Hemingway said that one should write
hard and clear about what hurts
but what if what hurts isn’t that
which stony lays heavy and dark?
what if tend’rest touch and rest
is what hurts deepest, what hurts best?
intimate soft whispers, silk
and lacy heart of cream and crunch
quiet whispers over head
of breeze on branch, what brutal punch
is gentle beauty, soft and blurred
by grateful tears, my precious pearls
slipped down my velvet slick white cheek
I write for all we…blessed meek.
when Truth a blanket insufficient is convicted
and self not be well covered over hands so cold
and madness gibbers in your shiv’ring teeth that chatter
and feet exposed to cold night air and bones that feel so old
I say it’s Self that must be altered!
For Truth it is the size that it must be
Seek not to grow the Truth, for it will alter not
But shrink your self to fit beneath…
whether cold or hot.
Fire races
thru the velde
across my heart,
and our communications,
conversations give way before
those sooty hot and greasy flames.
We run,
we must accept
the invitations we are given
to relinquish our agenda in the burn
and let our swelled importance and our egos
be consumed once and for all, there and finally gone.
Invitations
to strip down and get
to what is most important….
At the river
we see our plans
are not as important
as we think they are, and we?
We are not
as important as
we think we are…are we?
And so
we turn around
and face the hungry flames
and rather than our headlong run
we dance and rise above on fire, on tongues
of fire, on amber tongues of truth and declaration.
Clouds overhead, grey, full,
breaking, gathering can’t decide
which direction they are going,
whether they are hunkering down
thick and juicy or simply socializing
in a vaporous convocation that is all
twisty twaddle and no rushing rainfall.
It doesn’t matter, really. No, really.
It doesn’t matter, because in either case
the sky is constant behind them,
skimming the tops of mountains
and the troughs of wishy-waves
briny and stretching to the spines of stars,
The story of clouds is just pages turning
in The Big Blue-Black Book of Sky.
I lay here on the rock, below both
(the pages and the cover) and I feel
its hot rough rocky tongue against
my burnished sweaty salty skin and I am
slick with the sun’s caresses and drunk
on the wind’s soft moaning crooning
trickling down my throat into my heart.
I bury my cheek into the rock
and its unyielding solid comfort
so tharny-steel-brown and white
and let the wind pick at the drops
of sweat on my skin
and the bits of grit
that the rock gave me to
hold me there and grounded.
Beneath that blue-fade black sky reaching, touching…
Beyond those jumpy clouds roiling, fulminating…
Stretched out on that rock reeking of sun and surf…
Wearing nothing but the sun and the wind and my sweat…
mmmmmm…
I close my eyes and clench my thighs
and cling to stark unyielding comfort
fiercely present and I sing…and I know it…
that rock…there…has been and will be
and in its arms I can be clouds or sky…
or just the wind singing of it, picking at it
for stoney steady souvenir kisses
and pebbly tastes of its embrace enduring
And then I knock and then I melt
and start to flow tangy and hungry
all around and over the rock
and I become conformed and shaped,
imprinted, and tattooed beneath
its scratchy touch and I am
changed and owned…
I am marked
wherever I go
whenever I go
it will go with me
that rock unchanging
in the contours
of my heart
even though
it is still
solid and
unchanging
There.
Where can you run from the truth?
Think I will stand firm…and call.
Yes…I call.
When someone says “I’m just being honest” what they almost always mean is “I am choosing to put myself before you, my feelings before you, my comfort over yours…and then make it all okay with the tattoo across your forehead of ‘honesty'”.
Honesty is the sincere grappling with what is right, cleanest, highest and best in any given situation, and honesty without tact is simple aggravated assault of the soul…
It is the overall good that is the most honest thing, orientation, goal.
And you darn well better make sure that you have standing with a person, deep deposits of presence and consistent serving before you make a raid on the account in the name of “just being…”
One thing I have learned…
to be content
with the
size
of truth
Don’t be afraid to plead–
Be proud to be outrageous so long as
you have regard for “un-with-it” truth.
Say things that are, and are not the same.
Accidental or intentional, internal or external,
or both, it does not in the least represent sloth.
All of us feel losses. And we–we were not robbed
of the pastoral dream of youth–
just the pastoral dream of maturity.
To write in mockery of the system is the ultimate
Slavery to the system, of all things.
To say “I Love You” to language, especially now,
in its decayed condition–
to tickle the ear with musical savvy–
to say that human integrity can walk
hand in hand with responsibility…
It’s a challenge to chaos
Hurled!
Why use language?
Why simply to save the Word.
I’ll say it forever, damn it!
Life in a harsh world IS worthwhile!
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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