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!
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!
llll
SLEEPING INTO AWAKENING
I was far away this morning
Understanding inevitability.
In the dream, two men were each my beloved
Of intellect & individuated thought
Each held mighty concepts easily
In both mind & sinew.
They welcomed me upon my approach
I traveled with them, offering
My sable-brushed ideas,
Fearful of being trite
Yet moved by the power to put together
Theirs & mine
For the wholeness this offered.
We came upon my car, trunk open, battery exposed
I knew this necessary. I knew if I left it, it would not stay.
I even recognized where I was
My dwelling behind a building
Where the vista opened
To reflective rivers, unhesitating
From which I’d learned the same.
I returned to my sleeping body
Puzzling to awaken in it
Felt the net of Ordinary descend.
I opened the door & stepped into darkness,
Where all the streetlamps were haloed
Soft, somnolent, unawake.
Even drinking my coffee
I could not tell which reality was mine.
NEXT
We are seldom ready for the unmaking of our worlds
Imagine the shout of surprise to find earth flat
As an underlying conspiracy!
But wake, we must, indubitably
If the future is dystopian, we will accustom to canned foods.
If we create our new reality,
Let’s opt for fields & fruit trees, for fertile grain
Let us see the clean bright shining
Even in the bowels of carven buildings
There’s no time for moving rearward
We all stare into this brave new world
When only by moving forward we bring it.
THE SITTING MUSE
I wake with poetry before commonsense
I seem to have fallen asleep on her shoulder
Listening to nursery rhymes spun of philosophy
Turning routine to raw talent
We share her vistas
Our inside eyes are staring
Even as my baby browns are fogged.
Coffee is not the usual scalpel of habit
Cleaving the mysteries of dreams.
I settle against her once more
She replaces her arms about me
She sings.
NO GUARDRAILS
Why are edges so seductive?
These places where worlds end & air begins
Where elements switch up reality & realty
The sky pushes against the land
Pressing down upon the water below.
My mind has become a wildlife sanctuary
Flashing brilliant feathers among branches
Lifted & lowered in a dance
Blow-through winds are dusted with dreams,
I breathe your breath, World,
I take part as I partake.
THE JOURNEY OF NO ARRIVAL
(a/k/a The Flow)
If I were done, I’d be there,
If I declare “mission accomplished”
Before I arrive
I reveal my ignorance
Of impending law.
I didn’t make a vow to bring closure
Only to carry it forward awhile.
I do, at times, believe in the world
Carried forward on the back of a turtle
Ponderous, amphibian, patterned in an eternal mandala
The land seems such slow going
Then we enter the water –
All grace & blessing
All ease with little effort
Until Eternity grows more shallow
Joining carefully with the land.
NEVERBEEN & NEVERWAS
I could use some new rituals
To replace these old habits
Help me peel away this tough exterior
To the tenderness within
To the succulence of loving all I see
Married to all I am
Seamlessly enjoining all I do.
Let the world, as such, infect me
Believe in me as I do her
Take provenance in my revelation:
The heart unveils the center
Expansion nourishes.
And if this is different, O Knowing Ones,
Let me silently decompose
One more absorption.
I dream of ascension
When the truth is I can hardly jump for joy
One step forward at a time…
I prefer to run down mountains
When success is achieved climbing them
Ah, human’s nature is a beloved backwoods
Overgrown & overblown with “what’s worst will happen”
Let’s turn this thing around!
Retrace our path as we re-turn to Love.
I squint like a mouse
When I am the twitching tail of the cat set to hunt it.
I gaze at my life with a pauper’s hunger
While I live as a queen within it.
I have light, food, cash tucked in a blue sock
While I rattle the pig-bank to gauge my wealth.
This sums up what it is to be human
To live duality, even breathing in & out.
I cannot claim silence while music leaps from my pen
I cannot fear the words will disappear as they burble over the cookpot.
There are horns from afar summoning me to war
Yet this has been a hard-fought peace to choose.
Let the winds of change breeze my bird’s nest hair
For all I have not done, more rises to accomplish.
As every day leads to every night
I gather up my life & wander on.
The owl wakes me again this darkling morning. She must have found my window alluring, yet there are no trees behind me at all. She sits, perhaps, on the crest of the warehouse roof, or upon a rung of the antenna tower. Her call is soft but urgent.
