06 Friday Jul 2018
The swallow dip of joy,
swift arc and cut through bright sky,
has been on lengthy migration
to lands unnamed.
Yet the time allotted here, however long,
confined in concrete, noise, requirement and excess
may finally break me of this place.
What follows out
of the daily abrasions of adjusting
while not giving everything and nothing away
may open space enough for that swallow
to return truly
home.
05 Thursday Jul 2018
In search of meaning
but having to pay the bills.
Needing to matter,
but busy cursing the neglected dogs keeping you awake.
Reaching, yet thick in mud,
being with a sideways mess of months of days
and snarled in the wonderment of
what, in hell, this is all about…
Coming back, returning to echoes of your own one body,
again, again, again, again,
the home your fantasy conjured
minus the straightforwardness and glitter
of safe comfortable forever there
except it is precisely that in folly
and learning and diligent removal of concept
and heavy cultural residue.
This is home, your body, waiting,
waiting
for you to come back
to what is real, always with you, and still
strangely
not known.
28 Thursday Jun 2018
Undefined,
perpetually assumed,
the answer to the question
of family legacy.
Is it money?
Name?
Philanthropy?
Power? Fame? Title?
Accomplishment?
Keep digging. It resides
well beyond the surface of things.
Might it be anger, abuse,
enslavement, enslaving, addiction,
a thick poison, barely visible
and acutely sensed?
Might it be secrets held, shames and generations of fear?
Likely, aspects of these remain
and are being carried-
whether chosen or not.
The question then emerges from distant,
unvisited places, whispered
as warm mother to sleeping infant,
And what would it be for you
to transform
such a legacy, slowly, steadily,
with loving devotion
so as to soften- just a little-
the burden of a misunderstood life
with a dash more kindness, and fist full
of intent.
Far from easy, and miles east of glamorous,
that work may be your simple, impossible,
and singular gift
with the breath you borrow
here,
one day at a time.
26 Tuesday Jun 2018
While sitting in a slurry of nettles and skunk,
a confused mess of fury and grief,
I had to remember,
remember those I know well who will do anything not
to change.
Clenching to what doesn’t grow,
but metastasizes, brings more comfort
than trying it all, somehow, differently.
Yet the questions have yet to be born in them,
and time, with practice, has taught them not to find any stirring
since the familiar is the balm that keeps the abyss
from glistening up and pulling them under and out,
as it is for me now from the slick, hard cornered rock
I seem desperate to hold.
Time and body say, release this faithless fight and self-loathing,
those committed shackles of the past,
and give in, set adrift and enter
what is unimaginably larger than the Seen.
15 Friday Jun 2018
Someone told me today,
“You have great energy.”
Someone else
turned out to be my middle school literature teacher.
Another day, perhaps, I’m terrible,
and a familiar stranger might not be
who I think at all.
Ground is uneven.
Earthquakes come, volcanoes blow.
A life is a creative act,
parceled out in retrospect,
birthed forward through chaos.
Unformed to the end
each of us shapes the clay we’re given.
The world will think
whatever it thinks,
what matters is speaking God straight back
into God’s own ear.
13 Wednesday Jun 2018
Aching back, pounding head,
weakening eyes, softening memory,
anger, nightmare, spasm..
Symptoms.
What loves to be complained about
over tea, through the phone,
aloud aloud somebody hear this, oh please.
Imagine turning attention around,
bear chewing his tail-
Wake to me!
Symptom becomes lotus
opening
from murky waters into light.
Manifestation of inner
to outer,
an offering
a medicine
a gift.
Pain is not for pain’s own sake.
With suffering,
we alter to listen.
Awareness reaches up,
roots down,
grows.
12 Tuesday Jun 2018
Posted in poems, poetry, transition
≈ Comments Off on White on blue
At dawn
a church steeple, white on blue.
Down metal pipe railing
bathing suits and towels, ocean wet,
drape pink green red.
Hour after hour,
into day following day,
these months fill with surface disturbance-
construction, scheduling, maintenance,
scramble scramble scramble while
low currents move unfelt.
Details have a way of eating time.
Sitting by the water before sunrise
dips mind slowly back into mind.
27 Sunday May 2018
Dancer
unable to dance,
Writer
without words,
Climber
minus a mountain,
What now?
Not grasping for known
while Unknown is your becoming
means finding,
and learning
a whole new way to move.
Wiggle a little,
court the formless
in this precious release
of who you believe yourself
to be.
27 Sunday May 2018
The transformed steals the love-light,
not for greed
but for our preference.
What’s left behind in grit and dust,
even discarded in rank alleyways,
is the work of the chrysalis.
The
cramped
confused
identity-erasing
dark
of wrestling for the next life form,
of flight,
of nectar,
of tumbling in gravity’s wave
among flowers, bees and blue.
Remember what beauty lies in ugliness
before walking away from the misunderstood.
23 Wednesday May 2018
The basements, bathrooms, shrouded corners,
narrow, black to seem endless, alleys,
the Do-Not-Enters,
these are the intended places.
Go to them.
What courage lies docile and low
will rise up, a fire, a wave, a mountain
to have your back even as growing fear
dissolves
what you think holds you together.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 