Category: Poems

A Dance of Poems

Line Waiter

In the dystopian future

I am a Line Waiter.

I earn a decent life cuz I stand my ground.

As surrogate.

“No time to wait in line? Make the appointment anyway

then just show up!”

get the picture on yr phone?

Sometimes people throw coins, too

When I dance a little shimmy. Nice perk.

All day to contemplate the ones before

Philosopher by inadvertency (trying to keep self-amused.)

Lots of thoughts to think; no blame to be had.

We’re all in line somewhere for something we don’t

Feel in front of yet.

Yeh?

– – –

Don’t be shy, little words, just dance write up

Blow past the mind on your own mission

Of being seen at the same time as being said

So, don’t let me get in the way,

Just swarm by, mob the

Blood-brain barrier,

Well up in the ears,

Overfill the eyes,

Wash over the feet

Fill my hands so that to

Shake them is to write you up.

  • – –

Broad & Chestnut Meet

I was keeping that Philadelphian ‘never-build-taller-than-Billy’s hat’

In the ‘partment; didn’t really realize that until

Things started getting taller than me

On the surround

A 7’ bookcase, the split-leaf Rhonda finally

Supported on a walk-found branch so we are

Face-to-leaf

The top of the desk calling for its own inspection

Each time I sit down. Its vortex operational

In triangular Joy.

It all moves by

Same as it ever was.

My surroundings shift like a river

I somehow manage to stand up in.

  • – –

THE BUGLE CALL OF SATURDAY MORNING Or, staying in the Flow

Saturdays start early for me…I wake with

The yearnings of a schoolgirl who has survived

A week of hell & has time before Mom gets on

About the vacuuming … time to get out with a

‘bye’ n a grab at a banana and head downstairs

for Blue Boy – the 26” bike my Missing Dad

Bought me cuz he didn’t know I had a little under

24” frame – so the bike

Was a grab-mount

Feet already pedaling the ground

Before the saddle-leap

Already in motion, side by side

Up, up & away.

RECOVERED DOCUMENT

Ever get this notice?

You pull up Word & it offers

In effect, a snick on brainpan

A kind of “Ah Ma’am, you left this”

Someone waving my flea market

Moneypurse.

My

Eyes go round circuiting

all the memory banks at once

“What document?” My fingers

Assure an affirmative:

YES!

‘Bring it to me, sweeti,’

I coax it up & it’s an

Address I typed in two

Weeks ago for an envelope

That jammed the printer.

  • –

LIFE IS A MAILED LETTER

All alone, you are formed, molded, finally

Stamped with a Diploma & a birth certificate

(on second thought, Mom kept that till needed.)

Released into the world

Like a trained animal into the circus

Applauded by a crowd you didn’t even know

Was out there all this time.

Put into the slot, sitting in the darkness

Of the not-knowing until a Uniformed Daylight

Rattled the chute

You were snatched by an unfamiliar glove

Driven, sorted, allocated by some invisible

Zip Code machine

Deposited in the tray of life

Like change in a pocket

Carelessly delivered

Tho carefully addressed

In a life where you’re the Occupant

As often as not.

  • – –

We have Ghost Houses here

In T or C

We have places that once occupied

A “where” here, these can shimmer

Into place:

Overlay a yard or a park

So you blink & maybe find a coffee.

For where you thought you were

Is not where you are.

There are incipient ranches

A mirage between the highway

And the mountains looming

Like giants: the Caballos

The Horse Mountains for when

‘they’ hid horses there.

We have nearby a changeable lake

Atop a drowned fort-militant

Something to do with hostiles

While we trespassed unmercifully

Treading their flag

Writing on ours, “Don’t.You.Dare.”

  • – –
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Almost Solstice 2020

I can hear the insects walking on my grave

(Sounds like some old Beatnik thing to say)

Any line that meter will start a poem

Like any old crank cause a Model A to

Cough & wheeze & ready-go.

(Honk honk, rattle rattle rattle, crash!, beep-beep)

I ramble thru the ages living other stories

Moving left to right but mostly straight on.

It’s just that everything now looks familiar:

Is there no home I have not occupied?

No wonder at no need to wander

Perhaps it is all in my backyard.

I am, after said is done,

An Alchemist.

Remember that part about history

Belonging to the writers?

I do.

………………………………………..

How far back would I need to go for a role model?

