Friday, October 05, 2012

today, tomorrow

If I were to die
today
tomorrow

would you still feel me
where i was?

would the imprint
of me
last
for
awhile?

If I were to die
today
tomorrow

What would you remember about me?

That I was

smart
talkative
obnoxious
creative
opinionated
pretty
fat
talented
lazy
inspiring
happy
pushy
thoughtful
needy
surprising
underachieving
cool
loving
connected
?

If I were to die
today
tomorrow

would
the scent of my perfume linger?

the sound of my voice permeate the silence of my absence?

the shape of my face appear in your mind?



would

my words
continue to
make
a
difference

if I were to die


?

Friday, August 10, 2012

Just Close Enough

Just close enough to the heat
Just close enough to the pain
Just close enough to the pink red orange blue every color there is
dancing
between you
like lightning laced with sweet sorrow
and delight

Just close enough to hear your questions
Just close enough to feel your want and anger and joy and
tears
the feeling is so real,
full of the everything and of the anger, the adoration of someone else's humanity
and arrogance
and love
and thoughtlessness
and want
and perfection

Just close enough to see into the tunnel
cave
chasm
endless meadow of flowers of every color
Just close enough to know that what is there
is something
special
something dangerous

something real

Just close enough to know that no matter what happens
No matter how long it lasts
No matter how far you remain
the thing you fear and the thing you long for and question and want and run from
die for
has already happened.


Friday, August 03, 2012

Why Girlfriends are Important.

Woman:  Hey, let's talk. Let's hang out till the night becomes morning, tell each other our stories, our histories. We can try to figure our why we are the way we are and sit for hours just saying everything that comes into our heads, teasing out our fears and our anxieties and then coming up with ways to become our best selves. Let's talk about what we like about ourselves and what we don't. Let's trust in one another our deepest thoughts, telling each other what we love about the other and let's just revel in what the other has to say.  Let's do that, over and over and over, ok?

Man:  No.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Missing the Point

Sitting in the sun, feeling the yellow warm my freckled skin.

Right, but do you love me?



Eating a meal that teases my tingling tastes and delights me.

Well, that's all good, but do you love me?



Sitting on the bow of a boat, racing across deep blue wakes, wind whipping through my hair.

All good and everything, but... really... do you love me?



Laughing with a friend until my guts feel like they might bust.

Yep, that's super. I get it.  I have a question though.  Do you love me?



An hour in a hammock, reading a book that has me disappear into lands unknown.

Nice, truly.  I really dug that, I did.  Yet, do you love me?




Walking through the door to a burst of joyful "surprise!!!" and faces I adore.

Oh man, that was cool.  I'm not clear on something though.  Do you love me?




A walk through an art museum, intoxicated by the truth of others.

Nothing better, really.  I have a question though.  Do you love me?




Spending time with a friend, sharing, having real conversation, touching one another deeply.

Mmm. Yeah.... I see what you're saying. I hear you, I do. It's just....






Do you love me?


Friday, July 20, 2012

The Way I Want You To


I struggle.  angry. angsty because you don't do things
the way that I want you to.
You don't react to what I say or what I do or how I am
the way I want you to.

I get pissed off because in my mind, your words don't match your actions.
And mine is really the only version of life that matters, you see.
And so, therefore, I want you to act
the way I want you to.

Can't you see that I have an agenda
to create moments that have slipped into yesterday?
It's an important
undertaking.
And see, you are a character in my play, and it's important for me,
in order to experience life in my own particular desired way,

that you act

the way I want you to.


Listen, I can't imagine that you might have
a different way of seeing

or being
or thinking
or wanting
or loving
or needing
or growing
or expecting

than I do.  I'm sure that you want exactly what I do, exactly when I do.

See.

And that's why I want you to do things
exactly

the way I want you to.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Into View.

Lying next to my friend.
One who's been in the periphery of my life for as long as I can remember.
Wit and words dance as they always have
teasing me with what has always been, flirting with what
just might come into view.

I feel his hand brush across my hip, resting there
as we continue to talk.
Something new and soft.  Uncertain.
Creating a bridge for liquid honey to slide between
prickly
barbs of intellect and humor.

Bodies close.  Just enough space for heat to pass.
I loved the newness in that space enough to close it, pressing
my chest to his.
Like a curtain aloft, I could feel his life, his questions, his resignation
his desire.
My arms, my body, my mind surrounded him and watched the
lines in his furrowed brow dissolve
if only for a time        and
we talked, and felt, and shared.

