R. E. M. Sleep/Religion Lost

Deep in the folds of my sleeping mind

I stood in the foyer of my childhood church. 

It was the present,
and I was crisply aware that I didn't belong. 

I looked about, waiting for Tim, the head of our congregation when I was a teenager;

I wanted to unburden myself, and considered (skeptically) whether I might find relief through this ancient empty ritual.

When I entered his office

It was you

Standing there to greet me.

I smiled, knowing you would open your arms wide enough to hold all my troubles. 

I sat and you leaned across your desk,

Staring intently into my eyes as I spoke, softly, steadily. 

I felt as light as air

And a little smug - 

You are no preacher, no man ordained by god. 

And yet

You'd been able to bless me. 

I knelt before you

And held your eyes at I unbuckled your belt. 

I felt the warmth of your body against my skin

And I took you into my mouth. 

The dream slowed down here,

And I traveled through time

Relishing the taste of you, the feel of my tongue as it swirled around the smooth flesh filling my mouth... 

I don't know how dreams work, 

But I lived in that moment for what felt like hours....days....

And then I stood 

and you smiled and took my hand

And then I woke up. 

Come Inside

I wonder what you would think
if you knew
how truly
filthily
dirty
my mind is?
Can you even conceive of the delicious things
I would do
to you?
You have probably learned
not to open the gates
to that particular flood of images,
and you certainly have more self-control than I,
or you would have a string of decomposing affairs in your wake.
Or am I the only one
who strains against the confines of society?
And no, it's not my lack of gods
that allows this portal to gape open
(like my legs under this skirt)
but maybe it proves to me
that they couldn't exist,
none of them,
(The ornery little imps).
But if they did exist, even just one of them,
I would find Him and look him dead in the godly eye
and ask him what it's all for.
And then I would slide my hand up his thigh
and grab him by the long beard
and swallow his entire being
into my own.
Because
I'm not exactly prideful,
but
I am the only god I need.
It's easy to say that when you don't believe in gods, I suppose.
But I am the one that can make my world heaven or hell.
Yours too, if you duck behind the curtain and join me here in my daydreams...

Dirty Thoughts About You

Today what I wanted most

was to find a giant beanbag chair or couch or hammock

and curl up with you and just doze, chat, doze...
and then there are days 

when what I would want,

if I were given the gift of that proximity

would be to slide hands to hidden places and 

press clothing up, down - away -

until I could envelope you in soft wetness

and sigh into your neck,

a tangle of limbs and slow, 

rhythmic connection,

sleepiness building to urgency

and then the melting spread of pleasure and release...

Polished Silverware

I could have fallen asleep at 8.

But I didn't drag my weary 

body and mind

from the embrace of that fat leather chair until nearly 10.

And then

As I burrowed into the fluffy perfection of my bed, 

I murmured, 

"Spoon me for a minute, Love..."

And I could see his smile through my eyelids,
so of course 

he obliged, 

and of course 

spooning turned to forking, 

as it always does. 

And then I was wide awake 

until 11,

and something woke me at 2.

I feel like an old, old woman today - 

Foggy, slow...so, so tired, 

yet shiny and new. 

Frazzle

Breathing in just sort of happens

but the breathing out

feels like an unwinding of all the tension...

all the 

too-many-thoughts

all the 

unfinished plans.

I'm sure I'm forgetting important pieces of the

pie (night)

important aspects of the lovely surprises I'm planning 

for the lov-ed ones I'm 

loving...

I should relax more and breathe more and remember

that's why I'm doing all these things

and enjoy the process of creating the conditions for memories to be made.

Reset Button

It was a perfect day,
started off with a bang.
Well rested
well bedded,
I headed
into the day like a train shooting down the tracks.
Stolen sips of forbidden caffeine
(warm, hazelnutty),
dragged me through my to-do list
slashing through completed items like jet-fueled Zoro.
The evening brought dinner with friends
and baseball with enemies
(same people, different colored shirts),
and a victory that didn't feel as good to me as it would have to them.

