Last Chances Are Seldom That

LAST CHANCES ARE SELDOM THAT

Betimes, I weary of this life, even my own name.

Far horizons sing more clearly every day

Tho I long for them no more.

The trick of the light

Turned to a trickling

After rising oceans

Stole the land I stood upon.

This place is only an awakening

I play at touch while longing for a full contact event.

I flirt when I long to fall & be fallen upon.

I bring forth this love like a treasure found in the junkdrawer.

So long pushed aside looking for a real thing.

There is only potential to be made of

Skin & tactile surface

These imply anticipation, a discovery of imagination…

All I need would be/could be given into Love

I am willing now, to release & relearn

To go public with private passions…

Bring me to the Gate, O Love,

I weigh the latch in hand & lift it free.

I could care less of being found beautiful

I am as you imagined me

Finally, in the state of knowing it so.

The thoughts of others so long imagined

No longer slow me down

Or turn me away.

They travel over me as water over stone

Giving off rainbows.

A quicksilver moment

The prophecies predicted you

But left out so much –

            You’re married

            You’re committed

            You’re entangled

You’re a stranger, really.

These are not up to my undoing.

We are close by circumstance only

Who started it anyway?

So unlike me, yet it must have been.

I am an ever-opening heart.

I am the last to love, an unmarked trail

Full of my own footprints,

Far too familiar from following alone.

The light has changed. I’m in another era

From that last bumbling home.

There’s a mystery as to what could be discovered,

The farthest indelible vista

Of the lover I see reflecting in your eyes.

I feel an impish sense of grace

A dance of infinite energy

Love animates my bones, adds a sparkle here & there

Smooths my skin, manifesting like silvering rain,

I will find you; I will sing you onto the waters where I walk

Upon your thoughts

I am always ahead of you…waiting

The trips & triggers of clandestine love

Surround me, a deepening mystery

Of which I shall not speak.

A white flash of light in closed eyes

Turns my sleeping head to you

I walk with my heart in both hands

This simple single offering to you.

Come to me

Remove the layers of obligation

Like overheating wool

Your heart is stiff with scars

I will make whole.

Offer me but a passing glance

A ticklish whimsy

My heart will do the rest

Take me at my words, this austere truth

Gone lush with longing

Only this: to feel you skin to skin

Like air in secret places

Cooling fevers of unknown origins.

It’s not that I’ve kept myself

For anyone, I’ve just kept myself

Because I didn’t know you were here to share this with.

Your hands stay at your sides

When I will them “touch me.”

Your body stays separate

When I will it to melt into mine.

Let’s redefine all boundaries

Bridge all separations

Because we’re made from love for love…

I can’t be shy about us any more

I love your smile; I beg your touch

I wait your arms returning around me.

I look at you

And there isn’t a “no” to be heard.

Last Chances & Random Rhymes

The lights are all off

Moonlight through the window,

Strange Venetian stripes

Make you exotic.

Words will not say this

Like your hands on my skin

Chilled & heating both

Speaking cell to cell

A communication nonpareil.

I need a man with long arms

Willing eyes – see past this skin

To the heart ablaze within.

Take me now, I’ll last forever

The end of time never so near

As when we kiss & match our bodies,

These beginnings opening fissures.

No word so pure as touch

Escapes this pen

Time has melted from the clock

Held tight to you again.

I promised to clean house

But I am writing poems

About backing into love

Since we cannot meet face to face.

There has to be a way

Around or through

I refuse to take this underground

When all I can see is your sky to fly into.

The Most Dangerous Words

Are those unsaid

They hide like thorns in greenleaves

They are unkind, unkempt,

Blackened by Truth.

I brawl & bawl & break open

As they pierce me.

Something is bleeding here.

All I ask for is a heaven

To rest in.

A sigh to rest upon.

A love to press into

To wrap myself around

All I have is reaching fingers

When we have to draw apart.

My eyes would fill with you

And not these tears

But love is a

Never-ending ending.

There is an alarm going off in my heart

Like that insistent reminder charm

Messages await.

But this is written in blood & fire

I die to hit the “send” key –

Releasing our love to the world.

I have made up a story

I am pretending your regard

I’m playing at becoming your fantasy.

