s u r r e n d e r

(click image to enlarge)

i <3 new york

today

the poetry is in the faces

the light of day

the street signs

the tall sky

winter is nigh

my heart

a wide open sigh

breathing in new faces

filling in new spaces

the wind is tracing shapes

unfamiliar

to 

me 

i pretend

i practice

try it all on for size

wonder if i can 

rise

to the occasion

as i try 

to decipher

what you are to me

friend 

lover 

acquaintance

mother?

if i gamble 

will i win

if i dive in

will i sink or swim

?

for now 

i'll just breathe you in

and wander

admire you like a lover

dream

a 

dream

of

you and me

underneath

*

today I am milking stars from my bones

in the clink and clank of the coffee shop

i don my diving bell of dreams and sink

under the chatter

imperceptibly

only true jedis can get under the tiles

while a bus wheezes and the man to the left sneezes

and the city breathes its dirty secrets loudly

into every ear and the homeless man groans

I go deep beneath the city streets

under their hot grumbling drone

beneath the mumbles and moans

digging deeply into dirt and stones

inhaling the marrow of fallen sparrows and 

quiet bones

I paw freely into earth's belly with bare hands

scavenging ravaging

feathers death blood fur shit claws sand

I press into the silent pulse

then raise my head for air --

a blink is all you see on the surface of my 

soft stare

these words tangled in my hair

I return

and reach for my coffee

* 

artwork by hans haveron

water

i am a steady stream

pouring out into the world

less and less

emcumbered

with every bend

giggling past stones

carressing them

relentlessly

with ease

falling freely into this

limber languid dance

streaming easily

along roots of trees

rolling gracefully

into salty seas

rising invisibly

into the breeze

kissing the face

of morning leaves

reflecting the light

in early dew

streaming down old

washing it new

crying gushing rising flooding

tickling trickling languid flushing

still rushing healing rusting

rising falling coursing running

placid clear glimmering muttering

 secrets deep and true

ever-changing and irrefutable

half invisible

blindingly beautiful

all that is true

and impossible to hold on to

kissing your face with tears

singing for those who hear

i am you

a good night

tonight is a warm whisper

my body sighs

i peel away the self doubt

i bare my soul to myself and see that it is good

it is still good

as good as it was when i ran and laughed until it hurt late into the dark

me and my sisters

sticky with the scent of grass and dirt

giggles on our breath

a shared wallow in the bath

clean sheets

my mother's kiss

goodnight

i love you

our nighttime mantra

a clean bare heart quietly beating

under my favorite nightgown

what a surprise to come home

from the clamouring city of my day

loosen laces

shrug off soiled armor

and find that it is still there

still beating

still true

it hasn't missed a beat

and now

when i slip into my favorite nightgown of self-forgiveness
and close my eyes

my heart is just as clean

and just as bare

as it was that summer night in missouri

years ago

*

artwork by Audrey Kawasaki.... she is so amazing...

156 Cottonwood

At 156 Cottonwood, we women ruled the roost. 
This was a given.

My sisters and I knew every nook and cranny of our domain as intimately as we knew each crevice and bend of our own small bodies…

the irridescent pearl finish on Mom’s favorite lamp that we knew she paid too much for – the slight relief of its landscape of painted bouquets…

the funny cabinet it sat on – it’s printed wood veneer….
the soft, friendly thump it made when the front panels pulled themselves shut…

the lime green songbook that lived inside – its unfamiliar codes and dissected speech and sweet musty scent…

the forgotten birthday candles crusted in mysterious crumbs relentlessly patient in the back corner of the silverware drawer…

that random tall skinny closet in the kitchen – its mysterious, woody stench that, like a dirty family secret, we never understood and tried to keep quiet behind its closed, hollow door….

the thin, mottled, cold brown tiles of the junk room in the basement and its landscape of cardboard and old tin beer cans collected from rural sinkhole dumps…

the smell of dust trapped in sheer, stiff, blue, nubby curtains… I can almost taste it today. 
How did I become so familiar with the smell and taste of our living room window dressings?

We claimed
We inhabited
every square inch.

We rubbed and rolled over and tasted all of it.

We tapped its depths in lengthy episodes of hide-n-seek.

Out of boredom, on rainy days, we dug through dark shelves hoping to find forgotten treasures.

