Category: Poems

Thursday Morning: 7:02

Poems drift out of me

Like islands form in an ocean

Of infinite space

A sea of creativity

Into which others dip & swim

& nourish themselves & my selves

Some grow shady trees

On which fruit hangs, juicy & nurturing

Some grow worn tracks where thoughts

Have gone round around, grooving the land

To grow themselves

Some are parks for picnics & play.

What a life that gives me gifts such as these:

What a life that has offered me love

At a late age; love I’ve wished for forever

Even now, rare as unicorns, ephemeral as double rainbows

Even now made of prayer & songs of morning.

I pick up the threads once again

To knit? To sew? I have no ideas

Beyond my hands having something in them

With which to work a working

Towards magic? Towards love?

How can I tell, for all is such

In this life:

“Everything is holy now:” *

Don’t bring me figs; I do not care for dates

Don’t bring me excuses; live up to your own dreams

Don’t put anything dead at my feet for me to prepare to food.

I cannot tell you what I want

For if you don’t know by now, you never will.

Life is made of one continuing surprise, after all

What you bring forth today

Bears fruit on the morrow

As one day passes,

Another  lines up in its place

Like some cosmic Stairmaster of before & after.

Exercising the soul.

Filling in the blanks I didn’t know were there

Frightening small dogs with my heavy tread

Still, it is only me

Shrugging on a jacket

Or pulling off my shoes

Or climbing on top of you on the couch

To stretch my body around you

To make a wish for a dream

Worth dreaming

To engage with my age

In eager enjoyment/enjoinment

To taste & test & touch

To yearn into & tease away

And all of all, to love.

Who has time to live a conventional life?

Or the inclination?

Not when there are worlds & words to

Uncover, discover, recover

To render into small bites

For chewing: a cud of circumstance & dream

An element mixing surface & inner elements

A deep’ning dwelling of hope & holiness

The place where these meet & rebalance

All of who I am

That I walk forward in this world

That I take your hand in intimate delight

That I bring my smile to you

That I offer the who of I am

For your love.

A hobbyhorse on a carousel

Colorful & gilded in morning

A turning of around; an eternal wheel

Whereupon the world may never change

Yet the universe is shifting from up to down

From rote to miracle

From beginning to ending

All upon a calliope.

Circus music, mustang mortality,

Bright lights, small encounters

Bought & sold, given & retaken

An afternoon’s delight

A morning’s withdrawal into coffee & comeuppance.

O bring me no resolutions, no fake news

Restrain your anger, suck it back inside of you

I have no use for it, no space in my life

Where that fits: your angry logic…

Allow me my miracles

Stand down or look away

For I am dancing to the tune

Of my own being, a cosmic ballet,

A giggling shimmy

A vest of fringe over clown clothes

I am whomever you make me to be

While you have nothing at all to do with it…

*

Riding the Light

#1

Sticky with need, hungered with longing

Speaking In Poetry: a potlatch of words/images

Ideas like pebbles tossed down a well

Just to hear the splash.

I once thought words built houses

Safe spaces wherein dwelling

Was of comfort & whole

Yet the wind whistles through verbs,

Rain washes away adjectives.

I am left holding only the idea

I thought writing would coalesce into love.

#2

And this is her fate:

The always of the clock

Hanging silent for one D battery…

Still right twice upon each whirling day

At Ingo’s, the clock runs backward

But offers no undoing

Simply reversing Time’s forward dance

Now the Mandela Effect

Of my soul’s Mandala steps forward

Running down my arm onto paper

The lanky outpour of a million years lived

A thousand years loved

A past of pens, a present of words

Writing.

#3

If words are a spell, I am deeply ensorcelled

Splayed on a pentagram of circles, stars & points to ponder.

If love is an event, I arrived just in time to take down the banner.

If heaven is a train, my watch put me past its departure.

