Category: Poems

When Friendship Sails Away

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.

1

Reciprocity

I’ll Believe In Yours, If You Believe In Mine First

If I lie in the Desert

Without closing my eyes

For one whole night

Would I be wise?

If I followed each star-trail

From its home to my door

Would I discover

The way out, for sure?

But I know me better

And I know me worse

Than to think I might

Ever finish this verse.

The far becomes closer

The new becomes real

The pictures deciphered

Prove down-home surreal

So I’m in for the tall one

I’m in for the shout

I’m in till the other me’s

Say it’s time to bow out.

8/14/17

 

0

Habituate Joy

Joy

I have waited a long time

For Joy to become an unconditional habit

Perhaps I needed to re-member it slowly.

Joy is entirely up to the individual

Only apparent on their terms & caught up in their constructs.

Joy is the sweet smell just before awakening, maybe yellow

Light honeysuckle air.

I need to pull out my pack of Happies

Smoke them over a coffee

Breathe them into me & again out.

I need Joy to be my default; my go-to on life.

First, I found hope, then faith, then love

Once discovering how to work these lower gears

I get to shift into Joy.

 

Clocks: damned if I do or don’t

Time has grown slippery

I no longer seem to have a grip

On my days, dripping from the calendar

Like sugar crystallizes & drips from cheap candy.

I hold my calendar with both hands,

Writing with the pen between my teeth.

In memory, time always seems to have

Been wrapped in clingfilm, making me hack

At the packaging to get to the product.

 

Off Grid: different day

I put away the electronic leashes

Just outside satellite range

Time eeled off the devices, heading for the tall grass.

 

DARK HATS

There needs to be a general Amnesty

For not having the true story all this time

But we promised to remain conscious

If it came down to bread & circus; we swore!

I find pardons each day

I bridge any gaps I find

Between unknowing & learning

 

Interrputions

I’m better at recognizing what I don’t want to do.

I recognize an initial resistance-reaction to interruptions;

I understand the value of interacting with that, though.

I act to disassemble & set that equation aside.

Releasing the knee-jerk automatic response

Artfully changes the landscape

The future is served by service

“Carpé diem” ended yesterday!

 

New Screen-Saver

Open up to grace every day

To new choices of health, abundance, re-programming

Get those icons of “fear” & “illness” off the home page

Click “awakening”

Click on “cosmic”

Double-click “divine love”

 

1

Each day: a step to heaven (poems)

God-Mother / God-Father

 Bear down on me

Birth me into all You wish me to be:

Coming towards you

Coming into me

I know you celebrated before I

Was even conceived

I can see you turning spindles of names

{prayer wheels}

Until you turn my name

Into your breath of me.

My name: both appointment & anointment, I Am.

 

CoINcidence / CoinCIdence

Seems to be the emphasis can go either way, one being an

Immature Synchronicity,

The other an alignment of two paths.

 

Coincidence is not coincidence,

They cannot even exist in the same plane

Without interfering with each others’ warp & weft

Not to mention homeostasis.

 

They are, perhaps, a law of similars, called

In from the Jesters’ Universe …

After you toss your life at the wall or

Find a way to re-begin from where you are.

 

Keeping From the Eye of Horus

There are better things to do with my time

Than live in any rebellion

Past the stone walls of who I claim to be

Unilateral inner boundaries

 

Free to be the postage stamp home.

Attention does need to be paid

[Got cash?]

We can’t afford to miss much more than we already have,

Before the change of chance & chance of change

Diverge in some lonely wood.

 

In the same moment, when we cannot either breathe,

We are connected by a fiercely fiery sending:

“Watch me, Baby, just watch me!”

 

The highway of life is a toll road, indeed.

 

Cosmic Volunteers

We are the vols & sometimes it’s not to be believed:

stuck in the laundromat instead of a lifeboat.

Each episode we get to retool the set.

We arrive here curled into a fetal spiral

So well-salted, we match the ocean.

The rest of your life is the Unfolding of it.

An origami of an Avatar.

Some familiar clues / cues

(like enough for an army to follow.)

Status points for not opening the Guidebook.

Eyes Open. Tulku.

 

 Almost

Another of those words

Hanging overhead like

Campfire smoke

Aromatic, heady

Ready to clear into tomorrow

Of the deed done today.

 

You Call This A Mind?

 But everything is right there, on the surface.

Don’t you put anything away?

More likely, you put it down without thinking

(Sometimes I lose major organs that way.)

