Calcified

I tend to forget all the things available to me now:

The curl inside comforts, gifts from god(dess)

Muses / elixirs / flavors / sensations

Beautiful faces, bare skin, zaftig cheeks

Innocence free to delight in clean air

Aesthetic delight and kinesthetic pleasure

The rhythm of rain and little feet

The wine the butter the bread the wine

The sun, the steadfastness of its shine

The earth, the faithfulness of its spin

Our hearts, how they vibrate together

Our eyes, how they see color

Our ears, how they hear voices. //

I am human being, human doing

The dervish of life, years purling by

Experiences stacked like layers of dirt

We reach forth, we dig deeper. We hit

The crusted layers . We stab at the impasse

We grow tired of learning the same lessons until

We discover we are not calcified in every direction. 

The Embrace of Moon

We must turn away from the closest star

To see a universe brimming with them

We breathe the night

To break from consciousness

To process verisimilitudes of existence

To enter non existing worlds

We hide in shadows cast by knowing

But we can never hide from what's in our heads

We run and lose and get lost, but

The embrace of moon, the reflection of sol

Even when we cannot see it

Leads us back

Here

Now.

Growing Up

To watch a child grow up is to nurture a tender pocket of beating flesh into a conscious willful being.

To watch a child grow is to know the softest spots in a person and notice how these areas harden in response to the world.

To watch a child grow is to see how quickly life blossoms and transforms. 

To watch a child grow is to touch sweetness and know it intimately, only to let it go. 

To watch a child grow is to witness the expansion of knowledge and the sponge that soaks it up and squeezes it out in a conglomerated form.

To watch a child grow is to hold space for beautiful messes and wrong turns, sacrifices both expected and unexpected.

To watch a child grow is to unfold the folded pieces of your heart and write new messages on the inside.

To watch a child grow is to hear the whisper of the future as it echoes off the present.

To watch a child grow is to see how life arranges and re-arranges itself around the fiery light of love.

#childhood #motherhood #momlife #dadlife #growingup #love #poem #poetry #sanfrancisco #sfbay #vscocam

Pretend

I don't pretendTo know Why my body Just broke out In chills

I don't pretend To hate myself Or love myself Or know myself And what I want

I don't pretend To be anything Less than perfect For I was born This way

I don't pretend The deluge of This human experience Does not break My heart daily

I don't pretend Mistakes don't happen Or light doesn't die Or envy doesn't Warp my thoughts

I don't pretend My thoughts Don't matter My addictions Don't count

I don't pretend I'm naturally Thin and I don't need Recognition for These years of work

I don't pretend My heart doesn't Hurt And I don't pretend To know why.

Why don't you go fall fly away Leave me on this island

While I drown beneath today

Information like storm clouds

Churning and burning cold

A ceiling between me and source

A cage thick as an eggshell

But strong as gold

Yearning for tomorrow and youth

At once

A paradox of impossibilities

They comes in flashes, the truth

We chip away at suffering

But all of this feels old--

Could we leave it behind

This yearning for our words to be sold?

Without condemning human kind

To a history that does not bear

The privilege of repeating

Nor believes

That a greater power does, in fact, care.

Windows

I went outside and it smelled so good. I stood on a cinder block and danced to the music piped into my ears. I felt the morning sun heat up my face and my baby strapped warm against my core. Nine months inside of me, nine months next to me. I looked across rooftops, trees, water, past bridges past mountains, my gaze settling on the sky.

I danced and I knew happiness. I felt free.

Until I realized that anyone in my neighbor's laundry room could see me. They could be laughing at me. They could think I was crazy, or high, or both. A lot of people live in that house. They could be watching me the way I watch them folding laundry at night, not purposefully but because we are right in one another's line of vision. I sit at my computer, facing a window with a view. But at night the waters and mountains and trees fade to black, leaving only the illuminated window of their laundry room.

I stepped down from the cinderblock. The floating bridge in the distance disappeared behind houses.

I walked around the perimeter of my yard again. I want to memorize it now, in case I ever move. I know I will not live in this house forever. But I have grown attached to these walls where I've raised children and birthed a baby and loved a man and wrote words.

If the universe wants me to move, I will follow. If the earth wants me to feel my feet upon it, I will dance. If spirit wants me to play, I will dream.

Look for me out your window. I'm not afraid of being seen.

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Morning

Mornings open me

In the ethereal quiet of daybreak

I am free from excess thought and arbitrary restrictions.

Possibility looms in the form of light flooding from the east, clouds streaking the dome of sky.

A blank mind is a clean house, a new day is an unwritten page.

Coffee tastes better and I wish that mornings could last all day.

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Ground

The ground feels solid

When I'm spilled all over it

In bruised petals

Until I get it under my fingernails

And the land upon which we depend

Crumbles into piles of lost possibility

Beneath the surface a seed gestates

Cradled by the heat of the earth

A womb made of dirt.

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my full moon super powers

my full moon super powers--

Fly. See all of creation from up there. Skip through space to embody unknown dimensions. Walk to the other side of this planet. Understand the nature of beauty. Feel history as it pulses under my skin. Read a book by picking it up. Traverse the highway of time. Float. Levitate. Hover. Become everyone at once. Speak without words. Communicate across blank spaces. Shapeshift. Tumble through clouds. Read my heart aloud. Hold conviction as strong as the ocean. See God in the looking glass. Memorize the map engraved upon the deepest layer of spirit. Live the loftiest existence of my soul's imagination. Catch my baby's cries with unconditional kisses. Hold them forever. Grant grandiose wishes with the wink of my eye. Erase conflict with the nod of my head. Become the wind. Exhale abundance. Hear the echoes of animals. Unpeel the scars of living. Disappear. Reappear. Remember. Turn inside out. Show my insides to the kindred. Love all the children. Breathe in the babies. The crown of each head. Wrap my arms around the ocean. Unwrap the meaning of now. Sit in the stillness of sun. Bloom. Keep faith between my fingers, always close to my fingertips. Intuit without doubting. Play life like a movie. Slow motion. Rewind. Fast forward. Repeat. Open. Heart, mind, soul. Of infinite boundaries.

