as tears well
(it’s funny that tears
well most well
when I am not well)
up in my eyes
and they go all limpid
I limp around the room
I see the angles, the planes,
the endless lines
and sharp edges
of your geometry
and I am glad I am going
even though it hurts as much
being gone as it did being there
it’s just that my lines are round
my planes are spheres
and I have no angles
in the softness of my heart
and the glance of the moon
in the forest, thru the mists
under grey clouds on the moor
I wander, wander…I linger
even though my time
here has passed and
so has day become night
and I a woman of the night
in all its mystery and splendour
and thus imbibe its secrets and its wonder
yet do I loiter…here in the forest
near the old house once filled
with glory and light and music
but now just an empty shell
under grey clouds on the moor
in the forests thru the mists
It hits out of nowhere
It can strike at any time
It is hard to get back up afterwards
it’s strange, how my words
are vibrant now, and safe…
my words are safe in themselves
they used to need your eyes
like vines need their trellis
eyes constant and seeing
and singing in the wind
like that trellis
whose sharp point
kisses the depths of earth
with its piercing pressure
insisting on being
a root descending
that trellis whose strands
thrum beneath my words,
and echo them to the singing winds
but they
(my words,
not the wind,
or the trellis,
or your eyes)
are strong now
and own-rooted
in depths and dirt
and though they
feel the twinge
of regret in your retreat,
they don’t mourn or weep
they are own-winded
in their own-rootedness
they are own-trellised
they are own-sung
they are own-caressed
and the sorrow in the wind?
it is the wind’s tongue in the gap
where my teeth-words used to be
my home lies
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains
it is a space
from which eternity
pours effortlessly
right alongside sorrow,
longing and giving
and receiving,
that one unity
of space and going
to and from
that receptive deep
opening within
passing from
this world of woe
to a deep place
that’s not a place
but the echo
of my home
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains
Maybe it was to learn how to love
Maybe it was to learn how to leave
Maybe it was for the games we played
Maybe it was to learn how to choose
Maybe it was to learn how to lose
Or maybe it was for the love we made
Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love made sweet and sad the same
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving
Maybe it was to learn how to fight
Maybe it was for the lesson in pride
Maybe it was for the cowboys’ ways
Or maybe it was to learn not to lie
Or maybe it was to learn how to cry
Or maybe it was for the love we made
Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love did not hold back the reins
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?
You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving
First he turns to you, then he turns to her
So you try to hurt him back
But it breaks your body down
So you try to love bigger, bigger still
But it, it’s too late
So take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
And know you’ll never be the same
And find it in your heart to kneel down and say
I gave my love, didn’t I?
And I gave it big sometimes
And I gave it in my own sweet time
I am just leaving
I am just leaving
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
They aren’t the same
without your eyes.
My poems, I mean.
They sit like museum pieces
once living and lustrous
but now flat and lifeless
and pinned to the wall
by the absence of eyes
your eyes
in particular.
but they
(your eyes and my words)
miss each other
like ships in the night
calling to each other
but passing slow blind
and I miss you terribly
in our existence
of presence
so absent
and me on the outside
with only
my words
Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!
Barcelona,
oh City of Bones
laying hot and dry in the sun
beating down on streets, on tombs
and tiles so red over white and so hot
and shimmering radiant still,
oh ye bones!
Barcelona, City of Bones
Baking before the gates of the Sun,
I sacrificed my purity for thee, such as it might be
(my purity, not my sacrifice)
Purity…
of thought,
of mind,
of heart and soul,
purity of
song and deed
and strong intention.
Barcelona, my sacrifice
so droll, so dirty is actually
sterility masquerading
as purity and thus is merely
the absence of jazz,
the absence of spice,
the absence of that
jagged noise of exultation
and thus there is no
purity and nothing
quite acceptable
enough.
Gladly do I lay it there
(my sacrifice, not my purity)
on the bony altar of your burning eyes
hung there above the freezing flames
of your sharp haughty sniff and thus
do I seek sanctuary in the fires of
your hunger, games appeased and satiated.
And these words I leave
(my longing words so red, so sharp)
along the edge of your wet teeth,
hard teeth so white and glistening,
and there, blurred,
there they mingle
with your breath,
with the liquid you
and thus become
inflammable and ready
to leap up like the Phoenix
to take their ease in air and be
us, there, us there
be us there in the air.
