Category: Poems

No More Mr. Nice Girl.

HOW MANY DREAMS MAKE A SAINT?

(As many as prayers enwrap sin.)

Make me flexible again, Lord,

Bring me to that place of comfort

In this everlasting body.

Let me be but another Beginning

One more Easter; re-admitting the Light

I carry it upon me,

A cape of strong silk

Snapped out to stop the wind & fly.

There is a ray of light with my name on it

Somewhere here – I know it!

Another elusive Start, supported

Unreservedly by universe.

I am best at beginnings…

The one keeping track,

making notches on my stick…

Must be plumb worn-out by now!

Quelle Stupide!

Holding my horses while I’m in the parade is lunacy!

NO MORE MR. NICE GIRL

I look as sappy in the photo as the cottonwood behind me

And when did I ever wear pink in Real Life?

No more!

I don’t even know what I’m missing

Except it’s no longer there.

A sea entered my inner chambers

Hollowed/hallowed as any woman –

Wrought the change you see here

The rebirthing: resistance re-inflating.

What emerges? Who is this new Being?

…she who no longer needs pink?

In the desert, sometimes butterflies turn into dragons.

ANOTHER

I put the mirror low, to see myself coming & going.

First is awareness; teaching myself what to look for

         By seeing what others see.

I built a wall I thought a lattice

A work of temporary art that became a template

Situations fill themselves in

Too broad by far: whole emotional categories apply

To a scintilla of evidence!

BOUFFANT

“Becoming the universe” is the soul’s ultimate

Philadelphia Experiment:

Something here

Appears there.

Then very little ever matches up again.

It seems my mind

Wants to dart for every circumstance…

Fear keeps one paw upraised.

I’ve Got A Secret

At first it seems covert:

The Path: The Mystery: The Rest.

But now all that’s trappings…

And I’m on about mileage.

Make haste! Tempus Fugit!

MY INNER TEEN

Knows nothing but what she wants

The little thief dishes guilt like hash

Serves it hot & smelly

Sends it down the line

Souring

The little Righteous Scold

Who only knows rules & rulers, really,

Whose heart compressed them

Into puckered arrows arcing the sky

Putting all to distance.

Her Worlds gone hormonal

Too much knowledge, not near enough Knowing.

Beads, rattles, bells

Remind me where I’m from

Tho dry, I know ceremony counts

In stays broad & elemental

Verily I repeat, “There are not enough women singing.”

Mother Earth needs the voices of her daughters

The rhythms of women walking

That gentle, constant drumming

The light patter of every girl-child

Returns as fish & butterfly

Retracing their paths

To beginnings.

To review the terms

Refine the Vision

Reclaim the prizes left behind.

  

       Cheat

Why only & ever a chip off the old block,

It seems to be I got as much as I ever wanted from that quarry.

This is not yet the time I am to strike flint & create fire.

I stand along a widow’s walk

Near a bridge, feeling equally suspended

When all I ever wanted was to be a rock.

ROLL

May this wind bless our presence

May this rain bring forth our garden

When the One-Way signs point at each other

Often at crossroads,

Don’t take on any more lifetimes

Than you can handle.

Just walk straight through.

Take some time to sit with the cat.

Carol Borsello

April 2022

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Post No Bills

Attach nothing to this life.

this life is nothing in & of itself.

I’ve been doing it for maybe longer than you

all I’ve learned is I no longer want to be a particle

but a wave.

What do the words mean anymore?

I understand when I say them, I’m posting the wrong message

the one that these go for in this time.

I’m not talking them in today’s terms, though.

I gave up the moving forward & am taking a u-turn.

I need to have my today re-couched in yesterday.

And not just any yesterday, but a specific, focused, energetic of a yesterday.

the one where words had definition, & borders amongst themselves, & meanings.

I speak them that way at times.

I’m zooming in on my past, doing a close-up on who I was; with who I Am

aligning the two.

Once I got that, I’ll bring in who I want to be.

Life’s Little Potato Peeler

I like the analogy of being a whittler, of tiny shaves & curls of wood

tickling down to feather at my feet.

i like the idea that there might be a beginner spirit in the wood

waiting to get out, to sit on the shelf

to move among the thrift stores of the world.