I’m always arriving after the wards are set;

When time rests on its haunches

Always in between beginnings

Resounding climax dying away

The years haven’t softened me any

They washed off the pluff mud

Rending me to bare rock

Knuckled & craggy

Slapping back at the waters

Urgent & laughing,

Bent on uprooting me

To tumble downriver.

My footprint is a mantra

My pedigree soundly peasant

I am who I am that I am

Blessing & Muse & all that occurs

In that Between.

#4

Dumbledore’s Cauldron

I love the Pensieve

Where a wizard fishes out a single memory

From the mercury swarm afloat

Freeing if from fellows

All a-clamor for attention…

The memory, laid upon a towel to dry

Smelling of holy water & salt

Circling up with the prod of one fat finger

A stain of brine, a sharp cut of odor

A former place to be in the mind

Moved on to the present & far beyond.

I rest it upon my upper lip:

A clarion moment to inhale

Chill with wet suppositions –

Sodden strings of should/could/would/if

And just before it dries to sere

I flick it back to its pickling medium

It brightens, bubbles, swims away

A squirt of ink, an idea of smoke

Who will venture a guess who’s more free?

#5

I am a rogue mouthpiece for one small voice in the universe

An egg & a sperm penetrated long ago,

Perpetrated in a cosmic giggle

No longer in gravitas, simply gravid

Yet so fully lifted into life by the dreams of heaven

A breath of patchouli, of sage & ylang-ylang

A brilliant magnolia blossom, white on green-wax leaves

A ciliated, petalled moon.

I am a night-shadow, caught for a moment

In sweaty mystery.

The light of a false dawn, fading but a moment after.

Yet for all the ephemeral I find myself to be

There’s no doubt of my footprints

Crossing space-time, my spoor off the paths of heaven

Leading to those mountaintops, to the moment insubstantial

When I return to the memory of God

Who’s almost forgotten me,

“Oh, there you are! I just thought of you the other day, my dear!

I felt you all this time, you know, playing peekaboo on the trail.”

#6

These poems are running waters wearing me away

Rushing over grooves of white-salt runnels in rock

The years serve singled purpose: teaching me to fly

Oh yes, there will be a time

When laughter is my only memory:

The Holy Grail of life softened by a smile.

I have stalked the boundaries of heaven,

Drawn by a promise, a waft of pie-on-a-windowsill

A cool glass for an overheated soul to rest against

Taken by the view inside.

I am a vision, a shimmer in the corner of your eye

A snatch of bright song on an emptied-out day

A dip into perfume’s transitory promise

God has scraped His knuckles over me

I am bruised, imperfect, parts I started with now missing,

An angel touched down but for a moment but netted by gravity.

A breath of calm moisture on a searing hot day

I am the red shoes not dancing, the bare feet rejoicing; free.

Step out of your cities to my green velvet pastures

Allow the sun of my morning to break your frosted night,

Find in me that once-told joining of all you are to all you can be

Where you are born once again; born Holy.

December Afternoons – A Myriad of Poems

Ok readers, please excuse the spacing – WordPress has added a new format which I clicked on. O Lord! It’s making a mess of my poems. First, it won’t allow me to keep lines together, then it removes spacing between words & within punctuation marks. So errors are NOT mine! I am in correspondence with them about this.  ALSO, I am happy as a happy clam, so do not assume that I’m in a cell of depression just b/c some of the poems are sad. OK? Thanks! Happiest of clam holidays to you all!

My heart is lost

Wandering

A balloon with no string

Nor a wrist to tie it to.

Visiting landscapes I have not seen in years.

We perambulate & each horizon brings new to the old

A childhood at the beach

Winter in all weathers

Dunes blown & tracked with triple-toe prints of gulls

Landed & windblown, feathers flashing wrong-way-out

And they turn to face the whirling squall, stately as small can be.

I perceive old enemies waiting behind boardwalk stanchions

It is Christmas Eve & I am on the shore

Of my mind

Watching my heart lift away across the sea.

