LETTER TO A PRISONER OF WAR

I want to visit a prisoner of a relationship of war

A victim & perpetrator in a crime of passion

For which he suffers incarceration:

A young man who never integrated his freedom

Who took blame by the elbow & made it a confidant

So now he lives with it (if his sentence truths out)

For ten years more.

Who made his prison?

Does he know he has the tools to escape?

Being a handyman, he knows tools…

Oh, he tried. I saw him trying. I heard his “no”

Echoing in her matrix of sensuous “yes!”

Who took his body on that wild

Nightmare of a ride through rage & pain

Of hurt & ill-wishing

Of all the darkness of a 2 a.m. vendetta?

What occupied his mind as he ran

From the scene

Shirtless, reeling with fever?

Did he try to think himself back to innocence

To that hour before vengeance overtook his mind

Overpowering his soul?

How could he know in that moment of lighting

The match he used for the pleasure of tobacco

To a world of merciless man-made justice?

Who is to say he should not pay, this youth

Made of abusive put downs & unmanned

By his own son’s cautious return into his life?

He, who will know little now of light

Bored beyond numb, attacked on all sides

Caught in unending scream, this

Boy-man snared by untrue love

By masquerade of truth

By the Jezebel of his own choosing?

And what of she … but I cannot admit her yet

Only knowing part of her soul squeals as only a

Trapped woman can.

I have no mercy upon her now, no cooling

Forgiveness for her unending miserliness

In wishing him such as he suffered at her hands.

I give this to Mercy with no words of intercession,

Only the mute knowledge of a mother

Wanting only to spare this son

His punishment.

I give this now, knowing full well the law will

Extract many pounds of flesh

Until it reaches bones & gnaws these to salt.

All for an “I’ll show her!”

He’s foresworn an entire lifetime

He might have spent in living

Had he spent a moment in thought.

I cannot end this here

Yet there are no more words to say.

Carol (for Brandon) 9/20/23

September 20, 2023 4

The Recovering Psychedelic

Just when I thought events could not become more tangled at work – which is my main proving ground at this time of my life – they rewrap the Maypole with a swoop. After all, I did not think I’d be working at this age. Just days shy of the third-quarter-century mark, I thought I’d be reclining with a large-print book in a hammock, sipping chilled lemonade. I seem to be left with a bowl of lemons instead.

So much of the story I was told is so patently untrue! No wonder I reject nonfiction, favoring the flavors of myth. The tenets of truth have snaked back upon themselves. I am looped in lost causes: the world is not what it was meant to be & nothing like I am supposed to be convinced it is. At this time, I should be well-marinated in fear of all kinds. In truth, I’ve adopted a kind of “Well, it is enough to be what it is.” I swing the spotlight of focus to fall upon the study of love instead.

But love’s a hard sell today. Love’s the used car salesman with the toothy smile, the circus barker shouting wonders to be seen just inside this tent right here, Little Lady, the priest slicing a tomahawk hand to separate body & soul, ostensibly in blessing. Love, like truth, has become unrecognizable except in parody & mushy sentiment. Yes, my eyes still prick with tears at photos of kittens. But love is more the tears in reaction when the sun rises over an edge to the East, huge, quivering, brilliant, scintillant. One sunrise is so much more than my entire life will ever be, yeh?

I do not know if these words will capture fame, but they have encompassed my fate. I wonder who understands them. I get few comments & faint praise. Neither of these decides me in any other direction other than to continue on with them. I am building my own structure in my own time with my own hands, my own materials. The wind whistles through; pages flip & tear; bytes devour meaning.

I have come to understand there is no insurance policy for Stupid, no shield for accusations of others telling me I’m less than I am. I understand their need perhaps better than many when I get their rightness bears them up more strongly than mine lifts me. But I have withered from a shining mare on the hillside, satin & thin-skinned, to a burro (or an ass) with a wrinkled muzzle sprouting strong black hairs.

I’ve done my share of walking in circles. I’ve borne the curses of others & found self unresentful, if stung. I am quick to educate but students do not always care for the diploma I confer.

