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.