Thursday, July 24, 2014

Tapestry

Sometimes something reaches in and pulls out
the threads attached to
the
feelings connected to a person
the people
the ones
who have taken up residence inside of my heart.

They aren't fleeting. Or temporary.
They've woven themselves mercilessly into
who I am.

The feeling is so hard to describe.

It's a wailing of my spirit
a longing for
a needing
a knowing
a
dance that whips my hair behind me and knocks the breath out of me
while it breathes life into me
just the same.

Sometimes it hurts.

But mostly it makes me grateful
to be alive
in this life.

Grateful for

every             single           thread

that has made up this

tapestry.

Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Rainy Days

Rainy days
just make me wonder
where the sun be shinin' now......

Rainy days
they bring asunder
the sadness that fills our hearts
sometimes....

Rainy days
grey softness  covers
as I hide beneath its heather mist
and thunder rolls
singing our heart's
felt demise....

Rainy days
they
make me wonder
if everyone else is feeling it too...

Rainy days
the make my heart cry
knowing
that it just has to feel this way
sometimes.....

Monday, July 07, 2014

Ever Think

Ever think you've got it all together
and you just keep moving
toward
away from
here and there to where you think you
need to want to have to
go.

Ever think that you
put one foot in front of the other like you've always been
told that you should
and trusted what is coming next
watching it work
not work
fall apart
smoothly sail
but you don't really
know.


Ever think you've got the tools and
you know that
from the outside
from the eyes of all the others
that are watching you from their vantage points
into the view master that you've created
and you wonder if they can tell
that it doesn't feel as
nice and easy and perfect and charmed
as it looks through the lens of your iphone.

Ever think you thought you knew what you were doing
and then
a page turns
and you realize that
you have no idea
what you're doing
at all.

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

It Laughs.


I spin my thoughts
grabbing air
with certainty and
forming it into the shapes that I want it to hold.

Futile act,
and the wind

it laughs.


I reach into the careening stream and
will the movement to promise me
that it will travel just the
way that I want it to.

Determined girl,
and the water

it laughs.


I stretch my arms into the sky
my paintbrush in hand
sweeping color into the
above
sure that it will turn the
very hue
that I dream.

Bold attempt,
and the clouds

they laugh.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Sanctuary

From when I was nothing
in the moment I became

something

cells breaking into building into me.

From nowhere
somewhere
where
I came into your hiding place.

my sanctuary.

In a moment that
not even you knew
a silent burst of me
from dream to being
I was held in warmth

soft
love
red
dark
you.

my sanctuary.

In a secret not even you yet knew
your body my walls
my buffer
protected me from all that might harm
as I grew
from a something
into a something
into a something

new

my becoming
certain and loved
in

my sanctuary.

As my being grew
larger
able to hear you, feel you, know you.
The walls whispering that I might have
to soon leave
and see where it is that I came.

Violence and tumult
pushed pulled
forced and longed for and
loved and
coerced
softness gave way to harsh
and soothing darkness to light.
I mourn

my sanctuary.

My passive fish lungs failed
and in a heave of death
this planet blew life into my body.
So confused, wordless questions.
Where
Why
How
Is this the end of

my sanctuary.


Newness of angst in tears
down my tiny face
and in the face of
who's arms
surround and sooth
her breast my nourishment
her skin my clothes
her voice my song
I have fallen in love with

my sanctuary.

As I learned my boundaries
you were there.
My voice
you were there.
My song
My fears
My pain
you were there.
My growth
you were there.
My art
you were there.
My mistakes
My learning
My falls
you were there.
My wings
you were there.
My leaving
My returning
you were there.
My choices
My hurt
My children
My successes
My risks
My failures
My life
you were there.
My life
you were there.

my sanctuary.

And then, as I had chosen you so many
years before
I chose you again
and I choose you
again.

my sanctuary.

In my heart, you began to release
the stronghold that you have always had
on life.  On yours. On mine.
In slow steady moments lost to forever
I have watched you take steps
away from
who I have always known you to be.
I long for

my sanctuary.

As I sit close to you
and hold your hand.
As I hold close the you that you will always be to me.
I love you more than I
ever thought
possible.

and I know
beyond any shadow
that

You will always

be


my sanctuary.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Mother's Day

Mother's Day

I've always said that days that are calendar-ized are
man made. Meaning given not by life, but by someone else.
Yet, they come around as the sun rotates and I feel air as my butt finds metaphorical earth
after my legs are kicked out from under me.