Lying next to my friend.
One who's been in the periphery of my life for as long as I can remember.
Wit and words dance as they always have.
Soothing me with what has always been and what has come
into
view.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Listening

Listening
to
sounds.

Head cocked, stilling the canvas to hear
the sounds that give hint
to where I'm going
where I've been
who's been along for the ride.

sitting in heaps of pillow mountains
alone
feeling what is here
right
now.


What is here? Shhhh.


Feeling what was.
Where I was.
With whom.
The feel of the breeze that blew across my skin on that yellow day
alone in the grass.
The way touch felt
fingertips draping along my
white and naked skin
calling silent moans from a far away place.
Crack of thunder
whipping to my center reminding

me of

the sounds of metallic drumming music singing
in my ears
teasing my innocence with magnetic laughter
mocking
me from inside myself

titillation
in a garbage heap

Shhhh.

Sitting amidst white pillows
colored with present stillness
Thinking of what was.
Where I've been.

Listening
.


Tuesday, July 10, 2012

NFW

Sometimes there are just no fucking words.

Just feelings.
and I feels so damn deeply
and it hurts.

I want every single person I love
love
loved
ever

here.  in me. with me. near me. with me.
seeing me and loving me back.

now.

Sometimes there are no fucking words
and when I try to explain what is going on inside of me
I can't.
and I know I just end up sounding like a weepy, unstable mess.

It is messy.
and it's beautiful.
and it's fucking what I do
and how I feel life.

It's how I love
and how I need
and what I use
to color the day to day moment to moment.

Sometimes there are just no fucking words.


Air Drag

I'm impossible.  Honestly. Seriously. Incredibly. impossible.

I don't transition well emotionally.
This hurts, and it hurts even more because I know I'm the only one it hurts for.


I've noticed that some can move on to the next thing with slippery, effortless ease

the next day
the next event
the next person
the next conversation
the next view

I watch this skill with awe and admiration.

I turn my back and look over my shoulder
watching whatever it is that I am already
longing for.

get smaller
and smaller
and


I know that I'm physically removed from the place, the person, the...
but like a comet's tail
it clings to me and I to it, feeling it
drag on the air and keep me from slipping into the fast lane.

I feel the thing that is no longer here while seeing something completely new.
My heart has no idea what to do.

Luckily, I have been through this tunnel before and I happen to know that regardless of how entrenched I try to dig my heels in the clay of time's movement

I will come out the other side
just fine.

Friday, July 06, 2012

Lies

Don't lean on me.
I have nothing to offer.

Your opinion of me makes me crazy
and I'm just not what you see.
Stop making me feel like I might be wrong
about myself.

I have nothing to offer.

Ya see, I'm just not good enough,
and when you look at me with those eyes
that say I'm something...
Well, it makes me want to prove to you
that I'm not.

See, I have nothing to give
despite what you see.

You say you admire my talent,
but I know it's nothing special.
You want to hear my words, but you're simply
deluded.
You compliment my interests, but they
ain't all that special.

See, I know what you clearly don't.

I'm nothing special.

Orange Blossom Sound

Sliding through orange blossom sound
tickling baby pink skin
the sounds, colors that have no names
sneaking through the barriers that hold me together
my outsides, just an illusion

Your language, a dynamic textured tapestry
sounds that I never would have considered

I am learning it.

Show me things I haven't seen
Sing me songs that I have never heard
Touch the places I didn't know were there

Soothe my tongue with starry syrup
and stir my forever
with
yours.

Things

There are things in this life
Things that bring so much stimulation and joy
things that make my mind bigger and the edges move further out

There are things that surprise me
And make me wonder
Things that have me track my eyes back to see if I can see where it started

There are things that hook themselves into me
and I know that even if the thing itself goes away
it will never be unhooked

There are things.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Me Neither

Do you ever feel like you have no idea what you're doing?
Like, you're doing stuff you agreed to do, but are totally bullshitting your way through it?

Do you ever feel like you're an imposter and all of these people think you are some sort of expert, and really inside you wonder if they can tell that you feel ... at best, average and sometimes way less than that?

Do you ever feel like you wonder if the thing you're supposed to be doing will ever come clear? Like, crystal clear. Angel with a big sign, clear. Airplane writing in the sky clear. And then the path to that thing, whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing will open up like a moving sidewalk in the airport and you can just step on and you'll be on your way? The angels will sing and the air will turn golden because you've FINALLY gotten on the right path?

Do you ever feel that way?

