1.12.09
He opened the door
And watched her walk into rooms
Patterned with his habits
Colored by his dreams
Darkened by his fears
Lit, brilliantly, by his love
He opened the door
And watched her walk slowly
Through the museum of his heart
Touching the art on its walls
Slowly, slowly
Watched her memorize the
Textures, the colors, the shadows
The years of who he is
Watched her imagine
The years of who he will be
And she said,
"It's beautiful. I want to live here."
1.14.09
It is said that today is the climax of winter, the coldest day of the year. I feel it. In my bones, my slow-moving blood, my frigid extremities. I feel it. In my restless, aching heart. Even the sun is hiding its face from the world. Can I too? How wonderful it would feel to slip under, behind, beneath...to relax, forget, breathe, to stop the world and melt.
Wild
"Wild is anything that's not at home." I am not at home. I am wild inside. Wild with longing, with dreams, with the throb of suffering inside these walls of paper.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Alive/The Last Word
Alive
Oh, how hard it is to be this alive! My mind fights to live inside yesterday, tomorrow, to live anywhere but Now. To exist in a nonexistent place. I must wrestle it back and let it rest Here. It is morning and I am awake. Alive.
The Last Word
I am afraid of my memories losing their clarity, their proximity. I am afraid of losing my chances of feeling "at home". I am afraid of getting to the end and being disappointed. I am afraid of changing, as I strive for change with each breath. I am afraid of losing my already slippery grip on...well, what is it I think I have a grip on?
Maybe I need to learn that life is about losing, swaying, dangling, questioning, transforming...all those words that have no ending. Maybe I'm afraid of never having the last word, the answers.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
By Heart/Speak Heart
By Heart
There is hiding-behind
There is sleep-walking
There is immersion
What else is there to do
with a world self-destructing
with a life, a billion lives
shrinking from light?
What else do you do with
the Shadows
but stay still under their coolness?
This is the way
I know by heart.
Speak Heart
Speak, heart
just loud enough for me to hear
tell me what it is you need
could it be such a mystery?
Speak, and I will try to
remember your language
the words are somewhere
locked in the contours of my
crowded mind.
Speak, and while I cannot
promise to understand
I will try to listen
to know the reverberations
of words spoken in the dark.
There is hiding-behind
There is sleep-walking
There is immersion
What else is there to do
with a world self-destructing
with a life, a billion lives
shrinking from light?
What else do you do with
the Shadows
but stay still under their coolness?
This is the way
I know by heart.
Speak Heart
Speak, heart
just loud enough for me to hear
tell me what it is you need
could it be such a mystery?
Speak, and I will try to
remember your language
the words are somewhere
locked in the contours of my
crowded mind.
Speak, and while I cannot
promise to understand
I will try to listen
to know the reverberations
of words spoken in the dark.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Crazy/Ashes, Ashes
Crazy
What does crazy feel like? Like this? Like wanting to escape your skin, your brain, your reality...or like not knowing what your reality is? Like hiding under whatever is closest: a book, a blanket, a smile, a lover, an apron, to take you to a better place. Like hearing many voices that all sound like your own, but you're never sure if they are...or if you even have your own voice. Like seeing life from a distance, scene after scene, because being there in person is too dangerous. Like knowing you have every chance, every reason to be un-crazy, to be happy...and still remaining inexplicably sad (except in tiny, glimmering bursts).
Ashes, Ashes
Cloves snap, crackle, pop
Between my lips
Breezes awaken
A garland of prayer flags
Ashes, ashes fall down
And prayers float heavenward
In the afternoon.
What does crazy feel like? Like this? Like wanting to escape your skin, your brain, your reality...or like not knowing what your reality is? Like hiding under whatever is closest: a book, a blanket, a smile, a lover, an apron, to take you to a better place. Like hearing many voices that all sound like your own, but you're never sure if they are...or if you even have your own voice. Like seeing life from a distance, scene after scene, because being there in person is too dangerous. Like knowing you have every chance, every reason to be un-crazy, to be happy...and still remaining inexplicably sad (except in tiny, glimmering bursts).
Ashes, Ashes
Cloves snap, crackle, pop
Between my lips
Breezes awaken
A garland of prayer flags
Ashes, ashes fall down
And prayers float heavenward
In the afternoon.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Athena/Tight
Athena
In the spaces between action
I find too little, I find a place to
Realize my naked fears.
