Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Rituals

Withholding and who opens up the door
For whom, the chocolates (which I do not eat)
And flowers (I hate roses)
And the counting of the times you see someone
Before you are allowed to show
Essential pieces of yourself
So not to push that one away,
Or else to test them to make sure
That they deserve the next reveal,
All seems a bunch of crap to me.

Not calling when you want to call, or
You text instead of calling, waiting
The other out to try to win
The upper hand of order or in order to ensure
That you have done the proper dance
To protect yourself, so if the other
Bails or hurts or disappoints,
You can say, as you sit alone and once again alone,
"At least I took the proper steps," 
Seems awfully flat and cold to me.

This does not a true love make
In my own mind, at least, or maybe
Therein lies a fairy tale
I do not believe anyway, so maybe 
I have spun one for myself
As I believe the following:

The why of wherefore the strange words
"Test," "protect,"  and all the rest
Must be included in at all
The lexicon of love and friendship
Constantly evades me.


The reason why the process
Used on children or on pets we wish to train
To introduce them to the rules 
Of reward and consequence 
Is preached and used
When adults try and seek some solace
In another, equally adult,
Constantly confounds me.

And at this stage in the so-called game,
At a time when game-playing exhausts me,
And I, of an ilk that does not naturally
Play these games at all,
And if love is a game that must be won,
And played so calculatedly to sustain,
It's time, I think, to try
And consider a life alone.

Or, at least, to learn to love myself 
And my instinct to stay away from all the play
That doesn't feel like play at all.
No games,
No unclear and stagnant ritual,
No stupid dancing around the beauty of the truth.
For one who overthinks anything that can be thought,
I think it's time 
To do.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Changed priorities ahead (2003)



Changed priorities ahead
Of a small inconsequential pair of poised lips
Dangle like the fruit
Delicate, red,
Sincere and demanding like
A how-to manual inscribed in code
And coded for those
Already ahead one play.

No entourage to shuffle you through
While the others have to feel it out
Well, we’re in the same yacht now.
I used to hate them.
But the old woman on the sail talked me into it.
A strange little thing
That liked to gorge herself on brothers and sisters—
Taught you about it.

I’ve called on brevity
And he was in a meeting.
Insulting, but
I knew it all along in an early way
Seemingly indifferent
But that planner I wore through (the laughed one)
Was full of more than laundry lists
And the to-do’s
Were figures of destiny—
Unclear and they enclosed you
While you thought to wait in ambush.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Lucky

Beating back against the fray --
Against the unfurling confusion of the every day,
Trying to rise above,
To do what's best and to distinguish
Between what you've come to believe
Is your own dream
And what is really your own
Rather than what others dream for you,
In your supposed best interest --
Is exhausting.

Bone melting, hair hurts, forget to breathe,
Fall and pick yourself up by the carefully starched shirttails,
And the longer you do this,
The more you come to realize
That while the effort may be noble,
It has little to do with the outcome;
The outcome you are still not sure
Is one you've hoped for yourself.

They say a watched pot never boils.

They say you find love when you're not looking.
They also say the early bird catches the worm,
And while you're caught untangling such
Pervasive proverbs that all apply in their own evasive ways
At different times,
Life happens:

A series of moments,
Strung together by co-option and truth,
And in the end, though certainly
The effort is noble and makes it possible
To look at yourself in the tryingest times,
The older you get,
As long as you get up,
You see it's all a simple matter

Of luck. 

Friday, November 30, 2012

The fool patience

See him? Wait, he was there
A minute ago, 
I swear --
Catch
Your breath before he
Taps you, like a petulant frat boy, 
On the shoulder you didn't glance over
And runs away,
Giggling
Until you buy him a stiff drink.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

School of thought

It spins and knocks at
The barrier between 
My mind and the tip of my fingers,
The roof of my mouth,
Manic ideas unrequited by expression,
Interminably buzzing and making them numb.
If Descartes was right, 
I am ten people, or
I am just crazy.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Newsflash

Strode straight in beneath the lit,
Iconic ticker tape of what's crashed
And what side goes best with Turkey
Into the tall, iconic building of 
Childhood scribble dreams
With all the greats and the near-greats
Hanging in gilt frames on the gilt walls.

Where were the usual doubts? The nerves?
The ever-persistent sound of 
"You don't belong here" hiding?
The sounds of years of undersold
And underpaid? 

Under the Christmas wreath and up
The golden elevator, thirteenth floor,
An escalator to the room where hundreds came
To think before
To sell yourself in a short time
As we all do, as best we can.

And through the din of noise that spun
Inside the walls of the best of the best,
"I belong here" strongly rung
And calmly rose above the rest.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Lulls

There's a sweetness in the lulls
Between the dull and the do-too-much;
The space where the pull and push
Still stays but is stayed for a time
In its unique innocuousness.

