to building

like flame i catch disease; i catch bones in my eyes, i swallow heart for breakfast — like love i capsize on occasion;;

i try to find compassion for you, find the most human parts — i look past the brittle surface — i find the motivation for your movement, for your callousness and corrosive words — i look past the fudgey lines of the way we all present, the forms we all form in – i try to see the best in you, in each, in all

up and out and away – i hope for the glow of creation, for everyone, at all times / the past few weeks and months have reminded me of what i really want – love for the other, compassion, creation for everyone, self-actualization for everyone, and the manifestation of what sets us all alight, so that we may all glow – that we may all inspire one another, so that we can all create more beautiful, more meaningful things together. sure, it’s easy to call me too idealistic, but this is the one of the only things that truly matters – all becoming alive together – a world full of people that are fully alive and full of light and love

to building that world

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little everythingbox

my heart, it’s always about my little water wheel of a heart; little flutterby, caging wings and servicing kings; little wind chime chiming out of tune; little everythingbox containing more matter than could possibly matter to one person // little everythingheart i cannot be stopped; i thump towards the horizon; dragging myself through the wretched air and the branches that peel themselves from their leaves ;; bringing themselves solidly and singularly back to the surface of themselves – the utter indistinguishable truth of their barrenness – blank page on the sky’s horizon, aimless arrows in all directions — pointing everywhere, leading nowhere, aching endlessly — like my little heart, it’s always somehow a metaphor about my little heart

little gratefulness tune — i keep myself above the water, i take the high road, i ride the tumult of waves, i peel through your pressure, i promise myself the life without judgment of ridicule or mean-spiritness, i promise myself the higher light within shining, i glaze right past your glare ;; i love through the rotten air ;; i punish myself enough ;; i get stuck in my own head enough ;; i recognize my own mistakes, i pray endlessly to know my own faults better and with more veracity and honesty

and still the glow of eyes on eyes and words laying on top of words thrills my facile brain, still the pump and pummel of the stage curls my toes in my shoes and sends my spine serpentine and satiated — still i love the creation, the joy of meaning in words and the fullness of emotion in implication // still i love the full-bodied rapture of the thing, the way the body feels against all the motions, emotions, fabrics, wooden benches and handles of pewter // still i love the full-bodied rapture of the thing

towards wholeness

“Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.”
and your rage like a fire in my throat; my twittering bird’s wings fluttering in the shade of your black temple. i stand, the firmament / you rattle the cage // the meanness of intention slicing through the atmosphere / daggers displacing gravity and the molecules in motion around me

i lean in to the friction of the light, the courage of boldness in my bones that reaches towards the higher self, towards the deeper love, towards the love we all must have for one another. i find that love never fails, in any human, body or blanket of cells / i reach towards friendship, towards the lust of reconnecting atoms flying away from one another in space / i reach towards breath, i reach towards myself / i find myself staring back at the end of my hand, myself, myself. you’re okay, bundle of atoms. i pray towards wholeness, towards people that lift other people up, towards finding the best in one another, in each other’s words, in each other’s intentions, i pray towards wholeness.

lift each other up

 

“They sang don’t waste your hate
Rather gather and create
Be of service, be a sensible person
Use your words and don’t be nervous
You can do this, you’ve got purpose
Find your medicine and use it”

alight

and here the ice rattles towards me like a promise. here the tree sparkles its ancient eyes like flecks of gold and silver hulking away from the branch. and here i see you again. and here i see you again. and here the minutes that live inside of my eyes pass like endless webs – like a melody in reverse, back again, back again, the words akimbo, like soft soldiers looking for a war. and here i break towards a new day, towards an endless horizon; here your eyes are like a patchwork of ash and curled nevers; stuck inside the sideways partitions between seats in a row; here you lie inside the little theatre of my heart, forever playing scenes we’ll never write

but the delivery of these half-imagined lines still kills me

DYFS in the dining room. whoever thought my life would get here? whoever thought i would be inside of these kinds of days? whoever thought my life would unfold like this – a bag of marbles and a rolling set of ramps and bridges — i submerge myself in the bathtub, all the way under the water, i know not how this day arrived on my doorstep // i peel back my curtains, i know not what i am supposed to do, but place one foot in front of another forever and ever, thanking each day for each splay of beautiful moments, thanking the light inside Jamie’s eyes for still glowing, thanking my feet for knowing how to walk, feeling my skin getting thicker every year, every day, every crisis / there is always more life coming for you, and there is always more strength within you you haven’t met yet /

i pray to keep you safe, little one, i pray you will not be damaged, you will know wholeness, you will not be afraid, you will not cower, you will not flinch upon approach, i pray you will stay alight through the dark night and all the flames ahead

