Riding the Light –

Blog

  • Dear Time,

    Dear Time,

    I’ve been trying to catch up to you for a longish stretch now. You got away from me a bit ago – what happened there? Was it in Nashville where we shared so many deadlines; where you became a steeplechase run at full gallop, full of fences & water hazards but where you mainly surfaced as Total Taskmaster?

    Was that where I pushed back from the table, starving & sated both? Was it where I first perceived your importance & indifference (& impotence)? For surely at that time, you started to slip now having lost traction altogether.

    (If Time were a racehorse, it was riding me with a brutal bit bruising my mouth. Foolish with faux power & authority, I was fooled into feeling in charge.)

    Now you spin on your own axis. Now you wobble along scarcely missing other planets. I ride your edge but am no longer certain of my own boundaries. I have seen too much, heard too much; bled too much, lied too hard. I knew no better at the time.

    Forgive me?

    Can we be friends? Can we drop the Master/Slave relationship? I just can’t hold on that tightly anymore. Times have changed, hell, we both have. Boundaries & dynasties blur as I grasp for my place within these. I arrive to find I stand in the center of the Hall of Mirrors.

    One by one my systems fail your tests. Words burrow under the surface when I try to speak them. Ideas change color or come so clear as to be invisible when I rely on them thinking these individualistic & whole.

    And, Time, what have we wrought with the physical? Good grief! I so miss being beautiful, moving fluidly, the casual fearlessness. Hesitation becomes caution, caution a transparency of hesitation. Hey, I don’t mind mortality – I mean, we all die to the third dimension as we move into others. Perhaps I find that much-touted stance of Youth just plain boring now.

    I like my wisdom. I enjoy filtering all you teach me through experience. I am certain of less & less. You, too, have lost certitude & lack surety.

    Okay, this is how it is: I started this thinking to point out how far in the lead I am, or you are. But I now see we are so intertwined…walking together, neither leading, both leaning into each other.

    I left at arrival & still search a destination only to find the walk is all there is.

  • Pre-Post Covid

    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.

  • Writing Life

    Writing Life

    In the photo above, I am reassured of my worth…I wonder that I ever doubted it. This “now” is one where facts are proven not to be, where wishes lack the power of story, where no information can be trusted.

    The separation is so powerful, we doubt we exist at times, let alone that others do alongside. We see them, we hear them, we know them. Then we query their place in our lives – even as we reach for their hand to hold, pinching slightly to prove this tenuous reality.

    In Nashville, I raised morning glories from seed on my patio. I put long window boxes under the patio railing & planted them. They grew up the rails of the balcony & softened the view of the beautiful golf course the apartment bordered. I do not recall if they had a scent. I do recall their heartful intensity in growing, tiny tendrils climbing against gravity, waving about. Perhaps they had an inaudible chant: “What can I hang on to? Where am I going? When will I get there?” Despite these valid questions, they simply trusted their sole task & grew, putting out delicate flowers. Tho I echo my own cosmic questions, we reach out together, wrapping ourselves tightly around the best & only life available.

    The blossoms appear overnight. They open every morning. I’d like to think that I do too. Each midnight dream gathers love, deep & velvet, fragile, tentative & somehow secure.

    In my stony New Mexico backyard, the morning glories I did not plant appear each September, resurrecting from dry brown wisps clinging to the cyclone fence. This September they showed up on the other side of the yard – I watered them gently, wondering if they would discover the laundry rack & as you see, indeed, they did.

    I keep driving away life & from life. I cannot escape, but the thought I can draws me forth into the void. I am never out of touch with my divinity, but sometimes it is too remote to grasp. My bouquets at the wedding of life are clouds atop the mountains I scaled to marry stars.

    Love,

    Carol

  • Random Poems

    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.

  • Tired Of Covid Yet?

    Tired Of Covid Yet?

    I, for one, am VERY tired of Covid.

    Of course, I don’t have it. I am simply suffering from its blowback. Sierra County has experienced ONE death & two lockdowns so far.

    I have lost good earrings from wearing masks. I have been accused of standing within 6 feet of others! I have lifted my mask to cough & been castigated by other Wal-Mart shoppers. I have hit the wall with Wal-Mart being the only other shopping place in a town with two open facilities.

    Olive Garden is closing, I hear. Where else will I find salt-laden breadsticks? Bottomless soup & salad combos? Regal Theatres are disappearing – oh, wait, I don’t do movies much anymore (last one I went to was “Yesterday”.) And I live in a town where delaying “Mulan” is a sign of the downfall of America.

    Our two coffeehouses have closed. There is not a scone to be had in Sierra County! How can I go on?

    Already on our economic knees, we kowtow completely to our third lockdown sponsored by our Democratic Governor (who unveiled her jewelry line in Santa Fe recently, with a public “Grand Opening”) Does anyone reading this know what a “kowtow” is? Look it up!

    I figure I’ve got a 50-50 chance on survival if the air around the election ever clears, that is. Should the man I call “Sniffy” win, Kamala will stick a shiv in his ribs ten minutes after he reads the Oath of Office off the teleprompter, remove her mask & pick up a bullwhip. “YAH!” she will scream, “Get the Trumpers!” In self-defense, perhaps I can throw a container of home-made sauce at her, since all I’ve done is read books & cook for eight months. Cooking has become what religion once was for me.