And this city here,
right in plain sight and swaying
in the salty breeze blowing in stiff
off the racing aching blue seas,
this City of Bones dancing on air
with my words
there in air
like banners in the wind,
like thirsty golden kerchiefs
flying midst meteors, comets,
midst stars in the night
flapping in the solar flares
and furies of the sun and lapping
up the finest purest beams
of silver, argent grey moonlight
And those fires
(of the night)
my words those silver fires
streaking, shooting across
the vast expanse of velvet
black thick nothing, silver flames
curling, licking at the bones
of the City hanging
in the deep dark void
And the music rounding there amidst
those handy banners sounds like owls
talking soft and hooty in the wind-torn branches
and our hearts are slender limber flexing long flagpoles
and we fly our flags of love like maidens flying
tokens for our champions…
Together we all
(words and banners and bones)
shine upon your battlements
Barcelona
City of Bones
Steeples and graves stand marked in memory,
by a crucifixion making way for the last to be first,
and the guilty pardoned, making way for
the creature and The Creator
(the Dying/Living One Living/Dying,
dying/living here, within me too,
I who lack in every grace
to just die already,
so full of Great
Grace to live
always)
it’s a sign so mysterious and standing
at the core of history the core of the world.
CORE:
suffering,
death, tragedy,
and sad sorrow He
(Supremely human He)
submitted willingly hanging
doggedly broken and bleeding
holding our infirmities in
His bloody Holey Hand
(He’s Got The Hole
World In His
Hand)
it’s a gift of forgiveness
and assurance, depiction
of the depth of divine mercy
and hope of God and us.
Is this querulous song enough
to quiet restless running thoughts
and ease unanswered questions’ ache,
that burn so cold in hearts laid low
in suffering, hearts whose hope is seized
and despair left laying in its wake
(suffering-wake)
But we must carry willingly
defeat and thirst and emptiness
through to the end of darkness, to
the end of self, and to the world’s long waited end
bringing meaning to suffering and peace to hearts in pain
in this symphony of blood
in this song of loss and gain.
I am the bristly nest from which the great blue heron springs.
I am the stones upon which stinging ice-churned runnels ring.
And there, those fires hot from which the Phoenix rare takes wing.
I’m scintillating embers, coals ablaze and life giving.
They named me foul pale heretic and laid me down to rest,
outside the white-washed churchyard walls, outside their ruddy fold.
And there my hot blood flowed rich-red to feed their bloodless grass,
I deep red died upon that emerald sward of murder bold.
And I do let my bones peek from the curtain of my skin
and thus do I me nourish every living thing herein
with my authentic self and my unconquerable song,
my passion unquenchable and my me a sacred throng
of birth from death and life leapt up in winds, in rain and dew
I am nest, stone and embers singing always clear for you.
and thus it is unholy ground is cleaned, hallowed once more,
and every living thing’s communion, ever opened door
when your history is called lies by liars…
“The saddest thing that can happen to a person is to find out their memories are lies.”
— Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Directive
Robert Frost
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry –
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
From far out in the center
of the naked lake
A Lost Loon’s Loud Lament
Echoes the cry of someone.
My love, we did not arrive at this place
To remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like trees.
Trees are broken in winter and start again
Drawing up from
The Great Root.
Like Trees
We live again.
the way you talk, what you write
like acid in my mind dashed
against my face and in my eyes
I wish I could eradicate
the you you have become
and keep in tact the other one.
but you are blood inside my soul
you are my heart drawn and quartered
and existing here within, unbidden
inescapable because you sprang
off from my heart’s heart
from my heart’s heart
which hopes eternal for
the return of spring
and the red songbird to sing
I am a broken girl and I am
not so easy to love like
carefree normal confident girls
next door in cotton and flannel and lace.
I live inside a fortress and I hide
inside shields and my soul
lives centuries in seconds
I am a survivor of wars
that break the strongest
men so flimsy.
Can you love me so strong that mountains
collapse into the dust of quiet surrender?
Can you melt my doubts and burn my soul
hotter than cold death and abandonment?
Can you endure my very worst days and stand
me not knowing that I am beautiful,
can you erase the thousand tormenting words
the sibilant whispers from hell’s pits of isolation and horror? 
Can you stand that I am thinking even now “Why would you?”
Why would anyone?
I run from you,
but do you see that I run
far slower than I could?
Do you even know
what that means?
Why won’t you chase me?
Could you provide me anything
that I can rely on, any routine
that will be as sunrise and sunset
again and again?
Could you give me a pet name?
Could you kiss me, touch me?
Then do it again, and again.
I am a broken girl and I am
thirst itself so strong that Sahara is oasis.
I am a broken promise but I love
with loyalty that is the stars’
commitment to shine in the night.
I am a broken girl and I am
I am a ghost wandering in the dark
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wandering lost and in sorrowful shades
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
I am a wailing voice keening in grief
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
Wrapped in a funeral shroud black and white
and you don’t even know,
you don’t even see.
You walk into the nook, seeing me here
but you don’t even know,
you don’t even see
you don’t even hear me screaming.
Be yourself only
different now
somehow
with all
that
grief.