Even at my fabulous age –

Desirable, warm, funny, talented…

The crest of love forgotten:

The Love of A Life again…

“Ping!”

Oh, there it is again

It’s such a short message I want to say

To just one of the eight billion of us here,

“I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Footfalls

Gently, so gently do I touch love

The petal of a flower

With a tendency to curl into protection

Most tenderly I offer a wish, a promise, a longing

Turned into yearning, if I gaze too long upon it.

I am firm. Resolute. I will not disturb this seedling

Except to offer the water of my prayers.

——————————–

Who knows where our perceptions may bring us?

To what tall doors opening

Into adventure or amorous murmurs?

I am familiar with this dance; the steps never leave.

I am not like her; not frail, nor sickly

I am an ocean after you have tended a mountain rill…

There are mysterious depths here, a rush of saline

A holy path to follow to fulfillment

But I see you patting love down as you would a stray kitten

While I am the panther, curled upon plateaus of rock.

When it is time, we shall meet on terms of strength

In skies filled with wind,

We will open wings & fly

Be where you need to be for now

I have our future well in hand.

 ————————

I am daydreaming about being in love. What is happening here? What am I doing? What stray magic has padded in like a cat, curling its tail around my heart?

 So much is going so well, why not? Why deprive myself of a dream when being awake might bring the same thing? why else are we placed in each other’s path, except to love & become the Beloved?

 Yet I know nothing; love drives out all knowledge. What went before is erased, a film laid over the past to be rewritten, reworked, resumed at another chord.

 Don’t listen to me. It is nothing, this tiny blossom, delicate as a wish…a sturdy mountain flower bright in color against a desert sea of sky.

 I will tell none but you & my journal of this. Shh. Like oiling the tin man, this nourishes my heart. Unfolding an origami uncovers all the wrinkles; new patterns display, thoughts of never knowing this again are smoothed away. How does this happen except as a miracle patterned upon the sacred in life?

 There is nothing here but a whisper about to become a song…a melody drawing a bow across heartstrings long bundled in silk.

 O Lord.

Carol

 

 

 

The Collective of Silence

THE COLLECTIVE OF STILLNESS

There’s not far to go before the land starts insisting

I am alive in every place I stand

The telepathy of clouds

Drawing my face to the sky

The valley bows to my feet

The Rock People watching.

——-

I am listening as hard as I can to the Silence

My ears so still (no cilia vibrating)

No sound save Eternity

Settling in for the long run.

——

Earth whispers to me of immortality

Longing to be a poem

It tells me to take it everywhere

That water-meadow in Wisconsin

Chesapeake Bay largesse

The stone-poems of rock nearby

An unchanging safety

Waiting to claim all flesh

I am immortal as I can be in this moment

The activation of love in a grain of sand.

———

The spare skeleton remains; a lace & calcium poem

Yellow-white teeth resembling long-bone toes

I will be blanched

Gnawed by coyote cubs, dragged, growling, to dens

Sung into sunrise: danced on four legs

——–

Roadside flowers

Visible only en masse

A color smudging the landscape

Wreathing no arches

Serving as Butterfly’s foothold

Nectar in a bitter landscape.

——–

 

Aging to Perfection…

Mortality / Schmortality

Third person me

She walks with the confidence

Of a big-breasted woman

35 a dim echo as its double approaches

No long gray tresses here,

But short, sharp spikes

For the divine connection.

 

Thick around her center

Description: Rubenesque

Undefined by Twiggy-standards

A short, Italian fireplug of female

Passions wrapped in brain & heart;

Sharp-tongued, less than tolerant…

Strong hands, a wrinkly smile

Entering her eyes first.

 

She’s tasted risk & lived on love

Fearless, present; a solid woman

Ready for the next act

The third trimester of

Maiden, mother, crone.

 

Age Happens

Long after youth has fled the parade

Life lengthens beyond

Childhood

Adolescence

Adulthood

An unerring arrival (never expected)

It takes up residence

In spots, in strangely-shaped vein whorls.

It’s a celebration & a culmination

A triumph & a terror –

Not that it will end poorly,

But that it may not be well-accomplished.

 

The Divine Miss B

Age is the last factor of life

Positive on the balance sheet

But only after you’ve gotten past

All other negotiations.