In the silences I crave, yet avoid
I find too much, I find a place that
Echoes with dangerous thoughts.
I fill and occupy and consume and murder
The emptiness
But it always comes back to life
Rearing its frighteningly beautiful head.
I imagine that life is found
Outside quiet moments
I pretend to need distraction, diversion
When what I truly live on
Is the peace of Nothing and Everything
That is found in the spaces
If I will let myself go
There.
Tight
I do not like, know, recognize or want
This body
The eyes I know, the soul I recognize
It is troubled, floundering
Suffocating, indecisive
This is not new or surprising
The fierce longing, the ache for more
(The Nameless More)
The desperation to touch beauty
And the dark ghosts that numb it
It is me. I am that soul
Crouching inside skin, bone, fat
Afraid to be seen, but wanting
So much to just be known
Without explaining
The voice of my younger self
Still resides in me
Doing what she can to
Pull me into her web
But I can't seem to remember
How to speak her dark language anymore
I understand it, without question
I hear it in my head, my soul
But my lips are those of a woman
Who cannot go back far enough
To say those words again
So there is not peace behind these eyes
Inside this body
That is my burden
How could there be?
In the spaces between action
I find too little, I find a place to
Realize my naked fears.
In the silences I crave, yet avoid
I find too much, I find a place that
Echoes with dangerous thoughts.
I fill and occupy and consume and murder
The emptiness
But it always comes back to life
Rearing its frighteningly beautiful head.
I imagine that life is found
Outside quiet moments
I pretend to need distraction, diversion
When what I truly live on
Is the peace of Nothing and Everything
That is found in the spaces
If I will let myself go
There.
Tight
I do not like, know, recognize or want
This body
The eyes I know, the soul I recognize
It is troubled, floundering
Suffocating, indecisive
This is not new or surprising
The fierce longing, the ache for more
(The Nameless More)
The desperation to touch beauty
And the dark ghosts that numb it
It is me. I am that soul
Crouching inside skin, bone, fat
Afraid to be seen, but wanting
So much to just be known
Without explaining
The voice of my younger self
Still resides in me
Doing what she can to
Pull me into her web
But I can't seem to remember
How to speak her dark language anymore
I understand it, without question
I hear it in my head, my soul
But my lips are those of a woman
Who cannot go back far enough
To say those words again
So there is not peace behind these eyes
Inside this body
That is my burden
How could there be?
Sunday, June 7, 2009
11.24.08/11.28.08
11.24.08
I come to these pages reluctantly, for I know that they will reveal me. I write words, but they also write me. They spell me out, in ways that I fail to see myself. Here, I am exposing, searching...and finding much more than I bargain for.
11.28.08
It's true. How can I possibly divorce myself from Their problems? Now I know. Knowing doesn't disappear. Ignoring knowledge doesn't reduce it or trivialize it. Now I don't want to know. It is what I call "safer" not to know. It is what I call "easier". But is it? Is it safer to reduce myself to my small world, my personal problems? Is it easier to constantly avert my eyes from suffering around me? And if so, why should my goal be "safe" & "easy"?
I am here now, knowledge in my hands like a gift I never asked for...or did I?
I come to these pages reluctantly, for I know that they will reveal me. I write words, but they also write me. They spell me out, in ways that I fail to see myself. Here, I am exposing, searching...and finding much more than I bargain for.
11.28.08
It's true. How can I possibly divorce myself from Their problems? Now I know. Knowing doesn't disappear. Ignoring knowledge doesn't reduce it or trivialize it. Now I don't want to know. It is what I call "safer" not to know. It is what I call "easier". But is it? Is it safer to reduce myself to my small world, my personal problems? Is it easier to constantly avert my eyes from suffering around me? And if so, why should my goal be "safe" & "easy"?
I am here now, knowledge in my hands like a gift I never asked for...or did I?
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
10.27.08/11.23.08
10.27.08
My selves keep resurfacing
some I'd never known before
Evolving Selves...
unsure, peaceful, restless, grasping
ready for freedom
aching to be known
but necessarily hidden, unrecognized
I worry that the surface
is too unsteady
that my Constructed Self
will deconstruct
quickly and without warning
11.23.08
Overprotective? Am I? I ask myself. I am catching myself protecting...me.
There is a tangible distance between body and mind, between thought and emotion. And for moments, when that distance closes in, the gap is filled, I suffer. And I shrink away.