Back to the Chesters, I guess, the couple who ran

Our local public school, Margaret Mace

J. Elwood & Marie Chester.

I have no one else to share this story with, so bear with me.

Mr. Chester was the Principal & Mrs. Chester my home room & English teacher. Mr. Chester was of a larger than life mold & shared that with me – he would pull me out of class (thus actually conferring the status on me  of being pulled out of the room by the Principal. ) He would bring me to his office & recite Rudyard Kipling or a parody of some long piece of tintinnabulation. It still uplifts me to think on it.

Quiet, black-haired Mrs. Chester wore English like a suit of armor. I learned all the finer points of jousting the language with her.

I think the Chesters were the reason Mom sent me to the public school after Brother Joe lost to the Monsignor. They were involved with Mom financially, I believe, having co-signed a note.

………………………

SUNOCO

My favorite restaurant here has an old gas station bell at their drive-up window. I was awaiting my order outside & the bell rang with a car passing over. My friend with me remarked on the notice & in a rush I remembered I grew up NEXT to a gas station that had a bell system like that over both lanes.

My whole life must have been filled with that sound…

Hot summer nights

Bitter-bite seashore cold

I did not know I had memorized it so well

A friend would have to point it out to me

Waiting for lunch one day.

……………………

Someone said practice art

My art is wordsmithing

Wrangling words that ride me over cliffs sometimes

So I cannot get back to the mesa above

Doomed to canyons

Yet appreciating the shade.

……………………..

For a long time I said my life appeared in vignettes of my vision

I got pulses which pulled me back to that time as an immediate environ

Now I think that even the ones of the future appear at times

I want more to do with earth now, than tech

I take two steps back from seeing the future

For the holiness (simplicity) of yesterday

Holds my heart harmless

…………………

I can see now that I put myself into impossible situations

This lifetime. I made demands upon heaven, tugged on many angel wings to get what I needed. I moved mountains but with nowhere to put them, my backyard just got full.

I cut people off cold if I cannot get along with them. I assume. The word “err” comes up in my crosswords a lot & I always take it personally.

I wonder if it’s correct to say I get in my own way.

Just when I’m getting into the good thoughts

I come forward from the back of the room to say

Time to leave, gotta go … what we  doin’ here?

Like photobombing my own life movie.

…………………………………..

As I watch, the World of the Impossible slides next into the stereopticon

I do not remember buying [into] this slide

It is as real as any other & each life I unbury is similar to the one just before.

I can’t even remember who handed me this shovel!

Somewhere in a city is a diner in white enamel

With lights reflecting white uniforms with long black aprons.

Red/silver jukebox modules hang over the tables

Collecting quarters in exchange for memories

Fainting-lucky

If it had “our song”

Somewhere like B 15.

………………………..

The familiar grows shadows so long

Over my shoulder, I get cold in my last lifetime.

……………………….

There were horses & hounds, sir

Thundering & howling through the dream

More than that I cannot say

More than that would be confession

But there are no more priests

People today don’t remember horses

In a hunt, laboring by

I do.

The pack of red/brown dogs silken–

Eared & snarling

A “snap!” at me tho I was ne’er their fox.

…………………………..

The conservatives have left

Only madmen remain to rule

All the sanitoria are open

While the churches are closed.

I missed somewhat of the egress,

Deciding to hunker down, stock up,

Obey the impulse to just be still

To flatten the curve.

The curve gone cursive in my case

I might have once thought

Other than I do now

Like I said, I don’t remember.

Is it ok to stand up yet?

………………………….

Where do your thoughts go when you’re not thinking?

Everyone has those blank moments on arrival:

   Shrugging: “Um, how’d I get here?”

The cloud knows not its landing,

Nor my soul

Tho Higher Self pokes a head in regular-like

To test progress.

(The same way I click videos to see how much longer they’ll run.)

She shows up, takes a peek from my eyes.

My Higher Scout checking in

To see if she recognizes the terrain.)

………………………

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Pre-Post Covid

A long set of poems borne of lonely anger. Covid is not my illness, but it may have bested me – financially, figuratively & finally. Were I suicidal, I would already be dead of it. See my images as your own but don’t dwell here long. Love, Carol

THE DISEASE OF UNEASE

How can I not miss all that I miss?

A body so warm beside me

The wash of the sea

That salt-morning light

A family

So soon it all changes

Once again the more & the less

Will lead me a dance divine:

The motherless child

A fatherless girl

A sister-less life

A brother unknown –

The nights like this:

A season at end; another not begun

A time of silvered stars

The rime of the horizon

A single setting at table

A single serving.