One breath too much 
And you're nudged imperceptibly
Into the ebbs
And the flows of the "Now" and "Hurry" and "Rush,"
And you blink and it's already next year.

So here, in the full 
Understanding that this is precious
And refuses to last for long,
You keep your eyes open
Until the inadvertent tearing up
Blurs it all and the small momentum 
Of the involuntary, eye-soothing close
Pushes you in again,
In either direction.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Life is a phoenix

It astounds me when the sun rises
After a long, long night
Of cries and unwelcome surprises
Or joys unfathomed, surmising
That all that could have happened
Happened, yet,
After all is left in darkness, smouldering,
The flaming peaks of pink and orange
Again appear on the horizon
And like a symphonic motif
Reprises.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Stormed

Calm, snapped
Like a thousand limbs
As winds bring inside things
Out and scattered
For all to see.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Nothing.

It's the quiet she's after.
The rare moment when the mind stills 
And the heart only is heard
Beating irregular, but beating
And she knows there's a heart
That wants to feel, wants to be, wants to 
Be able to keep time with all she's done,
Wants to do,
Needs to feel.

But it knows what it's like to feel deeply,
Strongly,
Put out a presence that can offend,
Can repulse,
Can be the object of predation,
Can rock others when all she wants is
Quiet.
No noticing.
No wanting.
No needing.
No sound. 
Just still,
Nothing.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Forward

When the moment you could not think
Could come
Passes gently
And with grace,
Your find yourself inside a space that hums
Steady
As you slip from the harness
And float naturally
Forward
While your mind skips lazily behind
And revels in the time
It takes 
To catch up.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

For once

And there
She paused.
Eyes closed, and open
With a wing by her side
And the brief calm 
Of nothing
In her heart.


Thursday, October 4, 2012

Anything

"It's the right thing," they say
But still this voice
There says 
I gave up.
I was too weak.
I won't make it.
It's impossible.

What makes me,

The bringer of bad luck,
The harbinger of closed downness,
The predicter and embracer of what's
Old
And done
And over
Think that now,
With the "strength" to abandon
Yet another venture
I can rise above?

What is the implication
Of "above,"
Really,
In the depth of my in-
Security I wonder if it's really
A defense against total arrogance.

And that's why I say the world is not right
Because I don't fit into it
And that's why I say my efforts are not recognized
Because I don't have what it takes
And that's why I find myself in this endless cycle
Because I've built this defense
Against myself and
Against you and
Against all of you who think
You should give me 
Anything
At all.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Get up.

And in the silence, deaf as an endless string of days that are the same
Grows,
Surprised, the surge of fight
When your face has gone used to the smell
And darkness of dirt and ground
Since it fell from exhaustion
Down, down
Before the stubborn body, torn
And bleeding
Hurls itself back up again
With strength that only comes from
Instinctual, survival adrenaline.

You're not done yet, it screams
Just like the nerves you'd tried to rest
Protest against this upward stance
And hurls you against your will
(Or is it the will that hurls)
Into the world you think that you
No longer understand
A world which finds it odd, too, that you're still there
And walking, jerking one foot
Then the next and soon
It's automatic
Like the breathing which
Ironically, you still can do.

And suddenly you see a few
Hands gently, briefly touch your elbow
And it is enough to steady you
And lends momentum to
The forward movement, the gall
To feed off the quest you know is right.

Somehow you'll get there, maybe, you
Hear whispered faintly by your ear,
And even if you don't believe it,
That you've heard it
Is enough.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Time, the schitzophrenic

Only time will tell, they say,
And that it heals all wounds,
That it is unstoppable second only to death.

It is relative. 
It passes both quickly and slowly, depending
I suppose
On how it feels like passing.

We never have enough, but things start to go wrong
When too much of it gets on our hands.  
They say it is short,
That it moves too quickly during the good times
And too slowly during the bad.

It's a cruel mistress (even though it's a father, too)
And is never right,
But is also always right,
And there are countless, useless things
We can do 
To kill it.

By moving faster we can save it,
By ignoring it we can hold on to it,
In order to seize it we must deny it,
And apparently by stitching it
You can save nine of it (whatever that means).

I say time is a schizophrenic jerk,
An ephemeral vagrant with borderline personality,
A nagging bother with a clever, ill-timed (snicker) elusiveness.

But that makes sense, since apparently,
We invented it,
Even though we have no clue
Exactly what it is.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Quieting

Melts away if you keep your mouth shut
And the heart will slow
The mind will soften
As the lips close.

Easier that way,
Easier to not take
So they can't take away
What you've clawed for your life.

Their stares shoot through
To the raw quick, and you think
If you don't look back
Maybe they aren't really there.

But they are.
Just keep closed.
And calm.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Baker's dozen

It all began when she did
With eyes wide and skeptic-like
As young as anyone who'd been there before
And knew the game.

