Or is gender-blender better?

I glared slightly at the pants-less Dancer,
offering no words but a quick change in my
facial posture, a quiet "no" in the twist of my head,
a back-off when he shimmied up to
me in the dark. Content to stand with
arms down at my side, occasional
conversations with other dark forms,
declining to gain much attention.

I think he dances for me all the time
but I turn toward other things;
my virtuosic motions confined
to fountain strokes on leather-trimmed
pages with elastic bindings.

There is only the one Gender-Bender
inside us and all supra-gendered beings invoke
our originator's continual recreations;
the One who shifts best,
and he happily dons the masks we
offer to giggle and delight at our blind wanderings.
We are roving madmen arguing over texts
while she moves inside us
waiting for the music to begin.

We share the wall between us

Though that is nothing strange for us,
your domestic indiscretions
disturbed my day of rest
and altogether
inserted me in your unquiet
exchange.

I never thought to
see you in a state of rage
but more like it was your way
to be acknowledged-
it sounded like a language
you were apt to use fluently,
over coffee I heard frequently,
"Shut the F(lahdeedah) up!"

I thought while I adjusted to
the clean and silent sunlight displayed
across my sheets
that the two of you were outside
and from across the way,
like when she,
the manic banshee lady,
would shriek and tear her hair at
her husband and children around the
breakfast table
expletives and accusations
containing the entire thrust
of her assertions--

But no, I found out it was you
beneath me, and I heard
in your words the same
song and continued refrain that
had disturbed me for many
months of Sundays.

I stepped lightly through the door
into my kitchen
and engaged the coffee grinder,
then the stereo on a Sunday morning.
The sensations of slamming doors
and thrown objects into walls ran across
your ceiling and to my toes. And then
through tears and animal noises
I heard a man laughing,
encouraging you to rage;
pulling your warm frustrations between you
as an endless taffy distorts and sticks together,
both your altered voices from our
brief accustomed courtesies
feeding each other
to violence and the word, "Always."

Other things drift upwards and between apartments
smells and extra-curricular activities
slithering through wall spaces and pipelines,
but you made me stand witness in the very room
of your frustrations.

Not the same sounds that used
to wake me on Sundays,
moans and sighs loud enough
to invade my habitual earplugs,
still irreparably awake.
Giggling to myself in bed not quite alone,
I found I was in unrequested territory,
and then, too, I would stride through my house
engaging televisions and other noise-makers
until it was proper again for me to return,
giggling and shaking my head.

Not like now, though, no.

Love waits for us to find

I stepped in a bit of love
this morning
on my way home when
I wasn't in my normal stride.
Funny it seemed
to be waiting there for me
as I stepped off of the sidewalk
and into the gutter.
A mounded reconstitution of rain
like a dog pile ready to fill my world
with a squishy pungent odor.

Now that I have the stain
on my sole
I cannot gain its absence.
Love and my existence has not
been lately discovered but with me
all the while.

Thoughts with vacuuming

I cannot make you see what
isn't really there--

Making a spectacle of myself
in front of the wilting lettuce,
the red-felt bowl of shriveled ginger and
decimated garlic,
I collect myself in the untraveled
spaces behind opened doors,
along the distance of the floor,
beneath the walls and
joined with the quietly breathing dust
mites and wispy balls of hair set
into the corners of our conversations
by the daily unsung motions
of living things-
the blood clot lints spun from small
cotton rugs,
the dropped stains of coffee
rings and dried consumed concoctions,
scurfs of habitual living
and the dross marked paths between them,
pushed by brooms and
people that move them.

It is there I fly
down along the disasters
ground of our discourses,
gathered by the wakes from greater things
trapped on the way to the dustbin.

Pale without light

Words
that call with each inhalation
some lacking crisp meaning,
instinctual or flavored with
their appropriate use.
Careless with my definitions
I throw them about me,
laying seeds for a garden.

And when inspiration falls inopportunely
when I cannot reach for a pen
my words sprout messily, and
clump without regard for what's around them.

They start their life still in their packets,
locked away from a light in a drawer--
somehow the steady leaks of
watering emotion
trickle down into the crevices of
my notebooks
to cause these kernels to seek out and
grab onto each other, like slithering
hands in all directions.