Laugh, sleep, chop vegetables, surround myself with sound, light, music, strangers. These are the ways in which I protect myself from me. This is what survival looks like.
Why does my reality cause suffering? Why is it a force from which I flee?
In moments of reflection (dare I call it meditation?), I see absolute fear. I see years stacked upon one another, brimming with fiction, with disassociation, with many different versions of happiness, with answers for why life is the way it is...answers that speak no truth to my ears.
There are many shadows, and they do not amount to light, no matter how I wish them to.
My selves keep resurfacing
some I'd never known before
Evolving Selves...
unsure, peaceful, restless, grasping
ready for freedom
aching to be known
but necessarily hidden, unrecognized
I worry that the surface
is too unsteady
that my Constructed Self
will deconstruct
quickly and without warning
11.23.08
Overprotective? Am I? I ask myself. I am catching myself protecting...me.
There is a tangible distance between body and mind, between thought and emotion. And for moments, when that distance closes in, the gap is filled, I suffer. And I shrink away.
Laugh, sleep, chop vegetables, surround myself with sound, light, music, strangers. These are the ways in which I protect myself from me. This is what survival looks like.
Why does my reality cause suffering? Why is it a force from which I flee?
In moments of reflection (dare I call it meditation?), I see absolute fear. I see years stacked upon one another, brimming with fiction, with disassociation, with many different versions of happiness, with answers for why life is the way it is...answers that speak no truth to my ears.
There are many shadows, and they do not amount to light, no matter how I wish them to.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
09.08.08/10.02.08
09.08.08
Things must come undone, be recreated, redefined...
Our ideas of clean & unclean
Too much & too little
Fair & unfair
Rich & poor
Convenient & inconvenient
Necessary & luxurious
Ugly & beautiful
Appropriate & inappropriate
Need & want
Work & rest
Right & wrong...
Reality must change, is changing, whether we want it to or not. Ideas we had preconceived don't always work, aren't pertinent. The colors, the people, the essence of this place do not fit into the boxes we brought along. We cannot smooth them out, wipe them down, crop them to size, Americanize them. I am grateful for this. Frustrated and grateful.
It forces us to unclench our fists, let go, drop things. It compels us to speak another language altogether.
10.02.08
I am learning myself like a language. So far I've got enough to get by, to survive. I can communicate with my heart in broken words, familiar phrases. I can understand myself in pieces, if I go slowly, patiently. If I take clues from outside myself--my surroundings, my friends, what I evoke in others--there I see parts of myself revealed, reflected, regurgitated back to me for better or worse.
But when there is no outside, only inside to see, there is much mystery. Within--my true self--is over my head. I haven't learned this part yet. Oh, there are moments, but how small they are! Like blinking, like a breath, like a shadow passing.
The only way of learning truth is to do it slowly, unrushing myself, breathing deeply, keeping my eyes open just a bit longer, even if I do not like what I see. It is then that I will begin to learn--from the inside--who I am...or who I am becoming.
Things must come undone, be recreated, redefined...
Our ideas of clean & unclean
Too much & too little
Fair & unfair
Rich & poor
Convenient & inconvenient
Necessary & luxurious
Ugly & beautiful
Appropriate & inappropriate
Need & want
Work & rest
Right & wrong...
Reality must change, is changing, whether we want it to or not. Ideas we had preconceived don't always work, aren't pertinent. The colors, the people, the essence of this place do not fit into the boxes we brought along. We cannot smooth them out, wipe them down, crop them to size, Americanize them. I am grateful for this. Frustrated and grateful.
It forces us to unclench our fists, let go, drop things. It compels us to speak another language altogether.
10.02.08
I am learning myself like a language. So far I've got enough to get by, to survive. I can communicate with my heart in broken words, familiar phrases. I can understand myself in pieces, if I go slowly, patiently. If I take clues from outside myself--my surroundings, my friends, what I evoke in others--there I see parts of myself revealed, reflected, regurgitated back to me for better or worse.
But when there is no outside, only inside to see, there is much mystery. Within--my true self--is over my head. I haven't learned this part yet. Oh, there are moments, but how small they are! Like blinking, like a breath, like a shadow passing.
The only way of learning truth is to do it slowly, unrushing myself, breathing deeply, keeping my eyes open just a bit longer, even if I do not like what I see. It is then that I will begin to learn--from the inside--who I am...or who I am becoming.
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