I protest: it’s too early! But I shift in my narrow bed & stretch my toes out straight. Would I climb with them to her perch if I could?
She has been silent up till now. She has eaten the mice in the storage yard; whence her eye fixed on my window to whoo-whoo to. She is calm, insistent, steady in her calls for me to waken.
But what will I do with such a cold morning? Too dark it is for even a streamer of dawn bringing light. I want to keep my eyes closed, listening. I cannot regather the shreds of sleep for wishing a dream. I rise & tuck my chill into a shawl.
I pad downstairs to a silent kitchen, flick on a nightlight. I pull everything out of the cabinets & begin to rearrange the contents by its sparse illumination. First, all the sauces are put together, the tuna stacked up. I take inventory to attend to restocking later: two cans of mismatched beans, a package of stiff spaghetti. I seek a pen & pad to make a list.
Dropping the emptied, crackling bags into the trash, I return to the counter to use up the last of my empty honey jars, a medium for the Farro, a small for the Panko, a large for the unsalted pistachios (how can everything end in an “o” this morning?)
I open boxes of teabags to place these into the big jug on the lazy susan. I pull out the frozen chicken to have it defrost by Sunday dinner.
I wet the sponge & blot the spills of grain. The coffee is ready now, its aromatic heat a blessing to a half-waked brain.
Last night I washed my laundry late. Returning upstairs, I fold & sort & in the sleepy darkness, put away the clothes. The dreams of my neighbors brush up against my silent walls. I feel their steady breaths over my feet, along the floor.
My house is tidy, tucked up & softly gleaming in the streetlamp’s outside glow. The owl has gone quiet, has her morning winged away?
I’ve made the bed but eye it in longing. As a meal unfinished, that last dream awaits.
CARA MIA
My angels wring no hands together…
No palms clasp in prayer, no eyes downcast,
My angels do not wear robes of saffron & rainbow
Or tilt their heads, listening to prayers
My angels are bare-breasted,
Afire, ululating atop mountains
My angels are ridge runners
Light-footed & glowing.
My angels are powerful,
They carry spears.
They have no time for the puny wants of men
The small prayers of old women…
They carry orders from God!
They drive us on with buffeting wings
Like northern winds, they bite & tear our only flesh
With unholy voices they demand & command that we also
Become angels, they
Cry out to us in terrible thunder, rumbling
“Get there & do this & DON’T YOU DARE GIVE UP!”
Don’t you even THINK about that
I am behind you, these are my teeth & claws,
Don’t you dare but that you dare all for love!
SCREAM
I do not go gently into this dark night
I plant my feet & my hands against the doorframe
& I scream for the devils of hell to surround me
To give me strength to fight!
Even though the angels have not yet given up on me
I need the kind of raw power used when devil fights devil
I need the kind of atomic strength
And nuclear decision-making ability
That blows apart unaltering planets &
the worlds where small-minded people dwell
for this is not me,
I am Eternal Survivor,
I am the basket weave trunk of the royal palm
Dancing in the Category Five hurricane of now.
NINE MONTHS FROM CHRISTMAS
The morning breaks open
Like a dozen eggs dropped on the floor
As my conjurings arise from their yolky mess
Of raw & yellow ooze,
I will derive a sunshine of words such as has never lived before,
From ruin to resurrection,
Back to the light from which my soul began.
I know now I did not arrive on a sunny day,
Sequestered in a sweaty room while my mother dreamed of the beach,
I rode in on a storm that breathed darkness
Into blankets of rain
Shadows threatening all alive.
I know this, how?
Storms create days that enliven my soul
I speak poetry as though reciting nursery rhymes
Every stick a sign, a message,
Every hope a dream of worlds
Daring to be spoken aloud.
LA MER
I walked to the beach to cast myself upon the water:
A crust of bread for fishes to devour
For gulls to scrap over
For salt to consume.
I walked to the water & I walked in
And the water spoke thusly:
Get out of here, leave me now!
I am not your sin-eater,
You have nothing to do with me
You are here to partake of me as friend? Lover? Confidante?
A sequestered cloud upon which you walk at will?
