Sobbing is the exact right way to breathe.
Category: Sanctuary
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Are you 8? Style-wise, you a queen already.
The low heel ankle boot in black and buckles, hell yess.
The spangled jeans, acid washed just so.
The long-sleeve black sparkled owl shirt.
Keep it up.
Most of all, Keep That
Confident hand on tilted hip
& opposite tilt of chin
& glittery got-this-figured-out-already-ya-fools look in your eye.
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Reckless in the pouring rain
She crouched on bare feet, fingers in mucky sand, heard felt thunder rumble and lightning crack.
But rain was sweet as it roared down from the sky and drenched her thirst.
Her hair wet ropes, her bare skin soaked, she dug beneath shells,rocks and sand, her nails ragged and broken.
She cared not, for her fingers snugged into wet earthy sand and
liquid electric light surges.
Something dull slips away, replaced by something iridescent, flickering of silver dawns on the ocean.
Silent and still yet
Electrified and Electrifying
She knows it as something other than pain because it sparkles and shimmers.
Shaken soaked and seared, she stumbles through tangled mangroves to solid earth, rests there.
Dreamed of panthers and alligators in the swamp and osprey and vultures in the sky, she rises to dusk and mosquitoes and bats and owls.
Smearing herself with muddy sand, she prowls with the other creatures through the twilight and greets the rising full Moon as sister and brother both.
High evening breeze through a grove of cypress trees, she hugs one, leans on it, buena, abuela, i am happy to see you. Such dreams i’ve had, may i tell you?
Si, mi querida, mija, tell me all your such dreams.
And in the telling, she wanders in her story and in the grove, but the tree never loses track of tale, or teller.
The Earth spins and revolves. The Moon weaves. The Sun shines. Flowers bloom.Trees grow.
She bleeds and bears and raises and keeps and tends and cares.
She wanders again, and in wandering wonders under oaks dripping silver gray green spikes of moss to find a ragged branch of cypress leaning upon the largest oak.
Her spotted veined and wrinkled hands know this peeling bark. Abuela’s gift just under seeming ruin.
Chisels large and small and sandpaper rough and smooth in her hands slowly painstakingly reveal the river the cypress drank before cracking the branch loose and leaving it for her —
Red, brown and black rivulets and islets burble and flow all along its length, smoothed with soft oil to a moonlit gleam.
Clearly this end a hoof, this end a claw — and just where it should be, a knotty knob that’s also a knee.
The storm and the river and the earth and its creatures in the tree in her hand, she stands and walks and tells such dreams and tales and treasures to make villains blush and maidens to take up arms.
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From the spider’s perspective
The unfinished house was perfect empire.
Thickest beams held silken-strong threads under mostly built roof.
Surveyed her domain- an absence of interior walls
A peripatetic labyrinth of two by fours and
Music from elsewhere and
Rain-caught bowls
Seated on the floor among tools and empty pizza boxes
Our conversation inconsequentialQuotidian yet leaning towards deeper meaning, as tended –
She dropped in
At the end of her silk
Eye level to us
Betwixt and between us
To silence and remind us
Of mysteries forever, world without end…..
Then ascended to her silvery throne among the rafters.
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An evening with Dad on Fatherland Avenue
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The honey bees are drunk
Upon sea-grape blossoms
In the April sun sunk heavy
Barely aloft, so full of nectar
Of tiny butter-yellow blooms
This charm of bees
Dips and sways as predawn party-goers
Tumbling into the all-night dinerAn enormous, dense shrub, given full range to its code –
Yet here, in our secret garden, manipulated from sapling,
Forced lovingly by some former inhabitant into a single trunk
Allowed its full branching only when just out of hands’ reach,
This sea-grape spreads saucer-shaped leather leaves
And drips long curving rods of fairy flowers
That tempt and nourish this rabble –
Boisterous at sunrise feasting
Steady, business-like drinking songs in noonday sun
And by late afternoon their
Navigation blurred and wavering, wings slow as cold honeyThis hum of bees swims heavy
Back to their hive with swollen bellies of nectar
Like my heart swollen
To know this tree, that should not be a tree, but is a tree
Thrives and feeds hives
To know this game of bees
Bounces drunkenly
From my surprised cheekbone
To their queen. -
First, you must offer solace to the weeping redhead, long and thin, her pale spindle legs tangled in robin’s egg blue silk on a black and white checked floor, her head held hard by apathetic scullery cabinets, the single tap drip, drip, drip dripping behind and above her, ignored in the high and mighty solitude of her suffering.
