sea scape dream scape

14 Jan

some 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.

 

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none of this is pretty

2 Jan

When 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?

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how I spent my vacation

1 Jan

May 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.

 

 

 

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You dropped a bomb on me, baby

28 Dec

I 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.

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riding on the fumes of grace

27 Dec

Grace 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.

 

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when you know it’s a ride, you can play any part

7 Dec

Sometimes 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).

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this or that

24 Nov

we dream that we are choosers–

that our minds can weigh

our lists of pros and cons

and offer us the way for

sensible action.

Lists and justifications and choice

at best

are curtain decoration

for the windows on the plane ride

through turbulence.

We can torment each other with plans for the future,

but we would be better off telling the truth-

that we are surfing

avalanches with briefcases

and nice shoes.

 

The trees have chosen,

after weighing their options,

to drop off the green,

and then to disrobe,

desperate for a little attention.

Those of us alive are choosing breath

after the pros came out ahead.

What’s next tees up

while we color,

like earnest children

with fancy, art store pencils,

in our sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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