In case you ever
thought that
you were just
a being, just
a humble
presence
you are not just
anything, you
mean something,
more than that
you mean
everything,
because everything that
means something
beats inside
of you.
The monolith of your decided thoughts
looms large in dreadfall shades and shadows stark
of lost judgments formed in historic fogs
and lacking light and love, short on comfort.
and I am shrieking-dwarfed in their shot gaze
unblinking, baleful red and white and black
for all those choices made back in lost days
in reactive guilt and in hidden shame
give recoil now to even the mere name
of who and what I am, what I am not.
and still I throw myself against those stones
those bastions large and looming, standing there
in granite ground into your heart and bones
that glass unbreakable that you have set
to look thru, thinking seeing is the same
as being, but it’s not, not even close.
because you cannot touch me…no…not quite
…you will not touch me, that’s it, you will not
then I am naught…and my face…ohhh my face
my face against your glass red, blue and white
red and blue and white and I can’t get a breath
my face against your glass, your glass my death
I froze white
in an instant
just a glance
just seeing
everything
except me, eyes
bouncing here there
everywhere
except me, fingers
draping, dragging
dancing around
edges, middles,
dabbling in puddles
and oceans, seas,
except me
black hole
in the middle
of your
universe
No…the water
is not dirty
or polluted or
even stagnant.
It’s just cloudy,
this water, cloudy.
It was clear and warm,
luxuriant and lazy
but quick-like, to pull you
in and then lay you
down easy and gentle
and snug.
But you
never came in
so my desire,
that unknown
cloud unknowing
leaked out,
just trickled away
around me
until the pool
was cloudy
and thick
with my
longing want.
When you lose the rest of everything
and the curb merges with the gutter,
wander on down the grey road
in the weak darkness, thin and sorry
for its skinny powers.
Like you, it has been stripped
and hollowed out by pillars
of strange orange man-made lights
that pulse to rhythms eldritch
and out of whack.
Turn left at the golden arches
and meander downhill toward
that weedy field of thistles and look
beneath its frosty veil for the path, no…
the part traversing that bristly mane
low and lurking deep in the foot
of the silent graveyard speaking so insistent
of what it cannot say.
Head to the pylon, pushing thru the wild roses
and brambles and you can find me, sleeping and still,
swathed in brilliant reds that have been infected with
the sicknesses of too much and too little.
Cast-off Goodwill wannabes swaddle me
in the mangy light so far away from even
Bethlehem let alone a stable, and I struggle
to stay beneath the thready stream of thin sleep
doled out to me like penitentiary-gruel
to dulled-out dwellers in the dimness
that masquerades as just desserts deep-deserved.
Feel that moist air clinging to your cheeks
like my fingers used to cling to those faces
cherubic and innocent and unaware of the plague
awaiting outside the place we all used to live.
Smell that rank faint scent that lives only
at the foot of graveyards and only creeps
out in the dead of night…and take a deep breath,
for that breath is your inheritance now, in this
long first night in the fake wilds beneath
the petty-coats of this town but no longer with
a place to call home, or even a cover to keep out
the creeping dread of realization that this will happen
over and over and over and over and over and…
you can curl up behind me and we can spoon and
maybe our touch will lure the moon over
the crouched hump of the bridge that sings once
in a while with the passing of scrabbling
metal beasts scurrying thru this place
on the way to nowhere.
Or if that small comfort is too slow and uncertain,
trek across the creek and look under the bridge
by the trestle beams so dark and still and
certain of their strength.
They sweat in cold beads
and if you stick out your tongue
you can trap a few drops there and here
that will cool your ravaged hot throat torn
with such thirsty longing for what used to be…
and if you stick out your arm, well then
swift flows the river current for those
who would brave the rapids and ravages
of those waters.
But then again, you may as well
take the shortcut, up the twisty hill
and lay down amidst the still stone angels
and the lumpy skeletal headboards
amidst the sighing dead awaiting
for the Rising Morning…
I live here now, in this red infected light
of lone loss and dewy violet memory and
I’ve learned to thrive off things despised,
I’ve learned to sift the dregs and love
the cast-off lees and living here
wrapped so warm in Autumn Leaves
and with The Least of These…
I think I prefer authentic life even
in light somewhat diseased rather
than the full on blind brilliance
of that time past asleep in true light
but wasted light streaming on by
while my eyes were shut and sealed
and my heart full of things I knew
that just weren’t so.
Wander on
down the grey road,
for I am waiting
here.
we simply must face it,
we are on the brink
of loss blind as wind
and empty as death.
but loss is a gift
when you think about it
it gives us some space
and cleansing tears too
it gives sacred questions
pathways to the center
and old maps long lost
to ancient deep wells
distraction is gone
what’s left to distract?
we can burrow deep
under blankets of dark
and holes in our heart
that nothing can fill
but pure love and light
shining in and out
so now we can go
out into the world
and carry these things
to all who are hungry
for true things not false
beneath blood and skin
and deep in our bones
the true love of God
When light fades in upside down slow burn
that looks like sunset when it’s actually
just God’s Hand on your heart
Their dimmer switch of love
spinning round on and off…
brighter…not-so-bright…dark.
