It Matters Not

It matters not if we come late to wisdom

Have we come early to joy.

As children we are content with puzzles

Which may become a confusion

Of intemperance beyond their expiration date.

If we outlive our productivity, we can still

Rest in that glow; warming to remembrance,

Its fainting profusion

Now a single blossom

Become ash.

It is only that we have lived at some time

To capacity.

Our stillness is given to action

At levels now awash in Time’s changing tides.

Even when there are no pictures,

There are memories yet alive & aglow.

Our beaches laid bare in detritus

Still own the perfect shell

That one white pearl where we were treasured

Only for being who we are.

These moments sustain & re-root.

A new leaf on a seemingly dead stalk

Is still vital & attractive.

We still contribute to life’s ledgers

For the sake of the positive.

We underline life with a curve of laughter

A smile at rain, a thrill of wind

A moment alone later shared in hive-mind.

If I have had one thought others may learn from:

One idea which, drawn across the match cover of here & now

Sparks a candle or a forest fire.

I thank you, Life, for choosing your manifestation

In me, of me, around me, about me, even in lieu of me.

Where would I be had I not chosen to be here?

Carol B

2/23/23

0

Perhaps An Original Thought Will Serve?

Thinking of you this morning…wanted to write before you start the majority of your day.

I am being amazed by how the yin/yang of continuity & new just rolls along & we never know which one will be on top & it doesn’t really matter, does it? Just the pleasure in the moment matters & the ability to balance whatever does roll into attention mode at any moment. I was going to get off early today – it’s my early day – but I am pretty sure moving our staff meeting will kibosh that; so I canceled an appointment I had. It is coming clear to me to have my poetry workshop at Unity rather than where I was planning, so not a big deal. 

I am watching Joan Didion’s quote “the center will not hold” come into play yet again. Tho I say it’s a circle, I think life has become more of a kaleidoscope with flashing patterns changing on a constant basis, refitting themselves together in varied & captivating patterns. I cannot look away.

Ideas keep expanding & diminishing. I look forward to sitting on the front porch of heaven, rocking & listening to the birds, but I know that’s not the way of it… I’ll get a few minutes there now & again. Just enough to catch the Divine Breath & plunge back into it once more. You know, once the fear of transition leaves, there’s nothing to be afraid of. We are in the midst of such a world change, nothing left to do but marvel, hold onto your hat & take no note if it flies off into the winds of change! Laughter is so important & provident – we are such ridiculous beings to be so serious! Our milestones are but pebbles in the paths of others & this is rightful indeed.

I am noticing my bids for sympathy & knowing I must give them up; I must simply deal with what is happening as honestly as I can & if it happens, not use it for a bidding whine, but a strengthening. At times, I like the whine cuz it gets me that sympathy… I’ve been isolate enough to get comfortable here. Letting go is an art to perfect in a world where holding on seems the right action, yeh?

I dreamed of walking through a walkway where people lived off it in rooms & if their doors were open, I walked into their rooms, begging pardon for not watching my way. People wanted to hear but refused to listen, pushing their problems & observations in front of mine. But of course what belonged to them would be more important! 

I find myself saying, “Where’s my head?” I think Mom used to say that – or maybe it was (& more likely), “Where’s your head?” It has become a more layered saying since the 60’s & the recreational drug levels increasing. 

This body keeps wanting to succumb to inertia & entropy. I wage a steady campaign against these, however, pushing hard when I must to keep from pulling a pillow over my head & shutting it out. I face it every time I walk out my bedroom door, come to think of it. 

So for today, think about where’s your head? Let’s put it in line with our heart & allow it a catbird seat to see how it’s done.

Love,

C

0

More Stuff from Work

A MEMORY

We write our signatures on air

On air money

I remember when the sound of

Change

Jingling in a pocket

Meant a Grade A or a Red Hot

Do you remember?

Did you ever walk into a candy store?

Where a big glass cabinet

Housed a reflexive kiss for

Everything within

An involuntary tightening

Of orbicularis oris,

A pucker.

(Candy was the closest thing to love I knew.)

