The crow flew overhead as I ran over her shadow.

Not a word passed between the old couple at lunch

They ate, efficiently & neatly

Not meeting eyes, not exclaiming tastes

She murmured nothing

As he zipped his jacket,

Heading outside for a smoke.

I feel you remembering me

The square plate fitted among the rounds

The fried dumpling

Dropped in the asparagus at the China King buffet

We are no more each other, though we are.

I eat left-handed as I write

(A skill I learned from a broken elbow)

The words won’t wait, the impressions pour over me

Like water overspilling glasses

Piled-high food

The take-out guy tucks green beans into foam-lip corners

I’ve driven a hundred miles to eat here

But in New Mexico, this is not far…

And I will eat no more today

Replete with Crab Rangoon

In the light of a desert day.

No dragons hang from the walls here

Tho I dreamed of dragons ‘pon waking

A carved-wood, sinuous length I put on the roof of my car

Meeting the eyes of others driving towards me.

I finger your memory

Like a piece of fine china

Remembered in a thrift shop

Transported for an only moment

Into the life when/after I loved you.

So, where do you go, when you leave me?

When your lips no longer touch mine, your tongue searching, tasting?

Your hands reaching to glide secret spaces.

When all it takes is a little attention to stoke

The fires I flame into

You disappear so well

I cannot find you

And choose myself to love

For only I am real.

I wish I had learned to spit.

Sometimes, it’s the only way to express myself adequately.

I’m in a saber-rattling mood this morning. The day is gray as a nun, but I am smoldering. Breathing fire. I am of the idea that people should do their work, when it is their perception they are too important to do so & they are too aligned with that perception to accomplish much. Yet, am I not among them in my own way? So what is my job? For now, let me just vent here. Lie low, readers for I am in “take no prisoners” mode. I need either a vacation (coming soon) or more flower essences for noncombatant status than I can afford or have on hand.

I think I can & do make a difference. But yesterday was a revelation. I am newly involved in a Board for a local service organization. I found out my training did not include essential duties – actually, did not even incorporate training to do a proper job. Deadlines are missed which will cost our 501(c)3 money better used to help our clientele. Who passes over a title with a quick underhand, without informing the trainee of essential responsibilities? Well, the folks who elected me to the position. They were far more interested in the sale at Hobby Lobby for the fairy garden gnomes available this spring than in making me effective for what I will be doing. So I’m playing catch up but cannot do so until they have finished their sewing project, so just hang on here, Carol.  Curb your enthusiasm, okay?

I am becoming adamantine when I need to be malleable. Is this what age is about? Entrenchment? So it would seem. I arrive on the scene, cloaked in dragon mode, all teeth arranged in a ripping row, only to find those departing have waved over their shoulders, leaving me nothing to chew. All kinds of words rise to the surface: inefficiency, drawn to detail without a glimpse of the bigger picture, going to war armed with paper clips & rearranging the magnets on the fridge as the IRS ticks us off on the box saying “no response from them, time to set the penalty fee.”

I take flower essences for being haughty, for being pushy, for being bossy. These are needed qualities to get tasks organized & completed, especially in leadership. However, I’ve enjoined a flaw along the way: thinking others wanted to me to succeed when they were more interested in finishing up the latest pièce de résistance craftwork for the mantel than in the efficiencies of the organization they are fading back from. Is this what public service has become?

