No title

I disagree.

What we write is an expression of what needs outpouring, release, or clarification. It is so beyond us, that we look back on it in either repulsion or awe. Rarely do we say, "I did that", but rather "It needed doing."

(Reposting this poem from my dragonfly, Marion...)

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End? By Mary Oliver
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.
And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree–
they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.
At least, closer.
And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.

~ Blessings

Through The Cracks

In the fracture of so many pieces

it's amazing how light still manages to shine

between them, a type of binding.

No human effort could hold such shatter together

into a functional shape

yet a divine power gathers elements of chaos

into recognizable form.

We easily accept the dimension we are in.

We accept it as the only reality.

But we are changed by the light we allow through us

each new crack projecting the kaleidoscope

of something that never used to exist.

Construction of Indecision

I keep my hand on the knob
clenching and unclenching with fearful muscles
tired ones,
an emotional spasm if you will.

I want to slam the door.
I want to lock it.
I want someone else to lock it...remove my choice.

I want to fling it open
so hard that the latch is incompetent
nothing but decorative hardware to a swinging door,
removing my choice.

I want to assemble a deadbolt
that can only be opened from my side.
I want you to screw in a hook & eye
that I can easily batter through from my side
when I wish...
so that finality is not really
final.

I want to leave this door.
I want to run so far that I am unable to return,
unable to find it when resolve wavers like a hiccup,
those quick ins and outs,
Lamaze breaths with no birth.
I want temptation removed.

I want to become this door.
I want my molecules to fuse with it
so that there is no possibility of separating myself
and temptation is mythical.

I want to destroy this door...
every scratch, dent, and warp that showcases my handiwork
and yours.

I want to reconstruct this door
additional panels
glass panes
antique knob from decades ago
and new squeak free hinges.

But I am not a carpenter
and this is not a door.
It is a bridge.
And even though we are on different sides...
I will not burn it.
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Smith - Unplugged

I saw a dragonfly waltz above your voice.

You never knew how the sound drew wings...
how hearts soared and memories danced
on the floor of fading proms.
I watched old women lose their frailty,
middle age men grow hair
and children frolic as if you had brought them the meadow.

I tried to tell you that angels had chosen you as home
to anything they wished to sing,
but your father kept plugging your ears
and you let him
because obedience has a similar pitch to flight
until you're actually mid-air
and finally out of bounds.

You stood in your own regard,
which is always a mistake,
and let it transform your opinion.

I tried to tell you
what the dragonflies know.

HSS Concert September 2012

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Hello Lonely

Your loneliness spent the night,
having arrived for dinner
unannounced.

Do you feel better today
knowing I went so far into the heart of it
that I tapped out?

I am weaker than I ever imagined
and stronger,
the brows of both
lifted in surprise.

Loneliness is a fog.
It is not the blanket that some poets romanticize.
It is just cold.
But it motivates us towards warmth
and inclines us to see.

We swipe at our eyes
and wave our arms like windshield wipers.
Where is home?
Why has our shadow gone missing?
We look comical,
but here in the loneliness
we no longer care of hecklers.

Their company is welcome.
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Cutting An Orange

I am just a woman cutting an orange.

I could be the woman getting a divorce,
faith rattled
and no longer reliable,
or the girl without a childhood,
the child without protection.

I could be the one whose knife quivers
as anxiety mounts an attack worthy of all out war,
or the one whose e-mails hail her like Paul Revere
needing and assuming,
and whose work calendar overflows its daily boundaries.

I could wear the colors of past Spring
or the hues of coming Fall.
I could sing a swan song
or whistle a new aria that would lessen my impact
on those I hold dear.

I could be the woman who has neglected family
avoided friends
and hibernated in the disillusional safety of a foreign land.
I might even be the flesh that was not touched
in ways that made her cringe into her sunflower sheets
at too tender an age.

All of these things gather in the blade of my knife
as my breath swims a shallow stroke
that never reaches the shore of my lungs.

I teach the hand to tell the blade to steady the knife...