No?  Oh. Uh...Me neither.


Sunday, April 22, 2012

I Don't Know How it Works

I don't know how it works.

But... Sometimes I feel like there are hints, or glimpses into the space where how it works lives. I don't know if I'm right. No idea. I have a feeling that it doesn't matter, really.
Like, when it's been a long time since something. There is part of me that knows that somewhere,
somehow, it hasn't been long at all.

A blink.

A moment.

Spaceless, timeless, everything-full something.


I don't know how it works.


I really, really have no idea.  There was a time that I thought I knew. I was harmlessly taught the truth about it all.  And that was ok. Yet....  I'm pretty confident now, that there is much more to it than the story I was told.  All of us write stories to explain that which we innately experience. All of us, everywhere.


I don't know how it works.


Honestly. I don't, and I don't think anyone else does either, except for the all-knowing, something inside of each and every one of us that whispers hints to our quiet, noisy minds. It's like being given one or two pieces to an eight-million piece jigsaw puzzle.  Or...maybe four pieces.


I don't know how it works.


But sometimes.... all times.... I feel this

something.

I sort of want to call it love, and I think it is, but... I heard recently a quote that said, "The truth is the truth until you name it. Then it becomes a lie." So this something, this thing I want to call love, is ... i think... much much more than a name could ever justify.  I think. But then again....


I don't know how it works.


And still, there is this peace that resides beneath all of the questions and all of the rumors, and all of the fears and stories and threats and wonders and theories and ... all of it.  As if it is maybe the very IS that all of those things are sprouted from.  But I don't know.


I don't know how it works.


And

I'm
okay
with
that.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Turn.

I stayed still
as I woke today,
hovering in that soft, grey ether space where waking up happens.

I thought about how life can so much be like
turning one's head to look at a snapshot.

Turn,
a still.

Turn.
a moment in time.

Turn.
A smile, an expression of love, an act of anger, a parent, a friend.

and then you turn your head again
for a split second
and that picture is gone,
replaced
by a new one
a different moment
altogether.

I decided to begin looking at those photos in my mind
and I wish I could show them to you.

I want you to see them, the filtered green light of the ones from when I was a very young child.
I want you to see the one with my mother making dinner in the kitchen with orange, metallic wallpaper.
I want you to catch the one of that moment outside when my dad was talking to the neighbor and slid me his can of beer for a sip.
I want you view the moment and to know the feeling in my little mind when he left our home with an army green duffle bag, for the last time.
I want you to hover in anticipation with me as my young sister and I awaited our mom's new friend to come to the door as we played toss-a-ring-around-a-daisy in the entryway.
I want you to hurt with me when you see the shot of when I rolled my sky blue 10 speed into the house next to the yellow couch where my mother lay, dying, to show her my new birthday present.
I want your eyes with mine as we look at a picture of when I lay on the bottom bunk of my sister's trundle bed, the light in the late-night hallway mocking the time, as the sounds of quiet-voiced strangers wheeling my mother's body out of our house.

When I look back,
the photo has changed again.

Time has moved.
Particles altered
Players replaced.
Sets changed.

I see a picture, no longer edged when white, tiny black numbers narrating the date,
but one where the picture goes all the way to the edge.
The corners rounded.

Turn. A new woman in our kitchen making a salad. Light easy banter with dad, and we girls standing around.

Turn.  A surprise 40th birthday party for my dad, gag-gifts presented by his friends.

Turn. The house we moved into, big and beautiful on a sunny day. White curtains hanging in an empty room before our things made their entrance.

Turn. Yellow light on a September day, a wedding...  So many people I don't know. A happy, confusing day for me.

I wanted the photos continue.  Thy took me through the halls of my Junior High, showed me a moment when I got a locket from my 6th grade boyfriend, the day a student bounced a fish eye in science class, a fight with my 7th grade best friend when I threw her yellow jelly jacket into the hallway.

The pictures would have kept coming,
changing with the turn of my head
reminding me of my own, specific story.  But for right now, I'll stop them there. Maybe later I'll go on.

I wish I could show these pictures to you, so you could feel my life.
Feel what it is like to be me.

You have photos too. Moments that are forever filed in your mind.
Have you looked at them lately?

Friday, February 24, 2012

Isness

You are art.
Your voice is beautiful
and meaningful.

Your expression is a delight
to the canvas on which
it is
expressed.

You are something.
Even if you feel like you're trapped
inside a shell
that you can't break.
Even if you don't understand
your own
isness.

You are.

Art.