We took it all apart and put it all back together.

We bent over dirty tubs scrubbing.

We made the porch swing chains sing creaky songs for hours.

We pawed every branch of every tree that could bear us.

We knew there were dimensions in our yard that grown ups could never see.

It was our private fort in the afternoons after school.

I practiced being Wonder Woman in the back yard religiously,
then moved inside and practiced kissing the Fonz on the wood panelled wall of the basement when my sisters weren’t around.

And sometimes I simply waited in the bay window of the kitchen with our jam box and stacks of tapes…. listening to outdated radio recordings of Casey Kasem's Top Forty or recording the sound of myself chomping potato chips…
waiting for the return of our Queen….

our honey haired Queen Bee who faithfully bore gifts of food and kisses and warm baths and clean laundry…

our Queen Bee we faithfully knelt beside on cracked ceramic bathroom tiles while she bathed…

our Queen Bee that occasionally performed wild miracles like moving furniture and making runny ice cream out of salt and ice by wrestling a grumbling machine in our kitchen sink.

She was Queen of the Curling Iron
Queen of Furniture
Queen of Yes
Queen of No
Queen of Hamburger Pie
Queen of The Green Dress
Queen of Enjoli Perfume
Queen of Washing Machines
Queen of Wal-Mart
Queen of Swimming Pools
Queen of Chewing Gum
Queen of The Dirty Purse
Queen of Woman
Queen of Sisters
Queen of Us,
her hungry, wiggly devotees.

She smelled nothing like the man that walked in at 5:40pm everyday.
He smelled of foreign lands – of strange pink paper in duplicates.

He did not have a shiny green dress or any other pretty surprises.

He was as relentless as a clock in his measured, repetitive routines.

He inhabited small domains on the outer edges of our queendom.

He claimed the rear corner on the top of the refrigerator with his keys and wallet and loose change that he emptied out of his pockets at the end of the day.

He claimed the hall closet that was never properly on its hinges and filled it with his man shirts and big shoes.

He ran the woodpile on the far edge of the yard.

And his throne was the dull, dirty honey mustard Lazy Boy recliner in the family room that we would reluctantly acquiesce upon demand.

He only stunk up the blue bathroom when he did his business… which was mostly his domain as well.  The old stereo perched on the toilet tank was always set on an AM station which repelled us all.  Its frequency had the same effect on us as those devices you plug in the wall to drive off mice.

When he claimed the tv for Cardinals games and spit into the brown slimy tobacco soup in the Folgers can that usually lived behind the television, we were horrified to no end.  We skulked around during these endless hours, uncomfortable and tense, lamenting the state of our queendom, clinging to our Queen’s limbs, tugging at her skirt, begging for some sort of intervention.

This man baffled us completely in so many ways…

He loved to bumble around shamelessly in the old, rusty radioless Chevrolet truck that we called “The Blue Bomb.”

He impaled worms onto metal hooks and wiped their guts on his pants.

He scaled and gutted dead fish in the backyard.

He ate wheat bread.

And he got up early even when he didn’t have to.

But sometimes he delighted us…

Sometimes, when the Queen wasn’t around, he let us perch ourselves on the edge of the Blue Bomb’s truckbed while he drove us to the park.

Sometimes he made hot chocolate on the stove while we watched Saturday morning cartoons.

Sometimes he bought us sugar donuts at Foster’s Bakery.

And one time I slept with him at Grandma’s house and was overwhelmed by the unfamiliar, sweet feeling of sinking into his big, deep, warm, furriness in the dark.  He was like my favorite doll I slept with every night, but bigger and warmer and 20 times better.

Little did we know at the time that he made our entire queendom possible with his long absences and hours at the kitchen table spent bent over bills and checkbook.

His guitar sat quietly, covered in dust…. his dreams carefully tucked away in the hall closet with his work shirts and dress shoes.

And though he spoke little of making dreams come true, he always drove me to ballet class.


These memories that I jingle around in my pockets never change all that much.
As I get older, I’m probably losing a few here and there. 
And though I never seem to gain any new ones from that time, occasionally, when I empty them from my pockets to the top of the refrigerator and add them up,  I come up with values greater than I ever came up with before.

Thank you, Dad.
Thank you, Mom.
All hail the King and Queen of 156 Cottonwood.