I know at times, I do this with my life.

My pen makes a great tool; the sharpest knife ever,

that, & my words.

Each memory I consign to the forest floor

will blow into someone else’s tale.

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Transformational

GRAND CENTRAL LIFE

I see now, it’s become a spiral stair.

That was wide open once, everyone together

Rushing up to meet the golden world.

Aglow with their eagerness.

Yet one by one

They moved by me,

They moved around me

As I wandered off to a side.

I wanted to stand still & watch

The people heading by.

Sometimes I’d be joined in a swirl

Of like-thinkers for a while.

We’d connect in a literal 12-step program;

at 13, parting ways.

Most times, tho, I climbed along

An edge, over there, into where.

Alone

Not by choice,

But growing weary of departures.

That’s where the spiral stair began.

An idea “you’re better alone, at this point.”

That only fits one at a time.

I was unquestioning.

I notice now the tower around me

That when I emerge, I cross bridges.

NEW INFORMATION

My grief is not in my lungs, it’s migrated to my heart,

swollen with sorrows

not even my own.

I am annoyed to have to pay attention.

I am not sickly; my scars are well-earned…

Reminders & I stayed on a good path.

I did well when I remembered to

Search for these with my heart-compass Guide.

She tells me now to let go of it all, to go for the best

Which I can expect since my expectations will fuel nothing less.

I reach again Critical Mass.

EXTRAORDINARY

When it is time for Ritual, I test a chord in my solar plexus

If it says, “Go fill up.”

I leave the dry sand I’ve been shaping

where it is.

I turn towards outside in degrees

longingly, almost fearful from being In.

One word can set you on a path of looking through

The Window at yourself, instead of staring out.

Now you are in the Ritual world

Where shelter is reversed from your norm

Where you are a little less plugged in all the time

Since it’s so much more meaningful to be unplugged.

REMAINDERS

I am sifting, seeking whole pieces

Here there is one, a spotted memory for

My back pocket.

Who cares if it’s not mine?

Life can get curious enough, but can

Never satisfy our Curiosity.

AND WHILE WE’RE AT IT

I have overcome fear for long periods of elation

Especially in traveling the road.

I auto-resumed balance

While here, on land, I am off-footed.

I would know my chart

To see if this streaking comet

Of self-worth & reassurance soon arrives:

To know to stand with my arms wide open

In welcome.

I just found prayer is the remote, pushed the button

To jump-start my transformation.

It is begun.

Now I need take my bearings

For the center of me,

The spirit core, the one who knows

Where they keep the wings.

Angels fly because they can?

What’s to stop me then?

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When Totems Collide

WHEN TOTEMS COLLIDE –  1/29/22

Calendars are fetishes

We wear them for the same reasons

Totems are grounding

Stabilizing

Organizing

Isn’t that the definition of calendars?

Now you wear time on your wrist

How could anything else work?

We hid our power in the creases –

Power now inked upon the skin

“Wearing your heart on your sleeve”

Was less obvious in my day.

Secrecy as currency

Dispensed for display.

UNTITLED – 2/12/22

She lived her life in minutes

While hours thundered by

Sometimes attentive, she slapped flanks to hurry their

Return to pulsing seconds.

We almost galloped ourselves

Until age returned us close enough

To beginnings

To make a study of time worthwhile.

HEART, CAN WE TALK?

I don’t know if you’ll cause my death

Or if I just will dismount one day,

Handing the reins to some alter-self

What I know is I’ve not been Here before.

The world gone kaleidoscope, & calliope,

Altogether widdershins.

When that Spiral only goes two ways –

SO, IF I’M NOT ROCKING SIN, I’M A SAINT?

METRICS

I understand why

That card reader

Said the word, “Posthumous”

When I questioned Fame.

My timing began to stagger the 2nd time I broke my right arm.

Repetition never bores a universe.

Destined to “repeat it?”

Or did I just replay it

To see if I’d missed much.

CONDENSED

As I was, I folded up even more

Squeezing off fear of death,

Entering that perpendicular

Funicular

Up

It didn’t happen the next day, though

Actually, a decade went by

Before I unpacked it fully.

Sitting as it was, on the suitcase stand in my room.

