Tiny Blessings

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Well, I got that far. The title.

“When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears,” yeh?

The title is ready. Is the essay here?

In the beginning with the Word, the original spell was cast. Fascinated souls manifested through words. As they spoke, appearance solidified. As they dreamed & spread word of their dreams, these dreams lined up into 3D reality.

We dream now of change, so vast that words cannot encompass it. Have we moved beyond words to action? Do we still need the words, made of divisive energy, supplemental movement, mountainous effort? Or can we simply sail beyond the known world into effect, disclosure, belief, movement, “effortless effort”? I believe we can.

I believe a kiss can transform a world. The light in a child’s eyes beams back out created anew, improved, bettered, calling for the next leapfrog into attainment. That one light fractures reality as we know it & have known it to be…it is a note sung so purely the world shatters &redraws itself.

There was an effort some time back to have people write the word “Love” in the air. Just lift your finger & write…love, or joy, or delight, or enlightenment, or… For the short time I remembered to do this. I would trail my fingers outside the car window, consciously forming left-handed words (love backwards forms evol which draws into evolution.)

I have written my world for years, in history, in prediction, in delight & despair. I have dissected my heart with a dictionary dozens of times. I miss the “o” on the phone all the time, writing “Live”instead of “Love” – patiently correcting it back while wondering if one is not such a homonym of the other they are now interchangeable.

The patience of eons expands growth into achievement. Where are you on this? What will happen if progress cannot? Where does advancement occur? From the connections of fingertips to a keyboard? To a musical instrument? To the hand of another human? Ha! In one & all is the correct answer! In each is such a connection/correction made to the course of spacetime that permission is granted for fruition of those preverbal dreams, felt instead of spoken.

My pajamas have pockets. I am learning to fold in my dreams,bring them back with me from the other worlds I inhabit while sleeping. ‘Pon awakening, I slide these into my open palm, wondering where I’ve picked them up from. What intergalactic beach did I walk that this pearlescent shell winked up at me, invited me into its vision? What future did it unfold for me, what secret was contained in its moistened, intimate structures that created desire to scoop it up, save it for study at home? For as soon as I focused this earth-mind on it, I left the information far behind & sit with only the aspiration of a wish, the intimation of a fantasy which was to be followed into freedom.

It is all right. A pocketful of sand may beach my sailing soul on a new planet. This one may be one to beggar the thesaurus of visions.This anchor may be the one where I may fold my sails, lean on my oars, realize this destination to be where I’ve forever wished to be.

Living as Though I’m Alive

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My little heart yearns for beauty. We look under the winter-crackled leaves, turn over pebbles. We peer into relationships for Saviors. We are soothed by desert rain & the strong, piercing sunlight limning the horizon to East & West as Sol passes over the landscape, also likely searching.

What have we found? At the end of the day, I empty my pockets on the bureau. Some coins, uncomfortable earrings, a phone number scribbled with a name I already do not recall what I promised to provide them. Lately, I have taken to “listening to music” at the end of the day – putting down the book or the computer & just taking in lyrics from various songs. And these are all about love. Even in this dry & artificial way, my day ends with love.

Someday someone will sing a song over me. Someday I will wear that beautiful dress, be a beautiful mess, meet a pair of eyes in a café, be asked into relationship, be invited into the arms of an already dancing body…I just need to hold on a little longer.

My boundaries don’t so much as narrow as entrench. It is more of an effort to cross them in search of. I care less about the shape of my body than the shape of my lonely heart. As the physical condenses, the spiritual expands into a cool cloud in search of ignition. When the match strikes, I will be overcome with love, cast so deeply into the energy I am so ready for & all about.

My fate sits like the cat outside the mousehole. There is no menace here, only mystery. Will I be embraced or tattered? Can either matter? I am as old as I am…my secret passages are shattered by my own hand – always seeking.

I used to put things together; now I pull them apart for the juicy center. Now I wonder if circumcision – cutting myself off for exposure – is the way to proceed. What profit here? Cui bono? Maybe within the secret, smelly darkness where there’s a proliferation of underlife I will find love. For the sake of all holy or hellish, I have stood on the mountaintops of life & scanned the vistas. 

I have seen the beauty, taken in the airs. I have profited experience from the storms at sea washing treasure onto my beaches. I have shaken spears at the menace on the horizon. I have cried into my own arms of a night again alone. I pick up smooth pebbles on the beach, lacking the wherewithal to build my own house. So I dwell in the backrooms of love, never venturing out unguarded.