* * *

the moon hums to herself
        behind a pale shroud of clouds

i am vast
           half dreaming
                           mingling with the wind

shapeshifting like the smoke
      that whispers prayers into the sky

matters of riddle quietly unfold in the dying embers of the fire

         with eyes closed
i dream new ways to pray
                        soft focus
               deep gaze
time sways
            and frays
                              elegantly
                        into the night sigh

    . . . again i die
and with the sun i rise . . .

These Words

These words
tracing what I see

These words
groping for the unseen
playing guessing games with the unnamed

These words
wrapping lovingly around those I adore

These words
filling up space

These words
tumbling onto the page

These words
creating
time love magic bread doors swords songs life questions clues roads water flowers stone

These words
humming my song

These words
loose change in my pocket
that I jingle in the dark

These words
that weigh nothing
These words
that bear the weight of the world

These words
that waft through the air
land on paper
then slide off
chorusing into blood
through hearts beating
through mouths singing
through hands reaching

into everything
into nothing
in a mad dance that never ends

it is my favorite game
to gather them in my hands
stand at my door
and blow them like a wish into the wind

casting spells with my breath
like a good little witch

I watch them flutter and fall
and chant my favorite mantra of all
to myself
to you
to everything
to nothing at all

I love you
I love you
I love you

more sappy honey from my beehive heart

...............


Another love poem?!  This is what happens when you exist on a steady diet of Pablo Neruda.  You turn into a complete sap.

I had a close encounter last weekend with a close encounter from last summer.  I always knew he wasn't My Man, but nonetheless, even to this day, every time our paths cross,  my heart leaps and my instinct is to love him.  For no logical reason.

But of course these things are never logical....



my instinct has always been to love you. 
upon seeing you, in the flash before conscious thought,
before we engage in the ritual dance of hi’s and hellos,
my heart brightens, turns toward you and beams …
and my awareness follows…
it’s you.

you are a color I have never seen
you are a word only heard in distant dreams
you
a dark silvery shadow
a partial eclipse
half hidden
deep eyes
closed lips
you
a whisper half heard
a glint that flashed and faded
and left me holding songs for you
and appetites unsated
you
and your heart half shaded

we parted ways
the sun shuddered,
swayed,
dimmed,
sighed
and in time
continued to shine
the moon slowly blinked 17 times
and now when we meet
my heart still opens wide
even though you’ve long since retreated with the tide

but now I just smile
and simply say
hi
you

Transitions.... AGAIN?!?! Getting the heart and the head to get along.

So I don't want this blog to be too diary-ish, but my current situation swirls around in my head everyday.... any fresh perspectives on the the situation are welcome.

Transitions...
I feel another big one at my front door.

Funny -- growing up I always had this idea that after you finish school and find your mate and have kids and get your career on, you hit cruise control and everything just kinda plateaus.  It's so glaringly clear to me now that it is never-ending -- our changing morphing shifting learning is the very fabric of life.  So get nimble, right?!

The last few years have been a practice in nimbleness for sure.  When I look back I am astonished at how many boxes I've packed and moved and unpacked and repacked and removed and.... you get the idea.  Each new chapter involved a different bedroom and a different hairdo.  And all of this was just the physical representation of the accelerated course my soul has been on throughout the packing and moving. 

It all began with The Break-Up (like so many things do!).  I thought I had found My Man and that we were embarking on The Rest of It together.  Nope.  So there was the disassembly of Life With Max -- the wretching, rapid move into storage, couch surfing and tear-stained pillows.

Then there was the year of  The Urban Monk Warrior Superhero.  I unpacked boxes and shaved a mohawk and entered my self-imposed healing social exile into a focused stint of meditation, running, counseling, raw food and school.

Then I repacked and moved again into the 9 month gestation in isolation ... The Hermit In The House At The End of The Dirt Road in The Middle of Nowhere chapter.  I spent much of this time finishing my coursework and final collection at school.

This quiet gestation gave birth to more storage and gypsy time which ended in a stint in Bali where I happily lived out of my suitcase and designed a line of clothes in celebration of my completed course in fashion design.

Then back to San Francisco and friends' couches.  I'll never forget the day when I was feeling so ungrounded that the most comforting thing I could think up to do was to pull my station wagon up to my storage unit, pop-up the back, raise up the door of my unit, gaze at my Things from the hatchback and smoke a cigarette (something I had quit doing before that day).