This moment I have not been harmed.
This moment I am not hurting anyone.
This moment is not the accumulation of misdeeds
and their consequence on the future.

I am just a woman cutting an orange.
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Tripping Up

We forget to look up,

focused as we are on the path

and how we might trip.

Ahhhh...

but even so doing,

our clumsiness comes to the rescue

and us now, flat on our backs.

Suddenly

we are outside the box of our feet

and the whole world

is a cushioned place

without border.

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The Birth of Dead Words

She writes, thinking that beneath the paper
she might find something tangible.
The tremor of her pen
shakes the page.
It looks alive,
but the words will either breathe
or they won't...
their lifespan having less to do with birth
than endurance.

Some words are so hard to live.
They wear down the epidermis
until she is all nerves.

Her words flutter wildly about the page
attempting to gasp...
to do something audible...
the buried alive, vying for notice.

I am here I am here
way
down
here.


(No, I'm not sure what I'm saying here. The first two lines came piggy-backed on the last poem I wrote. That was a week ago. I saw them in my journal and started typing them in here. They added on to themselves, having something to say.  We can speak truth, but it has a short life unless we live it out. Difficult though. Living it, we'll find it truer, or less. In just thinking...we are never really sure.)
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Step Aside

Kids have it right most times, until we feed them something different. Remember when he said, "Mommy, why is that lady so old?" and you leaned down to whisper, "Oh honey, she's not old!" but she was, and she knew it, and you knew it, and she wasn't as afraid of it as you were.

Oh...and the time she said, "Daddy, why is he all crooked?" and you took her face in your hands and directed her gaze from his wheelchair to the candy counter, deflecting your insecurities. But he wanted to explain his malady...even to a five year old...because they were the only ones who really paid attention.

Children would not consider any of it odd, because it wasn't until you made it wierd. I remember the beautiful man in the wheelchair. I was 30 years younger, but not young by far. He dove into a pool...just right...at the exacting angle, and that cool delicious water you like to plunge into, well... it snapped his neck and swallowed his basketball career. "Why would God change the laws of nature just for me?" he would say when we asked, "why why WHY"? It's physics. We like to make it so much more, so that we have our judgement and our reason firmly in hand.

"Why" is a circular question for adults. It has no landing page. There are no analytics to square off against expense. "Why" is a finger pointed against the circumference, waiting for a target at which to pull the trigger. It's a big word though, and tends to muster all your energy towards an unsatisfactory end. Children diverge in this respect. They ask a repetitive why about inconsequential questions, such as "why are your legs hairy" or "why do frogs croak"....and hell, have you any idea?  But if you let them ask the question of people bound by circumstance....well, they have an answer, far better than your bullshit.
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Dulling the Edge

It is these evenings I wait for.

Heavy air, a waning heat

like the kitchen, after a good baking...

the fruits of which, cool

on a windowsill with white lace bangs.

The pool is so deserted

that the ghosts of its waters beg me come

and I oblige

sitting on the edge, leaning in

as if this were the precipice from which I might fly

or drown...either choice

inconsequential to the movement.

Beneath the surface

an unseen force circulates the waters.

The Praying Mantis has crossed me twice...

frozen in repose

but for the leg bent
unimaginable wrong.

It is a good place
for gentle restoration 

and an edge removed
from that which sharpened the day

into a blade.
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Super Cell

It was just energy

with the impetus to move you

from where you were, to where you needed to go.

It had form,

an almost human shape,

so much was blamed on its birth name

thereafter spat out with such vehemence

that it no longer rolled off the tongue,

but burned.

People, 

flesh and blood people in particular,

like to have someone to blame

for course changes that bleed

outside their lines.

"You let her out of your sight!

She drown! She DROWN!"

It is not satisfying to yell at the ocean.

It does not defend itself, cry, or apologize.

But it was the tide that took her,

and moreover....

the energy that drew her to the sea.

You cannot capture the ocean,

jail it, or remand it to therapy.

Funny though...

if you sit alongside it long enough

secrets are revealed.