In the long run, my truth means more to me than that of others. Is this not the way it is supposed to be? I have changed from inattention, unconcern, bullish insistence & sheer perversity to a half-paid attention with overtones of belief bobbing about. I know my truth; it’s only yours I doubtfully accept.

A friend likened me recently to a dragon & I have one as my spirit totem, so this is not a totally fabricated tale. Dragons are aloof, she said – I thought it was sheer neglect of humans. I don’t know anyone like me & I hardly “know myself” in the classical sense of the admonition.

For me, it has not been about that although it’s bruited as the Meaning of Life. Mine is the role of observer, not the participant, in most encounters. If these point up where others “went wrong,” this is my marvel, not my blame, my preference, not my alignment. Because in the end of my time, when I roll out of that swaddling cloth & tip the lemons to the ground, I will find myself at a beginning once more.

Let me in, God, I will say. Could You just let me in?

September 20, 2023 0

Alignment

What does it mean to have no dreams? That blog before this one, where I made a wish? This is some years later in the writing…

I took a class recently “Aligning Inner Self.” Now, I am quite snobbish about taking classes. I teach them, right? I tried not to be judgmental. I went with an attitude of learning & so I did. I learned about balance, specifically mine.

Teacher relied heavily on movie analogies. “Picture this like the scene from that.” One of the exercises was to express a desire: a wish in fact. It was to discern a future where we wished our way in. What was for gain was to ping the 100% Happiness Button. He had us picture it in the form of a hologram held in one hand. I did not even cup my palm as the others did. I realized there was nothing in that moment, nothing in my life, I would change in order to have one thing else. I am at a point of perfect balance. How often this might happen is rivaled only by the number of times it is realized. My tiny hologram Princess Leia (his analogy, not mine) did not need to materialize.

When he asked what we had out-pictured, I said “I pass” & inclined my head to the next student. Later – and I knew he would do this – he returned to the topic, smiling at me as he asked was there anything around my not wanting to share? I felt defensive admitting I had no wish. After a breath, I said, “Well, nothing came into my mind as you asked that, so I had to honor that nothing.” He smiled harder, clasped his hands together in a Namasté. He inclined his head to me. I blinked. He was able to allow a student to be his teacher in this moment.

Later, I would worry that non-wish like a seed, trying to get it caught between two teeth so I could chew it up. I thought about how I could have seen a freshly-authored mile of books in front of me – or even just the next one – or being a celebrated author, renowned in several languages. I could have wished to be slim, but I would lose too much of myself.

These did not occur to me then. Then nothing stirred the well I was gazing into.

And since I’m getting pathological about sharing secrets (tho not with you, Dear Reader), I may not have shared whatever wish mounted the sub-basement stairs to peer into a ready-made Reality. I would have pinned it in a steely gaze, told it “Wait! Who are you?” Held up a hand to stop it… while my face said, “no dreams neded here, move along.”

I had occasion to go through a period recently of intense dislike of myself. It had no overt reason I could think … just was. I honored that.

It seems to have spun back onto itself & the space it left has filled with comfort.

This is all I need right now: you reading this blog, me writing it. If I have to meet the world reader by reader, I am ready to write.

Love, Carol

August 22, 2023 0

Every Hope

“AND EVERY HOPE IS WORTH SAVING” TSO: The Lost Child

“There is a child that’s part of my soul.” TSO; The Lost Child

“Oh, to be so old & have your life just begin” TSO: The Lost Child

It Begins! TSO: The Lost Child

I could not live well without hope. I live for it, within it, around it & for it – all at once. I perceive the many levels on which life occurs, understanding I am not the highest nor the lowest. I am life expressing itself as only I can: an individual of worth & knowledge unduplicated in all the Youniverse.

The words “without hope” are not in my lexicon. I love to think every hope is indeed worth saving, and that somewhere in time/space they are. Maybe this is what St. Peter records, what the Akashic Records store, rather than the salt & ash of our fevered thoughts.

We must live as though nothing else matters. Our reasons for being surround us – possessions, ideas, inner urgings & outward expressions equally weighing in. Lately I see the phrase “where we go one, we go all” as a truism urging me to my best expression. Anything less would be inadequate to the privilege of individuated breath which I am in the process of becoming.

