No Matter the Dream

Did I really mean this life?

broken … but they all say that’s how the light gets in

so I don’t really mind at this age, this stage.

I wandered as if in God’s Maze

my life unfolded like a treasure map

one state after another

of mind, of heart, of locale.

Each a singularity of itself.

I had a purpose once,

I think.

It decentralized as I began finding meaning all over

in the darndest places.

Could I combine the moments,

like some hybridized montage where I’m a central character

I would take the love of the men I shared mine with,

the jobs where I shone, accomplished,

the mornings mirrors were kind, jeans fit, my cheeks had color

I would take the triumphs & tuck them into my bag,

slinging them over my shoulder to ponder later.

I know I’d be kinder, sing more, take less umbrage

but these go without saying. Wouldn’t we all rewrite a life

leaving out anger & sorrow? Just for the hell of it?

I learned from it all but these moments now,

ah! this now is like no other

this walk finds me resting more in the scenery

observing with old eyes all that I see around me new.

There seem no shiny destinations

when each day has a fold of glitter to shower over me.

I never got the pony, or the little red wagon

Or the kind of love I could understand before I

declared it over & done & begone.

I fled so many lives – relationships as well as timelines.

I skittered across the universe, a pinball played by the hand of God

Pinging each bumper, racking up points like a pro

Winning Him prizes, the kinds found in CrackerJack boxes…

Now I feel around in the drawers, pawing old glories, faded triumphs

Brought into the folds I peeled off to get to the meat of the matter.

Now I get to the place where everyday is so routine I must love it so much

that I know it by heart.

No matter where I journey in dreams, I wake in the same body

the same bed, readily living

the same day

Ready to bring it to life once again, to make it a li’l bit different.

There will be one so perfect it will signal an ending

A rightness to wander off from all I know

Into the palace of wherever it is Next to Be.

For me.

2

Watering Flowers in the Desert

I have times of crushing exhaustion. Too tired to even swipe my face free of makeup, I head to bed, catching myself at the last minute to head right instead of left, to enter the bath instead of the bed & clean my face. I sometimes am not as thorough as I want to be, but I do what I can so as not to wake with bits of mascara or smears of eye pencil which I so love to wear.

These times occur mostly after meals, healthy or not. The food, which should energize activity & move me to take on more – or at least finish what I’ve started – knock me out instead. My eyes close over the book & sleep wells up so I nod over the pages. I “lose time,” returning to activity depleted more – the nod-out not even restorative. I nap at 6, wake at 8, returning to the bed at 10. The good news is by 4 I’m back & setting up coffee, brushing Hanna Bell, writing notes to friends… By 5:55, I’m gathering purse & water bottle, heading to they gym to push & pull, to walk & lift, to swing & balance. I come home to fruit & flax cereal, setting out once again for work by 8.

I’ve been blaming age, the heat, my use of a lifelong right eye dominance. It’s difficult, channelling an entire universe through one orb. Tiring (that word again!), enervating. And it’s a lifelong pattern, this losing speed & spunk with darkness. Perhaps it is simply the light inspires me to activity while darkness sets upon me like a succubus. I don’t hear the stopper pop, but the well of energy drains away.

Lately I feel the years settling upon me like a colorful cape fading somewhat. I am exalted by the number I’ve achieved & fearful of losing to them as well. Where this me will go is unimportant. I’m happy with the progress I’ve made, the influence I’ve held. I haven’t built cathedrals, but there are many tiny shelters for hiding away in, there is much nourishment stored in the words I’ve put together, the paragraphs planed from formlessness.

Once a seer asked me if I’d like to know who I’d been in the past, assuring me I was world-famous. Once another assured me I’d have that fame once more but “posthumously.” I live by the sea now; I know tracklessness. I’ve lived in the desert, too, where a footprint can last a thousand earth-years.

That I wink in & out of time & timelessness is appropos to my years. That I may spend more time on one side of the veil than the other is a balance more delicate to navigate when I hold the edge of the bureau to pull on my pants. I once heard a fellow say, “The older I get, the farther away the floor seems to be.” This is a truism as well as a grin.