Spiral and swerve

Spiral and swerve
It doesn't matter that it happened.
Not that you were ever much good
at fighting it.
No, it slips in with your excuses,
in between your disappointments
and what-might-have-beens
Much like an ant colony discovered
one day under the floor boards,
or the way your neighbors
cheese-and-cauliflower casserole
odors crawl in along the plumbing;

oh how the cold presses close to you,
enough so that it gets inside your toes
to where they feel much like someone else's.
The things that you thought you'd gotten rid of
dumped into the trash bin
along with the ravages of dinner.

It doesn't matter that you're back
same as if you never started--
like reeling in a large fish from the
rolling waves of the oceans;
a few feet in, more out.

Membership quotients

The scores I possess for entry
to Mensa are non-applicable
according to the website's lists.
I pondered submitting the money
for a home test in order to better
understand what the local society's tests
might be like.

The smartest person I know says the
sample questions in the work books she has
entertained herself with are beyond even her.

I think in my whole life the only IQ test I've take
was practice for a neighbor who was studying
to be certified as a TAG instructor.
I was videotaped because her children did not want to be.
And even now I wonder what my non-applicable
test scores (sample) turned out to be.

Now though, I think I would rather spend my time
pursuing other things more practical
rather than sitting in a room with desperate people
for another line on their resume.
I guess that membership in the AARP is more easily attained,
and garners more benefits.

Pied piper sirens

But how can this be?

I turn away from myself when I should spiral down,
following the ambulance scream for my attention,
barreling through the tollways of my mind
like an ice cream truck for the unconscious.
While it twists back itself
I want to skip behind it
back to my childhood memories
scampering along deeper into my unknown,
a subconscious ambulance chaser.

Instead I hear the ambulances and
fire trucks pass by while I consider potentials
over a course of dirty dishes and soap water,
waiting for the coffee to brew and
pondering what I will write today.
Ambulances alert civilians to danger,
racing towards despair and destruction all the while
announcing their presence to the flames.

No more colors until spring

It is in my interest to take note
of the draining colors of the world
and notice the hues that take their leave
as light fades slowly from the skies,
only not so for the trees, the leafy trees.
Their colors warm while everything else cools,
except the autumn vegetables.
The light now less bright
as if the chill in the air somehow
removes the dazzling sharpness from the sun's glare,
like winter has finally caught up with sprinting summer
pulling warmth and effulgent vegetation back behind
the dawn of winter's recalcitrance.
I imagine the oppositions of the year,
and dream sometimes the sun matriculates
like a child with a private education,
flying away south with the squawking geese
while annuals furlough
in the call of the ground swallows.

And then in a few months, when winter, darkness,
and rain have had their way with me,
the grey-dark skies slapping my face with wet fingers
reaching down between my layers,
suddenly the crocus and the blue buds on the trees
will cool as they emerge, when temperatures rise from
beyond the ground, light inflorescent at last.
Just like a stray image from a forgotten dream,
or a stranger that promises to stay for a time then
disappears with hardly a word or a gracious note.

Cosmic parking tickets

She left a ticket underneath my wiper
while I was sitting with coffee
and an open notebook.
She was also writing,
citing the squandering of my gifts
and assigning a fine:
The continued dissatisfaction with my life
and everything in it.

She put a smiley face after her signature.

How was I to know what the meter maid
had secreted inside the searing yellow envelope,
"Violation" displayed boldly across the outside?

Stained by god

I am a tiny tea bag steeping
for a moment in the warm bath
embrace of the cosmic waters,
The concentrated flavors of my dried leaves
drawn away for a few moments to return
in the teacup curve of infinity.
Just as easily dipped as drawn away,
carried back to the cabinet to seep away
what my leaves can no longer
stay in my absorbent paper; only a
small amount of the dissipating heat remains
swollen and stained by god.

What do you say?

He kept ringing the house and leaving messages
all because he's waiting for me to sign the papers
to cede vast tracts of territory back over into his hands:

If only my faith reached further than my expectations.

Now having no one inside my home for ages,
I invited god in for coffee
or a tea,
to sit across from me and abide the silences and sighs.

But what can you say to god over tea?

Until finally he sighed
looking down at the table
and said,

"I did not design the world to suit your needs,
you know."