Halloween. And tumult and trauma and upheaval. Again. And the cycles, the seasons, the endless age of the earth age-ing backward. And laughter and holding my baby tight. But fear everywhere. Fear in the child, fear in me, fear of the future and the steps to be taken. Fear of the words and the truth in between. Where do we go, where do we go from here? Where do all of us go? The battered, the flinching, the scared of the darkness and the light? Where do all the children go that don’t have advocates? That don’t have people speaking for them, protecting them? What happens to all the children’s whose voices are only theirs against an adult’s? I am worried and weary and without a map, but I have my boy, and I have my bravery and I have the light on my side. And I have the light in my heart still flaming. Halloween and let the shadows come. Let the darkness come, let the haunting scare us. We have light enough to kindle. We have light enough to see our way through. Small and only enough to see one foot in front of the other, but we have enough. We have each other.

some amount of neon

three years at the same seat, the same pearled purple and green smashes across the glass as the cars wheel by, the midnight glow of horns and guitar strings, some harmonica no one has learned how to stop playing, some amount of neon that always glows — bliss game and a furrow of brows getting older, getting wiser, getting deeper in the depth; in the art of the world flowing by — you tell us you’ve written something new, you curl your brilliance through a voice pipe, out through the parade of bones dancing in the right order, through the finger army of musical esplanade — we clap, it is the only feeble jungle we know how to enter — we know not how to trace the elegant animal from the line of brilliance to the fuse of firelight and kindling, we see only the flame, we eat only light – all evening long we soak in each other’s fever dreams ; we fill up each other’s sutures with imagined melodies ; a wish for an unending splash of fleeting light – the sparkle puddle electrified in the misty autumn pavement rain – the glow of 1am filling the gutters with a gulp of dreamtime nightflesh : sputters and splatters of all the condesencing condensation of the consideration of conspiracy, coalescence and consciousness;; we here keep hearing, keep listening, keep creating long after the night has turned to morning, long after the clock tells us to tuck in for the night; we here keep hearing each other; keep making in the morning light

to many more years of making, and letting the night turn to morning, and morning turn in to new dawns, new dreams, new songs

endlessly

blue sky saturation to full – the greys come peeling in like mixed-race piano keys, like a fully embodied mirror of the hudson – muddy, murky, mellowing — and here we are, by 5pm the sky has turned mellow in October. by 9am the brisk of the cooling night has only slightly dissipated. and here we are, the time i have with my little one turning timelier and timelier. i’m not okay with the time, apparently. is it not the full flesh of a purpling peach – gathering time at the edges and pointing inwards? will i ever be old enough to love you? will i ever be young enough to know you? and here the pull of music pulls time away from me again, a little tap dance; a little curtain call; a little dream of how we used to be; a little dream that things will start making sense again, the way they always have, though time ticks through them at varying colors and degrees — the way they always have, though time ticks through them endlessly

all atmosphere

always the ever-flow of a cup of tiny lights bursting in the atmosphere, hazels and pinks and blues and something like music, is it all a concoction – a confection, a sensory hummingbird humming away at my heart ;; am i a curling page of some unfolding place i am supposed to always be or am i always the ever-flow of an overflow of a cup too small to hold it all in / too small to hold it all in — i runneth over, i, herculean bit of verbal eye language and saturn-ed arm twirl – i turn towards the sun and i let it collect me like light, reverberate me like sound, tilt me forwards towards the tilt of the earth — i try to tilt with it, align myself with the axis, but the thing keeps turning, and the thing keeps turning, and i am too small to hold it all in — and i am the ever-flow of a tiny cup of lights reflecting sound, not holding on to the ground, all atmosphere, all september rain, all cobble-stoned heart and fire-brimmed body – always formed but never finite; always the ever-flow

the season coming slowly towards

9/8:

I do it to make my heart full ; to make the empty spaces full of light / i do it because i can’t fight the love i have for it – because i feel like a whole person when I’m lost in the rapture of the stage / of movement / of colored lights and measured notes / to feel an organ breathing – a dozen people breathing in time, sculpting over a ball of air ; listening to the sound of the universe, responding with something to say, creating in the air – in the space between air and word and intention and retention and tension of musculature and heart ;; i do it because i ache to do it

---

the days turned in to battered rainfall, your life kept hiding in pattered wings, fluttering about, we’re all talking to butterflies now, my dear ryan.

your heart peels around mine like a curtain, we make promises to the way humidity feels on our skin, i curl backwards through the trees, the hunger for the sun and season holds fast on the leaves;; we take the reprieve of heat, we bottle it, we keep it tucked in our front pocket, we keep all the other pockets free for leaves and acorn caps and droppings of the season coming slowly towards us.

i call towards creation, i wait in the kitchen for it to hurricane over to me – i inspire myself with the movement of my heart towards words laced in love, i follow myself towards something somewhere that can teach me how to know remember how to let go, to find the answer to the questions of the current unfolding ;; of curious and curiouser – of the moments that don’t seem to make sense at all, at the frustration that boils like a furnace — i try to find the silver lining, to remember to flip the world on its head and shake up the snow globe, let it rain plastic trapped bits of white – i try to remember to flip myself, stop thinking of myself, look at the upside down roots of the tree, find an answer that i can live with ;; i wonder whether i’m creating it out of thin air, or if its sitting there in plain sight and my eyes are too weak and narrow to see it yet, curling into the bark – a few hieroglyphs of untranslated answers — i wonder how it all works – me and the sea and the trees looking back / i wonder how i work; my messy brain that keeps misfiring or re-hiring the old tired managers to come send the old foggy neurons down the wrong paths (the paths of least resistance, those comfy, soggy brain paths) ;; i amaze myself at how easily i forget all the ‘wise’ things i think i know at my clearest moments ;; i amaze myself at how easily emotion rips through the new brain paths i try to forge – a little icepick in my hand and a wall of solid brick in front of me // i keep trying, i will keep trying, i keep trying to stay more and more aware, conscious – light that brain up without fear; a glowing lantern leading the way, healing the fray, resounding towards the new day

For my big-hearted Ryan ;

i woke up this morning hoping this was all some horrible dream; My thoughts spiral in-and-out, it’s turtles all the way down, for sure — it comes and goes in waves — I can’t do anything without thinking of you; I can’t stare into the silence without feeling like a zombie ; everything I do is a momentary band-aid ; every distraction only lasts for a brief moment ; I keep hearing your laugh in my head

River warrior; smile-keeper , you were always a fire, always a lion, always full of grace and laughter, generosity and heart; the first night you met me you asked me to marry you; // you were in the room when i found out i was pregnant and waiting for us at home when we got back from the hospital with baby jamie (having fully cleaned our house while we were gone), you were there the night i left jeff; the highest highs and the lowest lows, and always with such kindness and openness ; you were my son’s uncle, his love ; i will miss your smile, your poetry, the love and faith you greeted everyone with, your lack of judgment, your mischief, your bravery, your fight, your spirit

I don’t really understand / i don’t feel motivated by your death yet – i feel senseless and entirely lost for meaning

I pulled the beautiful journal you gave me for my birthday some years ago off the shelf…I’ve never written in it – it was too beautiful…but now the empty pages feel like a promise i should keep…i’ll try to fill them up – i’ll try to keep creating, i’ll try to feel the beautiful day around me and not think about how much you would love it, i’ll try to keep my chin up, i’ll try to see what you saw, i’ll try to find you in the falling leaves, i’ll try to not give in to despair, you were always aglow, always bright enough to keep fighting through ; i’ll try to keep breathing and finding the light…but i don’t understand yet. i don’t understand at all. and i miss you. and i love you very much // i’m not ready for this week. for the facebook posts and the funeral proceedings and the horrible conversation we’ll have to have with jamie // but one minute at a time. one foot in front of the other. one breath then another. i’ll try to turn your laughter in the back of my head into my own. i’ll try, i’ll keep trying. i’ll try to be alive for you, because i know how grateful you were to have to your life. to have your life back. to have had life at all.