It’s in that plenary dark it seems
like love gets lumped together with
some lesser things indifferent to
light, and trumped by passions fading,
passing, dressed like love but there
beneath the pomp and circumstance
they lurk…contempt and loathing
lingering like endless expectation-fogs
of timid cold perfection leaving
just the loss of warmth
withholding cleansing cold.
When love is dialed down, dimmed to death
within the dark in that slow fade
and one swift moment final…and then…
there it is when you discover
in the flipping that the one you love is dead
or dying in your heart that’s aching
for a dawn that’s never breaking
and your edgy flesh is melting
and the burning in your throat
is draining into every vein
inside the pulsing sack of pasty skin and flaccid muscle
and red blood gone white with grief…
and day it doesn’t stand a chance
amidst that endless drone of hope
distressed and impotent before
The Hand that keeps the lights turned
dim and distant
and all you can do is wait just wait
for brightness to return, slow, rising
up painstaking there beneath…
your heartache heavy…lumpy…
quicksilver mercury mercy
glowing faint, insistent, slow
becoming wonder rising but
indefinite and vague and blurry
your heart shaken shifted stirred
and torn apart and all that’s left is
love and breath
the dignity of daring to love
greatly, fiercely, full and found
in faith
that love and breath
alone remain
i sit in tall grass, silky
lashing back and forth
quiet like tiger-tails
talking in air, with movement
i think about earth
hung spinning in space
hurtling round the sun
amidst the bright stars
(but none of them close
so i am really not amongst
them, not at all)
and i am the moon
growing in silence
fattening on gentleness
increasing with time
and in finding myself
and then come those sharp
hungry teeth gnawing
and others come clawing
with silences ringing
or spoken words shattering
indictments sharp thrusting
and I shrink, get smaller
my light become shadow
and me just a sliver
barely hanging on
and then the world spins
and moves round solaris
and this achey cycle
starts over again
i am the moon
and i miss you so
If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out. Right?
This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published. And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.
But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.
The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.
Mostly what happened? The binary. The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…
What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?
And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…
What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing? Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.
I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though. Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…
…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…
I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new. Say on. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.
I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.
what do I
do with all
the loss?
I never knew
the absence
of things
could weigh
so heavy,
could loom
so large.
Truly the Pearl
of Great Price
does indeed
cost everything
Across the ocean, you,
there without drowning
and I don’t know how
that happened, because
I grieve and take on water
in sputter-gulps and gasps,
dog paddle-fighting every wave.
But this your journey you have chosen
alone and must…choose alone.
I regret so deeply that you also choose
to live this life alone as well.
But I have choices too
and I choose Spring
even though my favorite
season is Fall.
I will always be right here
to offer you swimming lessons,
yes, always and forever…
but I will not drown with you
because how could I see Spring
return to claim her crown?
So instead I sit and watch waves
in this unexpected storm, this fat
cloudburst of grief unplanned
and out of budget.
I grieve the living when the living lie
in tattered shadows of what could be.
I wish it were different, but nonetheless,
I am okay, in spite of all these griefs
unplanned.
Thus shall I let go
(like trees release their breath
and birds release their flight)
of all that keeps us bound.
Blood by blood
and hope by hope
and I swim, harder,
faster now.
Because my grief
is my life boat,
I know I cannot drown.
But I still hurt for you,
your loss your sadness
crumpled, misshapen
in all this…and this,
most of all I hurt
for the aloneness
of your journey
you unmoored
from past and future
dark and just beyond
the curvature of your
moon so dark tonite.
But tho I hurt,
though I have
no tears left
I am alive
and I embrace
my own life
as my own
and mindful,
vested in
this journey
that I take
and undertake
at last.
Waves in steely oceans
of sandy sorrow and me
bound by blood and bone
to you alone, forever
in red-stains wrapping white
chains soft and firm with
my gallant foolish choice
to summon forth
a fragment of God.
Before I know it
I’m on the edge
of another wave,
silver, falling green
wave of grief
when I recall
you have never
died…you are here,
struggling to get
through your own
waves, and…searching
for the way
to survive into
your life in spite
of me.
Those dreams I held for you
(I hold them for you)
they keep me in that still place
and I fight it when those feelings
blow away as easily as my breath,
They were my dreams anyway,
not yours, and life — yours —unfolds
under your nose, a mole emerging
from our messy lawn of dandelions
and daisies and bluegrass…and your dreams?