Re: On the Subject of Close Friendships

I jotted down some impressions based on Caroline Myss' notes from her Facebook page titled On the Subject of Close Friendships. Perhaps you can find that note here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=118428954859&ref=nf So be warned, these are rough and consequently unpolished thoughts offered in consideration Myss' words as well as in light of my own circumstances.

We will all in our lives trespass against others. And then, after some time they forgive you or risk the ruination of the friendship. But the offer of forgiveness is contingent on recognizing that stepping/crossing other's boundaries, no matter how clearly marked, is an existing condition of living life among people.

Sometimes trespasses are committed carelessly, deliberately, innocently and/or maliciously. How often I have said or done something offhand, seemingly small only to find out that for someone else, it was BIG.

Sometimes it's best to hang back or hold off in the aftermath and give them space to reconsider their boundaries or themselves. Sometimes there is nothing to be done. Perhaps what will unfold is beyond our ability to affect beyond the original trespass.

As long as we are alive, we will trespass. We may take a seemingly pleasant hike into the hills of a new country, only to find, miles from any help, that you have crossed over into hostile territory, as what has happened recently in Iraq and Iran.

What is true is that those we hold most dear to ourselves also hold the ability to wound us most deeply. And all that we can ask when we trespass, all that we can hope for, perhaps, is forgiveness.

Resolve--not the carpet cleaner

Away, away, away I'll fly from you
from your wounds and jealousies
petty insecurities
criticisms and fears,
beyond the reach of your
indelicate protestations
to a place you'll never think to find me:

Deepening, ever deeper into me.

A Breath of Eco-terrorism

I stop to see the breathing of a bird
beside my car window
perched on a small stump
or was it a mile post
a songbird whose whole body
her breath above two legs.

No singing but only watching
counting cars or monitoring carbon emissions,
set to defile the next one,
a tiny eco-terrorist targeting
one at a time
the breath filled her entire body
rapidly
if there was space in her ankles they
would have expanded too.

An entire body of rolling pulsations
beginning again almost before the last one finished
and then a car horn brought me back to myself
and I had to leave the tiny activist to her selection.

Propitious Alignment

We are two orbiting planets
in our celestial bodies
catching sight of each other from time to time
coming into view from a great distance,
half of us always bathed in light
and bouncing it in general directions
forever dancing
toward and retrograde
destined to stay in our own preordained courses
taking turns following and then preceding
while balancing gravity with forward motion
and once--
coming into a propitious alignment

I'll put a little wobble in my pushmepullyou
just to see if I've got your attention.

A garden party

I answered the invitation
from the shy and whispering flowers and
standing in her garden as the heat of the day
began its increase I thought to myself that
the air in July feels more willing to accept and
promote the heat from the objects it surrounds,
more than the winter air.

As the yellow flowers unfurled
their secret hearts before me, the strawberries
with their thousand mouths
confessed that my presence was required
from an invitation of the Honeybee.

The tomatoes leaned closer in their cages.

“Oh no,” I had remarked to Mme. Honeybee
while baptizing glebed-floral mouths
in a diurnal effluence from the hose,
“Please don't sting. Just as you dance
within the floral cup, serving life
through your buzzing ministrations,
so too with dousing water wand in hand and
a humming-way, do I.”

And that, I gather, is how the radiant flowers knew,
toiling as they had these warming months
in their soiled excavations
all for the very moment
before the heat became unbearable
to offer back all they had borrowed
from the sun:

That I could bear their loveliness
and that some of it is safe in me.

Every step gets closer

I saw god walking along the side of the road
but before he saw me
I pushed the pedal down and left him
sputtering in the dust.

Can you imagine running away from god?

But he did not curse me or even cause
pestilences and plagues,
or even smite a single, tiny gnat.

He just smiled and kept walking--
He knows how to find me.

It will remain in might-have-been

You could have been kinder
in those moments we spent together
more than a month ago
and now that I see you
it seems the only thing that's changed
is me. You act like things continue forward
but all I can think is that
Some things are better burned.
In fact it was cold, city-fumed
borne on concrete with serious edges.
What matters now is what deserves my belief--
the fallible mechanical objects like
latch keys and green lights
and the taken-for-granted accessories in daily life
that I can count on to fail,
because they make no implicit promises with
smiles and polite gestures.

