My Own Saviour

I won't leave, he said. And it was true. And
he also wasn't there.
Standing before her, more invisible than fog Sharper than a thousand swords more toxic than monkshood. She, too, tried to stay.

I found her, this frail small part
of me. Her hair hanging long over
her face covering her eyes.
she wears no clothes, for she is feral and
her ribs show through sallow skin.

She has cried out all her tears. I hear the breath raw and hot in her heaving ragged throat.
"I am larger than you. I am larger than tears," I say to her softly.

"I am a swollen sponge stronger than the moon's pull. My eyes are love crumbs searching for ways to soothe every part of you."
She sees me, finally, and sighs.

I scoop her up and hold her close.
I see the places where her skin is torn and rip my shirt
to stop her bleeding.
I wrap her in my arms, and lift her,
Hold her tightly to my naked chest, my small far from innocent babe

she can sleep now. It's my turn to walk.
A mountain giant I stride across the universes inside me.
There is not much that can pierce my thickened skin.
So I will take the wheel for a while. I will walk while you cannot
I will fight while you hide
heal
I will protect you while you dissolve to rebuild.
I am strong enough for
Every part of me

At Least

At Least

“No. Let me have this dust,

These pale clouds dourly lingering, these words”

-Adrienne Rich

Pain and grief are such strangely strong

Bedfellows

The seeds are planted and watered with salt

Dug down deep in rich soil, made of things quite dead

The stories stay swirling

Although you try to drop them

Skip them across the swollen stream

They find their way, boomeranging back to your bedside

When you thought you were alone

Thirsting for the sound of something less sour, perhaps

Your own heart’s song

But she trembles, you

tremble

You, whose professed super power is love

Have a voice that trembles as she sings for you

It’s true

I have read that the work we do

Is empty

Unless there is love

And I have read of the perils

of attachment. So

How is there love

Without attaching?

I’m learning that the letting go isn’t

A release of love

Is not a release of Hope

Or of carefully defined ties

But of

Expectations

It is a release of ever thinking

Our growth

With grow another along side us

The bravest of dreamers crumble

At the thought of this

This release of hoping we can

Heal

Someone special

We watch them cauterize their hearts

To prevent that familiar pain

From coming back again

And also prevent the gifts

We must welcome most

The unwelcomed guest

I see things

Know them

FEEL them

And fail to live them

Just as you do. All things

Die

End

Leave

And still I see

The power

In seeing, trying, touching

I see the power of hope.  Let me have that, at least.

At least there is that.

Dissolving Into Light

In order to find the strength

To make deep connections

We need to dissolve

Our own story

Like salt swirling through warm water

We sink into our screaming souls

And leave the tales behind

Until

With careful

Quiet footsteps

 Kimon Maritz

We can sneak up softly on

who we all are

in the darkest parts of the shadows

and pause

slow down long enough

to look closely.

Pause

A safe distance from that which calls to us

So we can listen           

Listen through the tips of our ears

Listen to the balls of our feet

Listen with fibers and follicles

Until, with only a script dissolved

Our essences vaporize fog-like

Evaporating river water till it curls

Snakelike and writhing as

Words written on paper boat prayers

Float on, hoping to survive the passage home

We are wishes made on stardust

A moment, an eon, of brilliance

More than 4.3 light-years away

And simultaneously, that stardust

Is us.

93% of each of us

We have, in a way, already survived then

For long, long ago,

Days when the world was young

Someone looked up

The sky blurred with tears

Because they felt all the feelings you now feel

And wished upon a star

That now, you

Are made of-

You, all cracked and smelly

Angry and scared

Scarred and broken

Imperfect and whole

Are the most perfect offering that

Has always been

When a cave is cracked in the smallest fragment of an arc

It takes only a tiny sliver of silver glimmer dissolved

To light

It

Up.

As We All Are

"To realize that everything in the universe is connected is to both accept our insignificance and understand our importance in it." ~Jeffrey Fry

I

Shrinking the anxiety HOUSE
till it is small enough to hold...no...
To pinch
between forefinger and thumb
And hold before your
Squinted peering eyes So interesting, to view it from here
"David", turned somehow to "Goliath"
The power now available
To *you* From victim, to wanderer, to student, to
Poet,
To adventurer, to teacher to
MOTHER
To wife, too soon to widow. To
WARRIOR until
you listen to your skin
As well as pay attention to
Your heart, let the spirit
Pulse
Into you
Into you and through you

II

Life will lead in a dance
swirling you
tiptoes-beyond-tango fast
So fast high heels snap
and bare feet fall slapping
To the dance floor
Below The conundrum, heavy and awkward,
Loudly clunks,
Clanging as the warrior
Attempts to glide
across the dance floor It crashes against her chainmail...if
Armor

is what
That really was meant
To be...
For really, how do you define "warrior"?
That question is the conundrum, after all

III

I had a dream once
Of a mostly naked woman
Barefoot and oh, so strong
Forging a necklace
Of iron, stone, silver and bone But the buyer never came
So she forged on
Facing the fire over and
over
With iron, hammer, and anvil
stones and sandpaper,
Silver and bezel pusher
Bones and a dremel with a diamond bit
Creating She is a well armed WARRIOR
Yes. Perhaps. Yet...
Tilt
the
perspective
To see a different side: No need for warrior words, for
She is WOMAN.
In all her majesty
Not armored
But decorated, adorned
Of her own doing
And oh! Armor would be so redundant
Anyway...
For ultimately She IS the divine power
The very force
That drives the waves... As we all are

Each in our own right.