I no longer complain or marvel

I am simply through it

Through with it

I long for a bosom

To weep upon

A tickle to laugh, a limerick rhyme?

I yearn for a life which will never be mine

My nights spent alone on the staircase of time

Not poems that wait till the last word to rhyme.

STEEL MIMICRY

Bold as brass, I steer forth upon my course

Unstayed by wind, by aching hands

By sullen feet

My eyes sore of missing faces

My heart salted by loneliness & faintly sour

Faulted by sinecure of sin

I have climbed over decades

Searching an easier path

Than this, uneven stone & shale.

I have bared my soul a thousand times

Only to redresss it, bringing it home

To sleep beneath my pillow.

NOTES

The music defines the moment

One key on a piano

Tapping against time

The days all lit. I gather change about me

Cashmere in comfort

I see my way clear to home

While night approaches

A feral cat, seeking succor

A black thing with green eyes

A pat upon its head

A sufferance for food.

A narrow bed

I am grateful to rest into

The universe hangs upon my wall

A purple swag of planets to behold

A memory I live at the center.

THE POST-COVID WORLD

A 50-50 chance

Of having a car

A place to live

Food to table

I am no soldier

Yet somehow signed up to march in this lockstep dream

Before the lemming rush

Before the bodies take, wingless, to air

I have my life lived already

Enough to spin in front of me

No matter the height from which I fall.

THE READING

I look to you, my divinations

The round cards before me

Shaping a Celtic Cross

You unfold a fervor of vision only

Dizzying with foresight

My place in the middle

Where spirals emerge

A past with a future

Equally in balance

The to & fro of tidal life

The iron in my blood magnetized

To what I cannot say

By what I will not do.

I am agreed to stand the middle

To straddle lies & truth

To make my unequal way.

I remember the solitude of perfection

Once the pattern

Now tilted all a-side.

HOME ALONE

Now defined by idleness

Not sanity.

I feed a neighborly cat

I water sixteen plants

No expectations left

In polite society

For such an isolate as me

A hermit in the cave of time

Lacking the charcoal to

Slash a day – one day

Upon the wall.

And in this heartless stripping away

A promise is uncovered

A fan of words to hold the heat of hell at bay.

KEENING

I know I am enough for heaven

To gather wings around me

To live in former gravity

My pockets full of sins, like rocks

Will wings be strong enough to carry me?

Is even God enough to forgive the unlived life?

“I AM INNOCENT!”

I supinate my palms

One arm crooked, trembling with effort

“You cannot accuse me!”

But my voice is lost in the courtroom’s

Bloody effulgence of noise

The judge looks away

Shifting papers for dates & times

My wrongdoings rendered evidence

Disappointed to find me

Still sequestered to life

Without parole.

THE YOGINI & THE TWICE-BROKE ARM

The yoga chart behind the door

Bought in faith

The mounted visual aid

My self-improvement swear-in

Dust takes longer to gather there

My twice-broke arm cannot hold the rag

Let alone wield it true.

There was a time

I would have bulled through to be a Hero

To attempt a headstand on eternity

Now? Not even Happy Baby!

I am yet recovering from Shivasana.

IN POINT OF FACT

I have no refills

The pens run dry

Down to pencils

Yellow & thin

Reluctant to record my life

This is what is left of me:

A disembodied voice

A nursery rhyme unremembered

A fool to even care

The last to recall my name

Will end me once for all.

ONCE UPON MY TIME

I only wanted a chance to tell my story

To bare my breast, not beat upon it!

I only needed proof of life

Beyond my departure from it.

I guess coming in without a plan

Except to be here

Was a poor idea

An existential fly

In the non-existent ointment

After all.

GROWING

So this is what it means to age

A pick & choose among the words I’ve swept before me

Blossoms baked & dried in the sun of another’s regard.

I even forgive myself this confessional moment

This bedraggled accounting in want of smiles!

I forgive my independent ways

My chancy decisions

The long dusty distances ventured from home.

I forgive the litter of life

The loitering debts, the trespass of my passing

My feet remain unbound

My vision unhindered

My grim will, undeterred

To live my way

To live light & shadow

In all of it, the only me

The best I know to be.

CHURCHES

I remember when I prayed aloud with many

Rather than alone, on paper

Furtive, a dark morning becoming chill

Soft notes playing.