I dunno, they taste like a conjured normal
new and unfamiliar to us both
I hadn’t planned on grieving.
It just sorta happened, sorta blossomed
like a small grey cloud appearing
against that impossibly happy blue sky
while life scurried by, rushed across
the intersection of Existence and Vine
and the fluffy cloud became clouds
and clouds and they clawed their way across
that untouched sky so blue so blue,
bluer than my heart or my breath.
Your body is still warm
(but oh so cold inside me)
your mind whirring on
(but seized-up inside my soul)
your voice chatters (in my mind)
like squirrels or gears
in someone else’s ears,
while your lungs billow
poisons and false memories
in out in out in out in
and my grief sucks in
and my grief blows out
and so on…
it was eyes,
everywhere each one
attached to a beak, each beak
trilling so shrilly, chattering
in clakkety chirp-chirruping
in brackish raucous screams
loserloserloserloserloser
this forest was once a place
of wonder and the night
so full of promise but now,
it’s like the stars have fallen
from the sky and become
these birds, these birds with eyes
and beaks and nothing to sing,
just screams in a trackless forest
with a past turned out to be a dream
and a future that’s just a strip mine
yet unzipped, undug, yet torn open
and a present consisting of merely
the sound of these eyes so sharp
and beaks blunt just like red clubs
and no melody down here in sight
How did I get where I got? How you got left behind?
You could have come along, if you would have. You could have called. You know where I live, you could have come over.
You still can…if you have the courage to.
Or the desire to leave behind useless old ways.
Either way, there is dead weight that must be let go of to come where I am.
I can’t really say it feels like a loss…it more astonishes me than anything else, that relationships I thought were fairly deep and strong had the roots of dandelion fuzz but lacked the ability to travel on the wind.
Over these beauty-strewn flower fields
my heart overwhelmed at last, it yields
to the clamour and the clash of shields
and bombs bursting in air.
And I imagine how the ghouls
of war and battle grab handfuls
of humans gathered here, like fools
to fight for something there
in those fields,
their hearts snatched cruelly from their chest
thrown up, confetti, and the rest
a bloody mass, the reeling guest
of Death astride its Pale Horse…
But now, the field is strewn with flowers,
confetti fell and by Love’s powers
became Her blossoms and Her bowers
of healing evermore
and never again, please,
never again war
In Confetti Fields,
Scattered
1. You made her cry.. a lot
2. She wanted that last piece of cake
3. It hurt
4. She was always afraid
5. She knows she’s not perfect
6. She watched you as you slept
7. She carried you for longer than 9 months
8. It broke her heart every time you cried
9. She always put you first
10. She would do it all again
and your arms were all about me
like spring clouds soft and grey
and fat with rain milked from
fountains of the morning dew.
I woke, and there was nothing,
nothing but you…you in my heart,
in my thoughts, you like tides
in my veins.
Here’s what clashes inside me,
like tides and beaches under skies,
clanging loud and clear against crags
midst thunder and silky lightening:
I used to have everything anyone said
was required to be happy and content and yet
I was in despair
for there was nothing of me inside and yet
somehow I was there,
a mute witness to the horror of myself and full
of one long interminable silent scream…
And now? Now I have lost it all
(except you, dearest one)
and yet gained myself within
and thus find joy unspeakable
midst this storm of tears,
clash of times and loss
of all (even my fears)
and utter failure…
Now I sit in deserts dry
(no oasis in this barren land,
that oasis is become me),
I sit still midst salt and sand
and snakes and smile, because I am
become a meadow here inside,
and poppies dance beneath the breeze
and sway in purple twilight ways,
in this velvet twilight, mmmmm
this twilight in lavender
| — | René Magritte, speaking about his piece, “The Son of Man” |
| — | Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story |
I’m pretty sure that all of us have experienced sadness, but I really don’t know if all of us have experienced grief.
I’m talking about that helpless rage that is so great it is calm, so empty that you have never felt so full, and so sticky it seems you can never be expiated.
It comes from the loss of something or someone you were not designed to lose.
You do realise that, don’t you? Human beings were not designed to experience this sort of relational loss.
Loss is the result of something else that happened to creation due to the way free will was/is decided to be used.
But as with all forms of fracture, God is faithful to bring forth creative answers and counter-creations, in all Their faithful infiniteness…They always have a beauty that will come to you and weld with you and in you, and though the fracture is never “not have happened”, it is somehow made beautiful.
This.
This is the hope, and the glory of God. They are faithful, each and every time, if you will be patient, hold on, and keep your heart open.