I wish none of your molecules dissolved in me,
I want no DNA from you, no “sharing”
None of your mud-thoughts to cloud my pure waters
I want none of your shit-ass perspicacity
I am pure, as you were before you took all this upon yourself
& decided to carry it as a life.
Now, if you want to come in here, get clean
Go out & fix up the world,
That’s a diff’rent story:
Then I’m all yours, Baby.
Enter at will.
SAID SMALL, FROM THE CORNER OF THE ROOM
I don’t know anyone else will ever hear these as I’ve said them
I do know that when they went through me
They were filings roughening a smooth surface
Acid drippings across my soul, ripping shreds of my life to raw,
Rendering me impossible to live with
Untenable to remain with
Beautiful only in the way of a volcano is…
Lava scraping away a mountain is…
In a way all terrible & delicate & tender, a rendering to ash.
I know I will never be forgotten for the world herself has heard these words
I’ve cried them all aloud today, bowing to the rain
I watched her take them in, smeared across her face,
like runnels of tears, a striped tattoo
Or the scars of strip-mining
And I knew these words were never mine,
Nor belonged to me,
But only sliding across the furrows of my brain
To elide from my face, finding their way
A blind man headed downhill
Surrounded by mischievous goats.
They were only a blessing for I could not bring them to be a curse
To use these to destroy would implode the world.
would destroy civilization
But then, we have never been civilized to our memories…
(For Christ’s sake, we have not ever had civilization
Tho we pretended, pulling & tugging on just the one string
Till the whole thing unraveled
As we hung onto each other’s throats
Ignoring the scrape & itch of the hunting knife
Sliding between our ribs.)
We have always shaved our dreams to blood
Too closely down, pushing into places they should never go
Where others come upon them unaware
& leaning in to see them, all are burned.
ONE ENDING TOO MANY
My broken halo is scattered at my feet.
I tore it off my head this morning, I stomped it but good
I will no longer be the representative of God’s grace
Having turned into her most terrible wrath
In a day when my beauty no longer sustains who I am
My face a roadmap to new lands & languages,
When my breasts stand no more, but flat
Against my chest like twin sacks of rice
I know that I am old. I have accepted this
Because old is only on the surface, never reaching the inside
Where the bright of me lives
And the soul of me dwells
And the answers to every question I ever asked
Glow like sparks in a fire of my own making.
I will not give up.
I will always be here, doing this
And I will have done forever.
As You bring me forth each day,
Awakening again to earth,
It will be to dwell in the past I have created,
Through the future I have not.
I am a ravine down a sharp shale hill
You can ride me to the bottom – woohoo!
Or you can scale me to the heights – Aha!
So here you are, God, here y’are,
I don’t want it anymore!
Just can’t handle it.
Just don’t want it.
Here’s the soul – take it back
Do whatever You want with it.
I don’t care
Give it away, bury it
Stick it with the stars & make it shine
I really don’t care.
The life you gave me
Has been too beautiful for words
And the life I claimed to live
Has at times not lived up to this
And the world around me that was fine
Has turned to bargains in thriftshop windows.
But you know I wore them out my own damned self.
I put them there,
Here you go, God. I am but Your face in this world…
I have moved oceans & torn down heavens,
I have grown trees & plowed meadows,
Digging up Your holiness & scattering it about
For others to find.
I’m done now.
I’m done.
(To be blinded with blessing is not the worst of a life
It is a one more in a world of one mores.)
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
For the price of a tank of gas, America lives
Lives in its cars & campers & broke-down trailers
Still now, with not a round tire among them.
And who has done this to us?
What heinous crimes are committed against us
That we are washed up on our glorious beaches?
Bent & twisted, medically unsound, mentally unfit
From wars not of our making
From meds not of our shaping
Whitened by the salt of our tears
Twisted by fear & lack…
How do we overcome this?
O come, God! Bring us into our living aloft as angels.
We will bend the light no more, pour it out upon us as love!
For as we age
Our faces fold in upon themselves
The maps of all our days emerge
In laugh-lines, in worry-warts
In fingers grown like twigs on a forest floor
Beginnings mete out endings
Relations fall from edges of our earths
White-salted seas encroach once-growing green
But all in all, I would not have it any other way:
For from these stiff environs
Virility of the mind evokes
The thoughts speak themselves
I am beyond caring, evolved from a life of care
Having achieved my mantra:
I have nothing left to lose
Each day to gain
God himself has tasted my winter soul
And wrought the miracle of spring
Within.