I remember gathering like minds together

Under a domed roof

“Be still & know”

Where I sit amidst a chorus of cactus

A muted hum accompanying all grace

Needing no permission to sing

(Now all subversive in song

Transmitting death on a holy note…)

I have lived in times when children were ripped

From my arms to die by the sword

I remember when I did not look down

Till the hand on my neck forced me

I knew these words, tho not how to write them

I knew these formulas, results never changing

But I have less to live for now

So I write them with impunity.

Come, cut off my hands

Dissect my heart’s four chambers

Brain me unsensible.

I am impervious to curses

A stalwart divinity of One.

I have lived a life seeking eight noble truths

You cannot harm the God in me

Nor divest the Goddess in every cell.

Come, do your bloody worst

I am a stringy old woman with bad teeth

The perfect victim

My findings will never be that for which you search.

My submission will ever be a taint upon your hands

I will not even hate you tho I’ve left love out of it.

Wherein I dwell – that innermost altar you’re seeking to augur out?

Still intact & whole as a Temple

I am barefoot for I stand on holy ground.

THE DOGS BEGIN TO BARK

Brought outside their bedroom dens

Urged from oval, braided rugs

Where their paws tapped a Braille of dreams

Packs & pacts forsworn

Rudely chained to guard posts

In the chill of Autumn mornings

Barking to fill the spaces you once held.

HABITUAL HUNGER

Humanity stripped from inhuman times

Truthsayers hoarse in accusation

The walls of communication

Lined in silk.

But truth wears sturdy shoes

Stands impervious to false victory.

You cannot have the morning!

You may live in the land of no clocks,

Yet all I hear is ticking.

0

Random Poems

SHALL I

Shall I only grow tired of breathing my last

And breathe my first

Sucking in air never before tracing lungs

Wailing it out in objection to death

Shall I only toss a dark crust upon snow

With a prayer mighty enough to summon dragons

Beathing that air towards me on mighty pinions

Mouths ringed in flame, nostrils glowing

Shall I only then sail the lasso

Around a silken-sinewed neck

The rope blessed by saints, not slayers

As the beast rolls jeweled eyes to me

A sudden captive, noting my shivering newborn state

Shall we only fall in love that moment

The shocking recognition we are meant for each other!

The careful & tenuous reaching of flesh to flesh

And the song become a whisper

Shall I thus become truly dead upon this knowledge:

We are all kin! The newness breaking my back with joy

That I crack open, my long, leathered tail so long upcoiled

Unfurling ‘pon the cold – barbed of tip & gleaming

Shall I only reach once, the points uprising

From arms of coarsened scales

To end in claws of lengthened crystal

Shall I brush off all the bindings

Uncaring of the danger

As he winds his neck so gently about mine

Shall we leap as one from beyond gravity

Into clouds too thin to hold us

Yet they do.

DONE

“I’ve been there.” Says the brain

With a snap.

Then closes

Leaving only senses

Expansive in the brilliance

My eyes binocular, drinking the horizon

My nose awake to the synesthesia of color

My fingers in scintillant discovery of wind

My mouth agape to oceanic morning

MIRRORS

There is no hope but holiness

Should I wander in this desert

Seeking others

For there are none about but mirrors

So I therein seek my answers

TALENTLESS

I am no artist

No font of beauty

To emerge from sticks or paints

I cannot work with plywood

Building houses for the homeless

My arms afford a pen alone

And paper

There words pour out like landscapes

Over which come sudden stars.

TOGETHER

The front of me behind you

Pressed in, curled around

My crooked arms enfolding

All that’s left me of love & light

The bones within my fingers

Never to be straight again

But somehow cradling

The heart they tap

In silent rhythm.

ENDS

There are margins drawn of boundaries

Beyond the edges of my vision(s)

Etched upon the stony fences

Built so fiercely from my love

They do not stir upon windstuff

Nor give to seas approaching

No expansion – no contraction

Unrelenting as the hardness of a mother’s heart

To a death-cry as she births her child.

LOST

The cave of words, of wonder

Where the morning never reaches

To alight its crystal walls

Where the stars shine on the hour

As the minutes race the clockface

As the seconds all crescendo

In a click.

I have lived here, seems forever

In a solitaire of nightfall

I, unmade by darkness,

Untold in prayer,

Unwept of tears

A forever of suspense

Undone by breathing.

