Thursday, April 5, 2012
Eve and the Red Reset Button
and a gravity law to boot
couldn't keep my feet solid in this earth
she said as she grasped the fruit
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Letter for a December Baby
Found:
in a copy of Hamlet purchased at a used book store, tucked between the pages of Act Four.
Letter for a December Baby
You’ll like being the girl that listens to jazz and languidly floats thought out the open bathroom window on puffs of cigarette smoke. You’ll find yourself happiest like a moving painting with no speech- all image and form. These quiet, winter night hours when you haven’t spoken a word- just glided through your apartment like a ghost touching where and when you want. Expressing the supreme form of solitude that will drive your desire to reenter humanity feeling like you have a richness to offer, a texture gained from opiate night visions when the world seems to be only a canvas of your imagination. Yes, a shell of eyes and breasts and legs and color, but far from the ill connotation of emptiness. Your shell, an oyster even, taking in the small particles of a scientific world and rolling them around in silky nacre, all in preparation for a hardening, an anticipation for the transfer from your fleshy pieces of warm sanctuary to a reality where you wildly insist there lies hope for their beauty.
You will not always be this girl.
But tonight, and for now, it is the particular season of your life.
Friday, October 29, 2010
a story for a year 2006-2010
not any less intensely, no
don't be mistaken
the waters of my heart are ever as powerful
as they were;
but they churn at new sapphire levels,
close the core of the earth, where stone is forged,
no longer lingering toward the surface
where gusty wind becomes the fierce, quick master.
i am keeping my currents grounded
so that now, over time,
the continents of my life will be moved in the name of Love:
shaped by patience and time,
rather than the whims of an Aeolus-like god.
the leaves are changing in birmingham and the air is crisp. my mother is making tortilla soup. the front door is open and the mid day pours in while i nap on the couch to the ambient noise of a humming ceiling fan and the football game my father is watching in the other room. a kitty stretches on the floor in the beams of sunlight. there is a pumpkin on the front porch and my sister is not so far away. my car is parked in the cul-de-sac in front of our house and i love feeling the leaves crunch under my feet, because i never take the sidewalk. i hear the kitchen chairs slide across the hardwood floor. i smell the cinnamon from my mother's spiced candles, and when the phone rings it is a childhood friend that i can embrace in mere minutes. i feel the peace of being wrapped in familiarity and love, along with the chenille blanket that is always invitingly draped across the edge of the sofa. i am languid, warm, and safe. i am home in autumn, with quiet eyes and waterless cheeks.
vacant spots,
stray nails with no purpose.
just a reminder of structures once designed with reason
but the use is lost.
all that’s left are meaningless parts
missing the whole,
forshadowing the ultimate deconstruction.
-------------------
why am i surprised?
i don’t even like to write in pen
too stark
too permanant
too ominous.
now the delicacy of pencil lead-
the fragile marks on clean paper,
never pushing the pressure: needing to be ever present.
only leaving traces of thought in beautiful smoky strokes,
somehow wisely owning the transitory nature of life.
this
is where i find some comfort.
-----------------------
my mother called.
the tree she planted when i was born
blooms every april,
white blossoms
for 22 years.
this year
they all bloomed pink.
-michael chekhov
to burn that deeply, to live a life so scared and so open that you can wail and thrash and love so immensely, so true. to spark a light in the darkness with your tears and determination. to not let this world own the last thing you can hold dear, your ability to love and live more than you fear. when are we able to regain our lost right? ...frozen by ambition and projected insecurities...when can we give in? and just melt. invoking strength, but not strong like cold steel, or stone. strong like liquid; like water forging through time in its rage of freedom... opening our guts to be pulled forth into the web of humanity we often ignore: not owning our talents as reflections of ego, but truly offering ourselves up as vessels. we end up destroying the gifts that were meant to be our contribution to this world by indulging in fear.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Ode for the Occasional Insomniac (aka: the dreamers)
Well, it may sound trite, but life is so beautiful to me that a lot of times I can’t sleep because I just don’t want to let go of it. As if I stayed awake longer it would stop time from taking the present moment away, which in actuality I know full well it is perpetually doing. It just doesn’t seem true until I drift off and close my eyes… and then when they open again it’s as if they are reacting to the loss- like at the exact moment that I am swindled of a bit of that nectar of life my body instinctively responds, propelling me into attention- begging me to yell, “stop thief!” But in reality, the tectonic plates are shifting under our feet at the pace with which our fingernails grow; time acting in correlation (not being kind enough to rob us with such a gift of swift awareness, but rather sneaking in at such a steady and consistent rate that we begin to recognize the tortoise as a bit of the antagonist in that old Aesop’s fable). I suppose I could go into the Grasshopper and the Ant or The Fox and the Grapes now, but enough analogy for one night, no? At a certain point we must all resign to the Master Pirates of dewy youth- Sleep and Time: cruel enough to take with no discrimination and yet romantic enough to keep fondly provoking the hollows of our mystery regarding hearts.
Friday, May 14, 2010
one more group of three
the three of comedy.
and yet, i read the things i have written at fifteen, nineteen, and since the glory of facebook...even just three years ago. and i feel every moment of everything i composed in the past. i could write it again with the same fingers tip tapping out the arial font- clickity click clack. with the same ache and joy. working by moonlight and wrapping my thoughts in the thick, velvety blanket of night...posing queries like i have never met a lick of melatonin in my small, earthly existence.
the question becomes: is this humorous?! well, i suppose i should find the comedy in my life...so thank you, gods of memory and of media. i am now laughing with the constellations, and it's definitely the best kind of raucousness- straight from the belly.