Beneath the Mask: When Heroes Die
When our heroes all have died
And the truth we finally know,
Will we love the fools inside,
Not raising them above,
Nor casting them below?
Will we disdain the men we hail,
Without a cloak of manliness?
When we see them flawed and frail,
Can we love them nonetheless?
When women claim their liberty,
Will men praise their female power
And admit their own dependency,
Abandoning their fort and tower?
When our ideal slips and stumbles,
Whom we depend on to be strong,
Can we see a child that fumbles
Or will we make them wrong?
Can we lift the mask of shame
That keeps us from each other,
And love the self we hide in vain
From our sister and our brother?
Pleaser, sinner, bully, sage,
Get the actors off the stage,
Rebel, victim, saint, and scholar,
“Stop the play!” someone holler.
Can we put our shame aside
And forego the roles we play,
Disrobing fear dressed up as pride,
Our judgments dropping by the way.
Strip down the personality,
And look through others’ eyes.
Beneath the make-up, you will see
Yourself revealed without disguise.
Can we let our heroes die
And face the truth and not the lie,
Can we love in all directions
When we take back our projections?
When will we end this masquerade
And see on close inspection,
Our ego has been too afraid
To see our own reflection?
So peak inside the mirror now,
It’s our shadow we must face.
For if we want to love each other,
It’s ourselves we must embrace.
No one better, no one worse,
No rank above, nor caste below,
We’re all unique, yet all the same,
Equality we’ll one day know.
© Darlene Lancer 2003
To Kay: Lessons Beyond the Body
You taught us about the spirit.
You lit the way where we feared go,
And grasped what we could not imagine.
When you struggled,
You gave us laughter.
When you stumbled,
You taught us honesty.
When you were afraid,
You taught us courage.
When you couldn’t walk,
You gave us strength.
When you suffered,
You taught us compassion.
When you needed help,
You taught us humility.
When you couldn’t eat,
You gave us nourishment.
When you couldn’t speak,
You gave us love.
When you couldn’t breathe,
You gave us inspiration.
When there was no hope,
You taught us faith.
We never thought you’d leave us,
But when you did,
You left your light.
© Darlene Lancer 2002
The One
You are the one I want to love
To be the smile that greets my heart
Who hears my secret dreams
And who sees inside my soul.
You are the one I give delight,
Whose touch is tender in the night,
Whose holy passion knows no height.
You are the one whose voice I sing,
Whose words to me mean everything.
You are the one whose mind I yearn
To know and share the things we learn.
You make me laugh when I am sad
And promptly chide me when I’m bad.
You flirt and tease me when we play
And dazzle me with repartee.
You are there when I fall down.
You’re my playmate when we clown.
You’re the drumbeat of my heart
In rhythm near or far apart.
You are the one I’ve longed to love
Until the end of time.
The one I have been dreaming of,
Though a creation of my mind.
Confusing reality with what is not
And what I need with what I want.
A search for that I’ll never find.
But can reveal within my Self,
The One who is divine.
Copyright 2023 Darlene Lancer
Mental Chess
My father taught me checkers,
But Hank taught me chess,
He defined the roles of king and queen,
Of bishop, knight, pawn, and rook
And permitted moves that each one took.
“Offense is my defense,” he’d say.
Everything he did was planned.
He calculated every ploy and play.
Tricked and trapped at every turn,
His strategy I’d never learn.
But then one day I changed the rules
And started doing things my way.
I called his bluff and claimed abuse.
Dumfounded I did not obey,
His gambit up, I flew the roost.
Copyright 2024 Darlene Lancer
The Gibson Player I’d Like to Know
Expectantly, at six, I welcome Lee.
“I’m on time,” he crows, “and trustworthy.”
We dine, recline, and stretch our feet
across my coffee table.
“It’s too bright in here,” he claims.
So ‘round his toes I veer
to switch from lamp to candlelight.
While Lee plucks the Gibson on his knee.
Jasmine scent perfumes the spell.
He strums and croons and brags to me
he once played for Joni Mitchell.
With conscious touch he tours my hand,
His—rough from pitching ball today.