Years have passed, many counting themselves,

As I never kept track except the big ones,

Except in the most general ways

Others can tell you times to the tenth

But I barely know how I got here

Nor will I ever need to

This is all that matters: thisrightnow, thismeoment,

Thisthisthisthisthis… 

VISITS ASEA

Never have I lost your sounding waters

Stream of consciousness

I have missed the tiny whirlpools

But never the great Tides

Which swing my world so in & out of balance

I have learned only that balance is flexible

That it’s changeable, malleable,

Balance lifts us up into manageable.

Yet I claim it not, not fully, not without first

Looking around for railing, or a handhold

Balance was a for-granted

But it has gone the way of faith

The chair will be behind me when I sit…

A variable where only an inalterable ever existed.

But that doesn’t stop me.

I watched a baby walking, thumping along

After being put gently on the floor

Leaning into his future

Walking, forehead jutting ahead of his feet.

I walk like that sometimes now.

I don’t lean back, if I claimed my past it would

Claim me. I choose not to dwell there.

So much so I rush from it.

Somehow I have seen it all before

I am bored by the repeats

Bummed by the reruns

Interested in the growth & the new

In the place where I can claim some experience

The holy bath of experience

From which no one returns the same

The reruns are off, the endings

Jacked up. How could I have counted them ever?

But the not understanding is okay with me now

The wondering & the laying on of syllables

Like strips of bacon making grease in a heated brainpan

The smell will intoxicate me; I wonder if I’ll also have eggs..

I mean ideas, I mean ways to get out from myself & away from

Me awhile. There’s that place where it’s okay to sway.

I am there now.

REPTILES IN THE OFFICE

In my supposed comeuppance, your one-line flick of a forked tongue

At me, I watch you, woman.

I am a threat. You are right to watch me back,

to rattle a warning accusation of

A crime I know nothing about; One thing: I will not dance it again.

But you know all, having discovered we’re out of

Paper…the accusation precedes the announcement:

This from the woman who says have no fear,

Unity does not do fear!

But running out of paper is a hostage situation a 911 bristle, a threat

To the future of major proportions.

Staples being two miles away, n’all.

But there is a humidity of accusation cloying a measure of self-protection & I

Understand, as I was there, too, in the beginning.

Every Unity I know breaks apart, succumbs to Great Change

We are thinking it will be one thing

When it might be entirely another.

Now I have a measure of self-protection in place

This is just how it is; it’s nothing personal

It is how each explains herself to life

With a bang on the counter, a jarring of the bell

Heard in far reaches of outer space…

These women purport to ministry but live a self-crafted life

Involving much validation in finger-pointing

An air of mayhem-in-waiting

Of corrupted effort & diminishing returns

Saying one thing to another

Neither quite true or trusted.

Only demanded.

I can feel my armor dented in places

The shin-guards worn away

the covers over the ears newly heated

by accusation by disbelief by not “get it right, but you’re so

stupid you got it wrong.”

I think it’s because I feel it hit my Translator

& bounce awry instead of smoothly smoothing out.

I have no respect for the one & am rapidly losing

What I have for the two…histrionics accomplish zilch.

Something broke today when you harried me in front of John

Who was just waiting to speak to you

But seemed unmoved by what I perceived as a full-on Tantrum.

Like the ones 3-year olds throw on the toy aisle.

For many of the same reasons, a parent would say.

I’ll say, too, I can’t get there from here. I do not know how.

It is not my understanding of what you asked for two weeks ago

This is some wish you cobbled together in the fiery pit

Of I know  I asked her this!!

Nonesuch.

DEPARTURE, TAKEN PERSONAL

If this is how you feel, just go.

If it is coming to the point that you decide four weeks in front of leaving that we need to know every single solitary thing you know,

Only the God of Heaven can help us!

But we are not the women who ask for help

Before designing our own program

Buying our own uniforms

Building our own pillboxes

Designed beyond your getting in

Which is funny, because you built it

By how you treat me.

The irony of it all being you likely

Do. Not. Even. Know.

IN GENERAL

The tension in the room & the torsion in the air

Accelerate an already fast-moving iteration

Of Situation

Into international waters, traditions count out here

And One People do not mix With Another.

And don’t try to tell me these aren’t all over the planet

These whorls where someone made bad juju & no one ever

Redeemed it with a blessing.

Cuz I recognize them.

From before, some my own

You enter here at your peril

With the potential of  your sorrow

For I am only a battery

Only a mirror

I will up the energy of the situation

Since what I think if it is on my honest face.