—————-

I am not alone tho all around me except me is invisible.

I am the child of a universe

So bright with delight

So filled with gifts & laughter

It sparkles with my blessing

Mirrored back to me

I slip the ties of dreams

For open fields swimming in sunlight

I lie down next to you in holy anticipation

Of your whispers & feathering my hair

Oh God, your hands…

Repeat your tattoo on me, my love

Charge me with ecstasy; you know just what to do

And if you do not, I am not shy to direct you

Sweet carnal Angel to lift me, dancing,

On your fingers.

Lips & lives meet, late & in the land of lost, lonely dreams

We have waited long for this:

I cannot think but that time prepared us so well

That when we touch, all the connections of years

Fall away until there is only us two

In all the stars.

Your Jupiter, my Venus

We are ruled by benevolence smacking

Its lips in cosmic delight we have met

Whispering behind hands now joining

As our passion sparks theirs

As our coupling moves planets

From their accorded realms.

—————

I know. I’m brilliant.

But it’s because I shine with your regard…

This is not me…I am bitten with a dratted dream

A swatted swing… I am cupped in your hands

 Like a kitten, purring, yawning pointed kitten teeth

I am caught like a kite in the thorn tree

Wanting the pain of your missing touch turned into longing

Into pleasure.

O Lord! I am a selfish woman.

Yet these are not my tears, this is not my longing,

This is the whole world banging through my door

Barging into my kitchen,

Raiding my drawers for secrets.

I am a song at the edge of your lips

Sung with sweet longing, an echo of notes carried

On chill December nights

Promising Christmas.

——————-

Caught in the open without you here

I am bared to elements hard to fathom

My coat, my scarf, my gloves all indoors

My Uggs upstairs in the back closet

I am made of pearling snow

Frozen in posture – my arms reached out

For you, for love, for all that could be

Were all that is now, not all there is.

But I am gonna survive this; I’m a woman

Made of steel standing in front of the

Foaming Forge.

I close my eyes & walk on.

————–

There are seasons when life is different to bear

There are times when I live only by wits & what

Little wisdom I can rustle together, one

Hand on the recipe book of life

The other holding a spoon.

Salt & pepper on the table

Frypan heating on the stove

I am starving in the land of plenty.

Will you not find me tempting?

Will you put me back on the shelf?

No. I see your hunger; sense the rumbling

In your heart.

Come, devour me. I breathe my love

Into your mouth, over your body.

I am no sugar confection, pinkly spun

Atop a cake.

I am a force of nature

As you have never tasted

A flavor created just for you.

Dig in!

—————-

Wait, I hear another poem coming on

Not the train in the tunnel

But whispering up on fox-feet

Almost invisible, an intransitive verb

At the tip of a fricative…

Push me around again, world

& you’ll know I’m here

I’m not one to sit down

If there’s a performance to be held

I’m up in front of the mic

Capturing hearts

Not asleep at any wheels

Turned toward me.

——————

I want to pour myself over you

Like syrup on pancakes

Finding all the cracks & crevices

I want you sticky with my love

Fingers & face

I want to push you around the bed,

Chase you to the headboard

Tickle your toes with mine…

See? There it is!

I want you smiling!

—————-

A life divided by books I have & have not read.

Music I’ve listened to & that I never shall.

A love I can call my own & that poor excuse for it which I now have.

There are too many truths to understand anymore

Far too many opinions to be shared

When all I crave is silence &

Seagulls overhead.

I want an easy touch

Becoming more familiar

A burnishing here,

A tiny kiss there

The penetration of each other we allow.

I’ve seen it already:

The divisions in my life

Before & after  you.

—————

On Learning My Grandson Writes Poems

“They’re quite good,” says my daughter

I sense the surprise in her voice & hear her smile

This one little gene pops out…piping a shrill note

I may yet live beyond my days as a Babushka!