Soaking in the sun-filled silence

Backed with blessing borne & birthed

Do I call your prayers in answer to my own?

I have asked the wind for succor

I am prostrate on the morning

I ask only – my eyes tear-filled –

Take me home!

SPELLS

There is a dance I dare not do

For storms would rise, surround me

Tornadoes all around me

Waterspouts confound me

So I stand & I am still.

Yet I feel the mighty rhythm

As my toes begin to tapping

As my hands begin to clapping

As my happiness is happ’ning

All my souls with music fill.

0

Lifelines II

Part II

I was here before the color blue.

Aglow on clear green waters,

Teeth sharp, ending all-over in claws

I snagged you, dragged you down

Into meaningful disarray.

Bitten & chewed, I have become invisible

My stories only cliché

Beginnings to a nowhere of endings,

Curled like a dog on a chair

Paws scrambling over dreaming prairie

Chasing  you down with a sigh

That is a roar

Making an ending a nonsense rhyme of need.

Don’t Fall Anymore

Just bounce!

One interrogatory sniff

One question & you may choose

A word not beginning with “w”

(like why or when)

A word affirmative in deed, an “l”

(like life or love).

Take my silence instead

Of the dull hum of passersby

With the “m’s”

(like malice & murder)

Writ on foreheads

Held in hard hands.

Lay me down: I bleed from my head

Begging others to scrape dirt from my wounds.

Time grows feral in guarding my

Unrealized future.

These Words Are Tennis Balls

Tossed down stairs

All over yellow in a panic of gravity & insincere footing

I follow them down, no need to juggle anymore.

My arms will not turn from discipline

Tho they no longer turn upon it.

My Words Are Vampires

Clamping with an unholy snarl

Those lovingly professed, pre-formed.

The time will come to shine

Anew

Encapsulate the neonatal future

Now gasping on life support

Inhabited by the unholy present.

The tubes will fall away,

No longer needed,

Crusted with blood, flaming edges

Allowed & allowing, enforced

By specks of former selves

Now stilled & stalled:

Kinetic.

To Be With Me

You must believe as I believe

The imagination of life

Groomed for alignment.

Or you will meet me in years

That do not mesh with my need

And we will grind each other to

Nothingness again.

To start from coming forth

The unicorn horn

Midheaven on our skulls

To peck away the shells

Uncovering that which is not ours

That the world may view.

There is a wish to follow

Imprinted on the very souls

Meant to fly so straight & true

The air of joy invisible.

The Heart Thrives On Order

I age from the outside in

The edges dry & wrinkle

Back from plump health

In silent desiccation

Desertification

Curling patterns losing moisture

A sacrificial offering

To gods with sharpened teeth

Smacking peeled lips

Ringing a knife against a fork.

Yet somehow the moisture of Grace

Nurtures every soul:

My heart will be the last to sand.

Muse Flies In

On the coattails of a dream:

We wrote upon a wall

A typography of words

In letters ordered & bold

Laid out in neat rows

Of not-rhyme.

A countdown to Eternity

Blooded, salted, torn unequal

By love & beauty

Heart attack & repair

I am on the countdown clock now

The last long hours

To spring from scars & stars

To write the Name of God.

All The Songs Are Anthems

To wherever I might march

The drummer with a broken arm

Still rolling the sticks, still tapping away

Smiling in effortless effort

Sweat pouring from my shaven head

A monk of sound

A nun of noise

Living in the profound silence

Of Echo

Blackened & burned –

Once unmarked, unscored, unscarred.

Parentheses

I once was black & white

But strained to beige

By filters of a closely-led life

The colors vibrated, psychedelic,

Blinking out to buzzing purple neon.

Attention with bring me the Aurora Borealis

Waving to the earth unbridled

Old renewed upon this backdrop,

Against a life of living alone

To light another’s way

Awhile.

I Once Belonged

But fierce & fleet, I fled the herd

To wander desert dunes

To dodge the wild dogs

With flashing hooves & teeth of pearl.

Now I wish to settle in,

To have the circle facing out about me!

But I belong to no one

And less to nowhere…

I limp the trails where I once galloped

I fold in the fields where I once foaled.

The straight path spirals

The crop circles broken in beauty

A mysterious perfection

The future cast in runes & reeds

A hieroglyphic in a world

No longer reading Mystery.

Meant for other times & climes

For flashing eyes & virile swords

For the heavy gallop of destriers

A sweep of veils, a flame of jewels:

I sit za-Zen

In silence.