Adding to vastness

My life is
a mother's hands
cleaning cuts
and washing dishes

My life is
a teacher's heart
hearing fears
and cultivating curiosity

My life is
a widow's weeping tears that fall
tiny glass shattered shards
that land silent on a heaving breast
littering it in fissures

My life
moves on
and the question calls
querying trembling arms and soul alike
asking all of me:
How do you love this life?

The words are formless wisps of long
lost dream mists and arms, reaching
and returning empty
so many
times.

The thing is, I don't just feel the tears fall, Love...
I am
the tears.

I see the lives growing, coming, going
the ones that are mine
the ones that I only borrow
the ones I would hold forever, if forever
was a thing

The sight of them sharpens in my deep black
pupils, expanding in the dark
of dusk

There is wordless wonder
in the care we offer each other
man to woman
mother to child
Wordless, ending,
rending wonder

My life is
a tiny opportunity
to learn, notice, dance, cry...
How do you think the vast, majestic oceans stay
so full
if not, in part, for the depth of all our tears?

My life, if it has taught me nothing else
has shown me that this "Love"
is not a thing to avoid.  It is, in fact
the only thing aside from pain that is
boundless

Love and pain: they tie us to each next step, like birth
and a forgetting of where we came from
before.  Another chance
and a loss wrapped into a single soft embrace

It is the entwined existence of these twin pieces,
practically diametrically opposed
Antipodean dancers,
that create us, bring us forth, and cradle us
That give us
Life

Whatever else my life may be
with its deep echo solitude searching,
its wide eyes, clenched fists and racing heart,
its outstretched arms, twinkling eyes, and its lilting,
lyrical, (oft too loud) laughter

it is a moment in which I have the chance
to add a drop or two
to the
vastness
of
All of us.

My Heart, A Watering Hole

My heart, a watering hole

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”

~Hermen Hesse, Siddhartha

I. Recognizing Desertification

In a loud room

Full of buzzing voices, gaming shouts, and gales of giggles

Slow down.

Find the silence

Focus inward.

You are the only one who knows

What opening feels like

And closing down.

You cannot define that for another.

I can see him

In the red/black blue/black

Backdrop

Behind my eyes

He is walking beside me

Encased in his memory

His shields are up thick and high

Warning me to keep my guard up

Which I will not do

I’ve spent my life learning

How to remain open

And now I see

The key has been here all along

It’s a matter of me loving me

More than anyone else can ever harm me

Look in my own eyes

Revel in my own beauty,

love,

       tenderness

I cannot have expectations for you

Set your goals

Choose your path

I cannot open your heart.

I can, however, find ways to show kindness

I can find ways to be a source of comfort,

Joy, laughter, companionship

I can be with you on your journey, if you let me

Because I’m learning to be with myself

On mine

II. Saving the rain water

What happens inside me is

Like a black and white movie

Fed and refed, to play on an endless loop

A little girl wonders where the arms have gone

The ones that were meant to embrace her

A young woman does not believe the mirror

But the words of friends and family condemning her moment of confidence

I want to be told I am beautiful

Over and over

I want to be seen.

I want someone outside myself

To look at me dressed

                In a ball gown

                In a Tardis dress

                In jeans and a too big T-shirt

                In a garter belt and thigh high stockings

And be stunned

By the light they see in me

I want to be the first person thought of

When there is anger

Or sorrow

Loneliness

Laughter.

Or one of the first.

What if no one outside of you can ever

Comfort you?

What if the deepest tender parts of you

Are burnt beyond ever believing again?

Even if I don’t believe those things are true

If you believe it, they become the truth

So I focus inward again

Recalling that the culling

Of your fear demons

Is not my job

I have my own tigers to tame

Wounds to lick, muscles to build, trees to plant

I remember I, alone, am the star in this looping movie

III. Transformation

In art, the complimentary colors

Are the ones opposite each other

On the color wheel

The ones you might not, initially, pair

In science, opposite poles

Attract- electron to proton

Creating static electricity

The pouring stroke of lightning fire cracking apart the universe

For one small, sensual second

Buddhism teaches that without the absolute

The relative may devolve into pity, sentimentality

Without the relative, the absolute

May melt to nihilism and a lack of desire to engage

It is possible to love without clenching

In fact, isn’t that how love should really work?

To hold loosely, leaving all the locks off

Unlatch the gate

Unclip the restraints

Step into the breeze, together

There is so much to explore!

Both inside and out.

Every adventure story expands

With someone to share it, water it,

Tend to its needs.

Why not go one step further? From surviving

To thriving?

Turn a desert into a green and growing haven.

Build rainwater roofs

Composting toilets and find alternative fuels

That leave the trees

Alone.

When you like a flower, you pluck it

And when you love it? The Buddha says

When you love it,

You water it daily.

Someday, I’ll have a whole

Flower garden. 

Let’s listen to hear

Where the water will come from.

take a drink of Love

From February 2015

fierce and full true giving
with no request for
returning
an arm to hold me
a hand upon my lower back-
     a straightening
fingers stroking soft on my cheek
a shoulder pillow for my head
quiet
someone else to do the laundry
breakfast in bed
   lunch in bed
      dinner
in bed
entwined in
bed
naked and warm limbs
that tie
     your soul
to mine.