Stone Aged Loneliness

The cabin stood with the longevity of a world wonder. It was as if each stone had emigrated from a foreign land and drawn together out of a need for community. Having held the same footprint for centuries, the structure was stalwart, unwavering, unwilling to concede any ground to decay or progress.  The moon would rise soon enough, feeling no jealousy over the hours it was not luminary. Though brighter, the sun could never paint the water as beautifully, and every celestial body knew it. Here, at the edge of infinity, the only other illumination would be whatever wood, oil or wax a match was struck against.

The old man was unconcerned of wattage or time. His line was cast and the boulder on which he sat was the lesser twin to the one he leaned his back upon.  Soft, cushy places never gave him much leverage, and they seemed to foster an apathy he just couldn't stomach any longer. His line was slack, but he craved the pull. Tension meant there was something on the other end worth fighting for, and life had been flaccid far too long.

There was a quiet that had settled here, long before stone upon stone built human boundaries. That same quiet was a megaphone to anything out of the ordinary. The "driveway", a worn dirt path speckled with gravel and bird shit, announced arrivals as rarely as a holiday, and were just about as unwelcome. But loneliness drove a hard bargain and after a lengthening decade, he was ready to dicker. When he heard tires crunch a hesitant beat to the symphony of encroaching night...something in his gut quickened. He didn't care who it was, or how long gone, or how long stayin'. Everything suddenly went taut...and it felt damn good.

Yellow

It's a new wound on an old scar.
Once it heals
no one will know you've been cut open
and emptied out once again.
There will be nothing to show for this egregious pain
but the new way you will walk back into the world...
wearing, not hiding, a yellowing bruise.

In the moment of impact,
even the hours and days and months and years
past ground zero,
it would be hypocrisy to paint something so dark
with a sunny disposition.

Dark is dark
and pain is never yellow.
That color does not exist when a blade slices fresh
into all you thought was closeted away.
But on the edge of healing
it returns.

Yellow rips doors off hinges
breaks locks
melts chain.
It has muscle.
It's a bad-ass color you mistake for a daisy.
Imagine the sun...the moon...the strength!

Yellow is the beam
that turns all your shadow euphemisms
into real monsters.
But it's no chicken.
It stays in the room
surrounding everything...
and you, dizzy with the need to inhale,
will gasp.

Bathed in a color so long missing
you will fight to keep it.
You will fight to be light,
with light,
in light.
You'll fight like hell
ripping a new wound into an old scar.
And how much it hurts won't matter near as much
as the bloody way you will walk
back into the world
a delightful shade of hope.


(Sometimes we receive a new emotional wound, only to realize it has a history that we've been wearing like an old sweater. It seems comfortable and even comforting until it gets ripped off like a scab. Underneath is that still-tender place that really needs the healing.)

A Meal of Memory

I am so angry at your big mouth...all you ate,
years and days and months and moments
MY LIFE
devoured by a cavernous appetite

and all of us cruising by,
gawking the stranded car
unaware of so many deaths...
more dead than not.
Were we at some level aware
that as long as we maintained
our steady speed
we'd see no bones?

Had we mourned,
had we but mourned
even one,
the next might have been saved.

The loss overwhelms me.
All these corpses
mine

This, my staggering void.
I don't want to move
if every footstep is dead again.
So I weed the garden
make room for life.

Lotta damn weeds.

Some photos from Delaware. Concentration problems are a functional symptom of lack of boundaries, and a clinical symptom of depression. There are so many sad and unresolved things within the brain that there is no mental space inside to work. It is almost as if you live outside yourself (for sooooo long! Boundaries are created, or not, in the 2nd year of life!). Depression is primarily made up of feelings of loss. Feelings of loss are perpetuated by concentration problems, because they equate to a loss of memory. Kind of a fucked-up Catch 22 if you ask me. I am learning so much. The things I photograph now make eye awakening sense. Had I but mourned. I guess you start class when you are ready to learn.

Every day, is day ONE.

Breaking The Seal

It's not like I don't want to live fully, unfettered and outside the box. It's just that the existing captions are so large. They seem to have been placed there by misspent ideas, as foreboding as parents. Every hallway I skip down has a mirror that mimics a serious outlook....a responsible tenure, as if adult propriety were inbred and inescapable. But not this night.

The storm gathered strength thoughout the day, almost as if everyone who cowered from it, fed it. Wind sliced the rain into sidelong glances that cut smarter than any dead stare. For an east coast summer night it was darn right cool.

It was the child who said, "Lets go outside and get wet. Can we, can we?" The beach had been there for three days. Not a one of us had yet been wet. But there was an undercurrent of youthful energy that seemed to say the milk has already been spilt, so we may as well play in it. I thought to decline. It was cold. My hair looks shitty wet. My clothes would stick to my body, which at my age is nothing to advertise. But Annabelle was tugging at my shirt hem and she wanted to play. I really had no worthy excuse that would appease her, so we all nodded what-the-hell and headed for the beach.

The sand was wet, and easy to run on. I ran fast, hard, spending all. I ran into the waves, back out, in again. We shouted stupid stuff and sang stupid songs and all the "stupid" in me had a brilliant time! It was the highlight of my vacation. "I want to get a picture of this" I said. We knocked on a door and a kindred spirit stood in the rain and captured us trying to look woebegone...

It didn't work.

I think I'm going to do more stupid stuff.

People outta be stupid more often.

Annabelle

Me - 2 yrs old chronologically

Hey Annabelle,
I found the magic you were missing!
It crossed my desk
as an afterthought I grasped
like a kite tail.

And here we are my sweet
on nothing more than a patch of the world...
never a place you would imagine, but
here, redwood giants
aging like the old bones of women
creaking against
bees that hover
absent from their purpose,
just looking at us Annabelle!
No sting in sight!

The garden is a start-up
but the tomatoes have had sex
and the babies are on their way,
my mouth wide and watering
for them, pestering my apron.

You'd be happy here, my love
if only you could
cross over
all that shit.

Measured Fear

Do it afraid
that thing that makes your lips quiver
and your heart make sound enough
that it is base drum to the fear.

Do it afraid
the woman who seems out of your league
the job interview just beyond your skill
the conversation, dusty with need
the competition you could lose
the boundary wanting discipline
the discipline out of balance with joy
a song in front of a microphone
the painting in want of a canvas

that line you'd like to cross

a bridge you wish to burn

saying "I love you"

the life altering reply

asking for help
admitting defeat
offering your heart
facing the mirror
destroying the image
standing naked
a sober moment
holding on
letting go
trust

Whatever it is
do it
push through

Here is your growth measured
inch by inch
afraid.

These Five Hours

 

We sit here
silent
with everything to say
and nothing said.

Breathing is so labored,
as if the shallow end of air
cannot carry the deep end words.

It is hearts that are tender and tired
not tongues...
    and the body,
    from all it has born -
    injustices from within and without.

Have you seen the stunned bird
looking dead,
a shade of peaceful,
but for the rapid breath?

Now,
when she closes her eyes
I stand watch over a bit of fabric
fluttering like a curtain
with the metronomic rise and fall of her...
a sign for now
she is alive.
.
.
.

Without Words

as so often I am

my hands scritching at the pen

my lips twitching at the mouth

but words are scarce 

and meaning more so

in the face of so much

Power Failure

I can hear the rain

not in the natural

but through structure

not just being

but battering against

being known

I watch technology flicker

trying to bear up, a slipping grip

shivering response to sirens

and a quickening draft

There must be a puddle

in the street below

every tire makes a wet announcement

next door a baby cries

All of us wondering

none of us knowing

when our own devices

will be the light.