I feel silly being public about missing my mother.
You get it.  I say it enough.
She's been gone for 37 years.
Get over it.  How much can it actually pain me at this point?

Sometimes I want to ask myself those very things.

and much of the time, it doesn't hurt.  but then a day comes
and the calendar says that we are all to sit and think about
our mothers.

And I can.  I do.  I am.

She was so beautiful.
Everybody loved her. That's what everyone says.
She was likable.
She was talented. She was loved.
I didn't have her very long.  My sister had her for even less time.
And I don't have a lot of memories.

I remember her making dinner when American Pie was on the radio
as Carrie and I sat at the round table with the bright yellow vinyl table cloth
waiting. The walls were wallpapered with yellow zig zag fabric.

I remember her hair. It was so pretty and simple.  Her face so warm and pretty.
She didn't have to try hard at all to look that way.

I remember her making bread dough ornaments with us in the kitchen for Christmas.
We sat at the Shakey's table in the breakfast nook.

I remember eating spaghetti at that same table. The whole family.  Candles were lit
for ambiance. Could that be why I'm so nuts about soft lighting?

I remember snippets of more.  The memories are like snapshots that I might find in one of the almost too faded and worn by years gone by to really be able to look at anymore photo albums.

She was a good mom.
Maybe I don't have enough data to know that for sure, but for 10 years, she was a really good, warm, loving, all-in mom.  It broke her heart that she knew she would die when we were young. It still breaks mine.

There is more to Mother's Day.

I have a step mother, Maxine,  that has been a lovely and stable presence in my life since I was 12.  I have aunts that I love like mothers. I have Anna, who is as much like a daughter to me as I will ever have. I never met my mother-in-law; she died when Eric was 21. I have a step-mother-in-law who is sweet and lovely.  My sister is an amazing, real mother to Hudson and MyLinh. So many of my best friends are mothers to their heart-filled kids. One of my friend's mother is fading to the unrelenting sorrow of Alzheimer's.
The world is filled with amazing, painful, gone, sick, loving, courageous, tender, nurturing, real, complicated mothers. Just the thought of all of the mother stuff takes my breath away.  In a good, and in a not good way.  All rolled into one deep breath suck.

I have a hard time just saying, "Happy Mother's Day" as a blanket statement.
There is so much wound up in the word mother.
My wish for all of us is that we hold those relationships, those memories, and those feelings close, and give ourselves a break if it's not easy.

I miss you, mom.




Thursday, May 01, 2014

Honest

I still think about what it could be like.
If you were someone
that wanted
to have something
worth having.

I still start to plan on calling
and wishing
that we could talk about
what happened.
why.
what if.
I'm sorry.
Let's change it.
I love you.
We can start today.
Yes,
I've always loved you.

I still hurt knowing that it's rarely been you
that reached
or called
or remembered
or tried
or asked for forgiveness
or just made a fucking effort
at
all.

I still wonder what you've been thinking
all of these years.
Why my heart hasn't

mattered     enough    for     you    to     love     me.

Why you haven't reached or called or tried or remembered or taken
responsibility
for the fact that you were
the adult and
it wasn't my job
to keep you in my life.

But I did.

I still long for that feeling
when I was a child
and I looked at your
cool
strong
charming
dazzling smile
intoxicating handsome way
and thought
you'd be there forever.
Just like that.

I still sweep up pieces of my heart
from all of the
days moments years events milestones
that you gave away to someone else
and instead
sat in the dingy tv glow
with your lover in a bottle
while


i


grew


up.


I still wish for the father I always hoped you'd be
and
as the years
stack upon one another like
bricks and boxes and dusty repeats of things I have seen
again and again and again.

I wish
I wonder
I long
I weep
I try to make sense of how you could love me so
little.

and

I wish you didn't make it so easy
to try
to
forget.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Feet Grounded

I saw you in the corner of my eye
I was simply doing little things that I do
nothing special
nothing expected
stepping forward in contented banal.

and I felt you sweep softly into view
familiar presence
and grab my hand.
Your eyes caught mine as if to ask
if I might join you
and without time for response, you jumped into the sky
my hand held tightly in yours
my body slid into upward motion
and we flew.