Photo credit: Alisha Sommer

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These Shoes

When I wear these shoes the earth feels soft beneath my feet

the pieces of me that won't be confined are free to be broken.

Fallen Behind

TimeThe metronome of progress Even when we stop For a break Time marches onward We will have to run To catch up. Fall too far behind and We fear Spending our whole lives Hidden by shadows Chasing light Looking behind clouds To find more clouds Grudges shackled to our ankles Expectations binding our wrists Weights of want And no one within shouting distance.

Correction.

The fog is thick as dirt Like we are buried Beneath the crust But even underground We are not alone Surrounded by Fungi and worms Moles and insects Billions of micro organisms Pay attention with every sense Notice The movement The earth shifting around us We are the axis Life is on all sides In all cracks No matter how deep We've fallen.

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Frequency of Us

I don't know what I'm looking at anymore We try and try and try again

Some days we get better and somedays we get worse

The sky turns pink and we turn away

The rain falls and we call it a nuisance

The night settles and we go to bed

The morning comes and we waste it away

I don't know what I'm doing anymore

Distractions circumnavigate my head

Doubt settles in my bones

Something isn't right

Materialism Pollution Racism

Sugar Alcohol Gossip Magazines

Impatience Dishonesty Power Wars

I want to jump out of bed in the morning

Drink tea Walk in the rain Salute the sun

Kiss my loves Hold my littles Embrace myself

Write Read Move Learn Teach Love

I have a hunch there's more out there

We are like little ants on one sidewalk on one street

Unseeing past the horizon, unaware of the infinite

The country, the planet, the galaxy, the universe

Matter and energy

Vibrating on the frequency of us.

You've Never Felt For Me

Take me by the hands

Let us intertwine our

fingers Like our ugly

lives and Overlapping

toes Like the city we

love to memorize Up

here on the roof

Kiss me with everything

You've never felt for me

Then shove me over the

edge Let me spill across

the sidewalk Somersault

Into another dimension

You will be forgiven I will

be forsaken No one will

be alive to know What

happened But for you

And your uncrying heart

Please spare me from

Yourself My knees are

purple from begging

You who've molded

my theories Like putty

and Taken the sparkle

from my eyes To keep

in your pocket Where

it will live Even after

I'm dead and gone.

Climax

Perhaps we have reached the endForsaken by everything trustworthy Starved by our own prerogative Festering into odious spunk Never mind the shelf life lasts Forever. Our toes point behind us Our fingers point somewhere in The distance, an arabesque into The future, two uneven halves Divided with nothing left for the Now. We mow our grass though It never stops growing, we pay For superfluous insurance just To be safe. We spurn safety For money, we declare war on Life by spraying verdure with Poison, we hedge the present With gold and still moments captured By the lens, immortalized by the Screen, because we matter and Those smiles will someday climax And though we prepare for it, we Will never be ready for it, so what I pray is the point in trying?

Infinite Loop

I sleep not, rest notEat not, taste not Kiss not, love not Unless I'm with You

Take my fingers I know they're cold, let's Travel to panoramic views Where mountains float like Birds

I'll wait while you collect Souvenirs of this entanglement My wings flapping in rhythm With the cycles of the Moon

Once she's carried me home Turn your face towards heaven I'll return as a raindrop I'll caress your face with Water

There is no end to us As there was no beginning We exist as points upon the circle Repeating this infinite Loop.

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Fog

Fog.

A bride's white veil

Gray as marriage

Blinding like love.

Smoke from a fire

A fire in heaven

While our eyes were closed.

Kissing trees

Obscuring illusion

Keeping us from one another.

On the other side

A storm brews

Cut with time.

Earth becomes a dream

Water turns ethereal

I stay home.

letting go

Written for Trifecta. She looks between her legs, white paper stained crimson. It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

Her body, round as Mother Earth, heaves, like the ship against the waves. She tries holding her breath, drowning herself in the murky density of the mind.

"I want to die!" she shouts when the pain subsides. But her voice comes out of the wrong end. It travels inward rather than out. She doesn't have much time until the next attack. Thought falls into the shadow of suffering. The core of her cramps.

"You're going to survive," a man says. The tightening squeezes the life out of her. She climbs into his words.

You... Will... Survive...

She lives inside of the words. Intellect dissolves and their essence cradles her in an Elysian cocoon. She knows she is dying.

"Let me go," she says. "Throw me to the sea." But the interlude doesn't last. Force demands freedom. The big boom, the beginning of the universe, travels through her body, splitting open her pelvis. She bares down, until she realizes she is about to break in two like a seashell.

"Push your hardest, then let it go. Push, let go. Push, let go."

Push... Let go...

The first time she opens up, she does not break, she widens. Heaven passes through the hole in her body.

Faceless arms hand her a tiny child, naked and disoriented. Blankets, a hat descends, gloved fingers point her nipple between miniature lips. She holds his squirming body against her own. She looks at the suckling chin, a chin she already knows well. She thinks of nothing, not of love or of pain, but of what she has learned about mothering.

The hardest part is letting go.