Someday that face will look into your own

I amplify & reflect back.

I clap endlessly one-handed

I walk the forest listening for downing trees

I cannot play that game of throwns any more

I want to belong to a vibrant community of like minds

Who do not throw away their own decisions, but do not force them either. What would it take to not be the problem but the problem-solver?

ALL EARS’

Could I be a Listener?

A listening device of analog proportions?

What would it take to be fluid of body once again,

To have a man, once, lift me to himself & cradle me

Set a seal upon that Seer Eye: awaken it with unexpected vision

There is a reason they slay the spirit there

But I seek not even the smallest of deaths

To bring it to the surface, to lead the light

To have a unicorn kind of magic: emergent,

Masculine, parting the very air

For in between the particles

I would go

To achieve the feminine.

It sees me to be: finally whole,

Not foresworn in the belly.

My spirit parts are strong, but invisible here

Jovial, they push other stuff out of the way to have theirs.

0

We gotta go home –

Well, she will be gone from authority soon. Her influence has been positive, in the overall. I’m done, tho, with tantrums & repetitive commentary. If this is the seventh time telling me the story, at least make up a different ending, yeh?

Regular hours! Letting the air out of the shields I stay behind, working in a kinder, gentler place. I’m not going to invest emotion into many of the events I now do. It is time to let all of that go.

I want to build a vision of a church that works for all… What do I want my workplace to be? I want collegiality, companionability, the freedom to think my thoughts on my face rather than guard the game, hunching over the cards. I want to work in a safe place. I want to set a higher tone in my demeanor, comportment, attitude & tenor. I need to forgive foibles – they’ll catch up the the fools committing them soon & undo them.

My Mom was a screamer. She was a repeater. It wore me out as a child & I’m not going back there. I get buried in my work & time is the only resolution for accomplishment. I have no time for repetition when it can be spent on new & valuable solutions.

I’m not as powerful as some, but I do wield power. My boundaries surround me daily. I try not to settle if there’s a truer resolution to problems. I want to do my job to my personal best.

I want to stay alight in Zeal & stay resolute in accomplishment. I consciously let go of drama for the hot potato entertainment it is – immediate & irresponsible. I don’t need to magnify it with awareness.

One of our great tenets is “let go, let God.” I can bring my plaints to the altar but I need practice leaving them there. (“Them” & “there” are fence words, tall & inconvenient, restrictive & misleading if not clearly defined.)

So how may I improve, now knowing what I know?

Soften.

Be happier outwardly with all.

Relax about the non-contributors. They are not my problem.

I must become:

necessary, accomplishing, eager, helpful, forward-thinking, in motion even when in stillness, balanced, rooted, impervious, transparent, impetuous & amusing.

Mellowing out is a great way to level the playing field.

Figure it out & forgive it. Or just forgive.

I live a circumscribed life by choice. Happiness is mostly solitary. I bring my toys to the table & behold, they become treasures!

0

No More Gurus

The time is here when we must find our own truths & what served (serves) others be laid gently down to rest back in their timeline. My recent foray into an event of teaching with a Lakota elder who uses the I-Ching for divination brings forth only that his own tradition offers no grounds for wisdom for him. Sad, I say, when your elements fail you so far.

The weekend is billed as one in which to find your way according to his runway lights, obviously more brilliant than yours might ever be.

However, when his “divination” led him to say he would be working with fear for the entire weekend, I shut down. Why would I ever want to do that? Why would I emphasize or allow reality to a teaching around that which has no pertinence for me? I have “worked” with – worked over – worked around – fear to the point where I trust my own divinity with lifting this from me.

For me, fear means I don’t trust Source. I do. My life is a tribute & reflection of the positivity brought into my life by a solid grip on faith which has towed me through many a swampy locale.

He said four times, he hoped he had not “scared us off.” Nope, sure didn’t do that for me! His “teaching” about overcoming fear while wearing a mask tugged down around his own neck is a sadly “oxymoronic.” He’s bought into a system of fear for its own sake, based neither on logic nor “science” but on a common wield that a cyclone fence will stop a mosquito attack.

For me, this seems an exercise & an emphasis I find of no value. Too many times have I brought fear up close, sniffed its sour smell & rejected it for the open air of discovery & freedom of living without it.

