Month December 2018

December Afternoons – A Myriad of Poems

cborsello 1 Comment

Ok readers, please excuse the spacing – WordPress has added a new format which I clicked on. O Lord! It’s making a mess of my poems. First, it won’t allow me to keep lines together, then it removes spacing between words & within punctuation marks. So errors are NOT mine! I am in correspondence with them about this.  ALSO, I am happy as a happy clam, so do not assume that I’m in a cell of depression just b/c some of the poems are sad. OK? Thanks! Happiest of clam holidays to you all!

My heart is lost

Wandering

A balloon with no string

Nor a wrist to tie it to.

Visiting landscapes I have not seen in years.

We perambulate & each horizon brings new to the old

A childhood at the beach

Winter in all weathers

Dunes blown & tracked with triple-toe prints of gulls

Landed & windblown, feathers flashing wrong-way-out

And they turn to face the whirling squall, stately as small can be.

I perceive old enemies waiting behind boardwalk stanchions

It is Christmas Eve & I am on the shore

Of my mind

Watching my heart lift away across the sea.

—————-

I am not alone tho all around me except me is invisible.

I am the child of a universe

So bright with delight

So filled with gifts & laughter

It sparkles with my blessing

Mirrored back to me

I slip the ties of dreams

For open fields swimming in sunlight

I lie down next to you in holy anticipation

Of your whispers & feathering my hair

Oh God, your hands…

Repeat your tattoo on me, my love

Charge me with ecstasy; you know just what to do

And if you do not, I am not shy to direct you

Sweet carnal Angel to lift me, dancing,

On your fingers.

Lips & lives meet, late & in the land of lost, lonely dreams

We have waited long for this:

I cannot think but that time prepared us so well

That when we touch, all the connections of years

Fall away until there is only us two

In all the stars.

Your Jupiter, my Venus

We are ruled by benevolence smacking

Its lips in cosmic delight we have met

Whispering behind hands now joining

As our passion sparks theirs

As our coupling moves planets

From their accorded realms.

—————

I know. I’m brilliant.

But it’s because I shine with your regard…

This is not me…I am bitten with a dratted dream

A swatted swing… I am cupped in your hands

 Like a kitten, purring, yawning pointed kitten teeth

I am caught like a kite in the thorn tree

Wanting the pain of your missing touch turned into longing

Into pleasure.

O Lord! I am a selfish woman.

Yet these are not my tears, this is not my longing,

This is the whole world banging through my door

Barging into my kitchen,

Raiding my drawers for secrets.

I am a song at the edge of your lips

Sung with sweet longing, an echo of notes carried

On chill December nights

Promising Christmas.

——————-

Caught in the open without you here

I am bared to elements hard to fathom

My coat, my scarf, my gloves all indoors

My Uggs upstairs in the back closet

I am made of pearling snow

Frozen in posture – my arms reached out

For you, for love, for all that could be

Were all that is now, not all there is.

But I am gonna survive this; I’m a woman

Made of steel standing in front of the

Foaming Forge.

I close my eyes & walk on.

————–

There are seasons when life is different to bear

There are times when I live only by wits & what

Little wisdom I can rustle together, one

Hand on the recipe book of life

The other holding a spoon.

Salt & pepper on the table

Frypan heating on the stove

I am starving in the land of plenty.

Will you not find me tempting?

Will you put me back on the shelf?

No. I see your hunger; sense the rumbling

In your heart.

Come, devour me. I breathe my love

Into your mouth, over your body.

I am no sugar confection, pinkly spun

Atop a cake.

I am a force of nature

As you have never tasted

A flavor created just for you.

Dig in!

—————-

Wait, I hear another poem coming on

Not the train in the tunnel

But whispering up on fox-feet

Almost invisible, an intransitive verb

At the tip of a fricative…

Push me around again, world

& you’ll know I’m here

I’m not one to sit down

If there’s a performance to be held

I’m up in front of the mic

Capturing hearts

Not asleep at any wheels

Turned toward me.

——————

I want to pour myself over you

Like syrup on pancakes

Finding all the cracks & crevices

I want you sticky with my love

Fingers & face

I want to push you around the bed,

Chase you to the headboard

Tickle your toes with mine…

See? There it is!