I Have Met The King of No

Many times

I’ve even tried to live in his skin for a mile

Before I shucked it off, that dry husk

Of pain.

I aim to be the Queen of Yes

Insatiable for life

So juicy with

Mist & mint

Freshened upon each day.

October 3, 2020

0

Lifelines I

My Wealth Increases By Relativity

To the poor I see

Pocket change becomes a standard of measure

To those whose turned-out pockets wave the wind

Small waving flags

To the goods nearby.

I Turned Away

Before you saw

The laughter in my eyes

Your sincerity undone

Unproven by what

You so earnestly affirmed.

Did you think me blind

Or worse, deaf

To insincere verities?

To the immediate gain

Of long-term professions

Of love & fire

In the barren, ash-filled fields?

Oh No, My Friend

I moved before you glimpsed me.

Wiping off my long blade

Of your amorous, overheated blood

On your sleeve, for all the world to see.

I turned, in careless escape,

Leaving my lip-prints

On your soul…

Sucked dry by need & ignorance

By tears of sheer frustration

Blessed by holy men.

It Came To Me

Once so rapt in prayer

To curse & flay

To beat at Fate

Like a child beats at stillness

I moved to shadow from

Holy Light.

I struggle now to find the words

We once abandoned in this dusty field.

Now blown against fences

For all the world to see.

The art show of my world.

No pictures but screams instead

Impossibly brought to bear

Upon my hands.

My Heart Has Broken

‘pon the shores of your pebbled beaches,

The rock-filled flanges of your mountainous demand.

Tis ripped & sore, so bruised, blue

as my sea once was.

The impossibility of love &

Totalitarian Fate

Scraped & scrapped like the palette knife

Against an easel.

Nothing smooth here

Only grated crumbs are left,

The peels of love

Possessed by none

Colored by need.

I Await

Your breath in my bed

The tenure of your hands on

This body, my vanity

Sore from self-inflicted Other.

I have a collar.

Will you not leash me now?

Chain me to heaven

Where I may bark to carry on

The song of the Coyote Angels?

The Glamor of a Life

Unhinged, unfettered, unencumbered

By need to pay but only play along its edges –

Deckled & gilded in

Your words:

My feelings.

This I would live: thus I would pray

Were the words to wash ashore

Like sea-eggs

Filled with salt & potential

Pontificating the hand-over-hand of Life.

Will not the furrows of dawn

Berate the sky?

Encapsulate the ocean, so raw?

Mine/not-mine

The dregs are so much

Sweeter than the life

Has ever been before.

An Afternoon Nap

After a large lunch

Stoked me to write these

A dream on waking

My elbow sore from oldnew wounds

I frayed the edges of my soul

Against the cheesecloth of time

The burlap of sin

Chafing many places

Wrapped in sinew of  possibility

Forgot by even God,

My angels fight to keep me sane.

Interior Lights

Work no more

I grope for enlightenment

Choosing sharp edges to fall against

Testing my mettle.

But life is not my former state:

Life is where I live & where

Showmanship dims to facts of

No audience

Inferior to pacing across an empty stage

The nutcracker season

Came early

Finding me late for limelight,

Lost to imperial need

I did not earn the Right

By wrongs of note & number.

Black, Then White

A bard in a barn

Singing to the livestock

Talent un-mourned

For all its likely presence.

Brought up short by Change

By “new normals”

Entrusted to Age,

Wrinkling,

Eyes sinking back

With misplaced bruises.

I tower over the competition

When this there is –

I sing, a cricket in a midnight corner

Keeping you from twin resolutions

Of sleep & prayer.

My scraping song the fingers pulling your hair

In darkling hours,

Drawing your breath to mimic my music

That together we may grow.

October 3, 2020

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Seven Summer Samauri

(2020 Isn’t Even Over.)

 

(1)

Doldrums not dolphins

Lockdown, not “Hey, stop down!”

 I have arrived

In my earliest summer mornings

…I am relaxed…

 Body memory takes me back

Anatomically, a switch fires:

I am hanging clothes for Mom in the backyard,

Alongside the Little House.

 This is experience, not memory.

I can tie it to the other summer mornings on my belt & move on.

(1)a   Sense

I have the Sense that time is playing peek-a-boo

Time meant “life” as we knew it

Before the Ides of March arrived on the 23rd here…when

Time actually became a worthless currency – erased from the face of the clocks.