I’m going to take this from you
but give this to you instead:
more space, cleansing tears,
better questions, compassion,
pathways to the center,
maps to deeper wells,
less distractions,
blankets of darkness,
little pools of light under your skin
where he touched you
but will never touch you again,
and holes in your heart
that nothing but pure love can fill.~ McCall Erickson
Those
broken shards,
*scream*
those brittle,
bright blasted shards
jagged and hungry and
so shockingly absent.
They yawn with full belly
and ravenous soul for more
death, more hurt, more
*unlife*
but I have them
in my sights, now.
I shall throw me down
on my sister’s wounds
I shall bleed my heart dry
with balm from Gilead and
I shall cry out
in constant consolation
from her inward parts
while our
Strong Soldier Sisters Stand
round about us outside and ringed
in winged-woman-might
and tender hearts
so knit,
so tight.
And in
your death place
I find
life transcendent
And in
my own
your laugh rings
so resplendent
we will survive
our screams,
our tears,
our grief
and rest together
in Mama’s Sweet Relief.
Tonite the rain
seeps from the sky
in windy swells
and shower sighs,
oozing sideways
thru the grey
and slowly
watering this day
and watering me,
here, watching.
you, sitting there,
on that strange bus
going…where?
Oh why’d you ride
that carriage dark,
Ah, why’d you treat
it like a lark
to ride that sterile
Mystery Train
of darkling Truth,
forgetting lessons
learned in youth…
and me, stood there,
near, watching?
Your brother ran
that show, so full
of twisted fairy
tales for fools
who should know better,
don’t know worse
so they make sow’s ears
from silk purse,
intricate, smoke,
his modern show
of life and leisure,
ending bound up
in truth-mal-seizure
and me, in agony,
there,
watching.
But then you turned,
you saw me there
and your face crumpled
as you stared,
and understanding
bum-rushed you
and carried you
from Timbuktu
into the truth
of you and me
and what our hearts
had knit together,
free and flesh
of flesh, and bone
of bone, you saw
me, stood,
there crying.
and then your face
turned inside out
and I saw your heart
all heliotrope
and bloodstone it
did drain back towards
the skies and then
it pushed out of
your eyes, and violet
tears ran down
your cheeks as your soul
broke in both
our grief while I was
there,
there, waiting.
And you ran fast
towards the door
and it did open
then, what’s more
you knelt and fell
down to your knees
and wept so bitter
in your lees
and I ran to you,
there, crying.
and you on that step,
wracked with sobbing
to beat the band
and me on that
hot pavement sharp
and biting, crying
harmonic to
you sighing, and
your face covered
in tears of violet
flow somewhere
between red, blue,
purple, and grey,
like your eyes,
of velvet, violet
grey…
and then I woke
before we could speak
the words our hearts
broke to say
and never cease to say
and you were gone
midst tears…
midst tears of violet flow
and me left,
there, crying
i’m befuddled as jokes,
while i sit here and stare,
at the ordered brush strokes
that are hung there, mid-air
translucent and shimm’rey
in a gloaming lost day
i have witnessed the fading
of the old beauty way
while the efforts of many
seek orange everlasting
orange for my heart,
bits of white lay contrasting
and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed
by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange
so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme
before it was orange,
with some white thrown in there
cus nothing rhymes orange
it just hangs in the air.
Here…these waters.
How did I end up here?
Off-shore, un-moored
and docks all far away
behind me in the mists
above me in the air
above the waters
I traverse?
And guppies become barracudas
goldfish become sharks,
how did that happen?
Something in the water?
Something that doesn’t belong?
I guess that would be me,
heavy metals and radioactives
tainting all I touch.
I was always chained to edges,
I was always tossed by tides,
back and forth
up the beach
and down to seas relentless,
in the running of the tides of time,
in the running from the tides of time.