 

At first, it was a nuisance

I asked for laugh wrinkles, but this?

Ridiculous!

The 50’s slipped by

The 60’s kind of danced along

Now, here I stand at 70:

The threshold of being Born Again

Having it finally, my way.

 

Being able to ignore the life-beast

Or take it to bed,

Suck it dry:

I rise triumphant!

 

My birthday hides in September

I have tried, am trying, to pay my debts

To be faithful to the oligarchs

Who file their nails at my door

Yawning as they await their monthly checks.

I have a Final Solution for you all…

It might be the best payment I can come up with…

When I am dead, someone scatter my ashes

In front of the banks.

 

 

 

Hooks On Heaven

SET MY HOOKS ON HEAVEN’S RIM

Prayer over prayer, I climb

Searching in wonder for whomever therein dwells

Lords & ladies?

Saints, angels…

Crossing rainbows latticed of beliefs

Buttressed by Faith

This is harder than I thought:

Escaping humanity

While wearing a skinsuit!

 

GOD’S BEARD

I’ve never lacked fortitude or fortune

Promised God in every encounter

I examine each for divine traces

Sometimes finding only one gray hair.

 

8 A.M./FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

The hot, fierce light of New Mexico

Seasoned by overcast

To a blend of blessing-cool

A morning to sit outside

Traffic blowing by in purposeful wind

Life catching its breath

For one more day on Planet Earth

 

TRUE/FALSE

Who can trust wisdom anymore?

That of the ages is pop-stuff now

Our minds are far beyond the tenets

Deep in personal responsibility

Dig in, my Soul, find the

Traction of grace

Levity of blessing

Spores of holiness…

Follow the perfume of angels a-wing

Orient towards the Divine

It’s the scent of love

Fresh-baked & set

Upon an open windowsill

Of a morning.

 

CREATION (Two Views)

Father

I wonder if God donned an apron

Then set to shape the World.

Dusted His hands in flour & water

Before patting up the clay…

Could be He set us up along the

Fence ‘round Heaven

Walking down the line

Breathing out

Blowing us into the twice-blessed world.

I like that He clapped us up out of nothing

Cobbled up a world to home us

Blessed it blue & brown

Setting our souls a-wing into space-time.

 

Mother

Maybe a Mother made us

Searching the rag-bag pile

For scraps in red & yellow,

Tan & black…

Pulling these free &

Settling on a stool to

Fill a whimsy.

How lovingly she worked,

Symmetrical & shapely –

Imagine us, the source of Her delight

As we began our Song of Thanks…

Her affection captured, She

Fell to earnest Creation:

A world for us to dwell upon

Creatures to ride & roar & race

Greens to eat

God! She thought of everything!

Even water to get us clean again,

Brains to continue in personal conceivings,

Hearts to love…

Then up to bed She went

And in the morning, we were gone.

 

 

 

Dreaming Change (Happy 4th of July!)

Have I dreamed this sea-change boiling across America? It’s a kind of Stadium Wave happening across our country as one group stands up, thrashes about, & another sits down.

In Hawaii & other places, land forms & rearranges itself, heaving from unknown depths in an incredible brew of white heat & black rock. Mountains slide sideways & crush nascent dams. The sun seems to fracture its light or appear as a shadow behind itself. Shorebirds land far inland as their photos appear all over media. Bears move onto porches to reside next to the woodpile. Whales beach themselves in unprecedented numbers. I certainly am not dreaming this.

We are threatened with 5G technology, a weapons-grade “helper” which is proven to confuse minds, cause headache, scramble thinking, sadly being installed in schoolyards. No way I might have made that up. What have “the powers” got against us? Why do they hate us so, to spray Round-Up on our fresh foods before releasing these to market, to redesign vegetable cells & redraw gene structures? I don’t want drought resistance laddered into my tomatoes, or insecticides rendered into my smoothie strawberries. I would love for the corn I buy to be corn & not engineered fuel.

I read about MK-Ultra-driven shooters, each with his own therapist/handler to bring out the worst prior to setting him loose in the populace. I don’t want to meet any Montauk boys – or girls for that matter, during the course of my day.

Information bears many prefixes: mis-, dis-, non-…but all I want is the straight story of events, their causes, their outcomes & how they are being addressed. What happened in Las Vegas & why do we hear no more about it? Were the men in black Kevlar at Parkland School unworthy of notice or comment by mainstream media?