If anyone had told me as a child, I would grow up into the person I now claim to be, I may have rolled my big brown eyes & formed the mudra to “avert evil” with my right hand. I was incapable of assimilating the hope of a better life. Indeed, for years in between the good occurred the experiences which now allow me to appreciate my level of homeostasis with grace & less yearning than ever before.

My biggest wish now is to find someone with whom to finish out this life. I know this, too, shall be granted. My inner child is at play in the fields of Love; she will accomplish all she has set out to do in the face of her wishes made upon stars which have moved out into a more grandiose space afar.

Every day I see with new eyes. Nor is all I see in its ideal space. Hope is the slippery grace allowing it to achieve this…an effort worth expending, an energy pursuing.

Trying to recall when I wrote this. I would say 2019, fresh from Samurai Roads by a year. Cb

August 21, 2023 0

LOTR

Lord of the Rings

I sat at the table in the library for some while before really taking in what was in front of me: a shrine to Lord of the Rings – complete with a fluffy Smaug. I gazed into the glass & was transported to the first time I was given The Hobbit. My high school boyfriend was going to Vietnam. In full uniform, head shaved & sheared, trim, muscular. We faced off in the bus terminal as he said something like, “You’ll enjoy this, I think.” But I don’t really remember his words.

He handed me off to a book. He asked me not to write as he wanted a clear break from, what? Childhood? Atlantic City? High School? His life so far? No matter. I took the book & turned away, walking through the bus terminal to my own departure point.

The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien. A series written to keep sons alive in war, awaiting the next chapter. I skirted the cliffhanger delays by reading every other one, thus following the tale for each character clearly. I was good for little else that season, save Frodo & Samwise, Gandalf & the Nine. I took on the series as substitute for my young man. I was eighteen, just finishing high school & headed to yet more education at St. Joseph’s School of Nursing in Patterson, NJ. It took four buses to get there from the beach. And although I was always good in school, at studies, I did not do well there; was walked to the door by Nurse Carlett in December & told to go home. I was unfit to be a nurse. It was a singular failure to one who had not failed scholarship before.

I gazed at the library display, close to sixty years past my introduction to the topic. I had not read a book as encompassing as this in my early life: wizards, yes, but not balrogs & caves & dwarves & elvenfolk. Not big-footed hobbits & rings of power, an all-seeing Eye over fiery lands. I had no experience of characters nor presences such as these. My world snapped open. I would come to read the entire series three more times in my life: once aloud, creating all the voices. “What has it got in its pocketssss?”

On the other side of the world, war has always raged. My brother was sacrificed to the politicians by its gods. Names trickled back into town with shakes of heads, the young men I had sat next to in English & Religion, stiff in starched collars, stuffed into suit jackets now wrapped in flags for burial.

And for what? Did we stop the flow of Communism? Did we do other than tear apart a watery country, laying waste to it with chemical fire & the blood of brothers? Did we dim the drama of war to a backdrop of peace? We reaped the whirlwind we spread as yet another teardown of culture & peacenik wishes. My generation fled to Canada or to cannabis to escape. After a lifetime of Gospel & Commandments, thou shalt not kill, we were handed unreliable weaponry & told to go forth & murder or die ourselves, for a questionable cause which was not ours, nor worthy.

The War Machine ground through an America in destruction & woe. I heard nothing from that handsome young man until fifty years later when I though to take to social media to find him & I did: on a ranch in Montana, working with recovering soldiers & young men stripped of hope & sometimes limbs. The world tip-tilted & estranged itself from all that came before. And I?

I held jobs, husbands, a baby, friends, thoughts, words…

I still write, as I did then. I am victim & victor as are we all in emerging from war. I lost family & friends to Agent Orange sprayed so evenly over our troops too. The phrase, “Kill ‘em all & let God sort it out!” hummed a backdrop to music based on darkness.

There was a part of me that boarded the ships to the Gray Lands where only those who clung to the past could go. There was another part that moved in & out of marriage & found parenthood the least of its desires. There were dreams squeezed for the love they contained for that’s where love has always lived for me.

I left the last page unread for I did not want the books to end.

There were more wars, more “operations” fated to bring no healing home.

