Too close to home to deploy my umbrella
Too far from the door to avoid getting wet
The timing’s not right so I find myself pelted
By droplets of things that I haven’t done yet…
(Un)Birthday Dinner
•June 11, 2012 • 2 CommentsCurtains 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 CommentWhat 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.
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 CommentMy 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 CommentsI 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 CommentsI 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 CommentHow 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
