Author's note:

Sometimes as a writer it's weird to see how things you've written a long time ago relate to people, and experiences and situations in your present? This blog is a kind of celebration of time not being linear, but very multi-dimensional. So, I'm playing with some older poems now and helping them find their place-- ala Emily Dickenson who, like me, enjoyed playing with rules and punctuation and order.

If you know me in real life, you'll laugh because the last thing I am, and ever want to be is a straight line ♥

a soulin'

a’ soulin’

 

 

for bindi

I can hear myself think here
in this journey of wild divine
hear me come a’ soulin’
a’ soulin’ in your lovelight shine ~

here I come a’soulin’ in your soul so true
here I come a’soulin’.. souling deep within you

a friend, a lover, co-creater and muse:
soul shine yen yang whispers clearly so blue ~
fill me with your fragile beauty, with your questioning within
hear me come a’ soulin’ ~ a’ soulin’ across that ocean wind ~

here I come a’soulin’... in your heart so clear
here I come a’soulin’... can you feel me getting near?

lives hanging in the balance suspended in the wait
here I come a’soulin’ not finding us too late.
eclipsed in the chaos between the sun and moon
someday turning here to now’s way ~never saying never much too soon~

here we come a’ soulin’... what is there to fear?
here we come a’ soulin’...our answers all too clear ~

a soul, a soul, a soul, a soul
the world will ask a penny for your soul?
but we aren’t even from this place?
and our souls we will not forsake ~

so here we are soulin’... souling in our wild divine
blissed in loving freedom, our souls now intertwined ~

a soul, a soul, a soul, a soul …
find me thankful, my beautiful soul ~

12/2006

snow angels, for savannah

 

 

 

i marvel when I think of what we’re making

here….angels in alabama snow ~

and if I’m lucky my grandchildren will know

about this day the same way dad tells me his

 

Christmas memories….

 

the cedar tree with the fat outside lights

and his brother who planted it and hastened himself

home….I hone in on all of that and drink it up crisply…

not MY memory, but mine alone to preserve ~

 

because they deserve that…

 

so, I collect them you know?…in all of their guises:

old santa’s, and lapel pins grandmothers wore,

and bubble lights reflecting the soft mica’d glow

this reflection in me is of Christmases past…

 

and I hope to make that reflection last…

 

in my snow angel.

Now, I'll tell you the story behind that poem. My granny Kate was one of the first people in Georgiana, AL (and to hear Daddy tell it Central Alabama) to have Christmas lights OUTSIDE!  She was a Renaissance woman and maybe the third year or so they had electricity at Mockingbird Hill, Kate got out the Sears and Roebuck and ordered her some big, fat, outside Christmas lights for the Cedar tree planted near the road. The whole community came by to ogle them! The Cedar tree's not there anymore and when I asked Daddy to plant me one, he said "No!"  Apparently JC (John Chester one of Daddy's older brothers) was the one who planted that tree and when it got big enough to shade his grave, well that's when he got appendicitis and died. Poppy says if you plant a Cedar when it gets big enough to shade your grave, you die.

cosmos truth #1

 

 

for landl, always always


affirm yourself woman,
and know your name:

shout it from your diaphragm,
feel it rise up within you willing
that energy triumphant...freedom
trumpeting in the silky purple night ~

that name takes flight.

know yourself woman,
your bloom is becoming:
beckoning nectar rising under
blushing lips, pink tipped sun seeking madness ~

that flower is anonymous.

see yourself woman
through my crystal eyes:
bared naked lady without disguise
moving over and under and all around me ~ 

that lady is mystery.

see the world woman
with clarity of mind:
soul pollution purged through illusion's unkind
moving over and under and all around freely ~

that truth is liberty.

7/2007

 

 

wesley chapel

like so many leaves scattered,
tattered before the ashy day’s end

I find myself caught up in the wind’s

whispered sigh, pushing solidly at my

back….accelerating me and I imagine

 

that small space occupied by your hand.

Not anxious, not getting me out of the way….

instead moving with me as I sway in fiery

reds and yellows and crispy browns ~

a small stand of myself along a cemetery’s edge?