Through it all,
my mind swam with images.
Echoes of Friday night's lopsided conversation
and tilted world
bouncing around in my peripheral -
did I really say that?
Did you?
It's hard to remember that foggy world,
through all of today's clarity,
but I'm pretty sure there was some fucked up shit that went down
     verbally.
But I still wanted more.
I don't even know what itch that scratched,
but it did -
those conversations
make me stretch contentedly
like a cat getting up from a long, cozy nap.

Full Moon Fever

I'm feverish
talking more than usual
(hardly seems possible, I know)
and entirely without a filter.
I type all the words
and then I delete half of them -
the world shrinking back to its usual size when I do so;
contained,
breathable,
navigable.
I feel almost unhinged,
but remain connected more securely than it seems.
I flutter in the wind,
free and wild,
but not quite out of control.
No, I like to say
I have no self-control,
but I exercise an
utterly extraordinary
amount of self-control
every
(damn)
day
when I manage to refrain from touching you at all,
let alone in all the places I want to.

The moon is fat, round, glowing -
filling the horizon with its cool, reflected sunlight.
And I am tossed about by its gravitational pull on the earth -
the tides of me ebb and flow,
a calm lapping of waves on sand
and a great arcing surf,
each in its turn.

Reminiscence

Sweater season is BACK!
And that reminded me of this post.
Yum.

You

You are a field of calm strength.

I could hurl myself against you,

with giggles or growls

for an eternity,

and you would never be breached.

But 

don't you 

sometimes

just want to lie in the sunshine

in the cool green grass

and let the whole world flow through you?

Because it could,

it does - 

just clear your mind

and allow it all, 

the peaceandjoy
the birthanddeath
the ebbandflow the laughter...

it could all be contained in you

or me.

And don't you sometimes wish you could take some of that

and let it flow out of you and into me?

Bodies are the metaphor and the reality;

they are too real to be beautiful

but so beautiful in their realness.

I don't know

any

thing.

Scattered Stars

Watching Lady Gaga in the movie tonight,
I was struck by her character's inability to believe she was worthy of fame
all because of her nose...
And the power she held
in spite of
(the nose on her face)
was kind of thrilling.
It kind of reminded me of
The Ex
just the other day
showering me with praise,
(the you-should-believe-in-yourself kind)
and then declaring that instead of trying to please everyone
all the time,
I should consider
that it might be time
for me to tell them all
to just
FUCK OFF.
Hm...
I like it.

Well, anyway.
The movie had me.
It folded me into its embrace,
and fed me all the goodness I crave -
a scruffy-as-fuck Bradley Cooper,
deep, bluesy rock,
a girl with a big nose
(the likes of which I haven't seen since  Jennifer Gray in Dirty Dancing)
and an empahsis on writing -
oh sure, her voice was the highlight,
rich and husky and so Gaga-licious,
but she wrote her own songs,
and that was cooool, man, cool...
There were cheesy parts;
and I hated the ending,
but maybe I won't think about the part that made me cry
and why it made me cry,
or the long conversation I had with nobody,
while the final song was being sung.
Because that shit is complicated.
And I'd rather focus on the way it felt to be Gaga for 2 hours,
and to think of the soft rain
that misted the air
as we wove our way through the darkness
and back to our happy little home;
I'd rather lean back in my writing chair and smile
when my sweet man says,
Yeah, but your tits are better than Gaga's
(I giggle my assent, and say, But I'll take her tiny waist any day...)
and then I turn up Ella Fitzgerald and remind him that I need to concentrate...
Not that this quite counts as writing,
it's sort of the palate cleansing, the decluttering of the brain waves,
but when he speaks my thoughts scatter like a bowl of rice knocked from a counter...

I've been listening to the Lumineers all week.
The last time I listened to this album so incessantly
was on my ten-thousand-mile roadtrip,
from the center of our country to the east coast,
then the west coast,
and back to center -
(like a warm-up stretch, but larger-than-life).
This album pulls me back to that hot, long summer -
all those hours of solitude,
driving from state to state,
ocean to ocean.
I keep getting stuck on "Dead Sea,"
because it played as I drove through Utah's Salt Flats,
and out to the Great Salt Lake,
which I used to hear described as America's Dead Sea.
That drive,
and subsequently that album,
stir up some memories,
like a pile of fallen leaves.

