Bird in a Box

In the locker room

Where God cannot see,

In the dark corner,

Tube-socked and tank-topped,

Curled on the wooden slats

Pressed against the drab,

The cool of green tiles,

I’m shooting up longing.

I’m sucking in long

Sweet pulls of desire.

Nobody knows this.

Nobody knows me.

Even God cannot see

God God God

I close my eyes,

Expecting a harpsichord

Or the thin brass tines

Of a music box painfully

Grinding out Mozart:

Pling dah dah ding tra ling.

An emerald and citrine

Crusted wren will pop

Stiffly unfolding up

Spinning mechanically

Stretching in measures:

One wing two wing

Good-bye.

Back into the box.

Clapped shut.

Instead, I’m caught in a luminous diorama,

Painted brightly with thick washes of gouache.

The deliberate notes of a samisen are plucked

And drop soft as pollen,

Sweet as plum blossoms

Slowly unfolding.

In the melancholic stretching silences

Snow melts, rills fill, sap traces upwards.

Flurries of pink crab apple petals

Scrunch together on scabby

Blackened forked sticks,

Poking the blue cornflower sky.

A white crane kimonoed woman,

A pale spirea abloom,

Demures

And pulls from her silken sandalwood folds

A warm peach,

Offering it to me across the stream.

Barely blushing,

It opens in my hand so easily.

A cockatiel rises from its center,

Pale olive and sulfur dusted

He lights on a naked branch above me.

“He knows your secret name.

Call him to you

And he will sing it.”

But I fear his sharp beak,

His strange snail-curled tongue.

His scimitar claws

Will bloody me.

He will tattoo his name on my lips.

I cannot hold out my hand

As he chips closer,

Questioning in rising tones,

In little hops

Down the branch:

please

please

please

it's not that I don't love you

I’m in my parent’s bedroom

the house is on fire

the phone is ringing

I know it’s you

but cannot answer

not now not now

it’s not that I don’t want to

it’s not that I don’t love you

but the house is on fire

and I have to get out

and I’ve forgotten how

the door is latched,

it’s latched and I’m paralyzed,

forgetting how things work

how to open doors

how to free myself.

once I fell into a strange

seizure on my mother’s side of the bed

she came to wake me

but I couldn’t move

I spoke, but my words were gibberish,

a glossolalia from the other side,

the place of peeling birches

and red roots

that dragged along the mossy banks.

she was terrified

and I was trying to tell her that I

was ok

I’m ok, Mom.  I’m ok.

she said that my eyes were open

but rolled back to whites.

my brother is outside

he’s telling me to lift the latch

a bit incredulously,

Duh, lift the latch.

mockingly, but scared for me, too.

you’re doing it wrong:

Lift the Latch.

and there it is

that rusty hook

how many times did I shift this

dark crook out of its eye

just unthinkingly

a mere finger flip

to get to the back porch

swinging the screen door out

to the trumpeter vine

to the garden

to sit with a small bowl

of new strawberries

that I had easily lifted

from their sand.

Carte Blanche

Carte Blanche

December and white roses~~by the armful they come.

Pale pleated heads; one word and they fall,

laid on pillows lithely blushed pink,

soft petals fragrant like freesia or lilies.

I am calling your name,

longing for your snowy lawn,

the crisp collar undone,

the cuff that holds your hand

gently grazes the luster of my brow.

Slipping silk down my cheek.

you breathe lotus and peony

with undertones of amber,

sweetmeats and halwa

from the street stalls of Constantinople.

But we are ghosts at sunset,

blue-veined gauze, fragile and easily torn;

floating fading promises tumbled to the ruins,

the old wood and boulders of Sope Creek,

crashing to the Chattahoochee

rimmed with hoarfrost,

but still flowing turbid & broad.

And there we loose our souls,

let go the bouquet of osmanthus

and spider mums that spin and splay

to ever darker gray eddies and disappear

in distant mists.

Alone I fell twisted

Alone I fell twisted in a tumble

of army blankets from your bed,

fellating the dark green bottle

of your name in my head.

You walked in from Matins

to see me drunk on my own bower,

spiraled in the white jasmine

still-starlit sheets,

tonguing the thought of you

and twining the rose

wet conch of my lips

around my hot fingers.