I entered this Life with a full wall of medals

Later stripped one-by-one

I’ve done my time(s)

I personally have only two thoughts left

The You

The Me

 

Here, Put This In Your Heart

All the texts

Say, “you can’t take it with you.”

You mostly get to keep some essences,

Ones with evocative & menacing overtones.

The heart is about long-term Memory

Your heart is as big as your God

Who tucked you in between the angel’s wings

With a touch to your cheek, saying

“Don’t you miss a minute! I’ll expect a full report!”

 

 Dubious Honor

I may be the only person on earth who has, yes, here it is, forgotten how to ride a bike.

 

Make This Viral

 I want to be there when the grandfathers tell their peace stories.

 

“Where Have all the Flowers Gone”

Half-light morning,

I cross the bridge over a rushing Percha Creek

Glancing into it, mid-stride.

I see three young bucks,

Heads twisted over shoulders

Rumps all twitching in time

Not till they face forward

Do I see the burgeoning racks

Still in velvet, flaring in the little light

As, springing onto the low bank, they disappear.

 

But, Really, I Love You

I conclude two Italian women cannot talk to each other

Without taking turns at being child, maiden, crone all in one conversation:

Whoever is speaking is in charge…

 

 

 

1

Life is a Scavenger Hunt (11 Poems)

Life is a Scavenger Hunt

A leaf

A flute

Being in the presence of the lion

As differing from its photo.

Behind inter-twining gates

Breakthrough

(Brake-through)

The whole world moves on the wind

Shifting north to west to south

Where are we &

Where are we willing to go?

A wind’s message

Telegraphed by leaves

Danced in boughs.

The birds don’t worry on wind

Tho made of only spun-lace bone & color

Riding feathers upon it.

 

Before I get off the subject

I didn’t even know I was on,

Even as my pen brushes the page

More dirt settles upon it

I write crunching words

 

The wind taps this tree

Thrums that one

Shivers of its voice

Measure density

In a code far too random for comprehension

Yet I’m reading every movement.

 

This could have had such a different ending

Instead of these hasty walls

Thrown up between –

Barriers of denial

Relating to levels of anger & fear

I let it all go

One petal at a time.

They love me,

They love me not.

 

Washed Tin

It’s a busy street here

When two people pass one another

To either side, one walking a dog.

My heart is simply full of itself

With many lives to live,

Gaily leaping timelines,

So much potential

The designated “poof!” of hours…

Yanked from quantum entanglement

To seem a moment’s solitary

Accomplishment (hitting the “play” button often)

It all had to happen, though

Forgiveness unforgiven.

Momentary gaps in the thinking it through.

Beleaguered & beyond redemption.

Befriended by ascension

The wavelength to be on

Find-able

A smoother ride than along

The coast road.

 

I couldn’t answer the phone

I was buttering my hands

Um, yep, butter

Too long to explain

Not for everyone anyway

Tho more than a few would favor.

 

The glasses shatter on the fireplace,

Finalizing the celebration

But out come the broom & dustpan

The tinkling pour into the trash

Will it be replaced?

A decision for another day.

The two sides of every offering.

 

I have lost you

You who could have stayed far longer

To talk me into eternity

One way or the next

To talk me over the imaginary hurdles

I have created on my own

Spun simply & from loneliness

Your skin was soft from sleep

When I touched you to say

“I didn’t know you were sleeping.”

I dream of you now, con permisso.

 

 Living Divinity individually

Imagining duality

So, of course, a Singularity can occur.

 

I keep re/de/fining who I am

I’ve belonged to me for too long a time

I powerfully experience your turning-away

Do we cash out each other as we have been cashiered?

We tried this once before

To extreme disappointment.

I had One Escapade

But never saw the Devil I spat at…

I don’t have the nitty-gritty

Of being the fly on the wall.

Then he was summarily ejected from present company

Like a bullet, only one shot taken.

In his absence, we had no electricity for a while.

Without refrigeration, I am still frozen out for four days

From any/all conversation.

Until the PTB decide to sit me at a table

Pulling up chairs for accusation & disappointment,

Until I stand to say your life is not mine

And until you have lived it,

Do not accuse.

 

There’s a story here to tell

Untold & unafraid of itself

A love story stripping all else bare

To use the energy of the bones

I reminded her of an old friend

From voice inflection to flip-flops

So many interlocking pieces

With no interlocution.

Witness to sin

Condemned without trial

Or understanding

Yet walking free from it all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

Walking Rain

Our Father – Another Update

Hey Dad –

You live in the best place possible to increase joyous experience & productive certainty!

Your name alone is meaningful to me, as are Your works in bringing about the world that Mom envisions.