If the only one I’ve made happy is a random reader, it is enough. If my life satisfied one whim, one promise, one wish, it is enough. If I cannot measure in full any longer, oh well. I’ve built none but stone cairns & buried much beneath them. I’ve made myself happy & had others laugh with me. I’ve taught the light a few things & carried darkness to the outer edges of my life, far from direct experience, leaving it there for the kind of jackals that gnaw this fare to feast well. I am amazed constantly in my ability to move forward when all I want is to turn back, make a pillow of my past to rest upon.

I have no symphonies gathered in a trunk for some child-genius to happen upon, no recipes to feed the masses, no prayers to bring on salvation, except in the personal. My life is an excerpt, a condensing, a draft & a draught of what a life should be, can be, & in my case, is.

That will have to serve.

It is past 10:00. I close my eyes again & pull up the covers. If my life is only a dream: it is Enough.

0

Elemental

ELEMENTAL

I asked the wind where it would go

Receiving no answer, I asked again

When with a sigh, she replied “where I will!

I see no end to all this earth & must explore,

Must texture sand & tousle hair & so much more!”

I asked the rain the same, tho it seemed obvious

Its direction was always down

Except for when it was not

The rain eyed me drolly, with no response

Except to settle overhead more comfortably

I didn’t even ask fire, could not get close enough to

Hear anything anyway.

And earth just sat below, tho if it had moved

I doubt I’d have had chance to enquire.

Yet I do not find the situation at all stable

I find all elements in play, at play

Zeroed in on some mission not my privy.

I am elemental: not sure of where I go,

Except I stir things up,

I drip always downward unless I spin about

Fiery, to consume & not obey

Buried in my own name & dreams to once again arise.

I thought of heading to the pool this morning

Before the sun roared up over the horizon

The second-string sun, the faker put up overhead

When our own ascended in 2006.

This one made of white madness

Mixing all my plants outside,

The ivy grown into the wandering jew,

Who arrays her tendrils like a bride

Her wedding gown,

A bit psycho,

The orchid carefully courting the pencil cactus

With an errant root on overtime teasing outward,

The kroton spilling out urgently, of a sudden

After years of quiet thinking small thoughts;

The spider babies thickly rooting themselves in air

The jade dropping branches into its own soil…

Like people, everyone shoving into others’ spaces

Without so much as an “excuse me” or a “hello!”

I too am overgrown – a target of the powers that cannot be        

My thoughts recorded for some crazy product process

I say new & my phone trembles with selections

Beginning to awaken & shake myself from this

Long Sleep,

Finding clarity

After years living in the Great Cloud of Unknowing.

It’s the Fourth of July

The blood speaks again in fireworks of its own

The great release at hand

Even as the world spins its wobble toward

Separation

The second earth near, gravity doubled for some

Another atmosphere beckoning others,

A place where clouds remain fertile while  being unseeded

Where rain falls in place & not randomly on the patio

Alone, putting out the cookfire…

A world where nothing is controlled, but knowing place,

The one I’m headed to, as soon as I organize everything

I’ve got, will have, ever had.

I am constantly putting old information into new covers,

Relabeling myself, folding one more into what is

Already crowding space.

I expand with information, bettering how I feel

About myself

With forgiveness wrought by joy.

Everyone else has made mistakes –

Why not me?

Everyone else has spots from growing, not rot;

How can I not?

I’ve been waiting for that perfect me to arrive,

The one without that extra flesh hiding that bisecting scar,

The one where they stole my womb away, my fertile womb,

My desiring womb, my id devoured for a kid surgeon

To practice his ineptitude, nicking a ureter,

Using the cash sale – cha ching! – to join the country club

To advance his arts with brotherly second opinions.

What would I say to him now? He is at least as old as me

And not nearly so perfect, with a long history of rendering

While I’ve practiced surrendering…

I would have to turn away & find somewhere else to focus

For if I opened my mouth to sear him, like some rogue dragon

Forming fire in my larynx,

Even then would I know we were both falsely accused

Both right to be wrong

Both fallible & culpable

Both warned & prescient.

My life is what it was from my choices & other’s pronouncements.

All chained together proclaiming FREEDOM!

I pipe up for myself: FORGIVENESS!