"It's just a phase," they said,
Until it turned into two, and three,
And she's lost count now
So she counts things unrelated to keep on track.

One time she bought the farm,
Twice she traded it in.
Three decades she spent finding herself
And four times she loved.
Five days ago she was better
And on the sixth she was not.
Seven o'clock is when she gives up
Trying to sleep eight hours
And borrows one of nine lives from the 
Tenth cat she's had.
She hopes for a reverse Cinderella at twelve

But the thirteenth hour,
Her lucky one,
Never comes.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Attraversiamo

Dawn hits
With muted brilliant fingers
Snaking up the skyline

And I sit
In a private quiet
That only comes at this time

Smell the bread and pastries
Made while babes slept
Scent creeping out as they're lain
In their display cases

Hear the soft rustlings
Of an older generation
Hanging scrubbed linens on window casings
To dry with the early morning sun

In my mind I walk the cobblestones
Up the winding paths
Lined with women
Creased with love that lean out windows
Watching my spirit
Traverse with my ancestry

Here I am not alone
But float gently with those who came before me
I have to return soon and leave
Them to continue their soft journey
Which makes me sad

But they are with me everywhere
And when the next dawn hits
With its muted brilliant fingers
Snaking up the skyline
They will be waiting.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Compassion

It stops
When you make it
It eases
When you let it
It flows
When you go with it
And it does
What you want it
To do
Even when 
Those around you
Wish otherwise.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Quicksand

Life
Is like
Quick sand.
The more 
You fight
The inevitable
The harder
The inevitable
Fights you.

And wins.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Immune

A foot forward while the earth spins
Your body back, but gravity
Fortunately
Does not affect your soul
Which is all places
All times.

Friday, July 13, 2012

To forgive divine (as if it were an effort)

It's not a matter of forgiveness
Which would imply
A possible next step
A need for more
Or reversion back
To where things were before
They all went so, so wrong. 

I do not hold on to the
Ugly mornings, the sweat-streaked
Days of locking and relocking,
The bargaining with god and country
That they would follow my first request
To be simply left alone.

"By the way, no hard feelings
Your threat is exactly what you should have done to protect yourself."

It was, as it always has been,
Assumed I was concerned or
That I could care whether or not
There were hard feelings there
After a near week of sleeplessness and fear
And more,
The assumption that I, “seasoned” in this as it were,
After all my years immediately forgiving
(Otherwise, I think, while staring sleepless at the ceiling,
I would not have this recurrent problem)
Could have any feelings left at all.

To want to be left alone
Is not a feeling.
I have forgiven them long ago
As many, shocked, can attest to.
“But they hurt you.”
No. They hurt themselves
And if they stopped to think
At all
About the fact that I, and all of us alike,
Wished most of all
For there to be a lack
Of need
For forgiveness,
And that forgiveness is a way of life,
Or we'd all be dead,
They'd comply with the initial
Request. 

You were forgiven long ago
As you should have done yourself.
Now go.
 

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Friendly fire

Some people learn from experience
That during dark hours
You hunker down
Build the concrete
Kryptonite walls necessary
To protect yourself;
Alone, spare a few cats.
Rarely, some people are kind enough,
Persistent and smart,
Who know the right combination,
The right morse code knock,
To get you out of your picnic cooler fort,
Even though it goes against your instinct
And you might fight them.
But once you're out
With them you see
There are angels around that are simply angels and
Not vampires with close-mouthed smiles
Disguised as such.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Right and true

Daydream of a place that's
Soft, and cool, and low,
Where sounds
Of water
Emulsify the raw,
Exposed
Nerves that ache
With the constant scrape
Of what
Could be contrived
As fear
But it is not.
It's just the wear
And tear of life
Lived on the edge
Between the "norm"
And what is right
For me.
The water flows
When I expose
Myself to the idea
That what I am
And what I do, and what 
I've done
Is right
And true.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Mistrust

Creeping in again, that mistrusting cold
That breaks through the possessive heat
And the two forces battle
In my stomach, unsteadying my hands
And my head floats above itself
Gazing down confusedly on the whole,
Shimmering lot.

I am not the fearful type,diving head first
Often into the sort of
Situation that people purposefully avoid,
But the normal sort of things
That others do without a thought --
Like breathing steadily, or
Picking up a phone, going
Out the door when work has nothing to do with it,
Or sleeping --
Shake me from my core.

What keeps me here outside the fishbowl,
Or in it depending on the day,
Either way peering through the warbled glass
Inward or outward, eyes catching
Glimpses of steady images that, once
Caught, change shortly after,
Most times unrecognizable in their
New form,
Making my brain cells leap
Like a cat when you drop something heavy
On the floor.