May all You do be in aid of life & creation…please keep us to making improvements!

It is Your fulfillment to see the entire world productive & happy, more connected to activity expressing Love.

For here is the dwelling-space of Your children: we of Your accomplishment, fulfillment & amazed pride.

All You do sources Life at its best-lived level.

To You we bring our disappointments, all that limits our positive growth, our mistakes in this Grand Experiment; anything at all that doesn’t engender Joy. Erase these from our being that they may be replaced with Lovinkindness.

From You we learn how to be innocent of error. Light up the best roads for us to follow. Encourage our hearts, flow through us into each other with Your empowering grace.

Amen.

The Prayer Flags

Share their messages with us all

Trembling with shredding edges…

Praying to a heaven which (if I may loosely paraphrase)

Seems hell-bent on descending to reach us.

The gods finger the fringe

Thumb the coded symbols with diamond fingers

The flags send messages to the itinerant saints

“Forgive these humans who are never beyond Your forgiveness.”

Choose what you will say: hang your flags to pray.

Dear Mother Death,

When you see my soul wandering in your flowered fields

Catch me up, won’t you, please?

Fashion me into a hard rubber ball

Bounce me for the delight of children

For the elastic jaws of dogs

Place me as a leaf atop your highest tree

That a bird may sing to me in passing, wing me with a feather-touch

Open me as a shrine, put a candle within,

Set me gently into a baby tumbleweed blowing bravely uphill

Place me as the flat tongue of a tubular bell

Calling down the valley for all to enter prayer.

Grow me as a sprig of brilliant purple on the sage-gray desert

Toss me into a great black thunderhead

Trailing rain over mountains thirsted for weeks

Or, failing these, just sit me on your lap & watch me glow.

Water-Wind

All in place; nothing missing

And just in time

For now the wind rises in the north

Arranging itself upon a current whistling over the edges of my ears

You always start the same: a spatter-sprit of drops carelessly flung

Against the glass door

From friend to fury, drops burst like small bombs

Then comes that burr of thunder

A mighty split of light forking the sky

There are messages all over the horizon

Runic reveals beyond Revelation

To one such as me, quietly seated

On the inside, looking out with a cup of tea to hand,

Book laid aside for real-time drama, 3-D life

A dance of elements to rhythms I can only ponder

As I sip.

Poets Throw Dice

Of words

Sixes & ones

Sevens & fours

Chance & circumstance

Conspire to frame the day.

 

What we see is up to us but not ours

Miracle or meddlesome

A beginning of ends

No moment lost

As dice are tossed

We write as does nature

Lines on leaves

Runes on water

Words on winds.

We join gamers

Reporting back to divinity

Invisible & reckless

Trapped or galloped free

Ev’ry blank page a sensuous invitation

We shed blood to write with if no ink is at hand!

0

Transitions (11)

TRANSITIONS

Lay down expectations like boards

Build you a bridge to inspiration

Hammer these down with nails of patience

Paint them in colors of inevitability and change.

Stand in doorways where the transition

Of forward & back will balance your brain.

Find my hand in the total darkness of eclipse

Pull me into that pregnant moment of emerging light

Frail is it may be

Enlivening all that ever was.

IN WINTER

I find a west window of sunlight

Sit down, facing my back to it

As my neck warms and my hands,

I write poems

A tiny flag of incense curls

In the light

Music knits an afghan of sound

For a simply singular afternoon.

All I “should” be doing goes undone

In favor of these words flowing from this pen.

RIDING THE RAILS

May get me places,

But all journeys

Are made of expectations

Foregoing familiarity.

When only the scenery changes

Is change enough?

My life seems a layby off the tracks.

(Twinned steel cutting the horizon, glistening.)


UNEXPECTED PRESENTS

The habit of gifting

Is one to cultivate

I have been on the balance beam

Of gifting & receiving

While meditating on insufficiency’s

Pyramidal center…

I have pierced these veils

Of unknown power sources

Skirting the edges of vortex

Many other times.

RSVP

I have invited crucifixion

By my own emotions

And intransigence of purpose.

If all these beginnings

Lead to similar endings

Why even ask the questions?

I am the hapless beggar

In the Promised Land,

The starveling at the World Feast.

I have wandered the Lost & Found of life long enough…

Even when no Path appears,

I shoulder my pack,

I move on.

SECOND STORY

I am in Soul Rehab

Stripping walls of flocked paper strips

Snapping bowed valances to sweep velvet shreds

Of conscience

I tear at curling floorboards

A stale, sour smell of old wood

Rising from the sawdust cloud

I have no idea how to rebuild this!