People show up at meetings with clothing on inside out, with papers disorganized & without the simple knowledge that to get these in order beforehand might work. The Treasurer is opening bills at the meeting, trying to pull together a report offhand & full of “um, it’s in here somewhere, hang on”. He turns to me saying, “You need to run a tape of your expenses before submitting them” (I point to the totals list) “What’s your last name, anyway?” (I point to the address label on the report.) “What’s the name of the play this is for?” (Not only is he in this play, but the name is at the top of my paperwork.) The President has no Minutes from the last meeting – the first item up on the agenda. Oh wait, did I even see an agenda for this one? Actually, no. But it will be all right – the ten-minutes’- late-arrival of another Chair to the meeting (entering as we dial her number) will furnish the Minutes, handwritten & out of sequence, to be squinted at & read to the group. The entire meeting is conducted in the spirit of passive-aggressive counting coup. Few stay to topic – a specific question leads to discussion around recipes. I sit & simmer, pen in hand, waiting for a conclusion to write down. If none appears, I make one up…my contribution to next month’s confusion.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one with a point to it all. But it isn’t up to me & my point is lost in all the trying to be nice when underneath nice is where everyone lives because no one understands how to hold a real meeting. It’s a cabal of amateurs with the impression they know what they are doing. And why is the group less than successful? And why do they settle for this when they should take leadership in the community & serve as they ought?

Another volunteer gig sees me wrong in the eyes of the client – who thinks no one should be talking out loud in the room. As I prepare to ask the talkers to tone it down or leave, I am accused of not doing my job, “this only happens on your shift! Even YOU talk out loud in here.” “We’re not the public library,” I mildly protest, only to have a set of headphones flung at me as she screams “you’re a white shit” & flounces out. The client’s last name is “Mello” and she comes into the computer lab to listen to Indian Chant…guess she was having a Kali Ma day. My laugh-out-loud at these antics does not calm the situation. So I write “bipolar” next to her name in dismissive retaliation. Am I any better at handling the situation?

To say yesterday was frustrating is to say stupid is not abroad in the land. When people with beards & wearing fatigues are screeching, “You didn’t call me Ma’am! Watch your ** pronouns!” I am a bit lost in it. Is everyone in town off their meds – or should I be taking some?

Most of the time I’m a nice gal. But my slide into satire, cynicism & sarcasm is down a very short slope. My descriptions are apt, to the point, painful. I can leave people bloody & it takes awhile to scrub the entrails from under my nails & many toothpicks to dislodge these bits from my teeth. I try to remain patient, kind, loving – but I can be overbalanced by raw stupidity, discourtesy, unprofitable idiocy…just to name a few.

I like volunteering. But it makes me low on the totems. It is a false “in-charge” position against which demands are made to enforce the rights of others in a place where they um, actually? do not possess “rights.” Or perhaps these are better described as “entitlements.” They are availing a public service offering, unpaid & disrespected as it doesn’t live up to what they consider their standards. However, their life is not my fault. If one goes to a library, it doesn’t pay to throw the books around while hollering at the help. Or at least it never did before. I guess it does now.

I won’t go off into “whatever happened to” here. That would take pages to write. But I do have a realization that everyone is in their own space of right & wrong & it is one I may never have visited or conceived.

Among these experiences – being shoddily trained & left unprepared – seeing the underbelly of how irresponsibility can slow down the results of any process…I recognize I need to be more patient & forgiving, more forbearing overall.

I will smile when Ms. Mello next returns & asks for a set of headphones. I will show up to take minutes at the next Board Meeting of our town’s best hope at theatre. I will find a way to tame the fires of wanting so fiercely for all to be “right” as my way in the understanding that all is right just as it exists in now-time. I will turn it into laughter, as I do most of the silly adversity by which others use to prove they exist. I am both larger & smaller on the scales than I like to think.

It’s far more fun being the MGM lion though! Love that big, snarly roar!

What is it I see within? A universe of spiral stars’ unrivaled inspiration – stem cells growing out of undirected potential. There is always a past behind me & I have a tendency to pull it up around my shoulders like a shawl. It can be warm there. It’s comfortable.

But it is time to strip naked & walk the mountains unprotected by any save my divine aura. I feel my angel holding out wings over me. His Prime Directive is to attend the Soulspark within – my little shaving from Source around which I have built this life. How can I not trust the light informing the dark?