I cannot say still, what I want in life, except to make others laugh. I have shied from love, finding it a deceit & a disappointment of promises. I have outdone betrayal & lied to myself & others heartily in good cheer. I am tired of all of this, wanting only an affectionate cat to share my life. But this is another notch on the long stick stirring my future. My splintered life has held me to the long way back to a childhood of salt water & still bays where I paddled on my boyfriend’s surfboard before he opened a way out for us both. He took to sea while I found my land legs & learned to never look back.

August 13, 2023 1

Healing Language Itself

Words need to be instantaneous as thought to be most effective. They insinuate themselves – one word can start someone off on their own [infinite] journey. There is a need for spiritually healing words, nouns, modifiers, verbs, etc.

These were where the first loopholes were made. Language. Recall the difficulty of “un-seeing” or “un-saying” something. What about “un-hearing?” What words whispered into your various systemic extremities, traveling via the spiritual meridians, even energetically? What magnetized us to point this way? (We need to teach protecting ourselves as well as promoting ourselves. But that’s a class for a later school…)

Language itself needs to be rehabilitated.

Some meanings need to be relegated as unnecessary, in that cyclical way that language has of hanging out for the next sound bite. Overall, a return to meaningfulness that makes sense might streamline some of the hyperbole.

In our eager push to popularity, we use “programmisms” – sayings by clever TV characters so out there we love ‘em. I can’t give you many examples, but maybe a memory? How many jingles could my generation tap right into & singalong tho we haven’t used Ipana in over fifty years? That’s programming, and we never even knew it.

The words have to once again be made over into a spiritual cast as we learn their power on psyche & the connections to self-mastery that we might reclaim & proclaim ours. Words serve as our way to assert our being in the world & practicing that assertion whether timely or not. Words are magical, that’s why spelling is so important.

Refinement & awareness redirect language – sorely needed right now! The good things seem so clichéd while evil seems so creative. As the balance shifts, we know this happens because the language has changed. My mission & focus is to refine the written word to uphold us every one.

We could not knowany of this at one time. My lack of clear childhood memories is likely because I paid absolutely no attention to any other reality than the one I lived on & it rarely touched mainstream. School would ground me with the idea of learning. Once I started reading, I was Lazarus to be brought from the tomb every time I was called. I hardly knew to come in out of the rain & my Guides are still in angelic rehab from tending to me. Books were my lifelong Saving Grace & words the song my being is still singing.

I always identified deeply with words. I was a good speller, I could write a Composition at the drop of a rosary bead & I knew lots of words.

I remain the quintessential nerd from an era when the word didn’t even exist.

With kind eyes,

Carol

July 28, 2023 0

July Crisps Up

This day begins!

Tho I don’t feel that exclamation point – I don’t feel like much other than sitting still with this computer on my lap, typing my thoughts.

I am enamored with beginnings, always loved ’em. I am reading a novel & the hero has just related how he came to be where he stood: in front of the Elf-King & Queen, in their Hall of Meeting. The line catching me is, “the act of confession left him both weightless, and ready for whatever came next.” That’s how I feel this morning: mentally weightless & ready for that which will come next.

I have not had other than a Saturday off for eight months. There have been tasks & work every day except Saturday, & that day I do my own tasks & chores. I have claimed a day like a prize, a blue-ribbon-Monday. I hold it aloft like the gift it is for me: a space where nothing is owed, claimed, rewound or expected. This day will nourish me for the next eight months … I love what I do & claim much sustenance from that. A change is always a time to regroup & refigure, replenish, re-form & re-place.

I have gone from good wife to divorcée times three. I have lived on the beach & in mountains. I have traveled far in miles both mental & physical. I am arrived here, now, to this place where “whatever comes next” may take place.

I am no longer a healer tho I considered myself one for years & greatly prided on those rising from my massage table refreshed & relaxed. I am a fortunate individual with the ability for deep thought & thoughtful leadership. These only seem secondary to the simply practical tasks I accomplish. They take the fore by necessity & because this is who I am. But I no longer wade into battle flourishing a sword. I suggest & I prod. I push & I allow. And when it is time, I establish my way whether it agrees with others or not. Most of the time, however, I simply choose what will work for me & slip that into the mix.