I see short-sightedness & stupidity visited upon my neighbors & friends as a form of friendly fire masquerading as guidance. The skies twist in places, braiding clouds to bruise the logical mind. Groundwater disappears overnight, while downpours loosen rocks, in turn eradicating roads.

Whole populations rise from what they perceive as stinging insult, but instead of simple rhetoric, they line up cannons. Today I saw a star-spangled top on a woman while her significant other wore a sage green tee with a black automatic weapon stenciled on it. I actually wondered which was more representative of America at present.

Huge lines of people are on the move elsewhere & then become the butt of argumentative behavior wherever they try to arrive. I’m well aware not everyone is who they seem to be in these groups…no vetting has been enacted, the children with them may not be theirs & the Four Horsemen often ride alongside them, witting or no. But while we may wish them to return to their roots; this is an impossibility since the divide & conquer mentality of politicos has rendered their homelands deplorable. We created the problem we complain no one can solve.

We close borders to them, while our own destabilize, the very land humps & shivers, children disappear, economy spirals into the gray on the dollar bills, downgrading the green. We’re in an interactive system & need to recognize it’s a closed loop – atmosphere, nation-building, health – all connected in an intimate dance of creation & flow.

We have indeed released the Kraken we were assured might be controlled if only this, that, or the other happened. It rides the crest of the sea-change we experience, tentacles lashing out in fury.

The lies need to be refuted & remedied from both sides. The power to exercise global change must first bear some resemblance to what we wish the change to be. We straddle worlds so divided we cannot conceive agreement & attempt to enforce transformation. This clear & present danger to our individual selves & souls must be brought into order. At last glance, the Kraken was gaining, making this difficult indeed. The whole setup never came with an instruction book, tho many agreed upon what they perceived to be one in the Bible. Unfortunately, rules no longer apply & oratory serves no purpose.

Dissolving each boundary that is set, whether personal, political or perceptual, is sorely needed. Certainly, the world itself seems bent upon dissolution. But ours as humans came first. When promised heaven, what can we do with being delivered to hell?

Indeed, the storm is upon us & before its rage, we race for safety. It takes interesting people to live in interesting times, to counter the curse & give birth to amendment so enormous it is soon obvious we took on too much too fast. I don’t know where life’s demarcation occurs between forgiveness & right action, but I walk that thin line of light every day, in every encounter.

We each need to be great again as individuals for the country to be so. We need to curb the absolute power each one of us thought it so easy to handle. We have worn out the rule of law by applying it with force. Let us now try to administer it with love. It can be done. It is so quiet when we stop screaming. Change becomes possible, when love is used as the unerring power source to stoke its engines. Love is the only leash the Kraken will bow its scaly head to, rest its whipping limbs within, close its bulging eyes to rest upon.

Dig up your individuality, dust off all cliché it has rested in. Move your heart to the forefront, stop trying to think through unthinkable times. We must stop the harm out there to stop the harm being visited upon us. Do it now, as it’s unlikely we will ever have the full story!

Give the impossible its due: our hearts are online now, networked, hooked up, tuned in. Put the children in the center of the circle for protection, remove them from harm. With your eyes open to the future, attend to the present. Declare nothing to be unbelievable, even Peace in Our Time.

 

It Rained All Night

Such a commonplace event, rain. Unless you live in the Chihuahua Desert of New Mexico’s southwest where we’ve had no real rain since February when we had a day of windy-wet weather.

What resulted from a faraway “tropical depression” caused exultation here. A mothering rain fell all night. I woke at 3:30 a.m. to the gentle pulsing flow, swinging my legs from bed & rising with an energy I haven’t felt so far this summer.

I had left the doors & windows open, hoping for a breeze from Turtleback to breathe through & dissipate the built-up heat. To my delight, the chimes slowly named their notes from the yard pole as the rain began. The soothing sound of its fall, the distinctive aromatherapy of a desert releasing heat & sponging in moisture brought me straight downstairs to sit by the door.

The sun is a force of nature here. I joke the heat from the Trinity site (Alamogordo’s first atomic bomb) has revisited us since exiting outside is slowed by a solid wall of heat that stops all progress. I’ve lived here for years-at-a-time twice before, but this third time is exacting quite a struggle to stay cool.

