Tag Archives: Poetry

too too much (or as my daughter says, extra)

13 Apr

In days of distancing,

my body still

leans in.

Even though the space

is not breached,

I bridge the gap.

Forgive me

as I wonder

about you

at the edge of your shell,

counting the rings,

rolling you over,

tapping your belly

with a stick.

It is no use to tone it down;

the desire is too strong in

the ease of shared moments

while this body

at this time

today, every cell tingling alive-

breathing easy!

For us all.

My reach is forming still

in the field where we meet

beyond any possible harm

except love, that destroyer,

uncompromised

by any contagion.

Bless my forward heart

and join me as soon as you are able;

I’ll still be here,

grinning like the fool,

waiting–ready lava

here to there

magma joy joining us.

Found we are in sameness

recognized

amplified

into motion

in these hands.

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Clarity on the Mission of this Seedling

29 Mar

Oh learning,

may it never end;

how could it?

There is a sudden clarity this morning,

that I was made to confuse the most literal

beauties that god created.

It is very very good

to give creative writing assignments

with vague directions

to STEM students.

My clarifying emails

only confuse them further

because with good reason

they try to check the temperature

of the water

before jumping in the deep end,

unlike me, who flings myself

into confusing mystery

before the instructions are done.

We have so much to offer each other!

Love me in my frustration

when I have to start over

after leaping too soon.

Also love us

who shiver at the threshold

of just give it a go, rolling our eyes.

Together we fill the color wheel

meeting where somehow

purple bleeds into red.

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longing is a secret door

8 Feb

We only need to long

from our lower bellies

and our furnace hearts,

not from the jumpled frenzy of our thoughts.

Each moment

is the longing for breath,

and blood in veins

to carry what the breath brought in –

to keep us alive to long some more.

However, we are thinking animals

who have wallpapered over desire

with complex patterns.

We’ve forgotten where

impulse

comes from.

At the bottom of all complexity,

we can codify.

Tell me, is this list accurate?

Humans desire:

  1. to keep on breathing
  2. to pleasure the flesh
  3. to distract from the horror that comes from knowing we will die
  4. to keep on breathing

However,

breath will end; it will.

…

(enormous, this!)

…

Then and only then,

desiring the air of another realm

will pull us out of this life —

and though I can not prove anything to you,

I practice breathing and ending breath both;

for when my moment comes,  I desire ease.

I imagine our work on this larger breath can be gifted

to whomever needs it ~ when.

Use it with my blessing,

for I love you

in this breath

we share.

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now that my tongue knows no blue

5 Feb

a salty song

around my shoulders

wraps me in a harmony

of thirds.

Love like the wind

needs no introduction,

no permission from my parents

to bow on a knee

with a ring.

I’m sniffing yellow

bursts of instant knowing.

I can be entered by the sun

in penetrating ways –

the passing through of each photon

registers on my richter spine

of sway – I offer my belly for a rub.

Hear this felt truth —  I know no bounds.

What enters me

is entered by me

as it passes on,

an exchange without end.

Ever echoes the fervored beat

I dance

eternity

for now

a textured shadow on my retina

curve

later thinning out on the curve

of expansion

among other all-

perceiving BEings

returning

to our agreed

upon spot

no one

need know

but love.

 

 

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somewhere along the way

1 Feb

instead of keeping on

with the human interaction experiment,

I started saying no

and dropping out of the game.

It was so gradual,

I didn’t notice when self-care

turned into hiding.

Separate became a theme song,

playing on repeat

on the radio in my head.

Prone felt better than upright,

cozy felt better than cold,

alone felt better than awkward,

and predictable became a slow slide.

The blood began to thicken.

I told myself that I was refusing

to be food for the energy suckers.

What’s new?

I’m ankle deep at the surf’s edge

where

the water is cold,

the air is worse,

but the alternative is only for the bears,

and only in one season.

Spring seasons return,

and probably will again,

but I won’t wait

for it to come to me.

Motion is required

for the body,

but more so, for the mysterious heart,

which can’t be met

until I show up.

 

 

 

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glowing on

24 Jan

 

Joy arrives in the smallest corners

without a script to find it.

Think a bird tilting its head to you in curiosity,

a cat curled up in your pine straw, allowing you close,

a deer pausing mid-munch to size you up

before bounding its fluff tail bum deeper into the woods.

Agenda toward joy can look alright to start with

but it soon becomes a grocery store cake in the mouth,

leaving you wondering how to spit it out with grace.

Grasping at joy is revolting, a fake laugh, an insinuation,

a glomping on – vicarious to the actual fleeting glimpses

we are gifted without neediness.

Don’t grab the kitty by the tail,

try not to join in when you haven’t heard the joke,

allow your own joy to arrive outside the attainment of others,

without needing to announce it to the imagined view of the world.

The original intention that you came here with

is still flickering – and it will not go out until you are gone,

even if you are in jail, or cast out, or inebriated

on the most common drugs of: figuring things out,

escaping your pain, making yourself important,

making yourself small, just

getting through the day, busy, busy, busy…

you know them all.

Even here, joy still visits, and fans your fractal candle.

Thank God, it is one of those trick candles, so blow away,

test it out; it will be here as long as you – waiting to light you

from within – and your inferno will be all your own.

My bonfire on a distant hill

connects the dots toward yours,

making the view overhead of all these fires a truer map

of who is down here,

remembering joy,

no matter where.

 

 

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good kind of paradox

20 Jan

life goes by so incredibly fast,

and still there is no hurry.

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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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