————————-

The Washing Machine of Emotions/

The Wishing Machine of Time

Banged about by both,

I surface for a breath

Once more gone under

Water overhead

While I orient to air

And swim.

These omniscient waters

Cold & warm by turn

Bathing beaches arced by rainbows

These impertinent frothing bubbles

Tickling up my body

No one save me now

Caught in-between these elements

It’s only a life I lack.

——————

True North?

Is it true the man finds the woman he loves?

I read this long ago…in some dusty book

Some outlived tome.

I could  not know how it would end

The days I imperiously marched thru the door to Love

Took it by the ears, pulled it down atop me.

In this lies my forgiveness.

If men find love

Why are women so charged

When they lose it?

Can’t these yearnings

Thick enough for spoons

Be fed to hungers

Wide-mouthed with tomorrow?

——————–

The Tan Egg in a Dozen of Brown

Why are eggs sold by the dozen?

Potatoes by the sack?

Why so many names of measure

Ounce & pound & by the rack?

I eat potatoes paid tomorrow

With a fork earned yesterday

In a world turned pay-to-play

Down a street that’s marked One Way

All the signposts of this lifetime

On the black & yellow row

Where the colors cannot go

In the space I wish to know.

—————-

What Child Is This?

Peering from atop my heart this Christmas –

Why do her hands tremble on the rim; tears on her lashes?

What is she seeing from her pulsing landscape?

Rich with copper-smells & red…

She is an orphan of all its storms

I scarce reach my hand to her

What story do I have except our own?

There! She clambers out & looks at me

“I have a story now,” she begins, “Would you listen?”

She takes my hand, inviting my head to her lap

She combs my hair with tiny fingers.

“I started in darkness with only stars to light my way,

Before the world had air & light.

I danced when you thought of me – I got here first,

Remember?

I called the snow

And showed you how to bake bread

I howled for you like the wolf

So you would find me

Yet you needn’t be afraid to be we.

I kept all our moments safe

Full of presents & love, porkchops & beans,

There’s a Brother in here with me & a Sister

One of Daddy’s laughs,

One of Mother’s frowns.

Plus all the time you ever lost

With Christmas Eve & Christmas Passed

There’s a bunch of relationships knocked about like tenpins

Each one with a face.

Believe me, I’ve looked ’round hard

There are no monsters here.

It’s safe for us both.

Now, maybe you would like to play?”

———————-

The songs went through me

Like an express through the station

Stopping for no one,

Stirring up leaves so sere & dry

They snowflaked down.

I have no words for me anymore

Just a pen whispering in a heart, taking notes,

The pen so sure, the heart so not.

I should have kept on singing, even without a voice,

I should have counted all the gathered shells I

Envisioned in glass bowls on wooden tables.

Instead, I have collected my sins

Numberless & flickering, like lights on a tall tree

A rosary of pain I now ignore: old sins don’t count

Only the fresh ones, yeh?

Life is emollient

Ebullient

Opportunistic

Capable of living itself

Without interference from the outside.

I have no extant record

Tho I’ve been dragged to the copshop now & again

I’ve smoked stolen cigarettes

Wished others harm

I’ve muddied incandescence

More than once…

I’ve watched the light change so many times

Skirting the liminal edges rising

Tattered, tattooed, footsore & scaly

Yet the sun rises on me with incoherent joy

Burning me clear; I rise, translucent

Open beaming wings to fly.

The Shape of Happiness

SEPTEMBER

For a longish time I saddled up the dream each morning,

With darkness’ fall, I brushed you off my shoulders

Realigning my balance for dreams.

Old man, you are banished

Into your well of no acknowledgement;

In your inability to reveal love, review life.

Pack your suitcase of pretended nonchalance

Put it by the bus stop bench

For your tour of lonely eternity:

But wait! You are not alone!

It only seemed that way.

You dipped eager fingers into my life

Allowed small satisfactions: matches, not candles

Yes, I liked you imperious & you swelled to fill that role —

When slipping into the kitchen to embrace me

Was all you ever needed to do.

