December 2011
1 post
If you want.
if you want to know me know the darkness, the silence in which grow my roots the grasping, ink-stained creepers that wind around my arms sometimes and drag me into the past if you want to understand me understand the urgent smile the tightrope laughter on which I teeter containing an ocean’s raging despair precarious, eager to salt the face of my earth if you want to find me ...
August 2011
1 post
Going forward.
a standing axle watching whirring spokes parade in blurry excess uncertain but overcome with the certainty of some mysterious, imminent impending doom the breakneck forward motion momentum of past decisions carrying through this current uncertainty a narrative with a single beginning and a single middle but a plethora of unwritten ends
~~~
what’s a girl to do, having rejected whole...
June 2011
2 posts
Solstice.
Dark times reign In surly thunderheads, laden with Angry cascades of hail Heated gusts Carrying humid tempers Weather swings, Violent as any mood
O Sun Turn your face to us We entreat you Shed your mourning veils Cease weeping Blaze golden among the heavens Once more.
Soothe the pained earth Calm her weary skin Drive the tempests forth That the ravaged lands Might shrug off debris Blink at...
May 2011
2 posts
When I was teaching myself how to play the...
April 2011
1 post
Rainy Days and Other People's Words.
I don’t know why rainy days so often require the application of other people’s poetry, but for me, they often do. Today’s re-discovery was Max Ehrmann, mostly known for his infamous hippie manifesto, “Desiderata.” I like that, and most of his work….but especially this one, which is now in the running to be my favorite poem ever.
“Wanderers” by Max...
March 2011
6 posts
Last week marked seven months since I Officially...
You few.
You generous few who hide not your faces, who release smiles into the wild as if it were perfectly natural not to worry for their safety in the measuring eyes of the jaded You brazen few who will not slink into shadow, as if that were even possible in a vainglorious age where every motion is trumpeted in a cluttered public square You daring few who fear not the sight of your unveiled...
February 2011
2 posts
questions
truth is there isn’t world enough nor time the mad rush of want to do to see to experience to be is precisely that: mad
everything is an accomplishment beyond everyone myself included so why this frenzy to make to fix to accomplish to finish when it’s a conclusion perpetually unreached
not enough world nor enough time only enough try
January 2011
2 posts
Walking.
It’s not a yellow wood, but the road diverges anyway. The next step I take needs must be a choice. This familiar moment has held me before, with more or less or similar gracelessness. Each time I come to this place of choosing, I reach into the deep stillness of self to find the essential truth my life is a flawed effort to express. From that calm center comes the next step, driven by true...
Basil.
I dream in tones of sepia and basil, nostalgia and a wish to be cleansed of sorrow. I long for that aromatic - CRACK! - of leaf liberated from stem, the sweet greenblood clinging to hands in clouds better smelt than seen. I yearn for that piercing scent to sweep over my heart, driving forth the miasma of grief and claiming the jagged and torn edges in toll for its passing. No desire, it seems, can...
December 2010
1 post
Rasa.
Once more I am spiraling back to that place of ending that is beginning, an infinite snake choking on her tail. The half-healed weals and barely borne burdens - layers of peeling paint on a steel frame - seem to fade as the long hand hits the twelve. Rewind. Reset. Reframe.
What if I sanded down the rough edges and put on a fresh coat, covered over the tells and history with something pleasantly...
May 2010
2 posts
A Quality of Light
There is a certain quality of light some mornings, in the liminal moments before it can truly be called day. In this light, it can be difficult knowing whether one stands in a physical, grounded reality or a state of incorporeal intangibility, where the merest breeze might shred the very fibers of existence. In those moments of neither here nor there, inevitably questions arise. What is my...
This is a recently written tune I rough drafted...
April 2010
2 posts
Ashes.
farmers don’t harvest from fallow fields naptime is not for feeding arias don’t happen during intermission landing is not for takeoff let this note finish fading before the next begins there’s nothing left of these ashes to burn
March 2010
1 post
Burning.
I have heard about the phoenix, She who burns to be reborn - But I am weary of my burning And the ash it leaves behind.
Though I’m truly not so squeamish, Still I seek a safer turning - Wishing not to always mourn The constant changing of my mind.
It’s not that I’ve escaped the yearning, Wishing, hoping, flying blind - It’s just that life’s path is so worn, A...
February 2010
15 posts
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Speaking Love.
I have done with Speaking Love.
Speaking Love is just talk
and talk can’t be
seen
touched
trusted.
I want love
visceral
running through my fingers
firm under my feet
barging its undeniable way
into my life.
Pretty words are a
start,
but I can’t wrap them
around me
when the cold world
makes me shiver.
Give me love
dark
brutal
tangible.
Give me love I can
sink...
1 tag
Silence speaks.
silence speaks her voice not always gentle as you might imagine
words speak and wordlessness, too dancing eyebrows swift breath motion too small for measuring is heard nonetheless
sometimes a pin drops and the world halts and the impact of metal on tiles echoes deafeningly from the vaulted ceilings of startled eyes
secrets speak in whisperless glances unspoken but present sentiments roar in...
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Breathe.
I know what Buddha sought under his tree, just sitting there - silent - while the unenlightened watched him breathe.
His world was too small for the size of his soul. Walls fit a lotus-blossom heart poorly.
He wandered without, trail by path, street by road, one step by thousand miles until he knew. No road led where he wished to go.
Each destination held nothing but another journey, another...
1 tag
Ode to a Blade of Grass.
Even when everything seems motionless the world is spinning faster than you and I can conceive.
Even when I’m not moving my heart is beating, thumping like primal drums that make me dance.
Even when all the world holds still, balanced on the precipice of change, evolution is picking the select few.