I am in service to this event, this workshop so poorly organized as to offer little wisdom or knowledge but an opportunity for hero worship alone & tossing money to an old man billed as a be-all font of knowledge simply because he is a tribal elder whose understanding – no matter how poorly conveyed – will serve the dabbler from another culture entirely.

Today I’ll be there for the beginning, middle & end since I need to open & close the doors. I’ll bring a novel to read which is wrapped in an excellent tale excellently told & one which I reserved months ago.

I have a solid basis of my own ideas around how I interact with my fear, how I wrestle that particular angel down to refuse it tender at my table.

To you, it may seem as if I’m in denial – but I’m not your guru either, so think what you wish. I’m the one putting my words into the public ear & I speak clearly for all to grasp what I say.

Go forth & cast about in your own wilderness, Mr. Guru. Hope you remember your brown bag lunch!

2

Welcome, It’s Another Year

Time for another wander in my mind? For some while now focused elsewhere, I invite the Muse to revisit & stir the stilled waters. I invite a new year in & escort the old one out, but politely, cuz you never know when a year might come in handy to revisit. Hey, I’ll only save the best to savor from it, though.

The best: driving cross-country after years of in-place life. Finding a companion to sleep on my cane-back chair in T or C. Eating what I will, working when I will, sharing everything but living like a hermit crab with no surface from the shell. Friends I know well, each one a show-&-tell. Being a leader in a small community where the born-there did not welcome “immigrants” but we were the ones pushing movement onward, holding committees. Having a lover for awhile before removing myself from even that since love is not enough if it isn’t what’s expected & the habits of being alone overwhelm it.

Of course there was so much more! But I usher it out because there is so much new & more lively to replace it & I’ve barely touched the surface here yet. There are museums & beaches & new unmet friends & fulfillment of so many other needs. But I nibble at a smorgasbord, yeh?

I keep my split-shift life, awake at odd hours but now I work during these, writing notes I’ve taken on the job, checking emails for to-do lists, keeping in touch with many via cards & letters. I am less alone & reveling in that. I serve others with my work & this feels so worthwhile I tend to snuggle up close to that & experience less outward living online.

But I’ve been & gone before here.

I write of what disturbs me, of what moves me, of crazed-funny things that happen. I am more reserved about it now since I’m living it out loud, not testing it in the sound chamber here. I know there is so much more for me to do, to have, to be & I anticipate it all on this Christmas Day as I watch 2023 loom. My calendars are bought & on the desks getting marked up as I annotate my future.

Thank heaven the tinny Hallmark carols will stop & the simplistic plots morph to other characters who might have some reality-based story, tho my wishes on this may not come true. It would be far worse to have to overhear CNN all day.

Thank heavens I can live more fully as my body reaches a slow-down time & I push harder despite that every day. Thank all I can work out my mini-gym routines & eat fresh salmon & soon visit the beach & haunt the library & look for a place of my own come Spring. I tried the roommate bit & found I’m still not all there with it & I do better closed up in one room alone.

I’ve ordered new pens. I have a plethora of paper left over from overproduction of all kinds. I am still mostly focused on finding the humor in it all & have a March invitation to do stand-up where I work. I’m re-learning web design in a major way. I’m no longer hungry for stuff tho I love yard sales, garage sales, flea markets…but now I collect only some few items if anything at all. A blouse that doesn’t fit, a book I donate right off elsewhere. I’ve learned it’s not about possessions for me & sparsity works best.

I look forward to this new life in different-from-ever-before surroundings.

My split shift ends: time for what my dear friend calls “second sleep.” It’s Christmas Day 2022, 1:51 a.m. o’the clock. The heater blows strangely cool-feeling air & my eyes want to see what dreams live behind them when closed.

Good night, good morning, good God. Amen 2022. The blessings of the New Year attend.

Love,

Carol

0

Stream of Consciousness During Peter Kater Concert

I am as much as any fabled queen

or reigning Monarch

(even a butterfly)

I am moved beyond caring

What others think

If they are tiresome enough to dislike my I Am

I am enough for having touched the hem of the garment.

I only tell my story to one ear at a time

I am worn out of those who only have their lives

Who interrupt, who interfere

My tolerance is narrowed to nothing of their spectrum

I am reaching back

I pull the past up over me

To shake its discovery & settle it about me

Only if I find it saves the now

Which it never will

No longer being in existence

This is how I know I will fade too

When Time catches up to shake me out

In remembrance.