(What did it matter when we took off our pajamas?)

We had time all over our hands, dripping off, unimportant, schedules erased, through no fault of our own.

It ran off the clock in inky blackness we tried to catch & put back up. Instead we were made to wash our hands of all of it.

Time wasn’t money…but it was worth it.

We backed into not knowing the next of it

Days passed, even cravings vanished eventually, let alone news accuracy.

It began to feel “right” to seal inside – of course I can always say

it’s part of the heat signature, if asked.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t plan for the world to fall asunder,

At least as I’d known it.

All the bubbles are popping

All the soap operas ushering on their fat ladies with sweeping bows.

Mom always said, “Have six month’s expenses in the bank.” Ah! The description of a dream of my very own!

Between the moments of evolution & the next Emergence of holy life

We stand poised, yet learning by discovery (as always)

You live by your prayers, your wits, your altered (alerted) senses, until you live by habit, by rote; all alike as box stores at the edges of scintillant consciousness.

(2)

Biblical

Again cornered with un-betokened dark news

Clothing myself in worded Psalms!

O, Lord! Added to the  head of the line.

(3)

My Arrival

Is the short reply to a long-awaited answer.

Mystery a lá Alchemy

Finding at the end of “What was I thinking?” a

Long, drawn-out “Ohhh.”

(4)

My Arrival II

A resounding & magical “Amen” to all my prayers

(humble as they were, they were mine)

As a Traveler of Words, I evolve quickly,

Like, with a wish.

(5)

My Arrival III

There is no GPS in heaven – you either know where

You’re going, or you leave.

Some of us agreed to be the leavers

Some of us travel lightly across worlds

In no particular order other than within.

(6)

A Theatre of Words

One letter shy of encompassment –

An Imprimatur emerges in my life

I acknowledge my me as the only one

& thus the best.

My next moments are spent

Tagging the universe & running away.

(7)

I’m Here!

I was waiting for the Light. I was watching it magnify around me

As one by one by solitary one, all the descriptions I might have for it

Melted away to simply standing still.

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RENEWAL

I slept in tears – Loved against all my sorrows

Held & warmed by Someone who owes me nothing

(But a slap upside my head)

If the mourning is over, let the revels begin!

Let my hands hold secrets to universes

My eyes be kissed

Our tongues entwine

For all my shrilling fears tripping alarms

I will put away now

To let you bring them outside

For the wind to whistle away.

Thank you is never enough in true gratitude

Blessing lays thick with love, balm for the broken heart

I have Much to mend & more to make holy

In the doing of deeds.

My only gifts may be words to bridge the darkness

Yet these I do have & in plenty…

               ‘Come unto me when

               I breathe your name’

Last night too soon, too sad, too uncertain

Too full of truth that first clears the way

For us to part from parting.

I had to dissolve the wounds of dissection

Bring in the soothe of belief

Mop up the bloody departure.

Rediscover with new eyes

You will not disappear or disappoint

I would not be rushed the savor of forgiveness

Of your kisses, the tips of your fingers

Your offer of skin to skin too raw in that moment to accept.

You teach me to learn again

You are the place where yearning may rest awhile

Where “love me” dissolves in the mist of Holy Joy.

It is said the man chooses the woman – but, well,

I did steal that kiss for no reason other than your lips backstage

I did offer my perfumed presence in an unbuttoned shirt you could not refuse

I did fit myself too closely over coffee, cup after cup just so as not to part.

I love your energy, warm & welcome, the season of cold undone.

I love your christening touch, your murmurs which I do not hear

But always understand.

I surrender pretension of holding ground against

Of beating back your small demands:

Only gentle me with a kiss

Only take me with a touch

Let the sun measure our lengths on golden afternoons

Of heart-centered joy, hostaged to love.

Bonfires on a hill as angels overfly

Land not here! We are our own beloved divinity

But later, with the final moan of breath releasing love

Come then to laugh, to stroke our overheated bodies

With wings of balm & glory!

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Midnight Maunderings

I never thought myself a leader

Yet I have always been skipping out ahead

Finding the way of the Wayshower.

I venture outside at 3 a.m.