An odd meeting place for lovers without secrets…

hedging bets on dreams never dying…

and I’m caught up in the lacy folds of fence,

the white’s kept in and coloreds sleeping outside

in wiry waiting woods….all tangled,

haunted by neglect yet somehow

freer than their kept counterparts…

with families and a duty during holidays.

we skip stones and generations skip departed

like so many leaves scattered

tattered before the ashy day’s end,
finding ourselves...

11/2009

afterburn

sometimes I’d like to
burn away
this gravity’d girth ~
pain
plane

and jettison
falling away
in ringed fire
mmmm…desire
hotwired in a
stolen shuttle

burning humanity
1111 g's
profanity unheard…
free as a bird
in a spacesuit
built for two ~
high on oxygen laced
kisses.

slipping surly
mundanity ~
insanity;
whispering
eternity
found


paradise unbound:

in a moon walk.

in silent thought

 

in a shooting star

 

we are… burning away…

time travel

today I ran

so fast,
as fast as a kid
who knows she willl be airborne
any minute…

and the illusion paused

transporting me backwards
watching you walk away:
my stunned silence
a hall of mirrors

 

reflecting distortion

because I wasn’t a kid anymore.
I was me.  Now,
knowing who I am
and what I want

 

in comfortable skin.

no narcissistic reflection here,
that reflection I’m seeing
is your crestfallen
hope crumpled in a ball

 

in my stupid fist

 

holding notes passed

questions asked
giggled awkward refusals
now giving way
to adult’s ashes
 

I watch myself run…

 

this time, I’m chasing you down.

Sorry whole

sometimes I'd like to dig a hole
deep and wide and hide
between the covers of the dirt
and work, writing a letter about sorry...
I can see the paper glowing white
as the letters flow ~ bright liquid tears
erasing fears I've disappointed you
and me while I wallowed selfishly
in pitied shame... in distorted humanity.
I am insanely numb in this in-fighting
in my head...the dead of knowing that
you hurt...and I hurt, so on I work
in my sorry whole.

reply

it was everything I never wanted:
staccato on a page,
haltingly painful brevity
stopping just short
of feeling like a fuck-off


it made me wonder more.


so I proceeded,
carefully
tiptoeing through your mind field.
giving what I hoped to find,
with every sentence
still held breath


you would want more


sudden clarity erases doubts
as it dawns on me in your
passive impoliteness
with your gritty teeth
thank-you's:

that is everything I never wanted.

 



Bayou Boy

I knew you as a boy

Oblivious to your admiration

Tide pulling you to me in

Starry eyed illumination

While I just waxed and waned,

shrouded in my brakish fog…

 

Now I know you as a man

Seriously driven

With eyes not starry but shining still

I thrill at your attention

Then and now,

head turned towards my silvered

gelatin kisses, no longer so oblivious.

 

I wonder about you?
What shines behind those sleeping eyes?
Am I tugging on your dreaming shores?
What lies there?  Flotsam from the past?
So far removed now from bayou’s breath,
from streams and home and permanence,
I watch in shifting phases:

 

Shadowed  timekeeper of our sky

Shared once, shared still…

No-one has to know but us?

My nightly runnings through your glass,
Drifting in dreamland's technicolored bayou brilliance.
 

Now rising in our morning's purple waking haze,

I'm reflecting in your bayou's gaze.

God, Pet Semetary, Tolstoy and Ravi ~ Improvising truth.

In the olden days, I believe Mozart also improvised on piano, but somehow in the last 200 years, the whole training of Western classical music - they don't read between the lines, they just read the lines.

Ravi Shankar

 

 

 

This has been a very weird, Jungian, connect the dots, kind of week.  First I had a quote from (of all things) Pet Semetary rattling around in my head.  It was the scene where Jud was discussing Missy’s suicide with the main character, the doctor, Louis.  Jud says, “God sees the truth, but waits.”