Dry/Heat

Soft red sands dance across broad curves of red rock.

The heat presses down from the cool blue sky,

presses up from the oven-like earth,

sucking the water from my cells.

I will dry up and tumble away

like the husk of a once-green bush

blowing across the backdrop of an old Western.

A rhythm (like small beans in a maraca)

erases my breath as I pause to scan--

the coil of scales in shades of brown

perches on the far embankment,

and I breathe again.

The memory of a stream,

this arroyo is a note left to remind the desert to run out for supplies—

pick up some eggs, bread, and definitely               
                     some water.

(Out) Laws of Physics

If I could slice open
the fabric of time
and slip out into the nothing
I would meet you there
and
(finally)
(like a sigh)
hold your face in my hands.
I would breathe you in
and pull you close.
I would press my face into your neck
and let my lips brush against your skin.
I can imagine
this place,
this void
filled with the glowing warmth
of our bodies.
I feel the length of you
pressed solidly down the length of me -
your hands in my hair
my mouth
finding yours.
I don't know if there would be sound
in this pocket of limbo
we would stumble into,
but I imagine small moans of pleasure
being drawn from me
as I explore the outside of you
the same way I've carefully mapped the inside.
Maybe we wouldn't need to breathe
out there in the nothing;
maybe we would exist in our most natural state -
maybe
I would see in your eyes the key to satisfying
the growling lust shining darkly from mine.
Maybe I would pull you into me
with a sigh
and maybe you would let go of everything you've ever held back
everything you've carefully denied yourself.
And maybe I would pull from within you
every strand of desire
you've ever left unmet.
Maybe
in this pocket of nowhere,
our bodies would blend together,
absorbing each other
like spectrums of light
or osmosis.
Maybe I would fade into you
as you plunged into me,
and I
would dissolve into a mist of atoms,
reforming again in the real world.
I would blink
and steady my breathing...
still aching from the receding waves of pleasure,
wondering why my arms felt so empty.

(I've started to envision my poemy things with illustrations - this one calls for a black piece of paper/canvas with pastels sketching the outline of two bodies, intertwined)

(non) Conformity

Wedging my entire kaleidescopic Self into
the narrow slot of acceptable-in-the-corporate-world,
requires that I reign in my impulses
my imagination
my desires.
I cannot make all the dirty jokes that flicker through my mind,
nor can I use all the flowery language at my disposal
when detailing the procedure for filing a particular form.
I am full to bursting, much of the time,
with ideas and poems and raunchy puns.
It is a good exercise in self-control, I suppose,
but it wears on me.
I want to dance naked in the rain
and lie in a hammock with a book in my hands
(one I will devour at some later time,
but may never open
as I watch the leaves dance overhead,
or watch my eyelids disappear in the distance
as I wander deep inside the paths of my own mind...)
I daydream too much
and write too little.
Time to find some balance.

Does Elvis Live?

I saw Elvis last night,
could have been him,
if I squinted,
and if he was still in hiding,
and if he had gotten into really good shape
for a man in his...80s?
Yeah, no.
Not even close.
This man and the band put on a good show
for all the sweet old ladies
and some of their daughters, too
(like my friend);
but I was there as a spectator of the spectators.
I was not there because of a deep love of the first American heartthrob musician.
I was there because a friend offered me free tickets.
I was there to feel the music thrumming from the stage -
(that bass player was cute)
and to drift along in my own thoughts,
imagining what it must have been like
to have been a teenager when Elvis hit the scene,
and wondering how it must have felt
to carry a torch for him for 50, 60, 70 years.
I have not really been much for celebrity crushes;
I prefer dreaming of a real person -
the real-er the better.
I prefer imagining...lips on earlobs, hands sliding under shirts...
the real world is so much closer to the buffet of sensory possibilities -
touching, tasting.
Ahem, I digress...
Watching this man on stage,
wooing the sweet ladies who'd loved Elvis in the goddamned NINETEEN FIFTIES,
I wondered how they could possibly feel anything
in this moment
besides sadness and regret.
Such a pale immitation this man was,
and I was about a yard away from him,
but even from the back of the house,
you could see that he was smiling like the Las Vegas strip.
He was giving them the show they craved,
but I couldn't buy what he was selling.
I think I would have liked it better if he'd just looked like himself,
and skipped the, "Thankya vera  much" schtick.
It felt so hollow, so unsatisfying.
In 30 years, will I go see a Nirvana tribute band
and swoon over the man in the blonde wig and plaid flannel shirt?
I don't think so.
But maybe my generation's answer to that will be to have a hologram of Kurt on stage,
or better yet,
a Virtual Reality game in which I can make out with him.
I may not have been much for celebrity crushes,
but I could watch footage of that man all day
and it wouldn't fill the cavern of grief I feel for all his lost poetry.