To breathe night-ions

Garnering the darkness

In eager search of distant stars

I fly no flags of bedsheet measure

Only tiny banners of love

Protected on my windowsill

But these I fly proudly

Wings open to the heaviness of air

I am the mouse fascinated by the whiskers of the lion

Unobserved yet always overseen by gentle Divinity

Tweaking my tail, tickling my nose/

I paddled in ponds wearing shoes of adventure

I walked away from lifetimes

While laying no claims

Save those of memory & desire.

As to where this shall take me

I hardly imagine.

My face & my name ahead of me

I still search, scanning horizons

Calling myself forward.

#2

Unready to upstage the world,

I can only upstage myself

One accomplishment at a time.

I test the boundaries of constancy

Questing the North Star of God

I live behind no screens

Of televised content

Content I create my own world.

Where I am a hero on the Hero’s Journey of real life.

I boil carrots in the dark

To better see the day

I wipe my pens on my sleeves

Dotted with ink & drenched

With words about worlds yet undiscovered.

I would bestow my wisdoms

To children I shall never have

Applauding their creativity

Inspired by a tiny phrase.

Until I began these midnight maunderings

These densely-packed thoughts only to

Be experienced in single splendors…

It IS possible to love every tree in the forest

Every wave breaking in similar salty froth

‘pon strangely lit beaches

I watch the world lie down in death

Anticipating only resurrection.

#3

The incense burns

Fierce & hot

Devouring itself

In the grace of alluring scent

I burn to be so!

Never regretting the

Ashen remnant; each

Thought clinging to my nostrils

Breathing in & out.

Blessing all, even the unholy

Especially the unholy

My singular quest to bring

New thought to a mind

Steeped in the familiar.

I cry “Poverty!” while bathed

In the richness of a burgeoning world.

I follow growth in a hunger of appetite

Sentient in the awareness all of it has passed.

My life is a bowl of chocolate strawberries

Sweet upon sweet

Succulent & bursting with juices filling hunger

All is moisture tho more appreciated

In the deserts I choose to live in…

I burst with the treasure of living words

All spoken before me by minds so much greater

Yet what I know is sweet upon sweet

As one by one, I choose my earnest, surprising adventures

I am an oft-told story

With hope of teaching another.

#4

Inimitable, this world at the measure of ten tiny toes

I fight no dragons with my bamboo walking stick

Tho I smell them nearby

Feeling jeweled eyes fixed ‘pon my morsel self.

I pray on, an unlimited artesian well of self

Prevailing over their fiery breath

I pay no attention to mirrors

A rooster’s comb of misrule for a crown

I smile at reflecting shadows

There is nothing left behind but the journey forward.

My past is buried, a scratched-over self I claim not to know

How can I remember a name

Called before I became who I am?

Would it entice me even a moment to become that she?

There are bite-marks all over my past

I’ve chewed it to the bone & beyond

To nourish this future!

2/21/20

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Of Sable Wings & Ivory

On a day I felt as if I’d swallowed a wasp

My soul, beset by angers all about

Found a maze of love to wander

And at its center, bowed in two, before a Holy Light.

All fear fell from me like dry scales

I began to luminesce

I took up the warrior’s wield:

The shield & buckler

An axe of war-torn dreams–

A sword grew from my hands.

Two wings flared from my back

I groaned at their heady weight

I flexed then to the ends of the world

And screamed to fly again.

The chocolate night unfolded

I passed between great heavens

Of chilblained division

Which sealed behind me, becoming warm glass

Developing a face half-weeping, it called my name

A blast of sound I rode forward into infinity

There would be an arrival: a choosing:

A serious battle

“You will bleed,” it shrieked

I gave no heed, flew on

Touching wingtips to the Poles.

I will not say it a dream

Or an impossibility:

A flight through fire

Singeing me well

My feathers seared to black, to gray

Ash drifted down to float the river.

When bared to bone

I folded them in whiteness

Lifting weapons instead.

I fought to brilliance

The morning’s gold renewed me

I breathed hoarse sweat

Rank & beaded in blood

I took my measure & pressed the Battle

Fierce we were, uncomprehending

To win war is to lose

Each of us the other.

We were brave, skirling the mountaintops

Like thunder, our faces mist

We bashed & clashed

Till, fought to a standstill, we

Balanced atop each other’s feet

Staring, down to knives & nails

We bled each other’s blood

As morning paled to day

The humans watched, stunned, all disbelieving

We were thunder made solid,

Caught in the storm of our own making,

My soul mirrored his

Till black & white emerged as doorway

Where all might enter

Searching Peace.

Carol Borsello

New Year’s Eve 2019

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