seen & heard

Seen : A single daffodil head resting on its leafy hand thriving on a pile of leaves. 
Heard : The very essence of life is it's fragility and 50 is just an opportunity to discover yourself.   

x marks the spot

I know someone who knows someone who took a Xanax today. I'm lying. It was me for the first time. I forgot the stash of samples someone I know gave me in a Ziploc bag. Blue quarter pieces some of which were pulverized by time. 5 minutes in and the memory of loss was heavy on my knees away from the chest cavity where everything and oxygen is absorbed. This probably wasn't a well conceived plan for a runner slash mother. Getting away breathing is a way to get over.  Should I take another quarter to manage the worry? I'm low, kids are up, bills are high. The anxiety of what's left is enough to make me run around in circles while my husband dreams about a drink.  

love admonition

Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes) ,
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine. 
A collaboration. 
I do not believe a word I have said, 
except some, except I think of you like a young tree 
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root 
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go. 
Oh special person, possible leaves, 
this typewriter likes you on the way to them, 
but wants to break crystal glasses 
in celebration, 
for you, 
when the dark crust is thrown off 
and you float all around 
like a happened balloon. 

"Admonition to a Special Person" by Anne Sexton

Seen & Heard

* Detaching from Diamond Street like two dots never joined by a line.

* At this point, I don't read things to be informed. I read things to be reminded.

The Q Bistro

“Let go of the oars, everything you want is downstream.” - Hicks

the wrath of love according to Shakespeare

'love is not love when you do not have to fight for it.'

a minor injury

Playing along rewards in blacks and blues.
Mostly purple hues.  Unexpected,
as always, it diffuses like ink
in a cup of water.  Settling down and drawing
attention to an already troubling bridge. 
Never symmetrical or sturdy. 
Often making my sunglasses buckle.
A leaning tower shifts.
But imagine now.  At this age. The very future
when my eyes work so hard to find
the details under street lights.
What he looks like in my periphery.
The desire lines.  I just can't go
through life feeling my way out
of the medicine cabinet.  I drop a pill
into the sink and down the drain she goes.
Ending up asleep with an ache
inside where the air is thin
and in spasms
it almost meets crimson.

The Madness of Men

I heard from three men in March and the search for meaning is on.  It takes three to get me drunk.  Death happens in threes.  Three is the magic number.  Each one unearthed the madness of wanting them entirely at different stages of my life.  They fearlessly made promises by professing illusions.  Talk about fear of commitment.  My exit strategy was sloppy, sad, and full of rage.  A typhoon crashing into a Beach Boys listening party.  Nothing is real when I'm stumbling, but Tom Collins was a boy once.  That's what I tell myself again and again and again.

what T.S.Eliot said

Woman Running

I run alone in Central Park sometimes 

In the sections where there are no street lamps in sight. 

Imagining that in a big city lives big eyes

Everywhere watching 

I couldn't possibly get swallowed by night.

In the dark corridors footsteps are muted by dirt

And in the breeze I trip over rocks I didn't see 

Falling for a long time until I've scraped a knee 

Maybe it's my mouth that bleeds.

I think about what it feels like to lay underneath. 

Why I didn't check my fingernails

Clean them out in a hot shower before crying myself to sleep.

to really know something

Seen & Heard

* Holding an uncle's hand. Stroking a brother's hair. Hovering over the foot of a best friend's bed.
* Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and dreams of a love of his life whispering while Chet Baker croons.

container

Breaking Silence

I broke the silence like a broken record last night.  A free diver shouting "you matter!"  Even the bitch of a fish with the big teeth and a lightbulb saw it coming.  Not morbid curiosity, but real compassion.  I plunged into blackness where bottom feeders run amok.  I am crabs.  So many all of us except for when the vibrations are overwhelming and it was never his but yours.  The tiny hairs and a sonic heartbeat.  The sharp edges becoming wings and we fly over the horizon to catch the light before it burns out.  That light is yours not his.  You feel sun not him.  And the waves cover my ears.

How Am I Not an Alcoholic?

How am I not an alcoholic?  I've asked.  Often.  Facing a mirror.  In the Shower.  At the bar.  On a couch.  When I'm stupid.  To my closest friends.  To strangers who listen.  Like my emotional affair.  After the breakup.  A New Years Eve meltdown.  During the jazz crooning years. And my hiatus from sleeping.  In the darkest room. I can't seem to shake.  With the right spirit, you can pretend to know all the secrets.  Tell the ones you weren't curious about.   Poetry tumbler out of your mouth.  The kind that doesn't rhyme or isn't metered. Spilling fantasies on a silk blouse.  Head splitting into endless combinations of letters into words into sound under a paper umbrella and modesty tears everything apart.  But I dance better when I don't drink.

water ballet

Unable to perceive the shape of 

You, I find You all around me. Your 

presence fills my eyes with 

Your love, It humbles my heart, For You 

are everywhere.

A Vanishing Life

x: I feel lost.  I don't know how to make things anymore.  

y: Lost can be good. Without lost you can't find truth. Stay lost a little while.

Seen & Heard

Seen: Dancing in August and remembering it's ok to remember last August.

Heard: ... the "letting go"... people say this, but I've realized (by being so bad at it...) that one never does. You accept and love what it was. Hearts are thriving, pulsating, permeable things. They can in-love again if you let them. Be open.

Goodbye Spring

I fell in love with a predator. Cocoon living attracts that sort of thing. Spinning pupa out of control. Sun burning bright. I suffocated in delight. I fell really hard busting my pupa head. Those owl eyes feeding on a slippery mess. You'd think I'd land on my feet or tail or that soft, squishy part in the very back where I know what death looks like. I didn't. I didn't when I was writhing in it and everything grew moldy and thick. I didn't before my smoking wings flew me into the heat of dusk. I didn't because Spring has a pattern like a narcissist and I fell in like a parasite.

i can't go back