life goes by so incredibly fast,
and still there is no hurry.
sea scape dream scape
14 Jansome times
on land, reality is fine edged and crisp,
but on an impulse to go on out to the beach
on a warm winter day,
I enter a mystery
of mist rising up from the sea
hovering over the land
reaching down from the sky
making the smallest
difference in color and shade
between land, air, sand, sea, and sky indistinguishable.
I have dreamed of this place.
Now I think I am walking
alone in the day on wet sand,
the sea as far out as it can go,
I will dream of this place again
at night.
I may be dreaming now.
Is sinew the only difference between
our walking waking and our haunted dreaming?
I am in a place of longing and regret-
a wide beach, those.
Boats clang and moan behind the curtain of mist
so close I could touch them;
a dog bounds up to me out of the cloud and pounces me
its lover,
I remember joy, pup; you know that me!
This life, so short, so lush,
so impersonal as to remind me
that my recurring hurtful thought of late
can be wound again and again
playing a song I don’t want to hear
until the fog, the sand, the fin skimming the line
between water and sand,
the light skimming the line
between dusk and night,
my mind skimming the line
between awake and dream
between alive and dead
between a life of thought
and a life of senses,
wakes me to know which to choose
even when I don’t know how.
none of this is pretty
2 JanWhen you can’t tell the difference
between what should stay or go, and
discomfort has you puppeting yourself
frantically false,
get the largest knife
from the kitchen drawer and
cut down that which has propped itself on you.
Get the long matches for the bar-b-que
and set on fire that which still can burn.
Don’t mess about forever asking questions
and making demands with your hands on your hips.
Cut it loose, already.
But if you do not,
the thousand cut route will;
for a thousand years, you will spout nonsense
and spin in your own confusion.
Do you want to wait that long?
If you are swift, have asked for no mercy, wisely,
it will come in the form of bleeding out
or burning down.
Have courage – remain. remain,
though you will feel wretched
and ashamed,
sitting in the ash and bones.
When the dust settles, the flesh rots,
remain remain and quietly,
see what is left.
Does it need a name?
how I spent my vacation
1 JanMay you share my actual dream of a thousand birds released,
ten thousand balloons out from my grip,
going into the sky
without environmental impact.
My gripping hands have eased
and opened once again
into release and flight, oh my.
Watch out your window so not to miss it.
No story about it, but if there were one,
it would be about the body
where hidden spots of thought had turned muscles
into prisons.
Breath has gone there and released what was too familiar
and practiced as to not be seen.
Breath reaches into what feels like a knots, holding,
control, and eases what namelessly cripples
the entire body machine.
Simple and senseless is grace, thank you.
Visceral can extend where intelligence has no sway.
Breath goes into atrophy and life begins again,
with this body a vessel, yes, but also a map
with roads of scars and light.
Who helps light
the outed bridges
when our own blindness will not let us see?
Who offers their own shining scars
when whole sections go out and bring us down?
Is there a difference between a friend, a tree, a spider web, the chilly morning,
or breath? Use it all, as offered, to light the way.
Even Air, she in her soft hat authority can go every where.
May you find any and every where
the breath is not reaching
with help from the love mirrored here
reflecting back to you
in and from every corner
of our rounded body shells
of mystery–
separate yet shared and free.
You dropped a bomb on me, baby
28 DecI asked for it,
and it was given;
I feel ice
and see fire with it’s dropping.
I knew a year ago,
that I needed an explosion
but I couldn’t stop
pretending,
and so a bomb was dropped.
(I am loved that much!)
After the realization
of certainty is lit
in my head
the world is moving
slow-motion and
my ears will not stop ringing
just like in the movies.
Every move beyond check mate
is pretense.
My prayer:
May I have the courage
to not bury the dead.
riding on the fumes of grace
27 DecGrace is ever replenishing, but I wonder about this truth when I wake up into my dead end steering, my tank empty with no fueling stations in sight. My little body scooter carries me so wonderfully, but the mind, unexamined, tells a different story of where I find myself. I think of Job when my thinking runs me into ditches. Comparatively, my demonstrations have nowhere near the drama of his story, but I thank Job for playing out extreme, existential, hyperbolic loss loss loss. I would like to talk about Job more often, but somehow he doesn’t make his way into many conversations. So helpful it can be to see the human in extemis for our learning; here now with me I do not have a body full of deep sores; there is no burned-down, total destruction, but it is my own gracelessness (actually, thoughts about my gracelessness not actual gracelessness) that leads me to suffering. What am I to do when I feel like I am riding on the fumes of grace, that I have diminished myself in some way and I can’t seem to rectify with any thinking or doing. Job’s total loss example helps me with the way I can spiral into the same conundrum over an over again, the way faith and loss seems to repeat. Am I courageous enough to live in a way that leads to the total loss and resetting again and again? At my reset point — grateful, humbled, and open. Grace flows into my tank upon this admission. Grace is running out of gas for my own good and accepting the full tank, both. Grace is acceptance of the headache, the rejection, the wobbling, again and again, yet still returning my (loved)bum to the daybed in my case, but could be the yoga pad, meditation cushion, curb:) too, and making room for stillness to be seen, seeing without defining. I hold you close, heart sick companions, in the flow of graceless and graceful, only ever in this now, grasping not at what was or is going to be. Whew! Compassion increases exponentially now in my own admission for myself, and thus everyone. Awkward am I in this life. And thank god for that. Once seen, grace brings laughter and lightness again.The return to my own ridiculousness and freedom are never far. I live this truth, too: the path always returns to laughter and ease no matter where it seems to be occurring now. It cannot not. Truly.
when you know it’s a ride, you can play any part
7 DecSometimes I think the comedians and the poets are the most aware ones here. As we engage in our lives, it is helpful to remember that we can be any Larry or Bruce we want while we discuss the budget with a furrowed brow (while laughing every chance we get).