The energy does concede some ground, 

though long after you desire it

and way before you're ready.

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(Mmmmm, yes, I hear you. "What the hell is she talking about?" Well it is really a psychoanalysis discussion about events in our lives...how everything happens for a reason. If we need to be so moved, so healed, so cleansed, so informed....the perfect storm somehow manifests. I believe it is God. You may differ and call it something else. But I am learning to lean into the storm. It has many painful swells and at times I wish to succumb. At times I wear a life jacket of denial or numbness. At times I let the waves take me and that is where teaching begins. Do not hold to an emotion. Do not reject it. FEEL.)

Pot of Bastards

Michael and Marie met in the middle of their names

as unexpected as any surprise ending,

especially for a beginning.

She, there then

when someone loosed the ties of their lips

and let slip the cat

which ran straight for his legs and stretched languidly

like a tired truth

      "you were a mistake"

which she also was

and understood how the 's'

hisssssses out

like a deflating balloon.

And she was there

when her void

pulled the truth from him, hand over hand

reeling the marlin in...

only it wasn't that difficult,

from an observers point of view,

he gave it.

He owned up to the boy,

baby hand in a mothers fist

hearing the words reverberate through a cavernous bank

of marble, wood, expanse, huge word

BASTARD

the oh so tiny plea...

       "please mommy! never say it again!"

and her arterial apology spraying across his sweet

fallen face...

      "Never again love. Never again!"

He already knew...

the deep down knew
that gets hooked with a word now
hauled to consciousness, gasping, half dead

and brave heart...

he faked it.

I think we spiraled from there,

the pot of us bastards

and some un-named spoon

stirring.
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Note To Self

Wake as if you have somewhere to be. Curl your hair and paint your face as if you might meet someone famous, or better yet infamous. On second thought, you might meet a nobody who's a somebody and will bump into your grocery cart with their uncurled hair and sheet creased face. You will laugh, knowing she woke with nowhere to be, and she will know you made up a schedule when you had no errand. You might be new best friends.

Say something between the walls of your rooms. It is strange to go five hours without a spoken word. How do you even know your voice still makes sound? How will the couch know that you are still of an opinion? Say to the guitar, "Do you miss my fingers?" It will reply from it's dusty orifice and cobwebbed strings, "What do you think?" You will scowl in reprimand for such a sarcastic and sassy reply. Apologize to the withered plant, your words like a snake charmer coaxing something out of nothing. Realize the plant and the guitar have every right to feel neglected and pissy. Apologize to the guitar also.

Clean up your spaces as if a guest might arrive, a surprise guest, a surprise guest who may be a brother, or a stranger, and each will need the same care and feeding. Where will they sit if you leave your laundry unfolded on the chairs? Play Adagio For Strings, Op 11 because it is long, and you have the time, and it cuts through silence like mourning. Hug the lost parts of you, watch them wandering through the score, alternately sweet and sad. Change the music before a guest is greeted at the door with your wailing.

String together beautiful beads to rid yourself of the collection. A collection is just the accumulation of things that once had homes elsewhere. They grow along your emptiness and feel important. This is how hoarding begins. It begins with emptiness. Wear eight of your bracelets on your wrists and walk through the streets with your gifts brushing against your hips. Seek out recipients as if you are a philanthropist wearing your charitable foundation just above the hands that shake it loose. Know it is not charitable. It is just you not being a hoarder. Perfect motive is elusive.

Say a prayer. Speak it while laying on your back and playing with your curls. Feel small so you know your place. Grow wings because you know you're loved. Grab your shoes. God himself may send you on an errand. Be ready. Round up your purse, your keys, a sweater, and set them next to the screen door while giving thanks for the breeze. It cools. It makes sound between the blinds. It rushes through the room, from south to north, on a mission it seems, having woken with somewhere to be.
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The Stroller

The women all have sundresses and strollers. A stroller comes with a husband and a baby. If you have a stroller, then the husband it came with has a steady job and affords you holidays. If you have a stroller, then you have a sun hat that matches the print on the baby's onesie, and the baby has little baby sunglasses and little baby shoes and everything is small and manageable.

