(Un)Birthday Dinner

•June 11, 2012 • 2 Comments

Curtains of a bygone era

Polyester popular

Cream colored and heavy

Yellowed with age and sprinkled with dust

Draped and frame a large window

Rectangular prisms of shiny black oil

Reflecting only tiny pinpricks of candle-light

Window or wall…Do you feel it looming?

China like cleverly painted bones

Barely perceptible against the waves of white table cloth

Carefully woven and pressed

Appearing newer only because of care

Coffee cooling itself

Coating the bottoms of teacups

Shallow and cold

No longer inviting

A lone candle standing tall affixed with cartoon images of thanks

 In its crystal cradle

Flame captured in between dances

Casting prejudiced light on resting spoons, elbows, hands, salt and pepper shaker

Glass of tea

Cries condensation of neglect

Tiny disappearing icebergs gather along the surface

Diluting its purpose

“Heart” to Heart

•June 10, 2012 • 1 Comment

What do most people mean when they reference the human heart?  Usually it is an abstract notion of spirit, or soul, or emotional connection.  But what if we bring the human heart back down to its physical level.  The level of the real.  What if when we talk about the heart, we talk about it as a muscle, as cells, as nerves, and perhaps even the part of the brain that controls its beating.  Without acknowledging the multitude of different physical parts of the heart, we have lost the reality of the actual organ that keeps us alive.

Emotions, self, identity, human connection…these things come from the brain.  So why do we call them “heart?”  Let’s acknowledge where these things originate from.  Speaking of these ideas in terms of their actual physical function and origin does not diminish the value of said functions.  Neither the heart nor the brain, in my mind, are diminished if we talk about what they ACTUALLY do, and control.  Muscle, meat, a human organ.  Why do we constantly feel the need to separate our humanity from our brain, or other organs?  Why must we make “heart” some sort of ghost that operates in the middle of our chest, in place of a  very real organ is doing very real and important work.  Work that is absolutely “connected” to our very real brain.

Let us have the conversation from the standpoint of human, physical reality, and perhaps by doing that we can give this human body the same value that we give our ever illusive soul.  What would it look like if we did that?  Not vanity, but VALUE.

Image

The Circus

•June 8, 2012 • 3 Comments

This morning I grabbed my cranky pants,

And put them on before I had a chance.

My brain was blurry,

In my morning hurry,

My only choice now…the cranky pants dance.

Crushed

•June 7, 2012 • Leave a Comment

My daughter sobs

At the murder of a spider

Heaving and uncontrolled

Tears make tracks on her dusty cheeks

Eyes fixed in its direction

I whisper lies of comfort

 

She solemnly states

“They don’t come back.

They are gone forever.”

Dissolution & Disillusion

•June 6, 2012 • 3 Comments

Have you ever lost someone?

Not to disease, or distance, or death

But to an idea

Where once there was a connection

Of shared pain and life fumbled

Where once the reality of solitary existence

Was willingly disguised for the giddy illusion

“We are not alone”

One mythology now replaced by another

This one a God with whom I cannot compete

A deity who never instilled faith in me

The way our bay window observations once did

There is no constant

This is the illusion that I must release

No God, no friend, no moment lasts forever

Yet still I am here without having been destroyed

Or struck by lightning

Yet

With only a tiny tick of desire burrowing from heart to brain

Looking for a comforting mythology to feed on

With none to be found

Either within myself or without

I am at a loss

Sometimes

•June 5, 2012 • 2 Comments

I make pistols with my pointer fingers

And pretend to shoot laser guns into the air

Sound effects included.

I have one stiff drink

Right in the middle of my day

Because I am an adult and because I can.

I call my dog “booger-face”

As a term of endearment

When he gives me that “don’t bother me” look.

I spin in the middle of my kitchen

On the tile floor

Pretending I am a ballerina until I almost fall.

I smack my head, elbow, hand

On the corner of a wall

That I walk by every damn day of my life.

I am late picking up my child from school

Because I am writing

Instead of paying attention to the time.

Space Junk

•June 5, 2012 • Leave a Comment

A constellation on our cushions

Each the center of our own universe

Held together by the pull of our heavy mass

In a dim light-speckled vacuum of silence

Beauty, grace, and awe indeed to behold

While in it we are bombarded by debris of our own discarding

 

Legacy

•June 4, 2012 • 3 Comments

I keep feeling the pull to write something for my daughter.  I wonder if writing for me IS in fact writing for her.  But that does not quite fill the romantic notion that keeps showing up in my brain and that I keep feeling in my gut.  The writer, and meditator, in me says to keep doing what I am doing and that is enough.  The mother, and perhaps mammal, in me says I must compile some sentimental work of wonder as a legacy for my baby girl.  That baby is now a 6-year-old firecracker.  And, still I struggle with how to write for her…or even IF I should write for her. Do I just write, or write “for?”  That same old question of expectations comes to the surface again.

 

So here is a compromise and a start:

 

Amidst the blood and pain

In a flash of a moment

You were trapped

So I was willing to be ripped apart

And there you were

Scarlet cheeked,  overwhelmed, and screaming

As you swung your fists on my belly

I shared the terror in your eyes

“tell me about it kid”

Escaped my lips before I could edit

It wasn’t romantic but it was real

“we” were formed

In a pool of human mess and exhaustion

 

You and I then looked at your father

And We were settled

A Window (Into Me)

•June 4, 2012 • Leave a Comment

How loud do you scream

When it’s not loud enough

To crash walls, un-hinge doors

Or bring help from above

 

He’s not listening, just watching

Perhaps not really there

All that’s here is the human

Under his weighted stare

 

When comfort escapes you

None in your own skin

All that’s left is that window

And the light streaming in

I saw you

•June 4, 2012 • 2 Comments

Walking to school today

Arms wrapped around your middle

Shoulders hunched forward

Nausea or pain?

Brow furrowed

Face grimacing

Eyes cast downward

That city bus pulled up to your left

Causing an exaggerated startle

Quick covering of ears

Instant pulling away

You appear hurting

Going through the motions anyway

I saw you

I saw me