OCTOBER

The linking fingers slide apart

Where once was full embrace…

We are a remembrance of recognition

Smoke without mirrors: an irritant.

The road has twisted; I am no longer faint of heart

Nor will I falter in seeking out of your grasp

I forced all my music into one instrument

When I needed a concert hall orchestra.

Divinity is upon me again

Claimed in its embrace, I dare once more to dance.

NOVEMBER

Time to let you go now.

Unlace the dream tied ‘round my wrist

Close my eyes to open them to the new world

Without shadows.

Time to shoulder my pack

Set by the roadside in anticipation

Of traveling with you

We had a picnic for a feast

A day in the life…

A purloined kiss.

The song’s delicious fading

Out of memory, beyond horizons

Many endings, many deaths

From dearth of dreams.

I shake myself, I rouse to reroute the sun

There are new trails I follow now

I am around your shadow & gone.

For A Fool Too Wise To Be Foolish

O foolish man

Who cannot accept

The hands of a woman

Looking to heal you

O holy man

Set apart from the rest

Singled out by the surprise

Of unexpected Love.

Were I you, I would find the strength

To mount the dream

Galloping so insistently through

Your benumbed psyche.

I would hold to the pommel of

My hand offered in friendship

And admiration

Even beyond their physical application

Bound only by eternal spirit…

O man in my missing dreams

Glimpsed from the corners of

Tearing eyes

What could have been

Or might have been –

Kept asunder by circumstance

By timing

By opportunities unpresented

Unprecedented,

By promises of another lifetime

Extending into these our now-lives.

I would uncross your arms

Set so firmly over your heart

I would face my face

Shining with blessing for you

Accept what is offered

Although it can never be an all from nothing.

 

O dearest man I touched with all my being

I brushed with my beating/beaten heart

O king of my wondering servitude

I would render with tendresse & laughing joy

Were you only to accept

To the limits we must draw

Within the abilities I have to offer,

For these would delimit you also.

 

O wisest man

To back away from my incendiary

Lust for life lived well

In utter expansion &

Manifest truth

It is to your bald being

A covering so soft

It is to your naked skin

A balm upending the

Hardening of your limbs

In resistance.

 

Choose your boundary lines

Implant them well, that nothing

Can reach you

For this seems what attends you best.

 

I fade outside the vision in your eyes

 

Yet I remain, as said before

A good woman looking for a good man

Who seeks a good woman.

And Fate & Faith will not leave me upended

Fallen from the blessing of your regard.

I will not resume invisibility

As my starting place

I am far too exposed to so many surfaces

To step into any background

You may fashion.

I have seared your closing heart

Too well.

 

You may choose to retreat

To cover that which thrives in lightness

But I will never again

Be who I was

For having known the potential of your love.

 

 

 

So Close To Despair, I …

There are times I am so lonely I can taste it, hear it, smell it.

I see it in my mirror.

I am feeling empty.

Not much looking forward.

So tired of dancing with shadows when I want a real partner to my steps

In my arms, in my bed, in my head

Someone to wind fingers together

To share secrets

To smile at, crooked & crinkly.

I want to grow pale in sleep

Wrapped up in a warm body

Spooned around…

My heart aches

My throat quivers

Unshed tears, unvoiced words

I cannot even see myself anymore

Invisible as the wind whistling through the holes in my head

Where confidence lived & moved & clarified my being.

Where did I go?

Subsumed. Exhausted by my own thoughts.

Hands up in surrender

Numb.

I no longer believe in myself

Or that tomorrow will be better

A tangle around the Mayday pole of my ego.

Help me through this

Versed  in conspiracy, in what might be/might have been

Primary: secondary: tertiary

Me me me

Lost at sea, surrounded by water

Only the sky is visible from here

But the clouds change too quickly

For my hope to hook onto.

I can tell you of investigations, complications,

Recriminations, obligations.

