Sunday, February 11, 2024

Pardon me

Pardon me, while I invite you to stare at all the mouths for a while...weird teeth and double chins and lips that curl when they smile, like they're advertising orthodontics or toothpaste and the birds are reminders too. Watch them when you walk-maybe you'll see a bird drop out of nowhere, off a branch suddenly materialized and cast off into a beak first nosedive. You'll gasp, imagining a near definite disaster, gravity's grip is just so fierce, until suddenly the wings support the landing and when you see it,  you smile. Because, now, you get it-we aren't birds, but goddamnit we have WINGS, we can find our glide, sure as the sunset finds it skyline, and then walking on, more discovery takes hold. Houses tucked aways, eyes unearthing them like they were never there before, except they certainly were. Just not seen. Your eyes awakened new, you may laugh with the lady passing by on the bike in your moment of close contact, and then inhale deeply the wake of her perfume that somehow reminds you of the color purple. You will come upon a delightful older man tending watchfully to his beautiful arrangement of spring blooms- hands on hips a sense of satisfaction in his stance that can only be enhanced by the admiration of a passerby. So you'll play this role and tell him "how beautiful!" and he will absolutely light up and say "how kind of you to say" and when you return to your own humble abode, sweaty and tired, you'll pause a bit more to the evening events of your neighborhood's nature channel, a plumpy cardinal will visit and as you process full body chills, you will know that all of this is just ethereal confirmation of the sublime. You will know that the line between right and wrong, masks and vaccines, all of it, will remind you that the line between good and evil is not as blurry as you feel. It's all to be found in the here and now, in the sun you squint back, in the daring to feel. That is what I invite you to see, as real. 

<Notes scrawled in a journal on June 4, 2021>

Monday, July 10, 2023

The Forgetting and Remembering

The forgetting and remembering 

Are braided so tightly

It leaves deep angsty grooves

In the mind and in the body


Tension that True Nature wishes to relax,

Over-efforting fails to smooth out

Mental creases 

Until the sitting occurs


And it is not immediate or pretty


Inner chatter broadcasts in the brain

Physical form attuned, shifted

Opening the eyes, then sighs

Making notations belies what is wise


Attachment, Aversion, Delusion-

Three poisons dripping all over everything

How to deny consumption?

With each breath, return to the path


The exhalation allows release

Dismissing imperfections like this 

The inhalation welcomes awareness

Including what is not amiss


Right here

Right now

Is only

This moment


Come back to practice

Over and over; and over again still-

Remember what has been forgotten

The braid hangs loose, at will


Saturday, August 27, 2022

Family Heirlooms

Shame slips in, hooded in the cover of darkness

Insidious, it begins its work, undetected until

A landslide leaves you, stunned suffocation-

Shock is a sneaky way to rewrite a story


And while you begin the work of removing

Heavy narratives and half truths, breathlessly swimming

Inside a thickness of what you've been told is yours

The poet has opined as much (in prior drivel)


Then stopping to sit, a rare shaft of light

Brightens what has yet to be considered

And sudden expansion replicates-

You write lines that move and hold true



Monday, August 8, 2022

How Shameful

How shameful to be pulled 

So far 

        (Society’s collar and leash)

From the fraught moments of childbirth 

A baby then breastfed

Warmed by more than milk-

        (A nourishment inherent in this pause)


Sacred 


Bathing in retrospective sweetness

The miraculousness of a milestone 


Met and forgotten

        (Frivolously filed away, a new day)


New strangers dressed up as years 

        (Wedged and hardened, sticky)

Bloated rings, an overgrown Elm 

Brittle bark flakes, reveals and conceals-

          (An easily contained ecosystem)


Lurking beneath the surface 

Insidious and darling, all of it 


Monday, April 11, 2022

A Soft Place to Land

I call upon words to wrap 
like a blanket or a balm 
Pinning pain before it evolves into
suffering

In doing so, 
I will it to have meaning

Or beauty
Or integrity

Something. 

The staccato currents internally dodge
Conventional language and dancing fingers 
Spread longing, letters lacking character 
Pecking at a keyboard with intentions

A collection of the mind's inventions

What is missing?

A rendering to capture this experience:
The core truth of it ambles onward, 
Strikes blast in such a way to remind 
Standard discourse, unwilling to convey 

Grasping occurs anyway until I hear
"I am going to be okay"
Because essence matters enough

Today.

Grappling with paradox:
Practice prides itself on purposefulness

The terrain of possibilities 
unfurling like a dragon's breath
Mystical, with a reach that extends
into vast space and time

Corners crumble and curl away
surrendering to infinite rolling
Billowy smoke stacks fill the chest,
Demanding emancipation

Holding on is futile
The sense of uncertainty sitting 
Tall is all 
That can be called Certain.

Stones settle:
Sacred.

Worthy of respect I come to see
that I can honor with reverence 
the silt that slips, unsure 

Of what is and will be more. 

An opportunity to practice
true release and faith feeling into, 
The uplifting in the beyond

Divine Order 
Grace 
Mercy

A tall team felt so strongly
In colors pulsing behind my eyes 
Fluffing my wings, ever so lightly
Clearing a safe pathway 

Reminding me to "look up"

Inviting me to request 
A free fall backwards
into what lies ahead 

Assuring me a landing, soft-
A bed of poems and metaphors
That will catch me 
Carrying me all the way home

To My Self. 


Sunday, February 27, 2022

Goodbyes to Ghosts

Shadows tip-toeing behind us, faded
Our eternal light, luminously created
Dark parts held firm, nice and steady
Integration awaits my heart, open and ready

I see our iterations, so dear and so clear
Our silhouettes wearing suits made of doubt, fear
What was once you I see now as a ghost
What was once me I see now as a host

A reckoning rattles- releases- a grip
Our story an old tale, a beautiful blip
Ghosts that gaze, connecting as one
I am released- sigh- that story is done 

The me that I see discovers you waiting, at ease
Your heart now thawing out, a long deep freeze
Sunlit fingers laced together, we pray
The contours that back us now point the way

Goodbye

My shadow will always belong to me
Your ghost will always be kindred, free 




Monday, February 21, 2022

Presidents Day Haiku

Dirty window glare

Dog hair scotch tape shadow truth

Dust floats as a ghost 

🐚🐚