1

Dawn Fingers the Sky

I arrive before the light – just sayin’

the air so fresh it has no scent at all

the gulls still on the water

which is pale green with a ruffle of bubbling white wave

under indefinable sky.

I commandeer the lifeguard station steps

Stiffly sitting, fumbling for the camera option…

It’s early March & a chill 68

Yet a young thing in an orange sundress

Poses for her senior pictures, in just-visible light

Her friend in a heavy jacket, boots up to there

While Barefoot girl smiles & combs back her hair.

The world between us – me in wrinkles, she in burgeoning sun.

1

The Broken Chair (Ten Months Old)

Awake at 3 A.M. (Again)

Asking impossible questions

My book too complicated to read:

Future-less, no whereupons, no whereins

My mind sandpapered

My eyes too tired:

May I return to sleep?

No mother to answer nor answer to

The question hangs like

My pendulum:

Dead in midair, awaiting…

_________________________________________________________________________________

A broken chair on the grassy verge

Awaiting a Jesus Carpenter

Past support: its primal mandate

A sullen castoff,

Discarded after a lifetime of service.

Lost to fire, to water, to abandonment

Outside the window it smugly overlooked.

________________________________________________________________________

Existential poems in a pit of metaphor & sigh

A breath breathed only out

Rife with cancellation

I never said that! I am not responsible!

A clear slash slicing memory & reality

Wording & warding

I am in some disappointment

To ever be agreed with again.

That I stood next you in that moment

My witness found wanting: Brushed off like brain lint

By your need to be the rightest in the room.

The real question hangs: am I making this up?

Your disturbing cancellation leaves no room for me at all.

Silence becomes the better part of valor & intent

I surrender & surround myself within it.

Tomorrow you will say: “You never talk to me anymore.”

_____________________________________________________________________

Truth or memory?

I stand erased, zeroed out, discarded

Watching as you lose your phone, your mind, your life, your money.

Our friendship with this line now drawn through. Who bleeds more?

I stomp through poems

With a giggle of splash

Water overtops the wellies

My feet are cold

My socks all wet

A poet dwells in a make-believe world

A made-up turn of phrase

Spun from air & words

As empty or as potent as can be.

A poet has no answers to life’s questions

No affirmations to any but a craft

Somewhat forgot in the everyday of flat fact.

But my feet will dry one day

An echo of joy in their smell.

_________________________________________________________________________

There should be certainty in a church, of all places,

A firm knowledge that God Is

But god seems less to be found where the bills unmet

Sit on the desk of a vacationing accountant.

The vendors stewing outside

Steaming up the windows with hot breath

At their completed work.

As down the line it flows

Their God reduced to a curse against our holy doors:

Their chorus raised to pre-billing or no work at all

In return to our intransigence.

A recipe for failure no God can endure.

He leaves by the back door

Tired & empty, unsure.

_____________________________________________________________________________

You don’t share my divinity – your psychodrama has no place

In my black & white world

You don’t walk your talk, you dance with it in the moment

Not realizing the music stopped altogether

As of the First Excuse

There is no rescue here for Lord nor Love

But only a pile-on become an avalanche.

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap”

Replacing “Be thou blessed all who enter here.”

__________________________________________________________________________

There’s A Lesson Here, Damnit!

The mirror I’ve polished down to thinned-out silver

Over brass, no fault to find fault lines

Where I thought I stood on holy ground

I find my shoes & walk on.

Church bells in the distance

Become warning, not welcome.

Neither sad nor anxious nor beloved.

I empty my canteen of your brackish sentiment

To find Living Water

I fish my soul still kneeling at the altar rail

“Come on,” I say, “We’re leaving.”

I turn my back on your God

To find my own.

The only quest worth pursuit

The only life left to live…

I know my truth of imperfection & freely admit to God

Which is everywhere but not here anymore.

I follow a light still shining, simply swallowing your dark.

0

If the Buck Stops Here: Make Change

Having a mixed-up, shook-up day. Feeling stupid & poor & jealous & all the emotions I dislike the most in myself. I’m doing a cleanse & I thought it was physical or would be so, but it seems to be emotional & spiritual instead.