But, I had a lovely time,
and it reminded me that I should get back to writing that book,
and the other one.
First, I should finish reading those Elvis biographies.
And maybe go find a hammock to lie in.

Polarity

First draft of a children's book starring a polar bear.

Original artwork and outline provided by a friend.

Here's my take - 

Felix looked around.

The world was white.

The snow

the sky

his fur.

Felix couldn’t see where he ended and the snow began.

The caribou were white

the foxes were white

the hares were white

even the weasels were white.

Felix sighed.

In the springtime, they would move south again,

and there would be green.

Maybe…

Maybe if he started now,

he could reach the green sooner!

And maybe,

if green was possible,

maybe other colors were possible, too!

What else could Felix find?

He began to walk faster,

and walking turned to loping,

and soon he was speeding across the tundra.

After a while,

he came to a forest.

The trees were covered in snow,

but he could see the needles and bark

beneath the layers of white.

He filled his belly and rested for a long time.

When morning came, he heard birds chirping

and felt the sun’s warmth on his back.

He stretched and smiled 

and continued on.

He marveled at the forest as he went.

The snow was melting,

and more and more colors were showing through.

Tender green ferns were sprouting all around,
and the fallen tree he'd slept against last night
was covered in lichen and ridges of pale mushrooms.

Felix walked on,

and soon there was no more snow.

The trees stretched high above him,

their leaves rustling against each other in the breeze:
everywhere there were shades of brown and green,

and sometimes a glimpse of bright flowers of pink or yellow.

Felix thought he might have found what he was searching for,

but he wasn’t sure,

so he kept walking.

Each day, he noticed that there were fewer and fewer trees,

and instead,

there were vast fields spreading out around him.

The sky was wide and blue,

and the grasses shooshed in the wind,

rustling and sighing,

like the leaves of those trees,

but all in one great chorus.

It was warm here,

and he lay in a patch of shade

at the edge of a corn field

and napped the afternoon away.

Felix liked the rolling hills and the red barns;

he liked the fat brown geese that seemed to be following him south.

But he was pretty sure this wasn’t the place he’d been dreaming of,

so after a good meal, and one more nap,

he faced south again and looked some more.

After many days,

Felix had walked over mountains and down into valleys.

As he walked, the air got drier,

and the days got longer.

The nights were blissfully cool,

and he could see almost as many stars

as he could on a summer’s night back home.

Instead of trees,

there were great, green lumps with spikes poking out all over.

There was no snow and no grass.

The soft ground was orangey-red,

and instead of being cold and wet,

it was hot and dry –

the pads of his feet burned

with every step he took

under the glaring eye of the sun.

All was still,

like on the tundra.

But this did not feel like a place he belonged.

He crouched in the scant shade of a giant green beast,

and dreamt of howling winds

and icebergs.

This was not what he was searching for,

so he kept going.

After many more mountains

and many more deserts,

Felix came to the thickest,

greenest forest yet.

Vines wrapped around tree trunks,

and everywhere there were

wide, green leaves

and narrow, sharp leaves –

leaves underfoot, leaves overhead.

The sky was green, too,

or at least it seemed that way.