You walk your stroller, with baby and husband in tow...your straight back saying "Look, look! I am really a writer, but just now I am managing my stroller!" There is no time to think outside this managerial occupation. Doing so creates a perilous environment where the wheel might come off the stroller. You might lean down to fix it and your sun hat would disengage itself from your head, and the wind would take it into another life where it will sit atop the head of a woman you never became. You will hardly notice its absence as your hands fidget apologetically with a broken stroller you do not know how to fix.

The baby cries because you have been still too long and the sun is beating down like the sun always does. Looking up, you beseech the sky, but it is what it is and there is no powerlessness like you against the sun. You reach to pull the canopy down, provide shade for him and obscurity for you, but he is wearing a suit and tie, and was actually just requesting a little help with this months rent.

"Ask your father! Can't you see I am busy with the stroller?"

He gives you a quizzical look that lets you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your husband is dead, and you are old, and the stroller should have gone out of focus a hundred years ago. The canopy down, you drape a blanket over that. It is freezing, and seasons have passed behind your sidewalk workshop like freeway cars. Woosh! Woosh!

Somehow the stroller is fixed and you are not, and nothing is small or manageable. You straighten your back and push forward with your hatless head advertising silver hair. Your grandchild stops crying and begins to coo. "Look, look!" you tell her. "I was once a mother, but just now, I am managing my stroller."
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Abba Father

I sit rather gingerly on the edge of a lap I did not know was this comfortable. One hand holds his, and I feel awkward. Looking at his face, I see ancient and ageless mixed into an incredible beauty I fear I will never possess.




"Yes you will."




(How does he know my thoughts?)




"I see everything. You've hidden nothing, though I see you've tried," he smiles.




"All of this?" I ask, my hand leaving his to pantomime the warped human I inhabit.




"Yes."




"Even that?" I point behind me, incredulous!




“Yes."




"Even.........this?" My eyes spill over as I tap my heart with a shaking finger.




"Especially that. I know why it's there...ALL of it."




"And yet you love me?"




"Without question."




"Beyond all sense or reason?"




He laughs. "Child, you are not so hard to love. With every sense and reason, I love you. You are mine."




Acceptance branches out through a slow, giddy smile.  I take my hand from my heart and place it back into his, feeling the beat between our palms as if this heart is home. Leaning back against his expanse, I sigh into all that space. "I love you too Daddy.”
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Happy Father's Day to all you Papa's.

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Needing My Friend

Yes...we're gambling!

We’ve only our hearts to guide us this day,

where once we were more form than substance
now some kind of strange piñata

the bones of us covered in paste, held as body by crepe paper.

But no matter all that. Our hearts have GROWN

in equal measure to our deterioration and they have become

the governing force.

It is our hearts that beat us through those daily walks

to grease what’s left of our bitching joints.

Beneath these sagging breasts
beats the warrior child, the gator’s jaw

     fighting for
           releasing not
all that remains. We will

reach for our face to face moments...

two old souls, coming ‘round to a new innocence.

Our playground awaits.
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"With Sympathy" is not sufficient...

A blogger (a friend) I know, have known, since before...
Oh man...to say it
BEFORE

Since before the world became a incoherent swirl
since before there was a name spoken
not yet engraved

Oh GOD
I hate this part of life...
release, without consent, to
to...

More than death
what startles me is my sorrow.

We've not met
I've not held your infant
but he grew beneath me in the words you cradled him in
and I knew him
well...I knew him through you
well...I knew you through this
and I knew this through many

And the same avenue that brought him to life for me
takes his life.

Words.

And there are none.


I'm so proud of him, you, her.
So little
and yet so much he became...
becomes...
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My Fading Portrait

(For my friend P. You have always been so vibrant and alive to me. I will remind you every chance I get.)

When did my colors start to fade?

The first time you overlooked my dress

and the care I took to turn you on, only you weren’t

and aren’t, and can you believe I still try?