While stars I have never seen burn While molecules trade electrons violently While humanity...
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Restless.
that restless voice calling me to endless travel to journey with no end driven down a road of my choice (any road that is not this one)
spurred by a vast internal...
1 tag
Skyscraper.
Some people find contentment in ranch houses with white picket fences and two stall garages.
Some people find exhilaration in jungle treehouses ringed by leaves as big as a man.
Some people find satisfaction in dingy basements shutting the world away the better to criticize it.
Some people find peace in rough-made rustic cabins surrounded by nothing but nature’s silent serenity.
Some...
1 tag
There was a question in your eyes...
There was a question in your eyes, A furtive, tentative wondering… I sensed the absence of certainty and Some searching, questing, cautious query.
You greeted me like Fireflies, With chemical inquiry And no recognition.
You scanned the volumes of myself, Perhaps seeking on my shelves A familiar title. But finding no tale to your liking, You settled for trailing your fingers Softly along...
1 tag
Desire.
It’s a dangerous business, getting what I want. How do I know what that is, anyway? How do I know that what I get is what I really want, and not just what I think I want? Or is it that what I think I want changes, or does what I want actually change, too?
In the end it’s all just a crapshoot I suppose: taking the chance that something will fulfill them - those unspoken, uncertain,...
1 tag
Heiress.
Caught in the grips of techno-joy Mired in molasses traffic Wrestling my cosmopolitan woes A sudden wild wind catches me by the heart And I am not here and not now.
Under the ubiquitous sidewalk I smell the remembrance of trees And it occurs to me that This is not my place or purpose.
I remember moonlit serenades in fields Under countless enchanted stars When they were still the eyes of my...
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My Salad Days Are Numbered.
Unbearable restlessness goading my contentment corroding the unconscious resistance of my stick-in-the-mud self
Unquenchable, unbreakable this endless gaping inner space gnaws at my heart empty even as I fill it
Impermanence taunts me parading infinity before me but denying me more than a passing glance
The soul yearns for infinity yearns to become infinity yearns to encompass infinity in this...
1 tag
Precipice.
This precipice before me has sharp edges and nothing soft below
No guarantee of safety (more like assurance of utter failure)
I want to jump
These people around me care greatly for my well being and whisper to me of caution
They think they know my limitations (more like they don’t know my capabilities)
I want to jump
I can feel their hands on my shirt tails - They hold me close (they...
1 tag
Lament for Tammy Faye.
Buy me a trip to heaven ‘Cause it seems there’s no other way out of this hell
Mercenary missionaries selling heaven on a street corner
Any type of heaven you want - anything for a price - sliced and diced and served cold for a small fee
Everybody scrambles for the careless coin dangling from those pearly gates
Don’t confuse glitter with gold because enlightenment comes in all...
January 2010
16 posts
1 tag
Bottom.
I have reached the bottom of this cup. There is no more.
Before, when I thought I was here, always there was more from somewhere.
I have looked everywhere I can think to look. There is no more.
Before, when I thought this was absolutely it, always I was wrong, and I found more.
I have touched the bottom and all four corners. There is no more.
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“Be with those who help your being.
Don’t sit with indifferent people,...”
– Rumi, Ode 2865 (translated by Coleman Barks)
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Unuttered.
Unuttered words hang still midair filling the chasm gaping between two halves of a broken still beating heart.
Wordless rending sounds echo from ragged edges, secrets untold - spilling without sounds, harmlessly falling silent.
No use now. No purpose in sharing. No hungry bonds to feed painful recollections and sacred triumphs. No thrumming resonance making the awkward natural. No point, then....
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Another storm.
I.
collarbones painted with sadness gray clouds burdened by rain not ready to fall
eyes voice chest weighed down with unshed tears
gather, swirl, deepen arch high with torrents barely contained
canny creatures sense impending devastation flee fleetly
feet cannot follow Do clouds fear rain? Does wind fear tempest?
II.
What if this storm should break, restraint succumbing to exhaustion and...
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Familiar.
familiar a favorite sweater missing for years rediscovered sleeves just right soft, warm familiar i missed this cells and fibers aching in need though i didn’t even really know how could i so easily forget? this isn’t something so prosaic as to be cast aside easily, without note this, this sings speaks in full-body language every atom thrumming precisely every particle jumping for joy...
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Tools and trades.
keyboard, not strings
matte black plastic versus gloss blonde maple curly
arches against the body easy, speaking the language of comfort flat, unyielding desk doesn’t understand it strains, it pains, it pushes
effort, staying there putting in the full measure of service not losing track of time, caught up, natural as breath
vocation, not expression
Season of freezing.
Why should you feel wrong, wrapping yourself in ice? We trudge towards the season of freezing, And surely it is only to be expected. Spring is for blushing buds, bursting leaves, thrusting shoots: growing warmth. Summer is for ripening fruit, violent sweetness splashed hungrily on a thunderstorm canvas. Autumn is for mourning, leeching scarlet and verdant from a landscape swept bare to sepia...
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31.
There are crinkles living in the corners of my eyes; they used to rent but now they’ve bought the place and are fixing it up real nice like they mean to stay. A nagging ache stops by sometimes in the bone I snapped years ago running in platform shoes. Achilles and I stretch together, but if the weather’s bad it doesn’t matter. My shoulders creak now and then, if I sit still too...
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Brink.
she’s holding her breath an autumn inhalation captured indefinitely she’s been turning spokes rolling one after another pacing the seasons darkness light passing in shifts one after another frantic noise dwindles down into silence she waits breath no longer held deep drawing in long, slow exhale the world pauses with her held on an unseen brink