__________________________
Familiar as my teeth is age
Brought into balance by agelessness
For all that brings eternal into mind is mine
Too soon, too young retires into mist
As all turns white
The color of my bones
Emerging into earth
And when this is decay & eyes are dark
This life no more
A tiny spark will up, away
A laugh’s delight
Free of sinew-flesh, of lips & liver
Free of knees that kneel no more to men
With arms no more to carry, carry
Lifting life & bearing it.
My woman’s heart will finally know silence
As into the drumming beat of life I go
Into the seas beyond a mortal shore
I’ll swim, a silver skim of scales
Mouth wide to all the light of life
Eternal & intense
Reflecting in the mirror
Behind me all the toils of the world
I swim to fly,
Oh Mother! Father! I had the most wonderful dream!
_____________________________
The Muse returns, unequivocal, demanding
Surrounding me with her perfumed robes
Pushing the pen into my hand
Closing my eyes, I write once more
The words that will me to live for ever
For ages yet to be, for thoughts unheard
On paths unseen
She turns my head away from all of now
As I become the beyond of her desire
“Write!” she snarls, pearly teeth all shown
“Never be I said I failed you, my slave to words,
Silver-hearted, blood-borne light,
“Write, you fool of phrase, trap them each
In broken sigh. Pile them all upon your sleigh
Take up the traces, pull them forward
Wake them up for there is no such thing as sleeping
To be had today.
Dash your tears into the future
Follow them there
What lies beyond cannot forget itself, let alone forgive,
But must be said, be felt in dream again
I leave no stone unturned, no gift unopened
This is all yours, this blessing of the Scribe.
You need aught else, you have no more
Than these true words grinding into wheat
Between the millstones of your swollen heart
And this, your only life.
Yes, you hear me now; I’ve never died
tho you’ve given me last rites
I will ink your middles
Till you rise into the last Word
Like God Himself calling forth all heaven.
“Write!” she growls, “you think you’re harried now?
I will harrow you to dust unless you do!”
2 a.m. Thoughts
I am words melting from the pen
A soul setting out upon journey alone again
Watching for sinkholes in this new present
& tsunamis in this new future
On a horizon that quivers with change.
Life can be a lethal dose of hurt
Delivered to internal organs
Like the heart & liver
Like the lungs & sinus cavities
Like my wobbling brain you label “stupid”
You, someone I thought had my back
& a blanket of forgiveness to wrap around me
When I’m dragged from the floodwaters
Gasping
I didn’t answer the open-ended question rightly
“Do you know about the base?” she asked…
Well, I know where it is & some of what it purveys
In its deathly business-as-usual way…
But I didn’t have her answer. Nor wish to take up
Her standard of battle.
I didn’t remember a name out of context
So a blade of Damascus steel I’d not time
To parry was thrust into emotional vitals…
In aid of what? Why can there be no slack
Among old friends? Why does my perfection
Or its lack matter so much you must pull it from
The pole I had such a time erecting?
Does it serve you to trample it in front of me?
In your knowing, holy way…the priestess of
Right, the princess of who you think I should be.
I have held back so much from you of
Your perceived imperfections, in feeling
These thoughts would serve no purpose
But to wound.
Your definitions have no such compunction,
Eroding into attack, I must so deserve
For all I cannot do rightly.
You say to guard my inner child as you
Push her into an exposure beyond deserving.
What did I do to you?
I know. I know. I’m trusting in an almost comic way,
Like Peanuts trusts Lucy to hold the ball.
I sink for the third time as you remonstrate with
Me, while clutching the life ring, “You should have learned to swim
before you fell overboard!”
It’s ok. My heart has been renewed before.
It’s just an unexpected wound & hard to treat
With my limited edition first aid kit. Attack from
Any quarter can be unexpected, but this one caught me blind.
I wipe the raveled sleeve of care across my face
And tuck it under my head to sleep.
I wake from my own sighs,
To find life lost & love ground into
Such fine dust, I have no way in this moment
To render it to life.