No more! Now I am walking naked, fat may flab where it may…I am declaring my beauty of soul. I am tearstained, bloody, hungry. I am a menace to myself with this exposure but ask if I care. The blue days give way to white nights. I sleep as though there is a tomorrow to live for.

I am the sugar spooned into the cup of life, swirled about in a dizzy tizzy…scooped up, poured over, sipped & tasted for exotic flavor. I am in love with home sweet home, with home sweet love, with dancing every cell loose from its center. I will no longer behave according to catechism…these words have worn out a welcome I should never have borne.

Before death finds me napping on the periphery of life, I will enjoin it fully! I will take my soul in both hands, put it into the waters of love, watch it expand. I will drag it back to slit it open, inserting my heart. I am here to experience life & I will throw myself onto it in full tackle, bring it into all I am, wriggle with its subduction, its seduction. I am not here to overcome anymore; I’ve beaten at the cat’s whiskers so many times.

Devour me or drive me off, O Life. No more games here, I haven’t the time to be other than who I have become after all these years. Get behind me or in front of me but get out of my way! I’m coming through, Life. It’s my time.

The Shape of Happiness

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SEPTEMBER

For a longish time I saddled up the dream each morning,

With darkness’ fall, I brushed you off my shoulders

Realigning my balance for dreams.

Old man, you are banished

Into your well of no acknowledgement;

In your inability to reveal love, review life.

Pack your suitcase of pretended nonchalance

Put it by the bus stop bench

For your tour of lonely eternity:

But wait! You are not alone!

It only seemed that way.

You dipped eager fingers into my life

Allowed small satisfactions: matches, not candles

Yes, I liked you imperious & you swelled to fill that role —

When slipping into the kitchen to embrace me

Was all you ever needed to do.

OCTOBER

The linking fingers slide apart

Where once was full embrace…

We are a remembrance of recognition

Smoke without mirrors: an irritant.

The road has twisted; I am no longer faint of heart

Nor will I falter in seeking out of your grasp

I forced all my music into one instrument

When I needed a concert hall orchestra.

Divinity is upon me again

Claimed in its embrace, I dare once more to dance.

NOVEMBER

Time to let you go now.

Unlace the dream tied ‘round my wrist

Close my eyes to open them to the new world

Without shadows.

Time to shoulder my pack

Set by the roadside in anticipation

Of traveling with you

We had a picnic for a feast

A day in the life…

A purloined kiss.

The song’s delicious fading

Out of memory, beyond horizons

Many endings, many deaths

From dearth of dreams.

I shake myself, I rouse to reroute the sun

There are new trails I follow now

I am around your shadow & gone.

HOW BLESSED WE ARE

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HOW BLESSED WE ARE…

“With too much to eat,” as my dear friend says.

With tryptophan dreams, friends to loudly greet & gently hug, with cheeks to buss, hands to clasp, making a human wreath around a laden table.

How much fortune is ours when love rolls in & out like the tides of change, depositing gifts in shining merriment, or withdrawing everything near & dear with voracious tongues of flame?

How fulfilled our promises kept, to be where we are with those who accept us as we are in this living moment.

Bless us before the food grows cold, these dishes prepared in loving anticipation of sharing. We gather to bask in the anticipation of joy, little & large blessings of friendship & regard. We laugh, even as we are moved by the plight of those with so much less or nothing at all. We who are healthy, whole, in warm spaces with beloved possessions, still reach to those unable to reclaim these. We pray & we promise our prayers.

The whys will not wait, but we will be present today. In the dream of what we do have, in our gratitude, our love for the energy to help others rise from ashes. We love our children & bless our circumstances. We pray back the holy tides of abundance for all as we submerge in Grace.

Eros Landing

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EROS LANDING

Let go of me.

I demand this: I am silk & slippery

Without even your touch

I cannot get away

From this hold

One word, one look,

One imperious look

And I am fainting into your arms

Licking your neck

Lower, lower

While the heat crawls upward

At levels I’ve never experienced

Before

At pain

Not pleasure

That I know would be severe

Contractions, brain-wave disturbances

Mighty & sensuous

As silk & slippery

As us is us when us it is

—

Yes,  you’re a bull, all cock & balls

But what I would do with these

You would never rationally explain…

You will never have experienced

What I plan: what my body has in store for you

Wrapped in my legs

My arms

My tongues loving all over you

—

Villain! Thief! I cry aloud

But in your arms

These turn to melting moans

O lord, get me out of this cliché

Beyond & farther out that I’ve ever been

And I know how to weave words

Into pleasure; pressure

Pulsing presences

With a depth charge at the center.