For days and weeks it seems
above the everything
safe together
wings laced as we felt the wind at our faces
and the perfection of love
only laughter and flying and joy
with little thought of the
whats and hows and dos and needs and nails and hammers and wallets and calendars and.....

we flew and flew.

One day, our feet touched down.  Our eyes connected, we laughed
at just how breathtaking it had been.
And
the whats and the hows and the dos and needs and nails and hammers and wallets and calendars
beckoned.

Still our wings reach to touch, and we fly with one another.
In and around the hows and the dos and the needs and the nails and the hammers and wallets and calendars.
The air still at our faces.

It is finding the laughter and the flying and the joy
with feet grounded
and trust that the sky is certainly there
where our love lives.

I will always reach for your wings.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Trouble

If I were a child,
being parented by myself,

sitting low in a high back chair
finger wagging at me
by my very own self.

lectured for
patterns repeated
again and again and again
asked and pleaded with
warned and cajoled
threatened with consequences for

choosing yet again
to do
say
react
whine
scream
throw tantrum over temper tantrum.

If I were a young subject
sitting in front of a very large desk
an ominous me sitting a front.
my smallish legs dangling still from a chair
much too large
hands shaking on my lap.
Hearing that big voice tell me that my
choices
my attitude
my failure           once again           to do what I have been asked.

If I were that girl
getting a talking to from
the part of me that knows better.....

I think I'd be

in

trouble.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Feel it

I hope you can feel it.

The center place in you that is connected to something,
everything....
tethered to the everything.

I hope you can feel it.

I hope that when you wake in the morning
when you look at your children
when you touch your lover
when  you make a new friend
when you sweetly care

I hope you can feel that you are touching

love.

That word just never captures it.
Maybe it's because it's been so tired by the uses that we've given it.
When really,
it's not elusive
or small
or tinny
or what you find in $11.75 movies.

It's the

everything.

when you close your eyes, and there is nothing else but you
and what you know and what you feel and who you love.  It's there.

I hope you can feel it,
because it is so beautiful.

I hope you can feel it.  

The color and the love and the flow and the peace and the patience and the quiet
that resides
everywhere you look.

I can feel you not believing me, as life can be hard
and pointy
and painful
and lonely.

You're right.  It can.

But it's there.  I promise.


I hope
you
can

feel it.

Sunday, March 02, 2014

Dragging Lightly in the Sand

In the stir of the day
with every possibility swirling about,

I can feel you.


In the movement of life,
footsteps into running,
wind of fast against my face,

I can feel you.


In the questions
and
the
certainties,
the
scary
and
the
comfort,

I can feel you.


In the past                       and the future,
the    nevers        and                                    the always,

I can feel you.


I bend my back across the strength of your arm,
invisible across every mile between us,
my hair dragging lightly in the
sand.

Your heart's fortitude suspends me.

I can feel you.
and.

I.
am.
yours.








Friday, February 28, 2014

Broken Heart

Its beauty
breaks my heart.

The sweet faithful reaching to a father that they can clearly see,
and I'm not so sure.
As I look at pictures of places
I have never seen
beautiful artistry, scrollwork pocked
by bullet hate
people I have never known
on their desperate knees.


The questions
break my heart

I hear them being asked, all over.
Whispers and screaming fists pounding fingers tightened
around throats until the vocabulary that they do not know
for the very same God disappears.

Certainty.
exclamation.
assurance.

and

I       can't       buy       it.


The silence
breaks my heart.

Staring into ebony sky feeling forever
never ending
no wall with a sign that says "EXIT"
The ever drip of knowledge
confuses with its vast mass
but to me
points only to

holy.


The Love.
It
breaks my heart

into so many pieces they can't be counted
As I do my thing
working creating talking impacting living
and he watches from across the space
deep in his own conversation
about life or family or art or doing or being and
completely ok on his own
he smiles a knowing smile at me.
No ownership
only admiration.

I sit in this
everything
so perfect in its chaos
and all I feel
is gratitude

for my broken heart.


Sunday, February 23, 2014

O L D

Five days and thirty-five years.


moments and newness
and history and
frost edged memories
not sure if they're real or
created from the cast of characters
and sets that I remember.