Hmmmm…

I googled that phrase because it seemed just a little too good to be something uttered by a supporting character in a movie.  Sure enough, I’m correct. Turns out, that’s the title of the short story by Leo Tolstoy.  So now I’m wikipedia’ing the plot of the story:

"God Sees the Truth, But Waits"(Russian: "Бог правду видит, да не скоро скажет", "Bog pravdu vidit da ne skoro skazhet") is a short story by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1872. The story, about a man sent to prison for a murder he didn't commit, takes the form of a parable of forgiveness. English translations were also published under titles "The Confessed Crime" and "Exiled to Siberia". The concept of the story of a man wrongfully accused of murder and banished to Siberia also appears in one of Tolstoy's previous works, "War and Peace", during a philosophical discussion among two characters who relate the story and argue how the protagonist of their story deals with injustice and fate.

 

Reading that paragraph was no less than an epiphany to me. “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” anyone? A tunnel even plays into the story….I can’t make this kind of stuff up! I mean, King totally ripped off that plot right?  No offense Mr. King if you happen to be reading this (my attempt at sarcasm.) I mean they say there are only 5 basic plots ever written and we all re-form those plots to our liking but recently tunnels and domes have been showing up as little breadcrumbs probably telling me as a writer that “It’s okay to NOT reinvent the wheel here. After all one of your favorite authors didn’t!”

This simmers in my head.

So finally another favorite of mine shows up just in time to tie this week neatly together:  Mr. Ravi Shankar. I love improvisational baroque kinds of music, especially meditative ones and find his Ragu Piloo on “West meets East” exquisite.  I spin it often in my cd player, but this week I pulled it out and more than once made myself late to listen to the whole Raga.  I also happen to stumble on his daughter’s homage to him recently and one of the quotes was what I’ve placed at the top of the page. ^^

I laughed.

I’m all **about** reading between the lines. It’s what I do because no matter how rational and pleasing I try to be, I can’t help but do it because life is more fun this way---and makes more sense.  See, to me we are all God’s truth? We all have a divine purpose here on this earth, and that purpose is glaringly apparent in our youth as we find our talents.  But in our efforts to “be successful” and be pleasing in other’s eyes, we tend to just read the lines because we’re programmed that is what we’re supposed to doing. We create a cycle also because that is what we teach our children to do as well, to trust our “knowledge” instead of their intuition.

I don’t think it is what we’re supposed to be doing at all?

I think we’re supposed to be improvising.

And that is our truth.

illuminating antietam

illuminating antietam

the first year it snowed.
she recalled the red sled

and her brother pulling her along

belly down among the grid they sped
so gracefully
placing

illuminating antietam.

now they return every year

letting their little lights shine,
winding down that solitary road
that tells the tale so well

l23,110 strong,
stilled voices mourning

illuminating antietam.

this was their civil war:

oxymoronic bandaged plight,

no white or black there

just red and dread of the day

that didn’t seem to want to end.

that day was spent

illuminating antietam.

and so they all still come

one by one;

impressed by the magnitude

of light's solitary witness.

who’s holy war is this?

illuminating antietam.

I wrote this poem this weekend after reading about the yearly illumination of one of the civil war's bloodiest battlefields. It reminded me of a picture I saw looking at the earth from space at night. There I saw no country, no nationality, no race or religion, but millions of points of light....and hope. I hate war and the idea of all those young men dying in what some might find futility because everyday things change, but basically they stay the same. And as I read and thought about America's bloodiest battle, I thought of the world today...and where I'd like to shine my light.

I like it when history makes me live more in the moment.

Now. Illuminating this cosmos.

newton's third, or c.p. cavafy

newton’s third ,  or c.p. cavafy

 

 

I marked the place with scissors

Because that’s all I had then….all that was conveniently at my fingertips

Daintlily reading titles,  so different from one another….

From  The Next Table to Herodes Atticus

From barely trying to trying somehow too hard

Impressive still.

Such a pretty book in blues and browns…blue dotted binding made me laugh

Unexpectedly…

 I read the preface.

And I discovered my poet brother:  tormented and secretive, classically erotic…

Was also gay.

Then I replaced my scissors.