But I find traces of you even where you have not been

This life

Explosives

I can only detonate with you

Not hands, not devices…never anything but

Your body, your pulses rocking me into earthquakes

Prising the continental plates of me

It would be as no other ever has been

Why now? why me? What circle of hell

Would you have me walk along the edge

To arrive at your smile

What trembling & where next

I am trapped here, tripped there

Scourged by desire

With no edges,  no boundaries,

Nothing other than you

To resolve this

To partner me

To part me in the center

No conversation

No ending of heat

This hum along the perineum

Only the hot friction

Of finally, come take me

Come thrust into me

Come overpower me

But expect no mercy in return

Expect no quarter

For I will match you drop for drop

Sound for sound

Slick & sure & sleek of surface

Now now now now now

—

You are the clothes I would wear

The songs I hear

The love I may never have

You are heat of a winter night

When I would wake shivering

You are a fire for which I have no quenching

Until you find that in me & take me with you

Over & under you

The stretching into forever

We could interact

The arch that continues into full circle

Under the earth

The body’s rainbow

Needing no grounding

No gold

Only make rain on me

Until I scream out loud

No code words, no stopping

No borders of “ever”

Before or after

Once would never be enough

And a hundred times would stir up only more

Of the same, not even close

Braid me into you

Turning, turning, tugging down everything

That keeps us apart

I hear the sounds of clothes tearing

Infinity inviting divinity invading destiny

Only touch me: I am yours

In such full measure

You will never be hungry again.

While I starve quietly remembering you.

Set me free before it happens

Be the hurricane turned aside

Blowing up the coast & out to sea.

—

And even as I cry “release me!”

It is a word that goes both ways

Into me & out of you

A word that captures my hands

Erodes my will

Take me into tomorrow

For there is nothing left of today

Without you.

—

Another cigarette

But nothing tamps this down

Not even flame

Can match what I feel

Skipping the record

To only the beat

A drum hidden in the blood

Begins

When you hold out your hand

When I accept a fate

I have run around the earth to escape

Where does this come from?

What did I do that was so terrible

My fate is to wander, whimpering

Or pour words onto paper

Like some Niagara gathering

From every river on earth

To pour over you

Not cascade, not a rain

But a raw force

That brings boulders

Bouncing in a dance

To rip roots

Gouge the edges

Of the watercourse

Until these emerge

In glory & new earth

Where more waters may flow

—

O, I would hold you breathless

Conquer you like a country

Heretofore unseen

Uninhabited

Lay down with me & start

Close your eyes to receive

But understand

You will not be who you were

When you rise.

—

What will I do with you?

Nothing that’s not been done before

Tho not to you, perhaps

There is all of me to use

From breath to breast

With each heartbeat

A new sensation

But in the hard, unheard hereafter

What will you do with me

When I cannot do without you?

—

So let me go

While we survive

To walk apart

No long looks over shoulders

No blushes, for nothing has happened

Except under the surfaces

We threaten with words

I cannot be more naked

If I wore no clothes at all.

 

Rendezvous Denied

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Whim, Quim, Desire & Mire

Once upon a time, a tiny bubble rose up to encompass a small, localized starfield: mine. I thought – but thinking is so overrated when the heart is involved. So I acted. I reached & tugged & wrapped, pulled, but he was willing. I see now I should have issued  a disclaimer tho we did discuss some terms & conditions.

What was I asking this man? To help me remember the carnality of being female. Recall that rush of skin on skin, penetration, giving & taking breath together. Waallll, Pilgrim, here’s the thing about embarking upon dreams. That bubble can pop in a second. Fulfillment can remain a breath away or be brought in with one quick inhalation.

At one point, in thinking about the meetup, my feet were yanked back to earth so hard my teeth clacked. I cancelled our assignation; I weakened, I re-assigned our assignation. I wish I could say I was being noble & backing out because there’s a wife involved. But I was horny, he was willing, the wife would “never know.” But I would. There was coughing behind my soul, making it hard to hear my heart.