When did my paint peel, like a weathered door

that you no longer cared to enter

and I, the gauze ghost behind a pane of cobwebs

stuck between life and death?

When did I become an outline of a woman

all women, any woman

and too soon thereafter, just a frame

so long without my nuance

that I lost my face?

Was it the first time my desire tired you?

Was it the last time you took my energy and rolled your eyes with it

or when you tamped this rambunctious spirit down

with the toe of your sensible work boot?

Honey, draw my portrait.

I have so long forgotten the space between my eyes

and how you once traveled the distance.

Were my lips full, or just swollen with kisses

that once came without request?

I am fading, and who will conjure the me you met?

Who will remind me that I was once a masterpiece

screaming with saturated color,

excitement, and possibility…like a traveling van to Woodstock?

(you hitched a ride… don’t you remember? You stuck out your thumb and said “take me with you.” And I did.)

Sweetheart, do not age me so soon.

Do not pull me into a gray cinched bun

with these tresses still so unwilling to be tamed.

We are not old.

I am not done.

I cannot be the empty frame you just look through

to the chair, where the newspaper holds your eye

and the television, your ear.

Paint me with passion

Leave nothing to memory.

I need to see it all.

Do you remember?

Show me

PLEASE show me

before the mirror has no face.

Breakfast On My Mind

is it a man, a woman? filthy pajama bottoms. the cement must be cold. hard. i shouldn't look. and yet a person sits disheveled here in a public place. a cigarette for breakfast? it's 7:30 am. a cigarette for 7:30 am...and barely a layer of flannel on which to sit. I will buy a coffee. a bagel. what kind of bagel? possibly allergic to nuts. hates raisins? doesn't do cheese. fuck. *sigh*. "Plain bagel please"...."and a coffee." cream? will creamer be wanted? sugar? certainly it would be uncomfortable to be so disheveled and standing at the condiment bar. i have to provide these accouterments to coffee. what if the only cream is in a pitcher? do I go out there and say 'how would you like your coffee'? it doesn't feel right. thank goodness, there are packets of creamer, packets of sugar. four of each should cover it. a stir stick. a napkin. plain bagel in a plain bag. it's going to look like i didn't give a shit. *sigh*. do i put the coffee on the ground? do i say something? how do i make this less demeaning? it is a he. the bruise beneath his eye screams for attention. he is reaching for the coffee i hand him. his hands are filthy. i feel stupid in my dress and high heels. he says nothing for a time. i guess i will just put the bag beside him. i hear 'thank you', but my tongue is swallowed. i think i say "happy breakfast." really? happy breakfast? i ignored his eyes. i missed his name. i lost his story. i am close to tears because i can never seem to get this right. i imagine myself casual, yet confident.

I say "Hey! Good morning. Can I join you for breakfast?" I sit cross legged on the cold hard cement and my eyes form a tunnel toward his reality. I touch his hand. I ask his name. I hear his story. "Do you feel invisible?" I ask. "Not anymore" he says.

Stumped

I can't seem to hold on
I can't seem to let go
I've lost my hands and the stumps of my arms wave
as goodbye and hello
and neither the coming or the going or the bald end
knows the damn difference.

Can you see these incomplete appendages as they war
to pull and push
almost comical in their inability to do either
without a grip?

I am tired of watching them.
You must be too.
All that flailing.
A bad dance by a worse dancer
in the throws of this tryingtryingtrying
and you, with season tickets!

If I could just come into myself
push through the tight ends
fingers filling a glove
thumb...index....
opposable
I could hold something long enough to know.
I could release something long enough to know.
(at least in theory)


She said she had reached the middle of a lake
the shore lined with her many children.
She could see us waving, and she tried...wanted to...
but couldn't seem to make her way back.

I scoffed then.
'Selfish' I might have said.
'Weak' even.

Oh, I understand it now.
In the most difficult of all battles
(that being self to self)
she lost her hands
and we lost her.

