28 Tuesday Aug 2018
In the cross-hatch seat of the chair
wooden, dusted in time and use,
a cat
curled
and sleeping.
Looking over at her, floor boards below and sun
reaching through a far window,
doubt can not waver the sweetness
of a morning with feline, coffee, a book
and silence rising from the woods outside.
26 Sunday Aug 2018
If a push,
somewhere a pull.
Where taken,
pray it has been given.
The Western sense of community..
in itself a paradox?
We’re part–everyone–of centuries of history
cycling, tumbling, molasses-thick onward
with nanosecond “advances.”
No mystery that you, and you, and I
can not seem to catch our breath.
Faster is not forward,
as bigger not better, nor more money success.
Where lies the soul stuff making life
Life?
01 Wednesday Aug 2018
He slams the door behind him.
You think, Good riddance!
When next your heart stops and breath catches,
out comes a gasp, What have I done?
Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes
from complete sense to non-sense,
and it is on that iceberg of moment
(and each drifting ice island following)
when wondering, Is this true?
might most gather you back together in a form
strong enough,
wise enough
to hold all the sensations and feelings
threatening to tear you to pieces
to be with Now,
an actual fullness of Life
for which you have the grandest capacity.
31 Tuesday Jul 2018
Where is your Beauty?
Surely not
in the new shoes, fresh haircut,
expensive manufactured perfume or
endless product
product
product
pushed, hawked, manipulated into your brain
tinkering with insecurities secret and unspoken.
Your Beauty,
your Beauty! exists. Period. No one sells it to you,
convinces you of it, holds it over you, or
wants you solely because of it-
that sort is no kin of Beauty, but mere poison.
The posh tie, synthetic cologne, hippest beard or band-
they’ll not birth Beauty either.
No mask is She. Neither bought nor sold,
She is spark, and giggle, dance step and honest stumble.
She is inspiration,
your in-spiring moment to moment.
Nurture these and Beauty rises, rises,
a river filling thirsty banks longing
to sing her praises.
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.
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.
06 Sunday May 2018
An initiation ritual,
in the dusk-scape of dream,
of shared finery, costume, camaraderie,
and non-blood family
emerging from here, over there,
here, here, there
unexpectedly,
for the me before me,
with a gathering of eager others,
to mark time with life.
Saying no, no but I am not she
not anymore
no–
But as beads pass over head, and colors add up,
layers of feather, bone, cloth
none mine
each display on this body
currently
a light in mind shifts-
not for me
but she
who may pass through, closing
beginning years, finally,
in step with those knowing when it is meant to happen.
Dressed, prepared, without doubts,
I walk the procession.
To celebrate.
To say goodbye.
To welcome all the rest.
16 Friday Mar 2018
A princess in the tower,
at a distance looking down,
wishing
and kept.
How to get out? How to get away?
Desperate for rescue, a puddle of tears
and fury.
Why me? This terror and despair.
But, one sunrise, a light switches,
the kaleidoscope shifts,
her untapped power surges
along with the sight that she is on the inside.
An inside most would never know.
Following the sun
with fingertips searching slowly
the walls that keep her,
Somewhere, like the chink in the dragon’s scales,
a crack in stone
will bring the first ray of wisdom,
and freedom for which she was born
hungry.
06 Tuesday Mar 2018
Having lost touch with the beauty of chaos
a fogged vision sewn of fear
and the iron-grip of hoped for control
eventually forces bursting rolls of laughter, or
sphincters tight enough to pop
(not so pretty- quick, turn toward the pansies planted to your left).
If remembrance of having a tail to shake breaks through,
that romp, leap, roar and thirteen-step boogie
will plunk soul back in wild order
and life’ll flow naturally once again.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 