We are all spectacular

A sea of fireworks

A crackling voice

Summoned from inside

The mind of God

The intelligence of divinity

We are sparklers

In a Child’s hands (our Creator)

To be gazed upon in wonder

To share as a signal burning

In brief being, a heart stilling at our approach

The less I declare, the more I bare

Suspended upon a glissando of time

Fallen about me

Stripping me of thought, idea-free

I simply Am

with no identity at all, Divine.

An exaltation of moments

I have no time for those who do not believe

I’m right here, mirroring your movements

With a dance of my own to explore / implore

Seized by that same Time, shaken in its jaws, immortal

These words will walk before me

Forever: I follow

I am no longer a writer

That has passed…

I await the new, the next, the beyond

At one time, I’d have been anxious

There would be no bottom,

I would fall forever without words

But this was never so, I see.

I am as timeless as you

When the stories fling themselves farther than I can find them

Still, I will walk the earth

Until I walk into my wings & fly.

My records are no longer kept

There will be no memory:

I will be erased as winds upon the seas

As the faraway rumble of an unheard poet

A blessing unsaid

Beleaguered by all it has not done

While these look from windows

To skies that do not bend

But rather continue into blue forever

I have not lost so much

The this I thought

I have rather laid it down

And wandered off, wandered on.

I have let the breath I held so long

Breathe out

I am empty & careless

With little to say

And Eternity just ahead.

A lady-in-waiting

So fulfilled there is nothing more to gain       

So emptied out, the carelessness of life gives way

To benefit in only the absurd

In the thought of one more day

Which defies the blank clocks

This is what happens

When focus narrows

One at a time each thought

Melts to the next

The containers become nets

Centers do not hold

Banks have no tender

When earth is in full function,

The next must move along

The darkness must light

Or become what it is & give way.

The hands must flicker, reaching into

That needing to be carried

What to take

To bring

And why

And where.

The finding & the losing are equal,

Tho some will tell you no

the students will push the professors aside

to forge ahead into knowledge

The conservatives here murdered the “professoria”

There:

This thing about change?

It happens in between

Reality & that place between breath.

The packages are all opened

Their box flaps gape,

I have reached the place where I no longer

Know who I am, or why

And little in between moves me

Or can slow me down

Tho I pace the snail,

 & the turtle feels immortal nearby

The holy is no more

Nor ever was

My beliefs, as I said,

Have never been.

The solid ground has become insubstantial

The national and the local

Have merged inharmoniously even so.

My days of small satisfactions

Matter to me

The air I breathe

The food I eat

Are all I need

I move away

Into obscurity

Carrying out

Some mandate unwrit

Askance

Never breached by immortality

Tho believed in by anyone else

I am rendered null & void

The blankest of checks

In wealth unimagined

Bestirred & limitless

Indeed

Across the trackless desert

The cemented city

The brainless sky

My thoughts streak beyond

And below

There are no surfaces anymore

I am brought finally

To standstill

In front of me a mirror

I can no longer pray

Having become prayer entirely

I recognize my limits

But pay no attention

I have gone.

Experience

Ethical

So lost in the ending I missed the beginning entirely

Or was it off-way round?

It never mattered anyway

Since the continuum overtook

The answer & the question both.
in being lost in myself

I lost the self

The point of the exercise

Broke off

The pencil dulled to charcoal

As I realized any act I create

Is only a momentary level of cognition

For an out-of-body experience

I have busied myself so long

I think I matter

And it’s time to let go of all that

To be the final void.

Chord echoing the space

In between the worlds

I surrender

I am no more

I am no

I am

I.

0

“I Always Want A Tomorrow”

tho there will come a day when tomorrow comes no more

and all life goes far away in this three dimensional way

of having hands & feet, a mouth to kiss, hair to comb

a life to help others & put things away

all the ordinary events of the day

spent like coins of the Old Realm

to buy dreams in the New.

Do you think I should have refused?

was there a way to do things otherwise?

I came here to do this: to live as I have

alone & halfway water

belonging nowhere but where I am

and that only scantily.

it was a way to pay it off early

any debt I owed, any fault repaired

so I slipped between the bars & the barriers

to awaken here, my eyes wise with birth

soon clouded with living in so small a space

as a body – enlarged now tho it may be…

I complain no more

I tuck myself into a ball & keep rolling

I move because I can & because there is no other way to live.