Digging deep into the storage of my
awareness
to find pictures of people as they were.
As they are.

Interesting
as one ages.
when I was a kid, I'd look at a person that was
the age that

I
am
now

and be sure

they just don't get it.  
How could they?

They're

O L D.


Friday, February 21, 2014

Morning Must

morning must

show you naked
unadorned without
pretense
no coiff or thought to how the world might perceive
simply you.

morning must

tease you into awareness
a soft
float skimming the surface
ripples from tiny thought circles
from somewhere else to where you are.

morning must

create a cliche grey mist
cashmere
toussled hair
sleepy eyes
warm, sleep caressed
skin.

morning must

hold you like hot coffee
eggs over medium
night stretched tshirt
sheets wrapped in folds around
stretched legs.

morning must

invite you to the most
beautiful version of the day
before questions have chance
to root.

morning must

be
lovely.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Propelled

When I was a girl, I would see that glint
that something,
and I would be propelled into
that very simple thing.

He must be mine.

Two initials embraced within the red outline of a crayon heart
an arrow drawn through its center.


When I was just a little older, I would feel that               something.
That wordless
unexplainable something
and be propelled into combustable need.

Orchestrated sitting next to him in a bar
the beat of some earthy heart thump pulsing through
legs touching under sweaty drinks

electric

to find ourselves in a messy knot
candle lit
messy pile of discarded socks and sweatshirts.



When I was a young woman, I would notice

that

person.

Tall and strong, responsible and handsome
makes people laugh at parties and everyone wants to be around him.
I would be propelled
into planning for him to be my Camelot.
Imagination drawings of white picket fences
carrying me over the threshold
longing for me while I stir something on the stove
mowing the lawn and inside at afternoon's exit
his sexy day worn tshirt, my prince.

When I was a woman seasoned some, I would sense that secret smile
as I glanced at someone and would be propelled to wonder
if maybe it was he that
would
could
should
save me from the everyday
work
monotony
mundane
washing clothes cooking meals never catching up falling into bed too tired to make love.


I am a woman.
no longer a girl
no longer on any hunt for
someone
something
it
him.

enticed by my own mind and spirit
surrendered to complexity and layers of grey and nothing really living inside the box that has been
drawn for us.

I still notice.

I notice smart, and sexy, intelligent and creative, tender and strong.  I notice love and security and joy and comfort. I notice loyal and artistic and surrendered and inspired and kind.

I notice.

Thing is, I no longer feel propelled
to anything in particular.

I feel my heart unzip and allow my life to unfold.
I bend to integrity, and honesty, and all of the corners of life that I might have never looked into.
I rejoice in the love that I have and for every love that sneaks into my heart.

Every love is a new color.

A friend.
A muse.
An inspiration.
A memory.
A texture.

Perhaps I am
indeed
propelled,

but
to nothing
in

particular.



So Much Going On

So much going on.

Not to be seen with the eyes
of others.
For to them, it looks of calm and peace.
Glittery pics of pools and sleeping dogs,
holding honey hands
and basking in a bath of plenty.

So much going on.
The going on lives inside of me.
It is made up of

Thoughts,
Questions. Certainties.
Growth. Wonder.
Loss. Pain. Art.
Stagnation. Fear.
Resolve. Decision.
Newness. Panic.
Wanting.
Unresolved creativity.
Undiscovered
everything.

So much going on.

It lies in the processing of what I do, and what I haven't. It lies in
friendships old and new.
What to keep and what to release.
Holding tight to loves gone by,
and looking at the ghostly space that they
held, but
which will never truly have gone.
To me.
It lies in the fear that I am not loved. Judged. Eyes rolling from around the world
so hard
that I feel them crash into me.

It lies in wanting to be      so      me,
so ok with being

me

that I can't even perceive
of
ugly thoughts.

It lies in wanting to know
to dig deeper
to fall with breathtaking
abandon
into

art
you
friends
spirit
deep, deep love
exotic peoples
desperate giving
breaking through self imposed lids on metaphorical jam jars
learning
dancing into dizzy amazing
shifting
adding
exploding with color joy yummy sexy fullfilled connected awe-inspiring
good.


more.
of.
me.


So          much         going          on.