Ocean’s breath for Stephen and Lorca

green how I love you green:
the tint of my faerie wings in
gossamer’d foamy ocean love
whispering to the gypsy moon above:

I hear him calling me from that foamy wide?
familiarly around my waist his laced fingers slide
so perfectly willing and thrilling my soul
green goddess beauty in love made wholly

free in silver flight, misfit hazy skimming
across that ocean’s breath this starry night ~

green how I love you green,
the silver blue green mingling of the sea,
phosphorus currents mixing magically
igniting imagination’s fire, your eyes shining

free in desire, poet’s hazy dreaming
upon that ocean’s breath this starry poem is agreeing~

with that green fading into blue, silver laced melancholy
falling ~ I hear your ocean’d breathy voice calling

and we’re closer…

closer to that green.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Garc%C3%ADa_Lorca

It's not flying, it's falling with style. . .

I've been thinking alot about falling lately. Or failing, because its something we *all* do and some of us do it more gracefully than others. It's been really easy to teach my daughter to succeed. She set foot on this planet intrisically motivated to do well, and doesn't mind hard work-- so she usually does succeed.

But we all have "one of those days" and teaching her navigate such is well, a little different.

She had one of those days a few weeks ago.

We were at a practice archery meet, same as any other meet and for some reason on this night she couldn't hit the side of a barn, much less the target. I wondered was it nerves? Her bow? Her arrows? Did she suddenly get the equivalent of the shanks? hmmmmm...

So, knowing she would be unhappy with her performance, I got her to the car and let it spill. After she got out her initial upset I determined that her weight had been loosened at practice to work on grouping and and and we didn't know what else?

The last thing I wanted was to assign blame, because really there isn't any, and never is. Bad days happen and will. So I told her all I know to do was tighten the bow back to where she'd shot well before and go from there....to pick herself up and we would practice some at home.

And then something wonderful happened. Jennifer Lawrence fell down at the 2013 Oscars. Now granted I'm sure that wasn't a happy place for Ms. Lawrence, but timing for me as a parent couldn't have been better. Jennifer is the face of Katniss, the Hunger Games heroine, and much to mine and my daughter's horror we discovered she can be clumsy just like us. The falling was AWFUL, what she did afterwards was amazing.

Jennifer Lawrence knows how to fall. She knows how to laugh it off and keep moving forward, and hopefully learn something from the experience.

Long story short tightning Savv's bow helped her find her aiming point again, and her confidence. But more than that I've noticed a huge change in how she approaches her passion. She knows the comfort of messing up and each time she has a flight now, I *see* her relax.

And that is a different page out of a silver linings playbook.

nessun dorma

nobody sleeps anymore

have you noticed?
even those with all the right reasons
wrestle with it each and every night
unable to settle their days
their seasons….
with reason that used to make sleeping people

feel all is right with their world….

nobody sleeps…

the moon even stays out during the days now?

how odd? what she is hiding inside….

shining mostly during the hours

so late….so humbling when you’re wide

awake silently walking the floors

seeing houses stilled dark all around you

wondering if within them…wondering if

there’s someone…

someone noticing….

nobody sleeps…

not in these hours. In dormant day’s end

there’s anonymity perfected in faces illuminated
with other lives….other worlds….other

sides of selves we’d rather not show in the light

of days….so now so lucidly we may create

authentic selves without the mask …yet screened

in bits of encrypted illusion….

we ask ourselves why?

nobody sleeps?

America Sings

America sings

I’ve heard America singing



The gandydancers swinging so low

Folkstreaming visions of work

Now outsourced to a machine

That hums so white but low still



I’ve heard America singing



That poet’s barbaric yawp

Carrying me Home

Celebrating self songs of accomplished visions

While a Native Laureate’s flags unfurl in a river flowing West to Oklahoma



I’ve heard America singing



The pulpit’s amens looking down on

Colorblocked angels who come after me,

Shoulder to shoulder but divided still

In segregated harmonies



I’ve heard America singing



Eyes turned flagward

Before the game…

Mumbled uncertainty of tomorrow’s

Choked on words hard to forget…



Here’s what I hear:



America’s face now in a book

Dancers, poets, underground preachers…players

Each sweet with a prophet’s vision’s babel

Towering cacophony, all talking at once



Listening I wonder am I the only one

Who Heard America's Singing?