I nestle in his teal knit shirt that compliments his grey.
“You melt my heart,” he sighs
And puts my palm across his chest.
My mind is fraught with hope he’s not,
and fears he’s like the rest.
I gaze into his hazel eyes that gleam of life and wit,
“You’re beautiful, ” he adds, without a blink.
In frantic search of words,
I won’t admit I’m trembling on the brink—
I want to kiss (He’s tried on every date),
But think his kiss will lead to tears.
So in the amber glow we wait.
© Darlene Lancer 2004, 2020
Mother Wounds
I’d forgotten that I’d loved her
When she was my world.
I remember only years
Of dismissal and correction.
Unsafe to feel tears packed away.
My silent shield fed her rejection.
Our mother is our first love,
From her mother’s mother’s belly,
Trauma breathed through generations
Long before our birth.
Her voice echoes in our soma
Fating love relations and our worth.
She is our first heartbreak
when a smile vanished from her face.
A buried hurt we can’t erase.
Still seeking to repair that ache
In friends, and pets, and lovers
To be our longed-for mother.
But we find the flaws she had
Repeated now in others.
They provoke that sad and lonely place
When we hungered for her warm embrace.
Ice queen mothers can be cruel,
Play victim, or are never there.
Others harshly rule and meddle everywhere.
Some reign the fairest of them all
And treat their daughter like their doll.
Our unique self she cannot see,
But only her reflection.
She squelches our identity
To mold us to perfection
And spawn her unlived dreams.
She faults our likes and how we talk,
Our friends, our clothes, and how we walk.
She’s tangled in our brain and cells,
And models how we judge ourselves.
Struggles to individuate
Draw reprimand and penalty.
Her well-meant scheme to dominate
Breeds unspoken, growing hate.
Our nascent birthright must await
Our courage and our liberty.
To her we are invisible
As mother-daughter boundary blurs,
Our thoughts and wants merge with hers.
Our sentient needs grow hard to find.
Her ways and rules seep through our mind.
Blind to her fragility,
We fear our mother’s anger
And forsake autonomy and truth
To people-please in place of candor.
When we defy or comply,
Our true nature fades bit by bit.
We’re trapped within a puzzlement:
Lose our Self or risk abandonment.
Unsure if we or she’s to blame,
Believing lies that we’re unfit
For being touchy, spoiled, and selfish,
We live with guilt we cannot name
And wish for mothers whom we covet.
Glass walls us from ourselves and Mother.
We reach though cannot feel each other.
Our primal need still endures
For mother-daughter synchrony.
We try to change and hope she will,
Yet can’t concede that it won’t be.
Perfection cloaks unconfidence.
We dodge the world’s and others’ eyes,
Our hidden wound intensifies.
It extirpates our innocence,
And shrinks our self-esteem inside.
All we want is peace,
To curl up in her arms and rest
Our sobbing heart upon her breast.
Instead, we cry alone, unheard, unseen.
It’s our buried Self we must reclaim ─
Who we always were.
From her mother’s womb, we can rebound.
Shed worry that we learned from her,
Resentment that was her contempt,
And unhealed shame she handed down.
A mother gives us many things
But lacks what not received:
Tenderness and nurturing,
Which we can only grieve.
In our fractured, broken hearts,
Wounded women both are we.
Yet we must accept each other
To leave behind our legacy.
Give thanks for what she tried to give,
And enjoy the life we have to live.
One day we’ll find within our soul
A caring mother to love us whole.
© 2024 Darlene Lancer
When Talking’s Better than Sex
For months on end we talked past three,
I loved to watch him think.
He told me his philosophy,
And I acted like his shrink.
He’d place his hand along my thighs,
While I listened to him mesmerized.
His words flowed into me,
Each thought ascending higher,
Our minds attuned in harmony,
Our hearts burned with desire.
In every field we shared our views,
Then by way of illustration,
He kissed me and our passion fused,
Mounting our frustration.
Erotic turned the conversation,
My pussy getting wet,
When finally yielding to sensation,
The mind fuck beat the sex.
© Darlene Lancer 2001