And in the unexpected, ordinary morning

I catch myself looking up at a ragged sky

edged & egged in blue with the hoarse clouds ballooning

higher than life itself, the fragile bridges to a firm & total God

the creation in which I am as secure as individuality can make me.

I live now after dying to myself in so many spaces

And who I am is all I am, the wild paths fraught with winds

snatching my words & my blinking my eyes.

this is what counts: the here & now of forever

at which I stare, an idiot believing in sanity

not to be had here or now but only imagined.

With No Time to Consider Her Life

she did so anyway, the thoughts slowing her more

tangling her feet & tugging her ears

those old songs of faraway

no closer than before.

the now crowded about her

spilling into the future, disparaging the past

yet still she clung to what have you, to what might have been

as she clings to this now, knowing nothing else.

“I Was Alone, But That’s Not the Same as Being Lonely“

They spoke of families to visit, of grandchildren & sons,

nieces & daughters, of turkeys waiting to be carved

by the man of the house

while all the women know exactly how to use a knife.

a best-kept secret, that of life & death

where-over the women rule, washing the dead,

touching the wounds with aching fingers

mourning is the same as rejoicing

when death chooses another & calls out its hooting cry.

we women shudder & move aside for we are not the targets

we are only life symbolic & whole, uncommonly bested by life or time or tide

until we say “Basta!” Enough! Until we hold up a right hand to stop the tide no man can ever claim

the secrets all live inside of us & even cutting us open will not these reveal

their seclusion is their elation

their joy is that of all of nature resplendent in the sun.

0

The Space Between

There is a gap between loneliness & solitude. I used to spend a lot of time in the former & now find myself firmly ensconced in the latter. Yet I am only now noticing the difference.

When I was a child, I cherished being alone because the only person to be with was Mom & she was demanding at best… “Did you do the list? Ironing? Vacuuming? Polishing?” All I’d done with the list was find a hiding place I thought she’d never look for it. This didn’t work as Mother had a memory beyond normal & was quite willing to review every chore left undone, every sin committed against hearth & home in that category. And she always started with the very first time I’d missed something & worked into the present. So being alone meant I could do just what I wanted & only that.

It became loneliness when I didn’t want to be the only person in the mirror. This was a position I occupied for many years, an Occupation worthy of the name torture.

There came a time when I began to appreciate (tho did not really recognize) that doing these little jobs earned me personal rewards of satisfaction, of fresh environs & clean clothes. I liked keeping up with the house & the sense of accomplishment it brought.

There are many who cannot handle their own company: they cry their missing persons as tho their tears will draw them back. I sure don’t. When you’re gone from my life, especially if I’m the one who’s chosen to put you out of bounds, you’re gone. I say goodbye, erase the contact information anywhere it occurs & pay it no more mind.

Um, this is probably not normal. But I’ve never laid claims to that term personally. I seldom look back & if I do, it is to find something I left behind, not because I’m into remaking the contact.

Others lament relationships gone dry, squandered money & the gaps in life they perceive from these. I move ahead, working around any holes in the emotional landscape until I fill them in. I’m more likely to miss some activity done together than the person I did it with.

There has always been a set-aside for this in me: I don’t feel it should be this easy. But it is. I don’t linger in it, I don’t doubt myself anymore for being the way I am.

I figure I’ve achieved two goals set long ago in my life: nothing left to lose & nothing left to prove. This provides stress relief immeasurable! If I haven’t proven my worth, probably never will. If I have lost because of an encounter, not much I say or do in that newer reality will resolve or bind it back.

I know others feel I’m faking this, but, no, it is real enough. I’ll hang a hat on it & await tomorrow in peace & comfort. I figure I’m made this way, for better or worse, so I may as well get on with life in the new paradigm thus created.

I claim my power & presence in this way. I don’t have to tell my stories anymore – if I don’t care for others’, how much less will they care for mine? I keep the funny ones only & repeat them for best effect.

Could this mean a constant revamping of selfhood? That’s one result of being thus. So many spend life with a crick in their neck from looking behind. I’ve always felt I cannot get ahead gazing over my shoulder.