    I don’t mind ending it all, just let it be painless. Happy thoughts? But I know me, I’ll more likely be clutching the crockpot & a bag of carrots to hide among the prickly pear so I can feed the Resistance.

    Of course everyone has a gun here but me. My girlfriends discuss buys on ammo instead of shoes these days.

    Luckily (and on the 238th day with nothing else to do) I voted the second day the polls opened. Now I see the parking lot jammed whenever I go by city hall. Since the weather is doing a reprise on summer minus ten degrees on our typical 101 average of a day, and with the a/c turned off on 9/30 due to city budget restrictions, I know they are all feeling the heat in there.

    The nice gentleman who ordered me 6′ off as we perused the book aisle at a thrift in Las Cruces probably cannot be blamed. He had just been harrangued by a joyous Yahoo about how Trump was “felled by the wrath of God.” Since Trump was dancing to “YMCA” at a recent rally, it sounds like the Big Heavenly Guy doesn’t hold a grudge long.

    My Twitter account needs a black border to contain all the bad news. I get likes for such mild remarks as “I’m so old I remember when the ‘Streisand Effect’ was called ‘Banned in Boston’. I use Twitter to improve my Snark Factor only.

    I must look on the positive/hilarious side: I bought a 12-pak of toilet paper a week before the CV thing started & have only recently run out. (It’s just me in the house, here, folks.) I managed to run up a $2,000 bill with the medical community upon tripping over a Handicapped parking stop barrier. I have spent hours on hold with Social Security listening to the same four chords repeating – meant to soothe, I’m sure. I laughed at the reminder to service my car on which I’ve accrued about 100 miles in all this time. My sleeping patterns are totally out of sync with real life because life is not real anymore. I have enough “Don’t vote for him/her mailings because….” to put up a nice fire when I can no longer afford the electricity from paying medical bills.

    I have frozen containers of sauce, chili, soup & the bag of Brussels sprouts I carefully hid in the back of the freezer. (I removed the icy packs for picnic lunches to make room.)

    I have solved all the riddles of the Sphinx on my own & I’m really bad at puzzles. I have achieved enlightenment in my soul if not my midriff.

    So, what’s next?

  • Lifelines II

    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

  • Lifelines I

    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

  • There Is No There There

    There Is No There There

    Endings slip by like mileposts. Am I closer to my goals? Am I closing in on my divinity? This morning I tuned in to Joe Dispenza who says when the heart moves front & center, when the fear paradigm is extinguished, joy manifests throughout the body & brain.

    Got it, thanks!

    Adding another injury – as if one weren’t enough – I missed a stairstep recently &  slammed backwards onto the doorframe, gashing my head. Two people were here: one an acupuncturist who threw a clean dishtowel at me after putting some ice into it & dashed for her car (sight of blood?); the other stood still & wailed aloud until I demanded she shut up now. Then both disappeared, leaving me bloody, frightened, wondering if anything else could happen. I called my good friend who came to nurse me yet again. She cleaned the wound, iced up the towel & everything went very quiet for awhile after she left.

    I’ve no conscious idea what is happening here. But within an hour, I felt a joy come over me that I’ve felt before. I call it my “ineffable joy” aligning with head/heart to calm, succor & ratchet me upwards one more gear.

    It’s been about six weeks since I broke my right arm. I pushed through the pain with Advil (me! who hasn’t swallowed a pill in more years than I can remember!) I literally found my feet amidst an outpouring of loving/kindness & support from friends who helped with cooking, emptying trash, making the bed, bringing books to read. The gratitude is bigger than I can ever tell you about: I can only share it. I can only promise to be mindful to offer this to more.

    Heart coherence is an enviable state, except the envy would dislodge it.

    Within a week, I’ve sold my massage gear, watching with no interest as my table was carried off, the supplies around this 24-year career disappearing into the truck bed & a check went into the box to deposit next week. I look inside, finding NO emotion around this event at all. I will either make it work without a career, or I will not. I’ve put my hand in God’s & said, “OK, let’s go.” I am shaken loose, poured out, running over.

    I trust that all is well in my world. I trust I will keep my balance as confidence returns physically. I know that if I do not, someone will be there to help me straighten up. My body is battered & sore, my head scabbed over, my arm increasing movement by the hour. I have no earthly idea where this comes from; therefore it must be heaven-sent.

    I have a feeling now that everything else is out of the way, my true work can begin. But this remains a wispy thought for the moment. With all the world moving around in varying directions, I can only watch from my personal catbird seat. Watch, and know it’s all changed out each blink. I can only get ready, stay ready, be ready.