The good thing is some new thoughts are coming in. One that I had in church today listening to all the platitudes about Father’s Day was that I could simply let go of all the really old, grotty resentment of my dad about his fencing me so fully from his life – so wide I can’t get around it, so tall I can’t get over it – you know the song.

This is quite disturbing & I’m sure it will be liberating when it roots around & finds its soil to grow. It is, after all, a New Thought & you know by now how much I look forward to these.

My dad. Got to see him once a year & sometimes twice in the same year. Once he bought me boat shoes, stylish little slip-ons which, with a Buster Brown Enforcer of a Mom, was just the bee’s knees for my cross-eyed, pickety self. And actually, that’s my only memory of him. Nothing else is in the vault.

I know he was a Libra like me. I know he liked his beer with the guys after work (he painted the huge fuel storage tanks for Sun Oil before it became Sunoco.) It’s purported he had an affair with the town bad girl which forced Mom to divorce him & move as far as the taxi would take her & the kids. Since that was to the beaches of New Jersey, it made for an enviable childhood which did not seem that way while I lived it.

Oh yes, he bought me my Bike. I called it Blue Boy & it was a 36″ high bike while I was a 30″ high kid so that made for some interesting perspectives & a lot of time sailing up & down the boardwalk. My lonesome habits continue to this day, tho not the biking part.

I’m not even sure why I’m writing this. Just been a emotional coaster of a day for me & I’m where I am, digging out but the walls keep caving back in.

Ok. Later on it’ll be tomorrow & everything will change.

1

Reminder: Storm Heaven

So, this morning driving to work, the thought floated from the 8-Ball that is my mind: “You can’t storm Heaven & then complain about the rain!” I pondered this the eight miles to work. Along the way I noticed my car screen had – for the first time – mimicked my phone screen. Except there was a button with an icon of two fingers crossed, labeled “Reminders.”

Thinking to remember this thought, I hit the button. Google roused herself enough to blurt (in a kind of, ‘you wake me for this’? tone – “What do you want me to remind you about?” Well, heck, I thought it was a, like, memo pad where I could record my wonderful Thought. I blurted out “Storm Heaven!”

GoogShe asked me, “When do you want to be reminded?” (I could see her checking her electronic manicure…) I glanced at the red light & said, Tomorrow! She replied, “What time?”

Oh for heaven’s sake! I had not intended a conversation. I said, annoyed, 8 a.m. She noted this & put the music back on (to shut me up, I’m sure!)

By 8:00 tomorrow, I must come up with something to Storm Heaven about.

Any suggestions?

0

Bookmarks

I begin with endings. Don’t we all? Doesn’t everything? Something ends in order for another something to begin. Sometimes we cannot go back to what was before although we thought only to put that on hold.

I listen to ‘massage music’ today. All the befores: Dean Everson, Peter Kater, Steve Halpern, Aeoliah…flow from the player, soothing & calm. And familiar. With each one beginning, the muscle memory of folding down a sheet, placing my hands onto a smooth back, rolling down the sides of a spine in a long stroke – effleurage, petrissage, double thumbs. I feel my etheric body leaning into the stroke, fingers rolling along low back, just at the border of the sheet. In the music, I feel the placements, the strokes. I anticipate the change in position, the cover-up, the uncovering. How many of my reactions are simply familiarity asserting a remembrance of posture? After all, I’m sitting in a chair as these play.

I started the day with my favorite activity. In the 4 a.m. time when I wake sometimes a project will surface: I must do this today. When is a good time? I fix my coffee, ritualizing the filter atop the cup, the scoop of coffee, the hotpot burbling to frenzy. Hanna Bell stretches on the coffee table – her new summer-cool spot – she has already said good morning when I came from the bedroom. She’ll chirp until she sees the brush in my hand & I apply it to her smooth, colorful coat. She will emit the tiniest of vibrations, barely that which can be called a purr. She’ll bump her head against my arm & accept the kiss I place between her ears. Sometimes she’ll lie back to accept a belly brush, stretching her paws & flexing them, claws in, claws out as she kneads the air.