You stared at me as though

I were a stranger

dropped from the sky.

We once were brothers,

soldiers together,

and here I had crossed the line,

betraying our friendship

with the purple outlay of my sex.

You left.

I got up, hoping to glimpse

the pageant of your life

I had never known:

So many players parading.

I sat at the foot of the stairs,

a child thrilled and clapping

at the endless twisting surprises,

Jacks and Jills kept popping.

But no one had a name.

I asked a man who looked

at me askance.

No one was so foolish here

as to give that sort of thing away—

your given name, your private,

sacred self.

Your wife appeared in a fanfare

of gasps, brocaded in barnacles

and circuitry.  Her auburn hair pulled

to an elaborate knotted chignon,

speared with scrimshaw

curved in loving homage

to the soft yellowing

nape of her neck.

Her palazzo pants

swept along,

satiny waves,

an inky caress

of us all.

I vowed to honor

your pledge to her

and bowed low

only

to see you lying laughing,

soft-spun in cashmere,

sparkling aquamarine,

starfish woven across your chest,

dredged in fine gray salt—

a silica confection

I longed to taste.

Silently I kissed your breast,

stinging my lips

with your impossibly

beautiful sand.

The Strong Clasp

How I suffered to give you Sunday.

You’ll never know, I suppose, since

most of the sorrow was my own mix:

Guilt from betraying my current

lover, slipping out of my once

strong clasp, and that thorn

of hurried worry to catch you 

before you left the station,

to give you this piece from under the bracken,

this part of my own heart’s song that hummed

off the blasé beige bricks wet from a dull rain.

My man picked me up—stopped for coffee

to wait out the storm—slow low clouds.

I could barely see him,

blurred through my urgent mission.

Don’t go, yet.

I was breathing to you,

I need to give you this

talisman, this beating beauty,

my prayer for your journey.

But I had to wait wait wait

Ungrateful girl,

living in the somewhere,

not in the here.