It rained all the time,

and even his fur started to turn green around the edges;

he smelled like moss,

and the air tasted like a rain cloud.

The snakes were almost as big as he was,

and he didn’t like the way they looked at him.

Felix hopped on a raft,

and floated as far down the giant river as he could go.

He dreamed at night that he was on a chunk of ice,

floating with the seals and the walruses.

He woke up feeling itchy and hot;

everywhere he looked was green,

and the brightly colored birds flying over him

sounded like they were laughing at him.

He missed the way the icy water felt on a morning swim

and he missed the way the snow felt on his tired, moldy paws.

Felix sat on his raft, floating through green, warm water,

and ached for his home.

When the river reached the ocean,

Felix dove into the waves

and swam as far as he could go.

He found a strong current and floated along for a while,

rushing south in the cool water.

He started to feel chilly,

in the very best way,

and he saw familiar faces

(image of orcas and seals),

and wondered if he’d walked so far

that he’d come all the way back home.

After many days of swimming,

he saw colossal white masses on the horizon,

and was sure that his eyes were tricking him.

He swam hard, and tried not to get his hopes up,

but soon he smelled snow,

and felt the wind whipping along the surface of the water.

He heaved himself up onto a shelf of ice,

and sprawled out,

panting with fatigue,

and filled with relief.

Everything around him was covered in snow.

Everything was cold.

The sky was gray,

and the wind dug into his fur like shards of ice.

Polar bears don’t often howl,

but Felix let out a bellow that filled the air with the sound of his joy.

He had found the place for him.

He had found a new home.

Thinking Thoughts While Seated

I used to love meditation.
Back then,
I called it "prayer."
I would float so deep in my mind,
expressing gratitude and hopes.
I need to make time for it again;
it would solve so many
of my frazzled, frenzied moments,
certainly.
I should sit
on my sit bones
(a yoga instructor once told us to sit on our sit bones -
I didn't even know I wasn't, until I did, and wow)
and close my eyes,
and I should breathe slowly, deeply.
I should remind myself that all is well.

Love

I am
a delicate arch
My sons
are the wind
and the rain
Relentlessly
wearing me away
I stand firm,
but am changed
They are stronger than I

Vibrance

I realize
that I probably shouldn't
dissolve into the wind
and wrap myself around
someone else's soul...
but it's hard to stay anchored
to my own
when the light pours out of another.

Fireflies

Sitting across from you
in this noisy restaurant
at the end of a busy, productive day
we are too hungry and
it is too loud
to push our voices
through the multitude of crashing soundwaves
and say the soft things
that rumble quietly around on our tongues.
Instead,
I study your sweet face.
I see in your eyes the fragile human light that shines in all of us,
so easy to take for granted
so easy to assume it is unextinguishable, permanent,
like your love for me,
or mine for you.
In that quiet bubble of time
(the duration of a single breath)
in the crush of voices
echoing off the hard surfaces of the low room  -
in that moment,
I felt the quavering ground beneath me,
of time that will pass,
time that is passing,
passing,
and soon will evaporate around us like steam.
One more breath, just a blink away from the abyss,
and then I was savoring you--
recalling all the love that you've shown me, today alone.
I know that you can sense my restlessness lately,
my pacing, growling impatience with the world around me -
my need for space,
my need for adrenaline rushes and
new experiences and sleeping late and smoking and drinking and boys.
One would think I'd had enough of boys,
because I've raised so many of them and married two,
but I have found that no matter how many I have,
I only ever want more.