I keep trying
to swim with stumps.
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Poetry Wall

It came in sections, as most things do...donated from there, purchased from here. Drilled, painted, squared and hung. And what I thought was going to be the most comforting and beautiful thing, looked rather helter skelter, and my mind just cascaded around the edges with no intent of joining in. So I uprooted anchors, and hauled it down the hall, where it is in a somewhat more manageable chaos. It beckons without imploring. It rattles, but causes no deafness. My poetry wall stands at my entrance and exit, which just about sums it up.

What is Strength?

What is strength?

It is a candle from which both ends might be lit.

Is it strength to show pain, or to hide pain? It is strength to pretend, or to tell the truth...to protect, or to inform? It is strength to move or be moved? Is the surgeon who cuts, stronger than the patient who is cut? I wanted to be strong from both ends. It takes strength to face giants. It takes strength to be a giant. It takes strength to be a disappointment. It takes strength to be disappointed.

If I'm doing the best I can
and I burn up in the flames
how will you label my ashes?

"Before the Truth will come to fill our eyes

The wool comes down in the form of fire

And when the the answers and the Truth have cut their ties

Will you still find me

Will you still see me

Through smoke

I was born in a house in a town just like your own

I was raised to believe in the power of the unknown

'Cause when the answers and the Truth take different sides

Will you still find me

Will you still see me

Through smoke"

 - Needtobreath

Intelligent Design

I crossed Dallas twice in one night.

Sometimes strange things happen

surreal things

like Dallas in the middle of California

and my stride stretching across state lines,

like that night the rain

pounded its tiny fists against the windshield

and somehow

at the height of midnight

went silent.

It made no sense

to see the rain lose its muster,

and all it took was one degree

33

32

such a delicate balance...

we forget

there is Laminin

and one misappropriation of the chain

will cause our structure to fold.

In all that is unknown

and questionable

outside the norm

as if ever there was such a thing...

there is this glue that keeps us

together enough

that a silent rain

is not an oddity at all.

It's just snow.

Tears in a Vineyard

She held my hand
within the space he left.
She laced her fingers in mine
and after this long absence of flesh
I didn't care what others thought
or if it was appropriate.

Girls hold hands,
at least I heard they do...
and I wondered if I had ever done it?
Based on raw emotion
I'd guess not. Not this comfortably anyway.

But she's a rare gem.
She really shines, you know?
And only God knows the buffing it took
to ease grime into such a glow.
Well...I'm guessing she knows, even better than God.

I lay myself in the tall grass
as it bent the edges of a vineyard toward this
empty shape, of what was once considered a woman
and by many, may still be...
but the wild flowers know there is reformation
and school is in session.

Don't know as I've ever lain myself in the tall grass
and watered it from a lacrimal lake,
but it was good,
like a good death.
A right thing. And so few things these days are right.

And when he came to find me
I was embarrassed, lying there
in the field I soaked.
But the grass stood taller, having been nourished,
and when we waved good-bye
I thought of life as a circle
and I, just a bend in the reed.
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The Fundraiser

Even a poem

is too loud.

What is happening to me? The past few years have certainly seen this movement towards a very quiet life. I seem to be incapable of handling the way people swarm like bees, the hum of their conversation, the screeching punctuation of those who seek attention above the din. I CRAVE silence like a junkie. I am angry tonight because my neighbors are once again out on their postage stamp of a patio laughing it up like cancer has left the planet, and joblessness was soooo yesterday, and my son has not been spending his first four hours in Los Angeles on his bike, waiting for someone to let him on the couch. That sounds so jaded! I am angry at myself for being jaded. But I have weight. There are incredible weights...held, released, thrown, purposed, unpurposed. I used to drown them out. I suppose now I am facing them head to head, and distraction is just another semester to a diploma long past due. Noise was a deluge to thought. (Drown those dirty rats!)


I remember cooking in my kitchen...Marc Broussard on full volume, the melody, the sway, the words overshadowing my own, pots and pans making racket like ghosts in the attic, bent on driving the living from the halls of entitlement. It was only a stage...a brilliant light before the filament breaks a bone and darkness comes unexpected. This silence holds no distraction. There are no more shades on the windows, and filters are a thing of the past. This is where the mortar and pestle meet...in the coveted silence. Rubber v. Road. Truth v. Wish. The full monty.