How do you trust your mind 
When it will not learn to expect,
Even after all this while,
The constant betrayal of the subject of its focus
As it turns abruptly to something else
Every single time?

Friday, July 6, 2012

Ode to the lost

They can take my beating heart
And drive the pace to crazy.
They can take my energy
And steal it when they're lazy.
They can wake me from my sleep
And force me into panic.
They can shock me out of trust
And wreak me into havoc.
They can try and shut me down
And beat me 'till I bleed.
They can take my honesty
And chronically misread.
They can enter and attempt
My sanity to dismantle.
They can gossip till they choke
On more than they can handle.
They can talk themselves to death
And hope someone believes them.
They can constantly spin tales
And pout when life deceives them.

But they can never touch my soul
Or even claim to near it,
And when the reckoning arrives
They're way too lost to hear it.
And when they try to feign the
Righteousness they've never known,
Believe me when I say you'll never
Kill me with a stone
That's thrown in anger, fear, or narcissistic
Act of self deception.
And when salvation knocks, you'll
Be too deaf to the perception.

So best of luck to you, and may you
One day find redemption.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Newborn

I saw you and I thought, "Well, this
Will make me feel one of two ways.
First, that I am justly afraid
Of having one like you, and second,
That I will want nothing but
To have one of you for my own."
But neither feeling came.
Instead, I felt
A kinship in the way you slept
And woke
And slept so fitfully,
Flinging yourself unprompted
To and fro, and hardly rested
Much at all.
And so I thought, "How could this 
Be so, when you are only
One month into life and have no 
History that keeps you from 
Resting peacefully?"
I wanted you to feel the peace
That I have never felt, and I
Was more disturbed
By the nagging, self-imposed fact
That you, untainted, restlessly
Could find no comfort in the arms
Of those who loved you endlessly
And showered love and love and love
And still you cried --
With a mere month inscribed into your empty book --
So inconsolably.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

To her own tune

There is a woman
Dressed to the nines
Or what she would consider tens
And maybe others zero
With pinks and blues
And bright, bright greens
And hues that women her age 
"Should not wear."
With bright taffeta flower in her hair
And headphones always in her ears
Or on the days she totes the cart
To Pathmark,
It bears a small pink boombox
Blasting funk and soul loud enough
For her to hear, but not to bother
Those she passes, who, inevitably
Stare with curiosity or, usually,
Looks of disgust
Through dark eyes that match
Dark clothes
And darker souls.
And when she passes, it's not
A walk so much as a
Bop, and groove, as,
Keeping time to her own heart
She always smiles;
Always knows that others' looks
Don't matter, and further, what 
Others think of her own looks
Matters less still.
I wait for her sometimes
While sitting in my window
When I'm blue
To see her wearing and listening to
Similar blues, but so vastly different
To inspire my own to realize its potential
To be brighter,
And conceived anew.

Walking with God

Walking through soaring space
Mile-high arches flanked by gold and wood
Light pouring in choosing what we view
And bathing the pews in warmth,
I might very well see
How many years ago
Those who walked the same soaring space
Would immediately believe
They walked with God.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Subjective

The gray, transparent projection
Of the tree shades hazily
Across the rooftop,
Product of the sun behind it,
Unreal because trees don't grow on roofs
Nor do they appear and
Disappear with the sun.

Somewhere between the actual tree
And the version of itself
Lies the truth
So if you stand between the two,
Because the tree shields you from the sun
And there is no shadow of you,
You are real there in the interplay
Cast into being by
Your relativity. 


Monday, June 25, 2012

A (debateable) momentary 'meditation'

I seem to be exhausting myself trying to figure out how my mind works; in other words, I'm spending too much time thinking about thinking, which seems to defeat the whole notion of "letting go" and "living in the moment" and such. But then again, if you're thinking about what you're thinking, isn't that dissecting the moment into teeny pieces and overfocusing? Hacking up the moment? Not allowing the moment to transition on to the next as moments seem to do?

I'm doing it right now, aren't I?

Rats. Let's try this again.

It's raining out. A lot. I like cheese (There's no cheese here at this moment -- speculation). I want to watch this thunderstorm from my bed but I can't (Oops -- future-watching). It's hard to stay in the moment (Hmmm...observation of present difficulty? That's a little better...)

How 'bout this: moment moment moment moment moment. If you say that fast enough it starts to sound like "OM." Maybe meditation began when someone with a hamster-wheel-brain like myself got fed up with adages they couldn't live up to and started being silly.

The best things always have silly starts, no?

Great. Now I'm thinking about the past. Time to go to work.

[This message has been brought to you by Crazy Shack.]

Friday, June 22, 2012

Even

Whip cracks down 
Just when we've caught our breath
Takes it away
But somewhere else
Someone breathes easy
And it is ours, too,
Collective in and out,
Rise and fall
Which when taken into full account
Keeps an even keel
Always.