How I burned both ways

with desire

and shame.

~~~~~~~~~~~

And what gift did you hold for me?

The strong velvet marble vein

standing in a shaft of light.

I didn’t even know.

I stood at the opening

longing to undress.

yet so afraid of my nakedness.

Something kept pushing me

though these clouds

I dreamt of mountains

and then I could fly~~

 I could fly!

Why hadn’t I known

before?

So softly were my ankles held,

I didn’t need to be afraid~~

I was cradled in light.

How could it be otherwise?

And I broke open for you

 by the fire

where the Celtic gypsies were keening.

You knelt and unhitched the black lace mantilla

that held my breasts.  I still recall your lips

shushing the floating plum isle

of my left nipple

while you brushed my thighs,

my rippling new-born flesh.

How could it be other

than this?

Caught and released,

Bodhrán

stroked

tip toppled

wasn’t it, then?

As I sang out into

your arms your mouth

your hands?

Hold me again

in your eyes

so wide.

Oh, darling,

how did it

how could it

end?

emily strong, or I write myself down

"We'd never know how high we are 'till we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to plan, our statures touch the sky." ~ Emily Dickinson 

"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.  We seek out problems because we need their gifts."  ~ Richard Bach 

(This is basically a journal entry, unedited.  I may pull it, but I cannot bring myself to edit it.)

I’m acting like a jilted lover

fuckfuckfuck

Jesus, I can’t believe this.

I just want love and . . .

it’s not available to me.

I thought I got it.

Last night, I got it.

I went through my story

and it made sense.

Yes.

But today I can’t do it.

Fuck

I want love, goddamit.

I don’t want to be alone.

I don’t want to be precious Emily Dickinson.

I want someone to hold my hand

to hold me

to kiss me.

I don’t get it.

I didn’t do anything wrong.

Why is everything wrong?

I can’t do this anymore.

Everything is a fucking process.

I’m so tired.  It has been so long.

It takes so long.

I CAN’T.

So I made it up.

I made the whole goddamn

thing up.

I wanted love so badly

that I just pretended and made up scenarios

and then they came true,

sort of.

But it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t right.

Shit.

I don’t get to have what I want

and I’m so goddamned hurt.

I hate it.

I hate it.

I hate being like this.

I hate myself for being like this.

I don’t know what to do.

And fucking love songs.

Shit.

I can’t even listen.

I feel so cheated.

Somebody tell me.

Today I banged my fists against the wall and said,

“It does NOT get better!”

Where is this “better”?

I worked so fucking hard on this

relationship.  And now it’s shit.

This was what I wanted and I can’t have it.

because it only appeared to be what I wanted.

It was only part of a very complex mosaic.

The most efficacious way for me to change my life,

my path.

To fall in love with someone while in another relationship—one that seemed all right, but wasn’t.  To fall for someone with whom I seemed so perfectly matched, but who had this HUGE flaw that would always keep us apart.  One who I felt, for once I had an honest and open connection to, who ironically couldn’t be honest with me, because he couldn’t be honest with himself.  Bullshit, universe.  I see part of it, in retrospect, only.  The beautiful plan of having to break up a relationship that wasn’t good enough, by dangling one that seemed better, but always just out of reach, because I needed to be broken down enough to turn to my mother and cry to her as I hadn’t in decades, or maybe ever, so that she could tell me, at last, that she had loved me, forever.  So that I could hold her hand while she was dying, without any other clouding my view of her sparkling blue eyes.  All that had to happen.

And I wanted it to.  I wanted change.  I asked for it.

I didn’t know for what I hungered, exactly, but what I had wasn’t enough.  My life was too small.

I didn’t know I wanted something spiritual until an alcoholic asked me what I thought about God.  And then the Twelve Steps and meditation.  I was envious.  I wanted somewhere to go that would accept me no matter what.  Someplace at which I just had to show up as myself.

And soon-to-be previous boyfriend didn’t offer that.

Suddenly after meeting an alcoholic, I found myself surrounded by a cadre of affected folks.  Those who had been married to an alcoholic, were in a relationship, were trying to get out of a relationship with, or were in recovery.  A support system sprung up for me.  I slowly began to see how my life really was, how I was building resentment towards soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, how he didn’t and couldn’t meet my needs.  The alcoholic friend in recovery started up a chorus of “Go to Al-Anon.  Go to Al-Anon.”  I did not want to.  I don’t think anybody wants to go to Al-Anon, until they get there.  My first visit was eye opening.  Although I had been resisting for a long time, as soon as I stepped through the doors . . . .

The first thing that happens at a meeting is the reading out loud of the Twelve Steps.  Step One (We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.) which I had previously thought to be so impossible, suddenly made sense.

I was there because my life had become unmanageable.  I was powerless.  I needed help.

Boom.  I knew why I was there.  By the grace of God, I had met and fell in love with an alcoholic and that had led me to this spiritual program, which opened up more in my mind and life—the change for which I had asked.  Of course, that realization didn’t happen all at once, but I was on the path.  Through Al-Alon, I met a yoga instructor and started a regular practice.  Through yoga I learned a formal practice of meditation.  Weekly interaction with supportive strangers in Al-Anon gave me the courage to join other groups and show up as myself.  Most recently, I went through the twelve-week course of The Artist’s Way with four other creatives—what a gift!  I found out that I have an interest in watercolors.  I’m not just a writer.  How cool.  I can make art and have fun!  Art feeds my soul.  

OK, universe, I get it.  Kind of.

Just not very graciously at the moment.

 

Here & There

Transit my dolorous planet

benevolent conduit,

luminous love.

Slip across my meridian

gently as milkweed

aloft.

Pillow me

wordlessly

in your blue.

Here below,

on this broken tor,

this spiny divide,

I cannot decide

to which ocean I flow.

Tethered eddy,

I pony-circle ride

heartbreak

again

&

again.

Unhitch me &

let me sigh into you,

slowly unfolding, unfencing

under cottonwood whispers high

& low trilling crickets and toads.

Hold me in the glow of late-night radio.

Incandescent brushes of your hand

smooth tear-matted curls.

Echoing shushes of snares

you breathe,

a willowy sax lullabies,

a piano skips stones easily~~

warm kisses

across the black air.

And the bass,

upright,

steadily keeps time:

There

There

There.

 July 2008