I don’t rail against fate or circumstance, an automatic lightener. I do what I can & allow another breath to let me go where I feel I need to be. Others can shake heads at my behaviors. Once I’ve taken action, I don’t look back. Why would I? I will deal with consequences of others’ reactions soon enough. Might as well look forward & walk on.

I had so many ideas when I was young & they lasted long enough to shape my life into that which it is. It is never too far away, this Change. It is a constant current in all I do, all I produce, all I am. It is a ready flavor & a faraway perfume of enticement. I ride the suspense of its being with no expectations. I wait for endings without rushing in to make the save. I owe & I go for paying debts is important. I offer & am both advantaged & taken advantage of in the act.

I know what it is like to carry the baby both internally & externally. Now I lay it all down & I wait.

The world could go either way: its ascent or descent is not mine to predict nor to perhaps even share. I have no strong feelings over staying or going. Heaven may claim me at any time, leaving a dog-eared ticket with the last number scratched off.

I may be the occasional thought passing over someone’s mind, “I knew Carol, she was so ______.” Whatever fills in the blank will be of no import to the Carol-Now.

I slept last night for eleven hours. I feel the need to sleep again. ,

Since November, Saturday, Next, Idea, Healer, Chore-meister, Member, Independent, Master, Minister, Memory.

July 3, 2023 0

THE LIBRARY

AT HOME WITH FRIENDS

Another high wire week with a stint in the clown car

And a time-out with the elephants

Which sounds ‘wowsa’ til you get to the smell.

Sitting in the Betty L. Johnson Library listening to a soft

Southern accent explain:

By turns, placatory: scolding, expressive

In counterpoint to the piping voices of response

Pointing chick-beaks to the parent of the nest

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, there’s nothing else after all,

Nothing to learn after you’ve met me!

Sitting in the library where I just bought three books

Me, who has not bought a book in years

Settling in enough to find my own, needing bookends

But buying books instead: Settling in to

A comfy chair named Henry

And reading, legs slung over one arm.

But I digress: outside, a cautious rain, a tin roof

A subtle drumming

Uneven, small, tentative in full sun.

I sit: my bare feet on the table, lost in laptop dreams.

IN SEARCH OF WORDS

I wander … I follow that verbal slipstream

Where to tell a story is to worship

To find the perfect verb equal to world peace.

Outside cars cross bridges,

A live oak grows sidewise, disdaining the sky

For embracing the field

Roots wrap the trunk

The corrugated bark resembles feathers

Resembles shapes, its cut-limb nodes

Now familiar scars – the human’s warning:

Don’t grow this way.

Twisted roots of something once alive

On its bark, stark & twined, ropy

& looped – cautious in downgrowth

As it never was in up.

A red kiosk in the distance, a cluster of

Yellow signs facing it

A color war

Who will see which first?

BY A WINDOW, REFLECTING

The computer says “text predictions off”

That’s good: I don’t want any AI telling me what to say!

Or how to say it unless I ask for help.

At home in the familiar

The rows of known names comforting

In midst of so many left to read.

Whole shelves with one name as author,

Storytellers with so many stories

Unrestricted by things like

Not being able to make up endings.

This is my Saturday naptime, when I am usually

Curling into the cool fan, a secondary purpose

Served by its hum. But I am at the library

So I settle for a string of yawns & keep typing.

THE FENCE IN THE YARD

Is a Dispute Scene:

The neighbors say ‘t’was the hurricane did your fence’

The landlord says ‘not my fence now’

A Solomonic twist

To what remains a tree unrolled to planks

Torn from bonded comfort

Shrugged into its neighbor,

To swan back in the sun,

A fall interrupted,

Gravity held in abeyance.

ONLY A WRITER

Would hold so still for the mosquitoes while

The words trip over themselves onto the keyboard

While … while words settle on my skin with longer legs

And hungrier proboscis.

Ah well, I’ll have itching crème

To go with my poem.

For me, this is still an exotic

This lush state, green as Ireland gone tropic

Never have I seen such growth

I need this energy all around

I love to drive by trees

Caught in motion … I know as I move along

They change position

I have caught them midway.