This morning I sorted thru a box of cards bought at thrift. I pulled out the “Happy Anniversary!” cards – I know of no anniversaries. I separated the “Congratulations on the New Baby!” cards. Ditto on the blank of new babies. None of the seniors I correspond with are preggers. I stack the “Get Well’s” – keeping some of them. I put the Sympathy cards back, these are the most likely of use along with the birthday greetings. I put the handoffs into a small black bag to return to the thrift which will sell them for 35 cents each. I’m happy these at least have envelopes to turn in too!

I am doing a parasite cleanse which is returning just a shiver of taste & smell to my senses. I notice: Is that cinnamon? Yes! I am smelling cinnamon! I read this might happen. Grateful.

Off to market at 8:00 when Publix opens. Beef bacon – a brand-new tryout. Two jars of pesto on sale. Lately what I do taste is sharp, peppery, pungent, so I indulge.

Today us a no make-up day. An enjoy-the-quiet-Sunday rolling out in front of me like I rolled out the erector spinae by touch. A long stroke of a day, too hot to go outside. A nap-at-one day, a second-cuppa-coffee day.

I keep filching CD’s from the huge book of sleeves holding them. I float. Today is a bookmark: a return to start-point day. A holy day.

1

The Binding

I am terrified at the thought of my heart opening, admitting to love.

I am so comfortable here, wriggled into soft pillows, wearing cotton, a cat purring lightly nearby. Why would I trade these for love?

My heart is closed, sealed, impervious. It is locked shut with an ornate scrolling lockplate. The key? Well, it’s not in reach. It beats of its own accord, acknowledging outsiders but withdrawn into its own distance in the same instant.

Music stirs me, but less than the written word & right now the turn of recent phrases has begun manifesting dandelions all over my manicured, empty green field.

It is only now I perceive this fear as fear. Only now am I awakening to the [im?]possibility of moving beyond.

Long ago I accepted myself as an unlovable singleton, demanding, impervious, unyielding. I lament the loss of common sense in relationship. How could anyone understand me &, better yet, why would I want them to? Why open this contented sanctuary of solitude to outside forces, to an untamed energy that would ally me with another? There is no reason save the fracturing revelation I need not be alone. I could heal my splintered heart. I needn’t continue to live the experience that no one can love me as my Truth.

I have stalked my boundaries staked with the architecture of distance. I have squirmed into impermeability as a queen settling upon a towering throne. To love would draw & quarter my tightest boundaries in a most wonderful way. I extracted ‘love’ from my life a long time back. The extraction was forceful enough to build its own force field which I only now begin to question, a chick pecking at the shell. Shutting down was so much simpler than exposure.

Why now is this carefully constructed subsidence erupting? I’ve laid a parking lot over my heart – come visit, stay within the lines, be ready to back out. You’ll need a permit & a sticker to stay, not to mention a reasoning invitation.

I’m quick to drop barriers with a winning smile, a funny joke. I spook at real interest & willfully do not recognize it. There is a penchant within for empty spaces where only now I’m realizing as holding nothing at all.

Is this unreasonable? Unnecessary? The weakest flaw might be my not loving myself, which now is changing.

I say ‘share my words, share my world’ but I can count on one hand the people who actually read this blog who are my friends. Certainly none among my tiny family read it. My heart is blathered all over these pages for the ones I want to get the message only they’re not looking.

I may as well put sand in my coffee each morning.

This admission is an invitation to myself. I want to ponder those who loved me & why they did so, back when it was unconditional, when “I love you no matter what” was the byline.

Any questions?

1

Oz, The Great & Terrible

I’m drawing back the curtain

to see what lives behind

I’m sorting thru the webbies

from the spiders in my mind

I’m seeing new beginnings

in what-all I’ve left behind

I’m stronger for the memory

in the minders to re-mind.

All the monsters roam the hallways

None now linger under-bed

and the closet door is open

and there’s room inside my head

where the light has gone to linger

I’ll believe what’s up ahead

only when I see it dead.

I have given up decisions

which I thought I’d never do

I have answered all the questions

So all that’s left is New

i have fashioned me a headdress

of old feathers, ragged, blue

I could write my way forever

Given time & space & who

I have opened in the middle

my discov’ry is complete

there’s no room for ever-after

my invasion is replete.

I could walk away without me

scattered breadcrumbs in the street.

1

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