Know that try as you might to show her the needles and pins tucked neatly into the black paper in your hand, and try as you might to describe their whys and wherefores, their heads and lengths and ends clear signals to purpose –
“See, the sewing needle has a hollow head to allow thread to pass and a sharp point to pierce the fabric – to mend your beautiful but torn dress, my darling. And these, the hatpins, regard them, long and thin to hold the hat in place, the pearly heads large so that they decorate but do not disappear into your shining tresses, only dully pointed so as not to damage your lovely skin….”
– as a means of distracting her, she refuses you, her chin aloft in grief, her lips and eyelids raw pink, shut tight against your vanity for an eternity.
Her eyes under invisible brows, behind invisible lashes will not answer yours, though she is aware of your presence and your efforts. Touch her bare shoulders and she twists powerfully away from you, writhing and wailing her loss to the indifferent ceiling, her frailty a scalding lie.
For she knows your efforts are but detective fiction, that what you really wish from her is to know the origin of mermaids and dragons and squandered magic. That your bootless confrontation of comfort is a banquet of naiveté upon which she feasts by remaining precisely where she is.
There is ordinary sunlight in this room. Why is it the kitchen, and not torch-lit dungeon or moonlit soaring tower? Why are there plates and cups and spoons here instead of banded chests of gold, ebony-handled daggers, ancient maps and ruby tiaras?
Her eyes open.
Fall upon you, sparkling.
She asks to see the scissors.
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Tell me, said the old woman, tell me about this hand.
I thought that was your job, said I.
Said the old woman, I have no job, I have a means to an end. You tell me about this hand.
OK. Well, it’s my right hand.
So it is, girlie. What’s that to me but my left? I’m no mirror. Tell me about this hand.
This hand is my dominant hand. I shoot with it. I eat with it. I write with it. I –
AH! So you dance with it?
Ummmm said I… Where’s this all going? I can’t dance with my hand. I came to get my fortune told.
HAHAHAHAHAHH. Fortune isn’t in your hand. It’s HERE.
Ow! That was my forehead.
No. It was your third eye and I poked you in it. Wake up. Now tell me about this hand.
Hey, let go!
Why? I thought you wanted your future read?
My future, yes, ok, go ahead.
Alright then. You have five fingers on this hand. I see two more in your future.
Two more fingers? I don’t understand.
Of course you don’t. Hands.
Two more hands…..Oh I get it. So I’ll get help then?
You may, but maybe not. It all depends.
On what?
On you.
HA. That’s no fortune. That’s not even the future.
Oh yes indeed it is. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s best not to choose.
Not choosing is itself a choice.
And that is your future. Good bye. May the force be with you.
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0
Too many channels and truly nothing’s on
1
Speed the angels in their descent
0
Avatars alight upon imaginary wavelengths and ride them to ∃∀∞
1
The moon was new last night.
0
Connection
1
Unplugged.
0
Down
To
The
Bone
The
Marrow
Takes
All
0
1
Unraveled from the fabric of space
0
I love to drive.
1
When the road is open and full of curves.
0
It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand.
1
That was never the point.
0
Sometimes confusion holds its own answers.
∞∞∞∞
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With thanks to Emily Dickinson and Pablo Neruda.
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Or the card player?
Or both?
Or a pirate forsworn?
Or an angel sworn?
Are you none but a knave by birth and cultivation?
Are you a minion?
Are you a monster or a whore?
Or none and a fair human to all?
Are you all and then some?
I ask you truly, but ask no true answer.
Be not afraid to spout the truth
But at a slant pray you
Lest the straightest arrow penetrate deepest
And find yourself undone by your own lack of majesty.
Are you neither, but a life of your own,
Destined to do as you please,
Regardless of consequence?
The best stories are told roundabout.
I know not what I write
But I write for you
That read my words
And think a while upon them
May it stay your hand to hold in mercy
Against an oppressor finally avenged
Unnamed from history but final in its imprecation
That lies treacherous in its deceptions and treacheries for making the past a living breathing monstrosity that overtakes
A living heart.
Not was. Is.
How then to redress?
I know not but what I write
I hope to forestall.
I hope to mitigate.
I hope to regain.
I hope to redeem.
Let not vengeance
But hope to reconcile
And be haunted no more.