Since I came from Delaware most recently, my memories are of north-facing French doors being sluiced by nor’easters, days & nights of drumroll rain, pouring water, bouncing drops, gusty winds all contributing to zipping up my Maine rain jacket & tying the hood tightly. The rain tossed itself against windows like someone outside was flinging buckets one after the other. Umbrellas were fruitless, turned inside out after two steps.

In T or C this year, the sun is different, intensified into a kind of microwave heat, immediately igniting the skin & clutching the lungs. Sometimes, I want to ask it what I did, it seems a personal affront when temps rush to 107 or 110 of a day.

It’s heavenly to wake to this gentle sound & sit by the screen to inhale moisture. The form & force of recent weather here has been argumentative & I’m so not in the mood.

This steady drizzle is an arpeggio after the crashing cymbal clang of relentless, raw, unnaturally white light. It is grace, softly miraculous, growing my sense of joy in the breaking morning. It’s a prayer answered, one from the people & the land together.

My poor garden fell victim to the unyielding heat. My water bill soared; I brought the containers to the local community garden with a sign saying “Adopt Me’ stapled to each. Many this morning will be offering gratitude that they need not uncoil the hose today & stand outside to relieve the powerful daily thirst of anything green-growing.

An uncomplicated enough phenomenon, this rain. I bow my head & accept heart’s-ease to its simplicity.

Changeling

Every day I am restored by the grace to begin again. Actually, every moment is such. All the large beginnings: leaving husbands, letting go of lives so carefully gathered & nervously lived, turning away from daughters & lovers whose love for me was as real as my love for them…

I am who I am because each relationship began & ended. I am free & unbound & if I had hair, it’d be blowing in the wind of my life now passing by.

I am here to start dreams – though this means my expertise rises from endings. For all passages require one closed door & one that’s opening. Doorways equal transitions (which is why we forget what it was we wanted in the other room as we pass through them.)

Walking from one door to another requires a special energy that gathers as desire rachets down tightly, curling upon itself until the tension binds into a release. All else is wished away. The “New” laps around me like a litter of puppies, soft, round, happy, panting & yipping in eagerness to be experienced.

Even from this, I remove myself at times. I wonder about me. Every month brings a new moon & a full, the bright rebalances the dark. I initiate by becoming an initiate following an initiative.

I have done harm, yes. The landscape is littered with what I probably should have done. But I picked my way carefully through the detritus I’d made of my relationships, through the hash made of my relationships by the others in them. I clawed out of the spoils to that bright new day of welcome opening for me, as though I was the only pure thing it would ever see.

I trust with a full heart. I unfold as though the sun will shine forever. I keep believing, as all the songs say I must do. And when the fear sends me scurrying for the coat pockets to check for lost, linty money, or shaking the piggy bank for funds to finish the month, I live with it. I recover my joy whether there are enough coins to rattle or one single jingle.

In coming this far, I have taken the journey home. There is no arrival for I am always where I am: at home. There is wisdom here, and courage. There is heart-mind, order & determination. “All the time I’ve wasted is given back to me”* I’ve learned it’s okay to draw a blank at first. Sometimes a close encounter with a rhino & subsequent clean-up is the best I can manage. Whatever.

I don’t flicker anymore. I burn. People are singed near me. I have gone Samurai, a world-warrior forged by life’s forgiveness. Each place I have halted, I have gathered more.

If I seem part of a crowd, it’s only because I’ve stood still & the others have caught up. I can wait for them to pass me. Living alone is not my fear. Alone is one letter off of God: All-One. And I am all-in-one now.

I’m accustomed to the unexpected; I accept the occasional maladroit gifts I offer. Things usually come up right though it may be by a longer route.

Dreams always come true (at least mine.) If it isn’t in my life, I haven’t dreamed of it. I have come to view this as choosing, not limiting. Days march past on the calendar like ants, purposeful, fulfilling, each carrying one burden to release at the end of the day as a pearl of sustenance. Every before becomes an after. I sleep in my dreams like silk pajamas.

The unexpected turns into synchronicity.

It’s taken some time, but I believe in me & that is only because I’m a fragment of my own imagination, burning candles kindled at both ends. The light’s better that way, when seeking blessings.