A branch at an impossible angle

Looking like an arm upraised for balance.

The live oaks are a gymnasium of possible

Were I a climber of even small chancing.

Yet firmly rooted, I remain. Eating that which will weigh

Me in even more.

My climbing boots are stashed. I need to break out the wings.

June 27, 2023 0

FOR MY MOTHER’S DAY

June 2023 / preceded by May

(I want to read these aloud at my Mother’s grave one day.)

In fits & starts, my life

Buoys along, a balloon tied with a red ribbon.

Called to play, buffed & buffeted by Life

Glittering a starlit reflection.

I gather words like shells lining tidelines

Bending & bagging the world

Finding that sandy windowsill

To climb across, where mortal symmetry

Is of no matter, where Immortality sits;

An open lap to escape into

and be held.

THREE PENS & NO WORDS: A TIME & NO CLOCKS

What to say to Mom after twenty years apart?

She 20 years under, me 20 years more above…

I’m her age when she crossed over –

I recognize her disinterest now as simple survival.

Her feet hurt, her teeth would not chew…

Her pointer finger showed right.

I see now, when I left for home after a visit,

She would go to walk on the beach.

Letting go all I’d spoken, as I now do with others.

It’s not disinterest: it’s simply survival.

An era of silence, her life by the sea

Now me.

FOR ALL MY WORDS & WORLDS

For all the gates I’ve closed behind me,

For time & heartbeats to synchronize

I wait, being halted.

Those strong threads to life now fray

So much to do, yet one day

I’ll put my feet on an imaginary floor

To walk away

I’ll set down knife & fork,

Sit the coffee on the table

Shucking this mortal coil for light & air –

I’ll dust my hands of ink & paper

Lose my keys forever…

Hold no more hands

Answer no more questions

I’ll seek the heaven promised by the nuns.

When reality takes hold, I’ll rip off

This skin-tight cloak

My 12 ounces of soul will rise.

I live life to die, an oxymoron at the last.

I DON’T MIND ANYMORE

That before age & I chose to struggle,

Life was good days & bad

But I walked through even

When my shoes did not fit.

I laughed from my heart

Drank coffee for my soul

Wrote as tho one possessed

By statutes of limitation.

That which I become I already am:

Immortal, unbroken.

I’ll waken from this dream

To the familiar of forever.

I’ve paced off the years learning love

To turn & find Truth is all there is.

I’ll sit on a hard chair, waiting for

A door to open, then dash on through

Going Home!

I HAVE TWO RANDOM MEMORIES MY MOTHER SAID:

It was hard to keep your skirt down

Climbing into a rumble seat

And the other thing I can’t remember.

6/20/2023

Carol borsello

June 27, 2023 0

Mortality has its own pace & runs when we expect it to creep, creeps when we wish it would overtake & immortalize us in release. It begins early & continues late, we yearn for time to sleep & energy to avoid that. And life intrudes, interrupts, interferes with just every single thing we set out to do.

I am so good at blaming myself. Guilt is rarely comfortable & always unnecessary. I’m not a malicious person but I am territorial & almost scary in that. I have so much to be grateful about, yet find fault with myself for finding fault with others, especially when I don’t even know why.

Oh, I know all the answers to why but each cancels the other out. None of this world is my fault, but I made the construct. I live in my life as though it is mine, with no reality of a substantial nature. Each cell has its own intelligence & brain: I get involved in the discussion to rarely discover a conclusion.

I don’t even believe myself most of the time. I am not who I should be, but who I am. Scary thought, that. I am moving once again to another place with no assurance I will actually live there. Truly stepping into the unknown, with my bundle of sticks tied on my back in case I need fire.

Strength I pray for. Health I cherish. Love frightens me as I’ll likely not meet its conditions. I haven’t made it before but try I must & love isn’t easy but the simple way is not appealing if I can complicate, concatenate, camouflage the issues. Reality dreams a dream I do not share yet & my circumstances hold me under, yearning to burst free.

So one stroke at a time, I write my way to substance. Casting my life before me like a roll of dice searching the magic number, I walk on.

Love,

Carol

May 11, 2023 0