I want you smiling!

—————-

A life divided by books I have & have not read.

Music I’ve listened to & that I never shall.

A love I can call my own & that poor excuse for it which I now have.

There are too many truths to understand anymore

Far too many opinions to be shared

When all I crave is silence &

Seagulls overhead.

I want an easy touch

Becoming more familiar

A burnishing here,

A tiny kiss there

The penetration of each other we allow.

I’ve seen it already:

The divisions in my life

Before & after  you.

—————

On Learning My Grandson Writes Poems

“They’re quite good,” says my daughter

I sense the surprise in her voice & hear her smile

This one little gene pops out…piping a shrill note

I may yet live beyond my days as a Babushka!

————————-

The Washing Machine of Emotions/

The Wishing Machine of Time

Banged about by both,

I surface for a breath

Once more gone under

Water overhead

While I orient to air

And swim.

These omniscient waters

Cold & warm by turn

Bathing beaches arced by rainbows

These impertinent frothing bubbles

Tickling up my body

No one save me now

Caught in-between these elements

It’s only a life I lack.

——————

True North?

Is it true the man finds the woman he loves?

I read this long ago…in some dusty book

Some outlived tome.

I could  not know how it would end

The days I imperiously marched thru the door to Love

Took it by the ears, pulled it down atop me.

In this lies my forgiveness.

If men find love

Why are women so charged

When they lose it?

Can’t these yearnings

Thick enough for spoons

Be fed to hungers

Wide-mouthed with tomorrow?

——————–

The Tan Egg in a Dozen of Brown

Why are eggs sold by the dozen?

Potatoes by the sack?

Why so many names of measure

Ounce & pound & by the rack?

I eat potatoes paid tomorrow

With a fork earned yesterday

In a world turned pay-to-play

Down a street that’s marked One Way

All the signposts of this lifetime

On the black & yellow row

Where the colors cannot go

In the space I wish to know.

—————-

What Child Is This?

Peering from atop my heart this Christmas –

Why do her hands tremble on the rim; tears on her lashes?

What is she seeing from her pulsing landscape?

Rich with copper-smells & red…

She is an orphan of all its storms

I scarce reach my hand to her

What story do I have except our own?

There! She clambers out & looks at me

“I have a story now,” she begins, “Would you listen?”

She takes my hand, inviting my head to her lap

She combs my hair with tiny fingers.

“I started in darkness with only stars to light my way,

Before the world had air & light.

I danced when you thought of me – I got here first,

Remember?

I called the snow

And showed you how to bake bread

I howled for you like the wolf

So you would find me

Yet you needn’t be afraid to be we.

I kept all our moments safe

Full of presents & love, porkchops & beans,

There’s a Brother in here with me & a Sister

One of Daddy’s laughs,

One of Mother’s frowns.

Plus all the time you ever lost

With Christmas Eve & Christmas Passed

There’s a bunch of relationships knocked about like tenpins

Each one with a face.

Believe me, I’ve looked ’round hard

There are no monsters here.

It’s safe for us both.

Now, maybe you would like to play?”

———————-

The songs went through me

Like an express through the station

Stopping for no one,

Stirring up leaves so sere & dry

They snowflaked down.

I have no words for me anymore

Just a pen whispering in a heart, taking notes,

The pen so sure, the heart so not.

I should have kept on singing, even without a voice,

I should have counted all the gathered shells I

Envisioned in glass bowls on wooden tables.

Instead, I have collected my sins

Numberless & flickering, like lights on a tall tree

A rosary of pain I now ignore: old sins don’t count

Only the fresh ones, yeh?

Life is emollient

Ebullient

Opportunistic

Capable of living itself

Without interference from the outside.

I have no extant record

Tho I’ve been dragged to the copshop now & again

I’ve smoked stolen cigarettes

Wished others harm

I’ve muddied incandescence

More than once…

I’ve watched the light change so many times

Skirting the liminal edges rising

Tattered, tattooed, footsore & scaly

Yet the sun rises on me with incoherent joy

Burning me clear; I rise, translucent

Open beaming wings to fly.

Tiny Blessings

cborsello 2 Comments

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

cborsello 1 Comment

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.