Prayer for understanding

Teach me now to leave a moment
and take it into prayer
to move in chaos with a candle flame
and hold myself and others without despair,
to move through storms and turbulence
smiling,
when every word and private motion
is another bead
set in this exquisite contradiction?

No notice of the little man and his whistling

How like a tame little bird I've become
daintily choosing each crumb
you seem to leave behind
happily swallowing down
anything I find
while ignoring the better ones,
believing in my instinctual avian way
only what I see--
disgorging impulses and desires
gained over my short lifetime,
singing and dancing for your benefit,
content to eat what little
you forget to sweep up,
mercurial is your fashion.
Each piece smaller and harder to find,
I pretend that each moment is
a promise of a future one

How in your presence I've become
like a tame little bird
though in the end I will fly away
to peck at more substantial things
in dirt and hollow wood.

June 7, 2009

11:03 pm

I watched a lightning storm from my porch
tremendous crashes and rumbling thunder
like the sky had a terrible hunger

and as I watched the rain hurry down to meet me
I pondered lightning not as charged particles
and photons, static this-and-that
but more a reaching down from heaven
a yearning up from earth
a genesis of energy
of light
a recalibration of two dominions
an altogether lifting and descending
attempts at equilibrium.

the mountains, buildings and trees,
various materials of the earth
as lightning rods for the ground
as it conducts its energies skyward,
looking up

and a benediction from above
bending down for contact
in a brilliant display

a fire before water,
bridging air and earth

06 April 2009

10:21 am

In the end I decided no.
On days like the past few
bright shiny clear sweet
with breeze and warmth and cool clean air
This place seems almost liveable
all things as they are.

I walked through the park of green grass
fountains and pale pink-breath cherry blossoms
gossamer fluttering snowballs clinging to large pruned
cherry trees, breathing their teasing suggestions
scents along rivulets of fresh inland air
the occasional flutter of a liberated blossom casting down across
my path to settle in light
petal-drifts caught in blades of vibrant grass

some things
like these fountains
are better viewed from far away
up close they are hand wrought metallic monstrosities

Standing on top a mountain of grey striped marble
high above, a golden man
absolute and silent
gazing away from the city almost resting
with indistinct, disproportionate features worked in cruder metal than
what leaves schoolchildren clothed him in
even if you were to climb steep verticle cliffs of state
past glass panes and hallways
even then he could not see you
standing as you were right beneath a giant hollow man

I had my cellphone in hand
set to walk through endless uncounted blossoms
to make a suggestion of the day

The azure and shining gold above
the silver water,
brilliant bright green
white pink snow blossoms below

but some things are meant to last only moments
like a breath or first impressions

what but my own feeling could capture a memory
gilded with time's aged patina
sweet moments expanded, exaggerated

if I took a picture
why should I have cause to return again next year or even tomorrow?

How can one really hold onto a memory
distorted by lenses from man's hands
colors altered
breath fixed to one static, sterile sigh.

So I neglected my intent,
I left my camera in hand.

A picture from 2005

Changing as it travels

Let the solar wind pass through me
pulling with gentle dissipation
disintegrating pain from identity,
the myriad parts
diaphanous and stretched to a long
great trailing ribbon
of consciousness and memory,
unraveling on planets and
other interstellar phenomena.

Through all the worlds and various galaxies;
across the endless space between;
carried far beyond any eye’s reach
my countless particles will wander,
speeding along an unbounded highway of light
and mathematical probabilities.
Twisted and broken on gravitational tides,
in between the planets and stars
pass the scattered wreckages of a life and disappointments
silently adrift and crushed together.
All the chaos and distortions
filter the cobbled particles of my former body
as it pushes across the expanse of cluttered space.

This space, a journey

I intend this blog to be a place to release the fragments of my journals out into the world. I don't know exactly what I will be writing here. It will probably take many forms, meandering like a long stream in a flat country scene. I know that some posts will be like poems, others taking the form of excerpted journal entries, and a few resembling prayers. At this point I feel it's too soon to engineer the course of this stream to a focused, narrow gorge. So I hope that you find something to enjoy and leave a comment if you'd like!