Luckily, I found a place for next to nothing, moved my boxes into my new home and unpacked again.... only to find out that, unluckily, I had moved in with a certifiably crazy woman.  And I mean Certifiable.

So there was repacking and moving and unpacking down the street with a couple of guys that seemed pretty cool.    Then they both tried to kiss me within the first month and I realized that it wasn't the ideal home situation.

Obviously it was time to get my own place.  Work was going well so I also decided that career-wise, it was high time that I get the rest of my own teleprompting gear as well.  Surely after finding the most magical cottage on the planet and focusing on building my freelance business, I would be content and settled, right?  I could unpack for awhile this time.  Exhale.  Pass the moving boxes and baton onto some other wandering soul.  Right?!

Ya I dunno.

You see, I felt wide open and unattached upon my return from Bali (years of this nimbleness practice will do that to you).  I felt very unattached to San Francisco and felt a pull toward Brooklyn or Manhattan.  However, I had just spent all my money on my project in Bali and as soon as I got to San Francisco, I started receiving calls for work.  I was surprised I hadn't been forgotten and was thankful for the work.  I thought I'd save up some money and then maybe head out there at a later date.

Then I kinda forgot.
Until I visited my little sis in Brooklyn last month.
And it all came rushing back in -- the sights the sounds the textures the colors the conversations the nitty gritty city dirty real east coastness off it all woke me up from the lazy hazy lull of west coast living.

The truth is, I've never found my groove again in SF since The Break-Up in 2005.  Now I feel like I'm in a bit of a dead end relationship with San Francisco and it may be time for another break-up of sorts.   My relationship with San Francisco is familiar, it's easy, it's comfortable, but it is no longer feeding my soul.

The learning curve of the last few years has been steep.  With each move I have stretched and learned and become a slightly different woman.  I've grown and changed so much that I am no longer resonating with much in San Francisco.  I've been a little bored and uninterested in the culture and believe that I most likely have learned what I came here to learn.

It's as if I'm in an eddy at the edge of the river swirling around and around and not really going anywhere.

My heart is telling me to jump back into the current and head east.  My gut is telling me that that is where the growth is.  But my head is pulling hard on the reigns.  My voice of consciousness from the Midwest is telling me that it makes no sense to go there without a job lined up.  And if I'm planning on continuing my life as a freelancer with my own teleprompting company, it could be a very very challenging transition to go somewhere where no one knows me.  My voices of self doubt and fear tell me I'm not ready -- I don't have enough money to make a transition as a freelancer and I don't have the skills and resume yet to get a decent job in fashion.  I fear that I may go there and end up broke and feeling ungrounded. 

I take all that and weigh it against my heart which is tugging at me like a kid tugs her mother's hand as they pass by the candy shop.  I want to go noooow! 

What is the most wise, brave way to move forward?  I don't want to be impetuous or immature by packing up and moving and then find myself spending a couple of years getting on my feet again.  Am I really up for another uproot?  However,  I also know that I don't do well ignoring my heart.  I never have.  I want to be challenged and grow and evolve -- in the most graceful, wise way possible.

What does that look like?!

Lovespell

I fold this spell into the shape of kiss, reach for your wrist, place it in your outstretched hand.
Eye contact.
Kiss unfolds to reveal a map.  Of my heart.
Click "street view" and we're on your stoop
drinking tea
smiling sweet
pondering the origin of the breeze
lamenting the decline in picnicing.

If I was beside you on your stoop, would you feel inspired to court me old school?
Bring me flowers and bouquets of sweet words
inspired verse
trace my neck with whispered words?

run ahead of me to open car doors?
I wouldn't settle for less
but would consider settling for more.

For you, I'll let down my hair and wear pretty skirts
make you soup with love and sweet desserts
stitch your name on your bowling shirt ;-)
cuddle you fiercely
love you dearly
sing your name clearly ... out of tune but endearing.

But....
what did you say your name is, dear?
I couldn't quite hear.
Are you near?
I know you're there
just not sure exactly where.

So for now I'll just tuck this note behind my ear....
tend to my garden
keep weeding out the fear
grow my heart bigger
wait for you here.....

casting spells
hoping you'll hear.

Late Night Notes from a Casual Straggler

Here's a little sumpin I wrote about city living...