But now I swim unmoored
in unfamiliar deeps
surrounded by voracious
cruel cold creatures sleek
and fit for fit survival
by merciless sharp teeth
and furious assaults
of shredding ruthless words
and I’ve no idea whatsoever
how leaving the docks
marooned me here unmoored in deeps
surrounded by cold sharks
**yes, I am cognizant of the litanies writ, spoke, imagined, nursed and harbored…I know the recitations red and rough, I have my own remembrance, written in blood and sweat and tears, and silent visits in the night to sweetly sleeping angels soft, and exhalations beautiful and smelling so of life…and hair, scented like bread fresh from some heavenly oven and broken for me and put in hair…pulling me thru the valley of death…
…and discovering that my grateful declarations were in fact resented and received as guilt trips laid, it crushes me to my core…and something is defeated there, something there has died, in my core…
this is the unmooring of which I speak, the unknowing in which I am marooned…
and worst of all is the finding of complete strangers in places I knew every inch and wrinkle, and it is this that unnerves the deepest, for now every word spoken, every question asked, every thing created, I have no idea if what I think about it is real, is actually real…my truth meter pegs and then it seems all others call that up “down”, that north “south”…
…and I send up SOS flares, ask trusted hearts to read and to consider offerings of soul and heart, attempts to understand…and silence towers, and life looms and busy threatens…
that is what this poem is about. Swimming in strange waters in a strange land with strange sights and fearful creatures so hungry for my blood and so uncaring of the carcass left behind and so disinterested in the living heart that fiercely cries out “we are here we are here”, hoping Horton is out there, somewhere, a faithful elephant who never forgets…
Long ago the Psalmist asked “Whom have I but You? Though the mountains fall into the sea, though the colored dawns turn to shades of grey, I am learning to see the beauty of the greys and the glories of the canyons whose majesty is manifested in the things that were removed…
I do have Father, and I do have my Good Shepherd and Great High Priest who passed thru the heavens themselves and not a veil of cloth and skins…and I do have Great Holy Spirit, whom my heart cries to again and again “Mama”, She of wisdom and tender mercy, She who was there at the Lord’s beginnings, She by whom all was made that the Lord made…
…I have Them, and being unmoored with Them is like taking my homeland with me regardless of where I roam**
words are all I have left,
soft and furious
like ocean waves
breaking on themselves
far out to sea
and lonely
because there are no rocks
to dash themselves on
sometimes those words
get frozen inside my mouth
because everything around me
is cold and static
but the words are insistent
and well up inside me
soft and furious
C’est pas grave…
Si j’ai le cœur en lambeaux
Les yeux en sanglot
Les joues chamallow
Et la voix lamento
Presqu’une épave…
C’est pas grave…
Si l’amour s’enfuit
Si le jour se prend pour la nuit
Si l’hiver encore me poursuit
Si le diable me séduit
Je ne serai pas son esclave…
C’est pas grave…
Quand le ciel me tombe sur les pieds
Que je me sens abandonnée
Que ma plume perd sa volupté
Que mes mains sont désarmées
Je continuerai à jouer les braves…
Mystic4Ever
Le 25 Novembre 2012
Here, at this late and early shore
in clammy mist and silent roar
shriven and stripped, scoured to my core
and needy midst this weather-war.
I wait for you with my torn heart
Clutched in cruel claws and pulled apart
by lonely memories sweet and tart
in loss I’m given this fresh start.
Remembering fire in this rain
Remembering sweet in suffering
Remembering roots thrust deep in pain
and incense smoke removes my stain.
Old wood, dead wood and debris
and underbrush, flammable me
has fed the flames’ raw hungry plea
Consumed, renewed and set me free.
Sky and sea and wind and time
wash me clean of my past’s thought crime
And scrub away my grief and grime
I’m born again in Love sublime
Shuffling back and forth between…
night and day
week and week
(weak and weak,
strain and struggle)
sighs and sorrows
…the pain of this passage
of time and tears
is present always,
palpable still,
pulsing in my yearning heart
gone nova with the memory.
I lay awake midst pain and memory,
I neither sleep nor slumber
but instead ache and remember…
I re-member, piece by peace,
arrivals and departures.
We wear memories and longings
like stained t-shirts and chinos
and shod in our torn sneakers
we shuffle down the path,
so pebble-strewn and painful,
so rough hewn, uneven
and inevitable.
As soon as we arrive,
our hearts know we have to leave.
As soon as we leave we burn,
knowing that we must return!
Each journey punctuated
by our songs sung in the night…
songs of lament and longing
songs of suffering and sorrow
songs of remembrance and redemption
songs of deliverance and the coming day
…alas…memory is a river terrible
that must be crossed.
The crossing…the crossing!
That’s the common factor present,
primary and consistent,
pervasive and persistent
and it moves,
from background
to foreground and
back again
while it waits its turn to step up and partake
of the Communion Feast, its Sacred Supper,
the Holy Sacrament of our Sojourning Hearts.
I’m decided, I am settled.
I’m on the right side of pain!
I’ll not let anyone or anything keep me captive,
stranded on the wrong side of memory
and out of phase with time!
I intend to feel the pain of others,
bind their broken hearts,
be marked by suffering…
…no, wait: be marked
with suffering by my Mama!
In this looming collision between
uncomfortable mystery and unyielding mercy
and that suffering, ahh…
I can neither sleep nor slumber
because She who inhabits Eternity
neither sleeps nor slumbers but Is
Awake with those who suffer
and There with those who faint, who fall
and falter in the crossing…
She is there (I’ll be there too)
in Her house held up by beams
from that battered rough-hewn Cross,
shining fair with great doors open
thrown wide open to receive
all Her suffering children broken
in the crossing…in the crossing
and Her invitation spoken
Come and rest here at Her table,
there’s a place for every person
in the ending of between
and arrival of the Present
Oh, the greatest Gift of all, the Present!