ONCE UPON A TIME OF EVER-AFTER

We were crowned with living butterflies

Stars winked in eyebrows

Powers transported us with leis

Of lily & frangipani

We rose into that eternal clarity

In full power & reason,

We sailed easily into that divine

So promised.

I’m headed back there now –

Having seen enough here

To know I need to maybe think it out again

Playing “hide & seek in the desert”

Never sequoia, only tumbleweed.

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Sanctuary

If churches had no doors

would the gods come out among the people?

curious to see how that other half lives

having heard so many bizarre tales.

Each of us would know them differently

disbelief never stopped a god…

would the people discover churches

their lean acoustics

the affinity for sound, the hard benches

bouncing it into distortion.

yet even so, the perfect place for anonymous speaking,

for stealth-level sharing.

some might become coffee houses…or libraries

All the prayers, the dreams of hope & glory

— everyday glory that is —

rising up, scenting the fresh air of ideas.

Would the gods visit other churches?

Ringing a familiar steeple bell as calling card

or wander pastures, playgrounds, parklands?

Who among them would you recognize?

Who among us would they know?

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Poems In A Jar

Dedicated to my sister, Teri, who died on her 80th birthday last January – R.I.P.

THIS LITTLE BAG OF SINS

Keeps me from heaven

You see, it will not cross the sill

My feet are sore from walking

My fingers clenched with Will

I’ve left it by the roadside

      Several times, many miles

But it found its way through mirrors

      Devious with wiles

This bag of small wrongdoings

      Heavier than lead

Weary years of travel

      For what?!? These all are dead.

I sat a while longer

      Just watching heaven’s lights

A wretch in rags & sandals

      A refugee of night

A passing angel called me

      I wakened with a start

“I’ve something here to give you.”

      Then he handed me my heart

That movement took a lifetime

      As he stood, he took my hand

I turned to find Forgiveness

      In a pyramid of sand.

~~1/25/22   carol borsello

DINOSAURS WERE A RUSSIAN PLOT

Nah, they just jumped off an asteroid, see?

Or maybe Nibiru

Tough old hides rolling down valleys

Clearing off nature

After glaciers allowed eggs

Bigger was better, they surmised

That they ruled was no surprise

The mystery of their demise

A patchworked web of compromise

Enough for me that they are gone!

Where once they rolled, I make my home.

POEMS ARE SO MUCH FUN!

They climb out one by one

Looking around before coming aboveground

Their bodies well-rounded

Identities impounded

Compounded, surrounded

They shake themselves off

And put on their hats

They walk through the Earth

But yo, I never worry

The kids are all fine

It’s Mom who’s more usually out of her mind.

EACH DAY DECANTED

Of fine spirits

Distilled by masters

Trod upon by maidens with purpled feet

A day rides the border of night

To that same eastern horizon

Then swarms uphill

Touching everything

With fingers trusting life

TOO YOUNG

For a gun

He used his words instead

We prayed

He slayed

His road still made of lead.

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Tabula Rasa to Rosetta Stone

TABULA RASA to ROSETTA STONE

My heart is a water-walker

Knowing fire comes before air or earth

Without knowing how it knows.

All runes writ on inner walls.

I still believe clichés too well.

Worn truths for campfire nights.

So much disappears when ravens must be masked

Rumor has no brakes, careening.

We live history because we are that,

We pass through time in slick shadows

Claiming less & less responsibility.

All those fingers pointing at me…

No way to choose what was mine,

Or clean it up.

I hear they have snow on tap in Hell

But you have to order regret on the side.

We are all still dancing

Long beyond the musicians fallen asleep.

STATIC

Scattered static, poor reception

Stories of emotional electrical storms

All natural & delivered fresh to your door.

Sometimes I’m sitting in that

1950’s Matrix kitchen,

Linoleum & chrome, aprons on a hook

A bowl of cookies on the counter.

They should make churches of kitchens

Each cabinet a chapel.

ALWAYS EARLY

I think I incarnated fifty years too early

I may have rushed it a little

But I know me – even on the Other Side

I was twitching the curtains to see…

I just kept showing up

Till they let me in,

A kind of standby thing.

I didn’t get much advance notice

Just the part I’d be a girl.