Less than perfect I stand. Happy in this condition I walk forward. Blessed to the uttermost, I am.

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The Words Themselves, Au Naturel

Got a threesome that’s awesome & just needed someone to write them, I think, somehow they chose me for the word juggle. I read these with fish-lips, open & moist. Where? Who? So raw a fork would not stand up in them. 

It’s hot again. Back in my bathing suit flower coverup with the fan white noising. 

This morning the blog entry caught me by the shoulder & spun me around tho I told it I didn’t have time for this, I had to be out & away soon & still with a shower to take & a forelock to tug to Powers but it pushed me back down & I wrote, putting on this song to write by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wKzyIN1yk     Seems it needed a specific sound track. I still made it in time to unlock the door correctly & put up the coffee. 

Tonight I wrote the following – another lashing with the lonesome whip but again, just the words climbing up & oozing out from some deep well I thought covered, locked down, inaccessible. No longer needed as a proof of life. So I lay no claim to these: they are kitewords pushing past everything else to fly & I have found the strings in my hands. 

Something is breaking loose here, I run about picking up pieces with no way of putting anything together. 

It gets no better… 

I DIDN’T KNOW

I would live my life alone

Becoming existential

Hovering on non-existent

How could I

Why would I?

How do I not pass a razor over my wrists

Being so?

Were I truly alive

I might be made of memories,

I might have a love or, God be praised!, a lover

I might have been a woman someone could take by the hand

To an altar or a bedroom

To be made holy.

I am not stupid

These words will say it so.

I am too wise over time & experience.

But I sit in the middle of a road

Going both ways

To wonder at direction.

I did not know life could be this way

Or that mine would.

That my hands would be the only caress

Of time over me, that

My words would be my mirror

My reflection growing old with me

Mapping new arcs, new trails to play.

I did not know life could become a lump in the throat

A deceased cat, wounds that never heal

I would not have laid good money across the table

For a deal so rank as this.

For the numinous moments

I have paid. For the wonder of miracles

Experienced on beaches or in backyards

For love dancing always beyond reach

Always an admiration with the space in between

An uncrossable moat, an inaccessible moment

Where someone would love me in return.

Ah yes, I know about God & angels & I have

Talked with the elementals who grew roots on cuttings

For me, on plants I gave away to accommodate

That which walked alive around my life.

This has been the place where I’ve learned independence

From all else, over all else, above all.

This is the location I have reached

Where the familiar & the strange

Suffer each other in a silence broad & unbroken.

Here, of the here & now, this place

Where a heart breaks once again, but there is no blood

Only a sound unuttered.

The Gift Refused

Still trembles, being laid down

Walked away from.

Still holds its own elbows

Twice broken & crooked.

Weak with incomplete repairs

For some wholeness is never achieved.

The trick is to make it not matter

To find that sweet place where it no longer matters:

This imperfection, where a cup never reaches the lips

Held in that hand, where a blessing given from it

Is still whole, still love, from which light

May emanate, inexorable.

And of course, it does

Of course, this hand passes through the walls

I have built with it, the crooked holds with just

A rhyme of leaking.

I have grown into my imperfections,

My incompletions.

I have lost the idea of flawlessness

I think I tripped over it in darkness, an absence of light.

I did not turn it off myself,

Nor did I protest its dimming-out.

It does not matter to no longer be strong

To not care when my sins turn inside out & show to all

Faint, devoid of grace.

I have none of this & all of that & still am clean

As my God made me.

FAME WALKS AWAY

Fading like wallpaper in the sun

Dim & unremembered; it never was

Let alone did it crowd my doors

No paparazzi smoke outside the house

Awaiting my emergence

They are long away on wings of molten fame

Where everything happens to anything

Just like they were told it would.

It’s okay, I’m still friendly

I haven’t bitten any hands offering me food

Nor snarled at those who forget & forgive

With whom I’d be more comfortable should they now.

The old feelings do not abate

Nor fade

They just distance.

But when brought ‘round again

Show up my imitation absolution

For what it is: I am still that

Creature of sin & imperfect reparation

Bewildered separation

Losing light as if it never was.

And that’s okay, after all.

This was never supposed to be the ultimate 24/7

But it was good as it gets

Up to here & that will return.

The ineffable joy of my being

Will refill on the next high tide

At some point, I will no longer notice

What never was.

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