When the crossing’s done …
I neither sleep
nor slumber, waiting…
pregnant in this moment
and present in
the crossing.
Dread.
I feel it still.
Laying
at the base
of my throat
and throbbing dully,
quietly slumbering
with one leering eye
cocked open always
and leaning towards
my heart.
My heart…
chipped and worked,
touched and chilled
by the frozen fingers
of dread and
shards of it lay scattered
at my feet clear,
jagged glimmering
broken.
I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog
thick and lingering, but
2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it
I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more
than a dream.
It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew
or if it even could.
It was a year
without windows
but many doors
and ladies
and tigers.
There is more to life than meets the eye,
more than can be measured
by the senses or a census
but this morning there is just
the fog behind and the early dark
ahead awaiting dawn.
and Dread
and my heart shaped
in its cold hands
and God’s Warm Heart.
Across the prow of my ship
the rain slants and glints
in the deck lights (dark lights)
like silvery needles
sent to stitch
the past and future
together in this moment.
I think of Presences.
Emptiness…
Nothing…
Silences…
Absences…
Love…
Memories…
Hope…
Them…
there and here with me
in time and triumph,
tears and tragedy
but only One
does my heart
awaken in this dawn
and set afire tears
upon my face
a God of grace,
a God of love,
a God of…justice?
Justice.
I don’t even know where
to start with that!
I face forward
into dawn’s early light
empty,
confused,
seeking,
the way of grace
not effort!
in the silent moments,
when nothing speaks
(you did know that, didn’t you?
Nothing speaks.
Have you not heard its voice?)
and to stopper its relentless words
my mind goes elsewhere,
and I wander back thru pages of the days
and chapters of the years
and past volumes of the decades
until I stop at last
in children’s books well thumbed
and read nearly to death.
it is there I see you still,
and in your running laughter
released and giggly grasping
our guts in gales of mirth.
i see your eyes unguarded,
your innocence intact,
your trust still whole, unshattered
unsullied by grief’s touch.
I see your wispy curls, I see your toothless grin,
I hear your nonsense singing always
and you there, secrets within and harbored deep and lonely
I see you there within.
you cannot know how I feel, here
now…because the books won’t open
into your life unlived and yet to be discovered.
Well…you could believe and listen
when I reach out wholehearted
and full of love to give
and wanting to redeem all
that depression ruined
and self-loathing polluted.
lovelies I was always there
though trapped so deep inside!
I was shipwrecked just as you
when you felt choked by your hometown
well I was dying in my body
smothered in its horror.
The present yous swim into view
and lay yourselves upon
the little yous there innocent,
those brand new perfect yous
and I see at the same time
the spectrum of your beings
in scintillating sharpness
so smudged by separation
and blurred by longing tears.
I see your cold and austere looks
I hear your voice demanding
your questions stark, commanding
“what does your flaw have to do with me? What is your point?
So you suffered, big deal! Worse, you broke me mangled, mutilated
folded spindled, permeated all the air I ever breathed
with your dysphoric world!
“I was not given a choice! If I was, it would not be you!
so just step back, just go away and fade into the pages back
before our volume started, we are now ever parted”.
But as I said…they cannot read into their future
those pages remain stuck together, gummy in a messy wad
of yet to be determined, yet to there be written
in the blood of choices made and in the ink of voices raised
to speak of deeper things…or not.
regardless, I can still take out those books
and thumb the well worn pages
and read the much loved stories
of long lost wholesome glories.
and I will always love my babies there so cherished
and kissed and ever treasured, ever, ever treasured
always ever treasured.
I set off on this journey full of hope.
And wrapped in splendours of belonging here…
or there…it doesn’t really matter there or here
which far exceeds being nothing nowhere
But as I walked the crowds all fell away
and cruel branches raked across my face
disfigured me, tattooed with brutal scars
my garments stripped and used to block the stars
and so my world grew dim and I alone
and my companions left me trapped within
The last straw to which I desperate, clung
was dashed from my hands, hope was trashed and flung
to the four winds and blown away in dust,
left me un-moored, an object of disgust.
But hope is funny, indomitable
and it is sneaky, looking empty, full
and when I dried my eyes, what did I see?
But hope returned to heal and rescue me.
That Absent God so silent and so cruel
had made a move, become the Supreme Fool
and suffered as a lost and lonely peasant
and in absence became Supremely Present
It’s Here, in this fog, everything in shroud
Listen, hear that coming footfall loud
Lion, Lamb and Baby through the smoke
Paying every Promise that They Spoke
There…wet…thin…starving and alone
that’s me abandoned wet, drenched to the bone
and nothing beautiful, nothing of worth…
to this manger…that’s me…comes Christmas birth
And so I will press on, and I will grope
thru deep darkness in this season of hope.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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