vanished
into the knowing in their gaze,
as if the stars themselves
had charted the voyage
long before your name was spoken.
And the sum of it:
It was always written.
Soul to soul,
one eye,
one flame.
— m.c.f.
AI-generated conceptual visual ⊹ Edited in Photoshop ⊹ Created to accompany the poem ⊹ Not for sale
Evanescence
Dissolve
0415.2024
I’ve become something smooth
unraveling underwater—
a mourning fog,
a shadow folded
into another shadow.
I once held so much feeling
it spilled into the quiet,
lit the unmoving air,
and said, “I am.”
Now I watch the fog,
and agree with my life:
it is better to die
than go on kneeling
in shadows.
m.c.f.
Starborn
The Distance
0413.3025
“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” — Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
Who was I to the stars?
Was I once another poet, in another time?
A mouth of flame, a scribe of truth?
My being is pulled—this way, then that—
summoned by the pomegranate’s promise,
its madness, its ache, its unbearable desire.
How can I feel this one thing
as if I were the fruit itself,
pressed in someone’s trembling hand—
as if another soul has tasted mine,
and recalls the honey,
the meaning of me…
my breath.
Drawn to the depth of eyes,
as though they hold a memory—
a trace of a life once lived,
an echo of something once known,
a peace that speaks my name,
who was I?
The poets I venerate—
I carry their words like prayers,
as if they were spun from the same silk
that weaves my breath
and moves my hands.
And now my heart feels left behind—
not lost, but waiting,
hidden in the folds of some forgotten time.
Let my mouth open like light,
let my hands serve love,
and only love.
And still—
with sorrow stilled,
my breath silent into the dusk—
I ask:
Who was I to the stars?
❦
m.c.f.
Chromatic Divide
Color Theory
0411.2025
There are kinds of color.
Some go quietly—
sink in water,
drown in the painter’s grief,
brushed on to summon
love or shame or longing.
But others—
others are fugitives.
They vault the borderlines,
bleed through the page,
burn to get out.
Some mingle.
Fuse.
Grow gorgeous in rebellion—
despite the purists,
who hiss that mixing
is filth.
Contamination.
Some crust over—
unusable.
Others are branded:
too loud, too dark,
too melancholic to frame.
Not fit
(for what?)
the purists murmur—
to the others,
to the makers,
to themselves—
trying to stay clean.
But I keep stirring.
Even when they blister.
Even when the canvas recoils.
Because the color that runs
is the only one
that breathes.
m.c.f.