I watched the sunset in silence tonight, as if it could prepare me for frivolity, as if I could store it. There was a bright square in the midst of that glorious display. I thought, "How strange that this block of light should be suspended above all that sets...hung up, unable to pass on...another kitchen ghost with unsettled business". I tried to photograph it.  After one shot, my camera said Out Of Memory. Oh man. God is speaking Annie. Pay attention. We cannot capture and hold. Life is a succession of filaments. Be aware.


Of course I cannot live in such silence and still play human. And so I am wondering how to manage. People are hard. I am people. I am a shell misappropriated in the egg white. It's difficult to put your finger on such a thing, surrounded in moving viscosity.

Silence is keen on exhumation

the quiet Archeologist

catalogues.

.


(I had to go to a fundraiser tonight. I had a panic attack. I'd been having them all day. But these 200 people in a cramped space...yelling...shouting as a group whenever a raffle prize was won, jostling, swarming. Sh*t. I thought I was just about gonna die. I wanted silence. I didn't get it.)

Crossing Over

It should be one hell of a moment
the kind where fireworks mark mandatory celebration
and the champagne cork knocks an eye out.

Naw, that's not right.
It should be an epiphany
that halts you dead in the tracks of your every day practicality
head slapping double take - back and forth,
yesterday and tomorrow no longer at odds
because the day has come
oh my friends, the day has COME...
when you have more past than future.

But there is no rite of passage in this slow decline
We move toward it, then past it
with nothing more than a nod to another day spent
the same way yesterday was spent
and the day before that
because we just don't know
can't know
the date or time
when our end is closer than our beginning.

I've crossed over now.
I don't know when, exactly, but
I'll not live this age doubled.

I was born in April,
born again in February,
and somewhere between presents and cake
the candles started burning backwards.
,
,
,
,

Worship Can Happen Anywhere

I worshipped today
Soul crunching worship.

Have you ever?
Then there is no explanation sufficient.

It's been so long
but the song was made from my own joints
the way they push together without cartilage
carving new pathways into this flat valley
for rivers to run
painful, yet no less of a journey.

So my soul rose up as
tears, meeting these lips
opened in allowance.
I sang.
It was time,
the voice was choked...but heard
my heart
ahhh, my heart
one measured bar released
from such a cage.
.
.
.
.

Forgiving Me

I think I forgave myself yesterday.
I meant to.
I actually looked in the mirror and told that woman
I forgive you

She balked
and can you blame her?

Hatching off days on the walls of her cell
bamboo shoots under the nails of her fingers
that self imposed agony of a slow pull.
Pain must be felt at all times (how else is it purgatory?)
each sliver removed bit by bit by bit
so as to feel every mile of road
as if it were neverendingneverendingneverending.

But there is only so much blood to spill.
I told her..."Woman, it's time."

That man.
That man who blew my fantasy-family house of cards
to fucking smithereens...
she forgave him the next day.
Sure as shit she wrote him and said all was forgiven.
And she meant it
because forgiving is not the same as forgetting.
It is simply an acknowledgement that something is done
and cannot be undone
and we're not going to keep hashing it out
torturing fingernails and demanding blood.

She can't do the same for herself.
Well...she couldn't...
until yesterday
    (maybe)
tomorrow too.
.
.
.


"There's a host of hurts we come across
None of which alike
From the air inside the birthing room
To the darkness where we die
Though I feel I'm just as strong as any man I know
I'm not able on my own
Carry round the secrets
Only heaven knows
Crawl into our darkened rooms where only victims go
Though I feel I'm strong enough to carry all this load
I'm not able on my own

All my actions, false or true
Selfish motives I will use
We were born with knives in hand
Trained to kill our fellow man
If we're not better than the rest
How will children do their best
Find your patience, find your truth
Love is all we have to lose

I'm not able on my own"