Happy Non-iversary

It was twenty years ago, today...
---and if I were making an old-fashioned mix tape,
I would cut that line from Sgt. Pepper's
and place it first,
then maybe follow up with the opening spoken lines
of Let's Go Crazy,
but I'm not.
I'm not making a mix tape,
and I'm not celebrating.
Would we have made it?
Would we have been joyfully toasting
two decades of togetherness?
Or would we hate each other more -
or differently?
Maybe we would have fallen (back?) in love.
Maybe we would have dragged each other along
through this journey of life,
(reluctantly crouched at the starting line)
or, more accurately (but less mix tape-ily),
reluctantly approaching the finish line (of child-rearing, at least).
I don't know the answers to any of those questions.
I do know that I am still unable to forgive myself
and still unable to write to you.
It's too much, somehow.
It's too...intimate, too real.
If I write to you, then that means that I know (or expect) you to read these words.
And I am maybe not yet ready to write words that are actually for you.
They are still for me...
maybe all of the words
were always
for me.
Maybe that's the problem...
one giant piece of the selfishness puzzle.
But in any case...here I sit,
on what would have been our 20th wedding anniversary,
tired
fat
worried
(about work, the kids, the state of American politics),
and I wonder if you noticed the date.
I wonder if you even remember,
but of course you do.
Your memory is as sharp as your tongue used to seem to be.
I don't know if I got tougher,
or if our disentanglement is so complete that you can't hurt me anymore...
or, more realistically, that you just don't try to anymore.
An image of you as a wounded animal,
lashing out at the one causing you pain...
of course you wanted to hurt me.
Even when I was only loving you,
I was the atmosphere around you,
full of light and joy, but just
hovering
ready and able to end you.
Because you dared to love me,
and that gave me all the power...
too bad I never knew that.
Too bad I interpreted it all wrong,
and thought that you only loved controlling me.
Could it ever have gone differently?
Would I ever have seen the truths of either of us,
without fleeing to the edge of the continent
and hiding myself completely from you?
I don't know that I could.
I look back on that life and wonder why it wasn't enough for me.
All I can really see that makes any sense
is that I needed tenderness and compassion
and that it wasn't coming to me.
But why couldn't there have been a way for me to make us both happy?
The sad little truth of it
is that I may never be happy -
content.
Humans are not meant to have contentment, not really.
It feels good, but too much of it inhibits progress...

I just wish I had the courage to really write this,
to write it to you.

Our sons are you.
And I love them so much that it's impossible not to love you, too.
I wish you were here, but not like that...
just together and laughing and showing the kids that everything will be ok.
And maybe a part of me wants to go back to the breakup
and relive the gruesome pain of it all
because there is no way
that I've suffered enough
to deserve the goodness in my life now.
And I need you to know that you have -
you have suffered way more than enough
to deserve only goodness in your life now.
You always did deserve that.
As painful as it was to not get what I needed from you,
it was unquantifiably painful to not be able to give you what you needed from me.
I wanted you to feel safe and loved and fed...
I wanted to create the happy childhood for you that you never had.
And I wanted you to golf every single minute, because it made you feel good,
and you are so damn good at it.
(And I guess this must be deep because that's the first time I even swore...)
I miss your brothers,
and I miss the lightning storms crashing and flashing across the whole valley;
I miss the mountains and the giant sky;
I don't miss the fucking mormons,
or the arid air parching me from morning til night;
I don't miss feeling wrongly paired with you,
but I kind of miss fighting with you.

I am grateful for it all, though.
For what we taught each other,
and what we survived of each other.
I am grateful for the time we spent figuring out the world together,
and for the good times...
there were good times, right?
I am grateful for the two beautiful products of our DNA splicing together
and splitting and splitting and splitting
(and somehow not becoming conjoined in the womb
 - dyyyyying laughing at that memory);
and I know that there were good times.

I see it all a little more clearly now.
I see the sweet, innocent girl I was for 21 years.
I see the tiny amount of time that passed between living that life,
and discarding it all with bravado -
pretending to be a badass,
pretending to be tough, and cool...
and then I met you,
and you thought I had strenghth
because I showed you my teeth -
I was a tiny little mewling kitten,
puffing up its fur to the Rottweiler
(a strong, intelligent beast
whose eyesight maybe isn't so good,
because he believed that I was a tiger).
And there we were,
mismatched because I put on a show of toughness,
and all the while assuming that everyone else was as tender inside as I was.

Well, anyway.
I'm proud of you for all that you are,
and all that you've given to me and to the kids
back then,
and always.
I'm grateful that you are still out there,
sharing this part of the journey with me.