Being human is like carrying a cactus with long thorns. They catch on every silver streamer of dream. The soul cries out to me about mortality, but this is not its true state & I know mortal ears distort the eternity of the song intoned. There is a brutality in desire that flays willing skin…yet I return my flesh to its hungry outreach. What I remember most about love is goodbye. I am called to surrender to the eternity of love which has only proven a short-term endeavor.  Back to that cactus image…I’ve gotten stuck so many times on my own perceptions.

Am I another genetics experiment in the Great God’s Garden?

I have been voluntarily immersed in the all-being of life I reached for the inflatable ring with puncture tools & nearly drowned so many times. Yet here I am, as above, so below.

I trust my words over family to be my golden thread of immortality. But who is willing to delve that deeply into my little life? Does it matter, withal? It’s my mind. I’m the only one here no matter how many humans make appearances in front of me. The Akashic will bear my imprint. Maybe someday someone will channel me. I was told I’d be famous for my writing posthumously. Indeed, this took the pressure off!

I could fill so many books with writings, but I lose interest immediately upon writing. I almost cannot bear to return to old writings at times, at least of memories & old tales. They no longer have meaning…I have moved beyond them, like the mile marker vanishing behind. I’ve written love letters, suicide notes, unfinished stories from above & below the waterline. Who cares?

Validation, witnessing, perception – all longed for but not elicited or expected. I’ve done all I have. I’ve experienced earth, air, water, fire & ether. I’ve loved both the human & divine in my life. I may be close to closing the circle of life. What will it have contained within it?

Blessing: a prayer & a blessing. One song of many lyrics sung to Source. My whole life, a lyric sung by an overlighting angel.  

I have a hurricane for a heart, I see it from the space between us.

Counterclockwise / widdershins to time

I would turn the clocks back

And that would be easier than loving you now.

I would halt the sea as the next wave rises

So much simpler than trying not to

Write the words I want to say.

I feel tasered: my energy scatters in all directions;

My heart drums out your name

I stop my ears from answer

You cannot open these connections

You dare not flirt

For I will take you down.

And here, at my level, there are only your hands

My mouth…

And Hunger so strong

It hurts.

I cannot begin to use the words to say

What I feel

For the whole world would fall in love with me.

Swept away & far beyond

Where you have any permission to go.

“Ethics? The hell with ethics – it’s my life!”

I am calm. I dismiss the whole event out of hand.

Then your name on an email steals across the screen

Like a French kiss.

O God, I have been here before.

No Bollywood maiden, nor even matron

But ringing with tiny bells, rolling my kohl-shaped eyes

Slipping upstairs to the bedroom

Wearing only perfume.

Why you? You unlikely beast of passion

I do not even know your whole name

Only you wear holey sweaters.

And your smile replaces where my heart once dwelt.

You test a sentence on me; I am not sure you mean to say

What I hear. I am not sure I hear

What you say.

In the variation:

Wanting so much of one

The other sets up as pain.

My body is stately now, not shapely.

But every cell remembers passion &

That unremembered is easily created.

Tongues & fingertips – even toes to slide

There is silk here & salt where memory is only love

And I am a Fool beyond the boundary of

All the handbooks for the league of decency

Burnt to ash by the simple casual reply I give.

When I have erased six messages I could not send.

Don’t hit reply unless you mean it

You cannot understand how easily I will seduce you with words

Bring you to heel, to your unready knees

Or at least the closest chair

When they give way on you

I worry too much about appearances

When all that is remembered are results

I would create a fountain of you

And eagerly pull this into me

My tight interior, ready hips,

I would dance you into me

So you would not see the slack breasts

Or wrinkled thighs

My musk would be your air

And your breath would catch in wonder

To enter me; the holy of holies

The prize for which gods fought in times Before.

Don’t toy with me, don’t send me cute little words

For you are not my unwed lover

To take me in any fashion

But my own.

Beware the simple sentence

That compounds to loving me

For you will never return with words

To me what I will make you feel

You will touch once

For the burn scar can only remedy

By applications of the same

And yes, this is an almighty ego

Against which you bruise

But I will not be other than I am

To Love.

When with her, the only “lie” is to lie down in opening surrender.