I hopped on board,

Folding a note to the wing-footed messenger

“Tell them I’ve left, okay?”

MERCY

All of us breathless from the chase

Set upon like lemmings rounded up & running

For the cliff

Laughing out loud

At the rush of the madding crowd.

NEW MEXICO

My friend declares she’s done her “goathead yoga” for the day

Bending from the hips since knees have to consult on standing.

I found it a grand description!

My flipflops are spiked like golf shoes

Along with rattlers, the reason for all those Tony Lamas.

FORWARD

The kaleidoscopes have clicked, another paisley scene

Passes for reality in one eye only

SERIOUS CAMOFLAGE

Central Control never got to center

Tho I passed for rational at the time.

Barriers retreat: Clarity flips on the spotlights

Finding there’s no going back anymore

And probably never was despite the muddy reviews.

There was another opening line I had

But by the time I found paper ‘twas

Fled, like a deer to a bark

While I turn in circles on silvered toes.

TENTHS

It’s the tenth of the month: time to

Start its liquefaction.

Months march in on single digits

Upright & meaningful

But this is where they pick up speed.

Days can drizzle or pour, some

Snapping shut to disappear entirely.

I am busily escaping this meme of Time

Wherein clock hands feel around for my fate

I am busily unfolding DNA,

Making room for the light coming in.

HMM

I can pinch that last nerve of yours

Like a new mosquito bite announcing itch

I’m hell-bent on being who I am

Clear enough for transparent to lean in

I grasp that slippery slab of dawn

Two-handed, and a yank

Brings it to my face

Smelling morning up close

Mine is the Last Word

The very last.

YESTERDAYS

I walked the beach at this hour, turning up

Shells & sandcrabs

Hiding my shoes under the pier for later.

The morning bypassed curtains altogether,

Entering my room without knocking

Breathless in its message: Get up! Get up!

Into my suit & out the door I fled

The two of us, giggling at daybreak

Opening doors in the house of silence

Out the door, down the steps

Snagging a towel from the rail en route.

Sweep the kickstand back, mount up

Five blocks from the sea

I hear the shush & boom

Only a dune away.

WHATEVER IT IS, IT’S INTENSE

Dipped in morning

Held by one heel from total immersion

Nonetheless, redolent of early

Standing in my tiny kingdom yard

Playing peekaboo with the risen sun.

IT’S USELESS!

I cannot write everything!

Not the curl of air along my cheek

The ant I brush from my arm,

The clouds fitted into the puzzle-blue sky

How good it feels to breathe.

The pacing of the cat by the door.

Things before important

No longer apply

Lives of brown mountains &

Fairy-tale seaspray

An aloha of life.

The fabulous bouquet of memory & mercies

A seven-decade life to recall & restate

Well-written refinements of

Monasteries & memories.

SANDALS & BALL GOWNS

I’ve talked myself off cliffs

Out of foolish love affairs

My own counsel was wise

If ignored.

Saving change for the next time

I pass a gumball machine

Heading to where morning is enough

To satisfy the day.

SIMPLIFY

Embarked upon the most complex of journeys

Making my way through good & evil

Trapped in conundrum, peeling away heartbreak

For more speed

Entranced & endlessly so.

The invisible ongoing a most elusive route

Let alone a destination to be had

I would be a ridge runner

If I could climb mountains.

MORNING

God’s second chance or ten millionth

Embellished in daylight

Fringed in shadows

The soul skipping along,

A basket over its arm to collect magic.

AGAIN: THE WIZARD’S LIGHT

I watch the plants

Turning east to beginnings

Coming into view

Refining darkness

Silhouettes becoming solid

Profligate in green

The trees assume definition.

I have too much terminology

Little enough experience

A liquid comfort zone to float upon.

Once a neighbor, walking our common yard

Looked at me in the lawn chair, still-sitting.

“Are  you watching the laundry dry?”

He asked incredulously.

I smile now as then,

All these years later to think

I may have glimpsed my Life’s Purpose in that minute.

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Calendar Times

My friend gave me Seven Calendars

Added to the four from her last month,

Gives me 12 years to live – a life a month

Both a cram & a vivid adventure

January sees me as The Beginner

A six energy after the tests of the five,

Building the stability of four

February will see me shucking shackles

Finding my Fearless Suit, amen.