Our email correspondence was tony. Mine in poetry, his in more the style of a graphic novel. We achieved a high level of sexual tension in words via these exchanges.

But two days before the attenuated appointment, I bailed. I was coming home from Hillsboro after a cleaning gig. I never eat hotdogs, but I had a hardcore yen for a hotdog on a bun, fresh with onions & yellow mustard. So I stopped at a little eatery called “The Missing Link” where hotdogs are the main course. I acquired my tasty treat, miffed at there being a cold bun with it. Why couldn’t the owner, Randy, warm the buns?

I turned on my phone, it interrupted itself falling over message pings. I was happy to see a few from my paramour. Except he was describing his visit to a urologist for a check-up, and the note included details which were definitely TMI. It was a moment of high hilarity on one level…these things only happen to me in the universe…but eating my annual hotdog in company with three emails about his detailed examination by three female med techs of a highly sensitive area. Well, you get the picture.

That bubble popped audibly & wetly. I dropped out of our rendezvous like a meerkat disappearing underground.

My imagination clashed with my tastebuds. O Lord!

His detailed emails were to my sensibilities what a killer frost is to a budding rose. The bubblegum music stopped, the hot dog went back down onto the plate. In a moment, anything written on the slate between us was wiped clean.

There’s an empty space: no sentimental residue. I’m either really good at organic pragmatism or a cold-hearted bitch of the first order. But it’s a qualification of Libra that the knife used to cut cords be sharp enough to stop blood.

There’s always more to a story. These words run from my fingers like notes over a piano’s keys. Somewhere a symphony resides in potential. I hope to one day wind up with a man to play two-hand, a fella whose congruency with me is based on an ability to fulfill a relationship, no holds barred. Someone single.

Oops, there’s another bubble rising!

 

Once-Love: Time for You to Go

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I have a hurricane for a heart, I see it from the space between us.

Counterclockwise / widdershins to time

I would turn the clocks back

And that would be easier than loving you now.

I would halt the sea as the next wave rises

So much simpler than trying not to

Write the words I want to say.

I feel tasered: my energy scatters in all directions;

My heart drums out your name

I stop my ears from answer

You cannot open these connections

You dare not flirt

For I will take you down.

And here, at my level, there are only your hands

My mouth…

And Hunger so strong

It hurts.

I cannot begin to use the words to say

What I feel

For the whole world would fall in love with me.

Swept away & far beyond

Where you have any permission to go.

 

“Ethics? The hell with ethics – it’s my life!”

I am calm. I dismiss the whole event out of hand.

Then your name on an email steals across the screen

Like a French kiss.

O God, I have been here before.

No Bollywood maiden, nor even matron

But ringing with tiny bells, rolling my kohl-shaped eyes

Slipping upstairs to the bedroom

Wearing only perfume.

Why you? You unlikely beast of passion

I do not even know your whole name

Only you wear holey sweaters.

And your smile replaces where my heart once dwelt.

You test a sentence on me; I am not sure you mean to say

What I hear. I am not sure I hear

What you say.

In the variation:

Wanting so much of one

The other sets up as pain.

My body is stately now, not shapely.

But every cell remembers passion &

That unremembered is easily created.

Tongues & fingertips – even toes to slide

There is silk here & salt where memory is only love

And I am a Fool beyond the boundary of

All the handbooks for the league of decency

Burnt to ash by the simple casual reply I give.

When I have erased six messages I could not send.

 

Don’t hit reply unless you mean it

You cannot understand how easily I will seduce you with words

Bring you to heel, to your unready knees

Or at least the closest chair

When they give way on you

I worry too much about appearances

When all that is remembered are results

I would create a fountain of you

And eagerly pull this into me

My tight interior, ready hips,

I would dance you into me

So you would not see the slack breasts

Or wrinkled thighs

My musk would be your air

And your breath would catch in wonder

To enter me; the holy of holies

The prize for which gods fought in times Before.

Don’t toy with me, don’t send me cute little words

For you are not my unwed lover

To take me in any fashion

But my own.

Beware the simple sentence

That compounds to loving me

For you will never return with words

To me what I will make you feel

You will touch once

For the burn scar can only remedy

By applications of the same

And yes, this is an almighty ego

Against which you bruise

But I will not be other than I am

To Love.

When with her, the only “lie” is to lie down in opening surrender.