The reasons blur.

I blink them away.

I cannot testify to

Any reasons for this.

I submerge.

There are no exit signs at sea

Only depth

I have no fins, no scales,

No colors to float from here in rescue.

 

Can you lift a hand to bless me?

Lay it upon my forehead, soothe & smooth

Iron these tears to steam

Paint me on a smile?

Reinstate my life to valid?

I am here. I wait.

Lay a wreath atop the water.

Remember me for I was,

That maybe I shall be.

 

NOR MINE TO SLEEP

Once upon a time, I read that insomniacs keep the sleeping world from disincorporating (tho the description was surely more prosaic.) 
I have a clock in my bedroom which does not glow, so when I wake, I’ve no ideas on the time. I flick the button & a blue flash lights, a bolt of pulling me from any thought of sleep; but I must know the hour. Twelve after midnight: time to write.
Recently, I “found” seven grandmothers for my walls – me, who had no grandparents whom I knew. These are women of powerful profile, women of flowing/flown hair from which eagle feathers rise in halo, or drift in unheard winds. I made a Council on my wall, replacing my Vision Board, a grace gathered of wisdom. I put away my nightlight. The silken darkness woke them. Tho  quiet til now, I feel I shall hear more, soft sibilants in a tongue far from my native, but conversation / communication nonetheless. This is the first in the “Messages from My Mothers” Series.

____________________________________________________________________

NOR MINE TO SLEEP WHEN WHISPERS WAKE ME WISE

I rise to midnight

Wakeful & alone

My life unsung, is flaring to a tone

Unwrapped & watchful,

Barefoot & outside

A shawl to cut the chill

Of night alive.

I wait on words

They rise to overfill

To flow away to rivers, all downhill

These are my true love

Ever, thus, my world:

A child’s hand in fist I might uncurl

To find surprises hidden from the day

My heart sees through all blackness in this place,

A gift to share with all, with sky so dark

Around a glowing moon I set my spark

I write an old September, or a June

One day past full, a dimming, tonsured moon…

The pages in the journal start to fill

For sleep eludes creation as I write…

In daylight worlds, a creature of tonight

Lit from within, the certain glow undimmed

I am forgiven every time I’ve sinned

The Muse awakes, she stirs inside my soul

I scattered during sleep; she knits me whole.

These folded-over pages must unfurl

A child’s fist, I open & uncurl

I see you in the distance of my mind

You are not mine, a message so unkind.

Yet knowing you, I never can be blind.

Your eyes see far beyond a simple rhyme.

As words arise, insistent of their way

These messages in darkness filled by day

With chorus/blessing both, I busy out

When nightfall sleeps, I rise to be about

My muse’s business, all there is to say

O’erflows my heart, my mind up & away

I cannot think, for caught up in this flow

Of all but poem, resting in its glow

The world, unfinished, lest I write some more

Insomnia insistent at the door.

My duties crowd around me; I don’t care

For words all dance about me in the air.

I breathe them in & write them in release

My pen, my soul, my ever-loving peace

There are no hours when I sit to scribe

These poems are my fam’ly, art & tribe

So, hear me Moon – before you fade & fly

These words may live beyond the day I die

I shall return, in line & open verse

A value far beyond that in my purse

This ink, my blood, an overlighting world

A child’s fisted hand you have uncurled

This is as much a river to the sea

My heaven at our door, these words are me

As others live for love & duty sure

I live to write. The muse is at my door

I bid her enter, take a seat & share

She takes up my most comfortable chair

And makes of it a jeweled & shining throne.

I write, & I am suddenly to home.

My life uncircumcised, creation swells

Where others sleep at midnight, I hear bells:

My seven elders whisper from the wall

Tho no one else can hear them, I am called

For all my lives are brought about by words

My mind defrocked, unfeathered, undeterred

My dreams can wait til daylight in the world

A child’s fist, the words inside, uncurled.