Late Night Notes from a Casual Straggler

I clink the empty drink on the bar in front of me
and nimbly excuse myself from the thick steamy indoor revelry

I squeeze out the door and giggle past a gaggle of gloomy glib hipsters
smoking
fashionably moody
ignobly nonchalant
and leave them in their cool listless mist

Cornerside
I tip my hat to the hiccup and hobble of a homefree hobo
haggardly shuffling toward the grumbling underbelly of his underpass alcove

then quietly slide by the open door of a Mission bar
exhaling the musky breeze of the rowdy revelry of ranchero wanna-be's
hootin and hollerin over a madcap merengue melody

they whistle
i smile

Onward still

The searing rumble of a swift skateboard slices through the air to my right
a hooded young urbanite cascading into the night
dimly lit by a stuttering streetlight
a fast moving urban bat
his ipod whispering secrets into his ear
moving to a theme song none of us can hear

Meanwhile the rider looming low at the stoplight
haunts the hood heavy
simmering in the rattle and roar of his souped up DeVille
heaving deep gangsta beats into the streets
shiny wheels
tinted with the gleam of homeyville
broadcasting his ways always without apology

Noted.
I put in all in my poetic pipe and smoke it
then exhale it back into the night
as I weave my way through the dimly lit maze of the late night urban jungle byways.

Do we have to call it A Blog?!

Blog.
Such an unromantic word. Ugh.
A bit ugly even.... I wonder about it's origin.

Of course I could look it up on Google and get to the root of it quite quickly I'm sure. But that's the thing with the internet... it's like the twist a plot that never ends... ADD's best friend. One moment you sit down with a clear goal and the next moment you're on YouTube watching somebody's dog in Indiana peeing on a Christmas tree.

But I'm not gonna do it!

Because..... I am here .....

to Blog.

Why?

Well, we'll start with the fact that I am in San Francisco twiddling my thumbs wondering what comes next.... dreaming up new chapters.... weaving loose visions of my new life in Brooklyn where I am writing profusely and creating art non-stop when I am not busy as a successful owner/operator of my own teleprompting company. I figure this life of art and writing will eventually grow and transform into a wildly acclaimed book of some sort which will of course lead to the next chapter where I steal away for 2 months at time to quiet, quaint huts in the tropics where I work on creative projects (probably a book and lots of poetry and also maybe my next clothing line) to the sound of wild animals hooting and hollaring in the breeze. By this time I will have sold my teleprompting equipment and will be living a full spectrum life of pure art, music, dancing, beauty and love. And of course I'll have my personal assistant taking care of the nitty gritty details of life such as car registration and library fines so those unrefined, dull tasks don't sully my art with foggy hues of dishwater gray and such.

And did I mention that I am reading Julie and Julia?
Yes it's true.

And just like the thousands of sturdy, feisty, inspired gals that joined boxing gyms after viewing Million Dollar Baby (being a sturdy, feisty, inspired Missouri native, I too, of course, pondered it for a moment, but was too busy learning trapeze at the time to give boxing the proper focus), I am joining the ranks of the wistful wordy thirty somethings who feel like the beginning of their fabulous writing career (and eventual movie deal of COURSE) just might begin right here online in cyberspace where so many miracles seem to be happening these days...

like it did for the woman who wrote Julie and Julia for example....

that maybe anything is possible even at the age of 35...

that maybe now I finally might a have a thing or two to say worth listening to ....

and that maybe it's okay to begin to spell it all out before I have it all figured out.

So okay...

I write a lot of poetry.
I constantly juggle a lot of philosophical thoughts around in my head.
I ingest copious amounts of delicious poetry these days that I love to share.
I pay attention.
I am often confused.
I am often amazed.
I find myself shrugging and laughing a lot.
I know less and less and less.
I love words. I play with them regularly.
I dream of compiling a book of "awakening" stories and paradigm shifts that will include my own.
I am dating... which provides me with anecdotes for at least one book.
I am changing.

And this will be the little cybernook where I begin to doodle and trace these things into words.
Anything from this list and beyond might appear.
And you are invited along in my meanderings ... even if you might be already completely overwhelmed by this New Age of Too Much Information (which I freely admit that I am).

Let the blogging begin... (until I think up a nicer word for it).
;-)