Taking it out to check it over.

March will find me serving the wind

Standing, as webs are wick’d away

Arms up, as in a test pattern for flight.

April puts me on the chocks

Feet already poised to run downhill

Arms braced to push forth into speed.

May is Permission Month, I face the mirrors

Checking each reflection for any flinch

Seeing none, I shall start divesting.

June sets the flight pattern

Ablaze across a hemisphere

My breath exhales to explore it.

July sets a backpack of heat

Across my cool plans, these meld

Like good peppermint bark with red sprinkles.

August shares me with the moon

Introductions all around

Handshakes, offers of maps.

September sets an 11 upon me:

I’ve lived thru the ten: rebirth permits

Starting over in Spirit Time as a One.

October farewells all that went before

“Sayonara,” she calls

Syllables on the wind.

November flexes haunches to spring

To leap the now-familiar moon

To launch beyond it to the stars.

December sips wassail in the sleigh

Where overhead beams Heaven

Our sole road Home.

The Next World

In the last 30 seconds of the bifurcated moment,

the ones ticking down as I exhale

I forget there may be meaning in this life

I float to the rafters where ever-afters

Have lodged themselves as breathed-out dreams.

I realize the mine of my life is up to me:

I built this pier I stand upon

Plank by plank.

I watch the night

Where darkness never happens

For starbursts pulsing over

I sent my mind in questing

But my heart leaped free instead.

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NONET

MINE IS YOURS, OR IS IT?

Poets are thieves

Making off with the best words.

Hoarding them for careful distribution.

You cannot tell a poet much

Has not already crossed their mind.

Quarters in a piggybank

Turning into silver dollars

Coming out of the belly –

Runes & reads & roads

Everyone counting every one.

POEMS ARE SKINNED ALIVE

From living language

Arcane & mottled

Visible only to the see-r

The ti-leaf reader

Appearing from the cards

Like images of medieval life

Depicted in peelings

Left in runes in the sink

Gathered for composting minds

Forever nourishing.

POEMS ARE LIKE RAIN SHOWERS

Of words

Skies sweeping by of a patchworked day

Everything having a voice, telling its own story

Some listening: write it down,

Lest it just run off brazen rooftops

Into gutters

Alleys

Streams

Rivers

Oceans

Clouds

Showers.       

DOUBLE HAIKU

Crystalline rainbows

Dappling the stubborn vacuum

I roll across them.

Vain undertakings

This two-step dance of cleaning

Vacuuming rainbows.

PREDAWN

Is the new 7 a.m.

All those mornings I rose before dawn

That light would find me out upon the sunrise.

I now reclaim the nights,

All the stars I did not see

Shining still so patiently.

Now it is not just mornings

When I am

But whole motherships of night

On the other side of the clock.

WHAT IF

What if this life was the preview to the real event?

A prelude, the someone laying the red carpet was me

I liked the feel of it & climbed on up

Following worn & wary dreams to arrive

Where I need no defenses,

I made my own way

To where I shoved my suspicions under the bed

I made my way.

Now can I shine?

DAISY CHAIN DAYS

Suspicious of such good weather, I am.

The tender center of midday

Sealed by the hunkering night;

My heart counts down beats now.

Idly wondering will I be happy in the Hereafter?

CORNERS

Weedy & overgrown

The yards of my childhood

Good to cut across to shorten the way

Blue uniform, cloth coat, Buster Browns

Crushing crunchy growth.

Mind stratospheric: ablaze!

Body trudging home from the schoolbus stop

Lopsided with a leather schoolbag

A Lone Ranger lunchbox (featuring Silver.)

Of two minds about homework

But well-acquainted with inevitability

Consigned to childhood’s compartmentalization

Free as the sky / sand / sea

All my boundaries

Bled out to edges

Of omnipotence.

THAT FAMILIAR CADENCE

Of my heart

On its own riff

Tipped over the lever

Into countdown

As faithfully as it counted up

To here.

Where we are now,

Feeling the world

As a flashlight does the night land.

Now it starts a little flicker

Pushing out the limits

Of all achieved before.

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