    Mother/Father/God: I thank you for all in my life. I offer my sore hands for your blessing, for you to place upon my real work. I do not bow my head because I know you want me watching the horizon for any opportunity to serve again. Allow me just a little more grace until I can earn all that is needed to return to you with interest. My healing is your manifestation of love for me. My friends are even more so. My blessing is a mirror of all you are & I must bring this through as powerfully as I can. I am emptying myself that you may fill me. I will be here when you call. It is I, Lord, a single soul of unique making; I speak for you, I flow you, I manifest your earthly work through just being. I am staying tuned to your words & wishes with the skin of my soul. I know your plans for me include all good, only love, active blessing to receive & offer to others. Show me your way; I’m tying my sneakers on, I am ready for you to enter my life more fully. I think most everything else is out of the way & I am clear to report to my future. Unburden me more, that I may walk with you lightly. The world gathers itself up behind me, already lost to it as  you lead me home.

  • Right & Left: the Space Between

    Right & Left: the Space Between

    A daytrip resulted in a broken arm. It’s not too long a story – may I start at the beginning? There are funny moments, but you kind of had to be here for those.

    I tripped over a concrete parking block (also called a parking stop, a curb stop & more.) It’s that concrete thingie installed in parking spaces . And, in a spasm of ironic humor, it was a HANDICAPPED block – but then, blue is my favorite color. We were in a rest stop near Silver City.

    I have a mental vision that my body whipped forward in a crack-the-whip motion, my right arm & my nose landing simultaneously. I have a slow-mo impression of bouncing on the tip of my nose, my head snapping back to have another go at landing, this time fully face-down. I now call it my “asphalt exfoliation.” I could feel my nose dripping blood. Pat, my travel companion, rushed to help me, as did another man but before they could touch me, I growled, DON’T! I drew myself up to a sit, carefully positioning my face forward so as not to bloody my clothing.

    Inside, I sent up a fervent prayer, Don’t let it be broken!! I rushed through the door marked Denial in my ringing head. I got myself up somehow, re-entering the bathroom where the water pulsed in a slow trickle. I looked in the mirror & choked. I dabbed carefully at my face with a rough paper towel. I figured, It’s done, might as well go on.

    My friend & I continued to Silver, discussing whether to go to urgent care or a hospital. But I was reluctant. I asked Pat to fashion me a Girl Scout sling to support & immobilize my arm. I kept sending up smoke signals of prayer (“not broke, not broke, not broke”) I knew on a deep level: broke for sure. This experience was, after all, a revisit to a 2002 event in which I landed on my right elbow.

    We had lunch at an outdoor table as (of course) all indoor venues are closed. After half a tuna sandwich & a fruitless search for a store Pat wished to visit, we stopped at CVS for an arm sling. The passersby in Silver City offered ice, help, care, directions to the hospital… We started home. I was in that space after a traumatic injury. Nothing yet hurt, but I wasn’t exactly planning on breaking out in the Macarena. The ice melted in my lap wetting down my shorts thoroughly, adding a level of comedy…oy! Wet pants on top of everything else.

    Since I’ve broken this arm before, at the elbow, I had a preview of the immediate future. I groaned inside as my Medicare card does not include doctor fees, but relied on the fact it does include hospital care. Next piece of irony up: the hospital treated me as an outpatient so I now face bills in four digits for a 15-pound plaster bumper, a 4-pound “ski” to seat the injury into & no fewer than six ace bandages tying the whole thing together. I left hospital with an offer of oxycontin (NO!), a bloody-scraped face which they didn’t even offer to put a cool cloth upon, a CD of the break & a prescription for an orthopedist in Las Cruces.

    I barely fit into my tiny car with my cement block arm. I learned that slings of any kind are not forgiving of DD bra size or having a straight neck. I adopted a tilt to balance the weight, learned to meditate about moving no matter how urgent the call to do so. Slithering seemed to work when standing up was involved. Dishes, washing, food prep, dressing, climbing the steps & descending backwards…

    Friends gathered every day to help with all of the above. From feeling faraway while up close to my surroundings, I was gathered in a bubble of love & help that brought more relief than tears, tho they were not far behind as it turned out.

    I am not even a month after the event. This morning I opened a jar, cut my eggs, buttered toast, washed in the shower (hair, too!). I dressed carefully in real clothes – finally free of the single caftan that I could squirrel into. I am typing with both hands, my right elbow tucked in close to my hip.

    The tip of my nose is still pinker. My arm bears a stripe of discoloration which may never fade. My elbow looks like a small ball has been shoved into the joint. The injury – supracondylar transverse fracture of the humerus – heals well under the infrared lamp, constant Reiki & much mental conversation over the future.

    My career as a Massage Therapist is likely over with this being the second injury in the same area. A whisper of possibly changing careers in these unusual times has become a steady hum. I finagled a couple of payments for the hospital & the doctor who earned $608 for looking at me, recommending oxycontin, insisting on a CT scan for what he was convinced was a broken nose, then disappearing to peck at a computer behind his decorative mask. (Since a CT scan would provide nothing to enhance what might become a prizefighter’s cauliflower nose,  this I also refused.) Not a bad night’s earnings when it was early on Friday evening with the weekend rushing in. I’m not even gonna talk about the hospital bill. They could have admitted me so the bill would have been covered, after all.

    Life & moving on. I am left to do right in future, to repay the care & love I’ve been shown. Soon I will be driving again – maybe I’ll get to Silver City to thank the people there, too.

     

     

  • Seven Summer Samauri

    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.