I have only the belief I can.

The house groans, settles,

Creaks; obligingly dismantling itself

As windowsills tilt & slide

Down separating walls

I pull nails bare-fingered.

Standing, I push support beams

With strengthened shoulders,

Digging in my heels.

For all this determination,

There is no center to demolish.

Only a guess at what will bring

This structure down;

Only a hope it will not take me along.

CALENDAR YEARS

In all this time of walking forever forward

Of wearing out shoes in differing directions

The compass whispers me to north & west

South & east

I do not heed these siren songs

I am a turtle with a rock upon its back

Thrusting forward my head, neck & finny legs.

Swimming stillness.

MORPHOGENESIS

Off to a rough start:

The bloodletting of loneliness

Collapsing my fluid body

To knots & gnarls

Tanned to roughened leather

A wrinkling purpose

Overlaid a pristine map.

“But,” I argue with the mirror,

“did I ever know? It was given to me:

‘Travel, stop, begin again’ over & over.”

These I did: a trio of begettings.

Would you have me make a list of my sins?

There are few enough to recall to my forgetting mind

I do remember toting buckets of them to

The confessional incinerator

Where sparks burst & flew

Into heaven.

FACING MORTALITY

Dying is one of the best things I will do.

I don’t know how I know this…

Perhaps informed by intimate experience?

I am content to blossom as a rose,

Exploded of scent, explored for color

Curled & peeling petals taking

Flight for faraway –

Plucked to die, dreaming,

On a kitchen table,

Beheld with love each glance.

Not knowing how it knows this…

The chance to return

As a miracle on the Tree of Life.

But I say this not being in line for

Predestination

Not really believing in death, per se

Remaining the nonbeliever, tho afloat in

A sea of total incrimination of

Evidence & experience

Responding to more of what I would not do:

I would not regret or mourn

I would be as fierce in death

As in death-defying life!

Cherished as the moment of breath

Breathed out after the intimacy

Of circling the heart

Form into formlessness

An eternity of time

To dip into life once again.

 

JUXTAPOSITIONS

Momentary fulfillment &

Long-term lack

The land that once rolled toward me

Traveling up & out-away

Impulse decentralized

Purpose diffused

Once measured in steadying mileage

I am disengaged from movement

Bereft of directional impulse

Uneasily content to be part

Of a landscape

In favor of making landfall.

AGAIN, MORTALITY

I would be bold before the Throne,

Demanding face-time with God,

A hug from Jesus,

A fig from Buddha’s Bodhi Tree

A tear from Guanyin

A knighthood with the sword of St. Germain

A high-five from Michael Archangel.

I would sleep for a thousand-thousand years

Each dream the petal of the rose

I would return in.

 

0

When A Mother Dies

We Strip the Careworn Dead Their Mortal Coil

We lave their toiled hands,

Their knobby feet,

Their centers and extremes.

We lay them flat

In underground and secret passageways

to Heaven’s scroll-worked gates.

We bless and praise them in our tears.

We brush the wood encasement with

Messages posting to God above

Even as

We bury them below

(a convoluted path to Him indeed.)

 

Our last dance one single step again

(We dreamed this all before

And will once more.)

~ Carol Borsello 2/23/17 (6:43 a.m.)

0

Hillsboro Greeting

First Rendering

I think that all this time

my muse has waited here

wrapped in a serape, wearing a light sombrero

that covers her eyes and her face

when she folds down into her arms

the bright blues, reds and greens of the fabric

stand out against the landscape

only the toes of her boots peeking

She has the patience of a mountain

all this time biding everything, awaiting my voice.

So, speak to me; I share your soul

I will lay it atop mine; we will be naked together

I will take your hand

Hike you up.

We will walk the crunching, dry road

Atop a memory of rivers.

Together we will teach what we have learned

Rebalance this nature to

the water I was from, before & after

This eternity of land

the patience it holds for all of us

​You, newborn again, mute, blind, awakening a soul…

And this silly, simple human made of words.

Second Rendering

I am listening as hard as I can

To silence

My ears are still

No cilia vibrate

Nothing is

Except a breeze passing

Quail-calls

The buzz of a heat-fly

En route elsewhere

I am amazed

No other sounds are available here

The silence has an intensity

My ears bear weight

Bear witness

Eternity exists

A scant half-mile from

What passes for a road.

Third Rendering

Here are the mountains I remember

In utter stillness, fully alive

Never fated to touch the sky.

Just to survive the eternity it takes to be a mountain

Underneath it.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