“It happened without a fight

Something is new about me

I feel it with each breath

There’s a majesty about me

A majesty about me…

I feel it in my self

A new heaven a new earth

Is all that I see” *

—————————

*lines from “I’m Changed” composed by Ricky Byars-Beckwith.

I’m Changed sung by Angel Travis

 

Dancin’ with my shadow

Dancing with my shadow

Down the middle of the street

With my headphones as antennae

And that Pentatonix beat

Tagged by madness, yes, and music

And my shadow twelve foot tall

All the drivers checking mirrors

Other walkers at a crawl

But I just can’t help it, darlin!

Wish that you could hear it too!

Cuz if this beat all grabbed your feet

Your arms would feel it, too…

So, if you see me on the corner

To the left or to the right

I’m just dancin’ with my shadow

N I may be here all night!

Friends No More: A Parting

Disparate Heart

Made of thorns & parry

I thought you better than this

Moved to pity & then Toledo steel

Bladed with desire

Cutting through love

Looking for yourself in the openings

But this you are already too full of!

You understand so little

Stopped short of full tide

Withholding the forward of completion

Gentle heart, will I take you in compassion?

Shall I find you a nest of ordinary love

Wherein to rest? And, then, will you so?

We have parted a year ago

Your proud blade & I

We have discovered many centers

Many sendings.

We yearn to be the ocean

Covering a high-tided beach

Once more…

 

It Wasn’t A Dream

I moved one small thing

and the world of dust behind it

came to light.

So it is in life:

I peered behind one thought

Into a world of teeth & claws.

How many times to clear this?

As many as it may take, perhaps?

 

Barrier Reef

Protecting the tender lagoon of love

Tidal & green inside

Brimming with schools of thought

Flashing in a silver unison of silence.

I will no predator among them,

Coral & Carol interchanged

My bones all unseen

And as beautiful.

 

Briefly Then

I’ll tell you the story of my life:

I Am. That’s about it for now.

Oh, you want details?

I have been advised to not follow advice

I have been told to sing, but practice silence

To run, but now, to sit-stay

To love “in cautious abandon.”

Whom shall I believe?

Who shows me the reality of hard-packed dirt

Advising me to see only stars?

Allow me just a momentary hug

Heart-to-heart,

An angel wrapping wings around a tree.

I have lived so long on so little love

I am beyond existence.

 

Parallels

I have news for you

These double lines that merge in the distant vision

Don’t merge.

I assure you – it’s a mirage.

For as long as they go together

Somewhere they part

They encounter division

Become singular of purpose

Each no longer the other’s destination

 

It Is Time

Oh, I have clung to you

Like a child her child’s blanket

It is now to set you down

A dried pen I’ve shaken hard for ink.

I’ve run downhill on our friendship

Now out of fuel, spent completely

Yes, time & past time, months of days

We were to have together

You swept from the calendar

And folded your arms.

Our years are dry as kindling

Our friendship lost in conflagration

A wildfire of no know etiology

One careless match-word

All is now ash.

I’ve poked & prodded with my mind

For reasons for reasonableness

Yet there are none hidden here

None to be had

So let’s say not farewell

but say goodbye.

I brush my hands of loving  you

I did all I thought right

While being only wrong.

 

No Light

Bring on the unlit darkness

the moveless tide

the ink all fades in loveletters anyway.

This burden of relief a wonder.

Once emptiness to fill, now fallow space

This ravished ground

 

Stupid

It was a turnkey operation

Our being friends

Immediately, I offered entry

Together, we closed the door to others

And tho I wondered where, at times, you went

We found each other at need.

Your many truths were also false

Perhaps mine, only returned?

Your final insult wormed around my edges

Not quite belonging, yet taken in…

The door flung open, invited exit.

I prowled outside, peering in windows

Rattling doorknobs.

I’ve salvaged from the shed,

Made myself a hobo bag I shall not carry long

I leave you to your limping life.

Striding through the white picket fence,

I close & latch the gate.

 

So Long

This is the last of you

Out of my heart, I say

Your scruff & hind in my hands

One more time

I toss you from the environs of my heart

Your compass after – find me no more!

I clap my hands

And watch you disappear!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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