Category Archives for Uncategorized

August 1 2014

The morning is suddenly turned
on the ringing cry of a gull
and the clear call to see
that we are all commanding the prows of
way-faring ships
rising toward shifting horizons.
Be-ware, Captain, be aware.

The prelude turns the corner and
suddenly I am taken back
to that road trip to New Orleans
Valentine’s and Mardi Gras and
dancing monkeys all weekend
and searching for hidden alligators with
my first love and two of my oldest
friends and a sister
all crammed in to
that tiny car
for six hours each way
and I turn and see the marine layer
roiling over the top of the hill
with the swiftness and impending weight of
an advancing army
and the words come sing song
and I want to howl them
into the layers of mist,
but not Ginsberg’s Howl,
my howl,
this magic,
this now,
this song,
this summery unsummer
of peeling away the layers
digging deep, deeper
leaving the confusion behind
for this solid shining knowing

June 7 2013

The degradation of money is made beautiful in your skin,
the bright breadth of imagination, hopes and dreams,
vividly colored and singing to me
across the train.
Here is one way to flaunt wealth,
to make true clothes of it,
a brilliant quilt of accumulated tales and years,
how,
unlike the precious metals and gems of ancestral ranks,
it cannot be melted down and sold
or traded for other resources to “own”.
A thumb in the face of their grand mythos of money,
the imaginary god so many worship,
but few will acknowledge,
even to admit the truth
to themselves.

Perhaps we are stars

Are you a vortex of time?
Or is it that we create one when we are together,
our unification opening gateways impossible to access alone?

It moves differently with us, surely.

Perhaps we are stars on long orbits
dancing across the heavens
of the world’s great dream.

Perhaps it is only my heart
so full of joy
it goes to pieces
at your proximity,
scattering stardust out
beyond human measurement.

like a blanket wrapped around the soul

It’s only taken me nearly 20 years, but I can finally recognize the first day of my period as an oddly wonderful gift.

For this one day, I am completely unable to ignore my body. A good half of my attention, or more, is incapable of being diverted from what is going on with me physically. I find there is a complete lack of desire to do anything quickly or extend myself in any way, which is quite the opposite of normal. I move around slowly, at some small percentage of my normal speed, shuffling my feet and watching myself go about everyday activities almost as a bemused observer. My eyes want to close, my body to rest it’s activity, to be able to better focus the attention inward. All unnecessary energy from every other part of me is rerouted to support this hidden demonstration of strength. It’s like I’m all wrapped up in a thick blanket, blinders on, senses drawn in and muffled around the edges so that the clearest thing is only what is directly in front of me.
It takes a concentrated effort of will to go to work and have to repeatedly yank my focus back to the task at hand instead of the natural inner process where it is wont to go, and will unerringly go, if I do not keep myself constantly on point.
And it is so interesting to me to notice this happening. To feel this natural physical event trumping even the strong determination of my mind, to witness all these normally quiet inner parts remain unwaveringly firm, uncowed for this day by the usual dominance of the mind over their voices.

Sometimes it happens that the pain is so great that it takes all my focus to just remember to let the breath out and draw it back in. To force myself to stand upright and even to move around instead of curling up into a ball on the nearest horizontal surface. Trying to think beyond that is a task in itself. Other times it’s just a constant ache in the background that only takes a part of my attention and leaves me a little more room to feel what else is going on.

I think we have for too long let ourselves perpetuate this ridiculous archaic notion of menses being a thing of punishment. It has taken me even this long to realize there is some hidden beauty in it and that is rather sad, that this experience is not something honored or even cared for.

Look at this wonderful awareness this woman’s body allows me. To be brought back to the caring nature of things, to be sharply reminded every month of it’s power to bring forth life. I don’t know that the other half of us so often has this opportunity to immerse themselves in such a deep and full sense of the corporeal.

Right now I can feel so absolutely how this soft animal of the body is like a blanket wrapped around the soul, and that to me is an amazing sense of things that should not be kept silent.

these essential echoes

It calls to me,
the curve of your shoulder,
the rise of your chest,
the flare of your hands,
the indent of your hip.
It calls to me
with a deep thrumming
through my bones
in a way that is
impossible to ignore
when you are near.
Maybe the day will come
when my body does not
meld perfectly to yours,
curve answering curve,
these essential echoes
brought to stillness
when the distance is closed.
Maybe one day this will not
feel
so unequivocally right.

Beloved, come back

Beloved,
tell me how it is you come to me.
Tell me what it is that calls you,
so that I may make it happen again,
with intention.

Last time you stayed for three whole days
and put me so ablaze with bliss
I was afraid I would start fires
merely by feeling joy at the reflection of you
in everything around me!
Just as I was beginning to figure out how to put ecstasy
into words that others might understand,
that night,
you slipped away while I was sleeping.
As always,
you left without word of when
you will be back,
so that I must look to find
the glimmer of you
through the weeds & the shadows
& in the shifting pattern of things around me.

Beloved, come back!
I am tinder waiting for
the spark of your touch
to become again a joyful conflagration
that paints the whole sky
with the colors of your love.

Kissing the sky

Right now I cannot distinguish
between loving you
or loving God more.
All that is clear is how
every second of my existence
longs to stand on that mountaintop
among the windswept trees
with the hair brushed from my face
so that nothing
lies between me
and kissing the sky
with my whole being.