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Water Fire Walk

Posted in Uncategorized on July 31, 2023| Leave a Comment »

She is a storm. She came in like a burst of flame. It’s seldom he.

We walked together for miles. Conversation: light. With texture. We’d notice together the big, dark, gnarly oaks; tried making out what the elbowed graffiti said; the would-be-squats, where glass once held out the weather & now created passage for breeze, flying bits of garbage, & eyes in search of shelter; which tracks looked to still be in use, & which looked overgrown. Basic detective shit.
I’d show her a special shadow that mimicked a different type of life. I’d ask her if she saw subtle rainbows in clouds too. Private super-power.
She’d point out different ways to walk to experiment. Subtle & effective to awaken different muscle groups; how our bodies might shift shape if we’d walk in such a manner for a whole week, month. In such a manner for another.

I cannot say that water ever harmed me. It’s scared the hell out of me. It’s forever changed me. It’s brought me -also- the greatest of peace. If I had to pick an element to trust to bring me home…
I had a 4 hour drive home last where I remembered someone telling me how their mother was an unstoppable swimmer. Any body of water would do. As her health began to fail & a chair took over the job of her legs, she’d still insist on going to the water. She had a caregiver that had taken too long a break & she’d wheeled herself out somehow to the ocean. This was what ultimately claimed her. The memory is fuzzy now, but I think that’s right. I remember feeling like that was the saddest, most beautiful, poetic way to die that I’d ever heard in 1st person. I wanted to say so, but instead -held space.
On the freeway that had been smooth- red lights cropped up & suddenly traffic appeared thick around the bend. A heavy plume of pitch-gray smoke. A small-town-fire truck pointed, determined. Water on its way.
I took the reroute & bypassed through the country.

There’s a lot of life in the country. There are people everywhere. This brings both fear & comfort.

I cannot tell you how many times I have wished with my whole molecular structure that we could live in a society that were trust worthy. How different being would be.
There is no office to write this appeal to. Who would sign this campaign? Who would practice in authenticity? There still would be room for drama. It’d just be an alternate variety. Still room for excitement.

The rain curtain will again fall but it will fall less & less. We no longer can shack up in the desert without a smart plan. Have the rates of lightening strikes increased? There is a name for the person who studies this phenomenon: fulminologist. Juicy search history over here. Getting paid to study specific types of natural devastation; & -due to familiarity- eventually to inevitably align with at least some of the good in said devastation. This is our human nature. We are not so unpredictable after all.
There are ample opportunities to take to the forest & wander in wonder, noticing how little birth is accomplished without someone/ something giving way for it.

People that were born during a storm: raise your hands. Are you a different breed?
Water births or early swimmers: can you be categorized together too beyond your early years?
Must we be cut from similar cloths to have the joined desire to roam? The fulfillment that walking brings.
Do we leave something similar in our wake?

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Home Words

Posted in Uncategorized on June 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

It works like this.

There’ll be a wall. It will look like a wall. It’ll feel like a wall. But that’s not important. You must remember you’re here at first to find a door; no matter how long, deep down, or how high said wall is- you find the door. And if you can’t find the door it is your job to invent the door, to claw your way through in some form or manner until the passage becomes star-full easy & you feel accompanied by the cool hand of God.
The warm hand of God.
The seething hot, fiery hand of God; how ever your God comes. And if he comes, may it be in your eyes.
May it be on your head.
All over your heart, thighs, back, where ever your wonder resides & your worry, fury & excess, & and where the ferocious scratches on desperate pulpy napkins come from on wet wood bar counters on dewy nights with blurred strangers, hungry kisses, compromised memories.
And the walls will soon be distant until new ones appear but you’ll be oriented by now & if not- you’re to remember to notice your psyche is on, your synapses are lit, your skin is borderline electric, & you’re here to find what you’re supposed to plug into & it’s probably not the kind of situation that any wall could support anywho, so your descent is on par & you’re cruising, aren’t you- to destination unknown or if you know, you don’t know you do yet, but anything can be where you’re headed, & anywhere can be where you’ll find the most formidable manna this side of Eden, & you’ll never know which side that is, which is just as well because the interior can quite resemble an Escher painting with the bottle spinning. You’ve locked lips with every poet who ever dared to resist in order to invoke, & this -my friend- myself- is so many people all inside of us -the oneness- & we’re about to get a ticket for public indecency even though it’s a dimly lit park bench with only rats to hardly mind, & you’re a happening party of one, so full, for the walls have toppled & you’ve made it to some top of some hill where the bats have soared into an infinite black night with every color squeezed captive & exploding in perfect silence, fizzing.
You will remember that you are open to your guide & will ride any direction in the wake of the right spark because you’re one serious buyer on the market for your next big, extraordinary home. And this home is limitless, undivided lyrics; more than unearthing your favorite threadbare jeans you’d thought you’d lost. More than heavy sleep due the softest pillow you’d given up hope in believing in. This home is a sonnet that will hold your soul familiar; where you’ll wake with all the love songs assembled at your feet, creeping through you, you exquisite vessel. Soon to travel out of your beautiful, crooked mouth with the force of a wrecking ball from 1,000 feet up, knocking down the last barricade where only open doors stand against the sky that you can walk around anyway.

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Slow Summer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The butters’ been soft for over a month.

The sky turns a fuzzy pink around 8, reliably.

And speaking of pink- the Satin Flowers have proven their might in the backyard; pushing their elegant heads out of the cracked, compacted earth where the kiddie-pool once stood.

It’s summer in the Northwest, which means evening temps-of-your-dreams when the days are unbearable, which they’ve mostly been.

And speaking of pink- everyone’s walking around like they’ve spent too much time around aunt Dotty, cheeks all pinched-up.

And the crickets have so much to say.
Year after year I wish I could be privy.

A friend said the other day that she was ready for autumn but I told her “no”.

Times’ pulling all my extremities in different directions, asymmetrically. I’m like a wicked little star, shining, pulling. I’m mixed up & twinkly. It feels like it’s been a very long 2 months, that feels like 5 months, that feels like 2 weeks.
I just don’t know anymore.

If I measured the time in zucchini bread I’d be old enough to buy cigarettes, which means tiny flames, which means fire, which means sun, which means long summer nights, walking around aimless with sand in my pockets.

And speaking of pink- my toes are the color of tropical fish bellies. And speaking of sparkly: that too. It’s nice to wear peep-toe shoes when it’s warm, as the rest of the year my skin longs for breeze-contact.

There’s a little dog before me now. Her fur feels of soft, toasty hay. She’s my newest friend. We’re doing summer together from here on in.

I’m not sure she likes the heat terribly, but she certainly likes the butter on the counter & would like to know it better… with her pink tongue.

We’ll celebrate the season some more, sleeping outside in our clunky, well-worn trailer. We’ll pee out in the bushes under the cover of night. Come morning we’ll toast with fresh coffee & some creamy Baileys. And milk the last bit of heaven out of this time while we can.

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Nada Mas

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The 1st time I got my own apartment & had my 1st lone sit inside was my 1st big nothing.

Held by one of those clunky papasan chairs that are hard to get into & harder to get out of; creaky & boney. I sat.
Looking at a wall of blank & white being all I wanted to do; realizing- I could.
No one was going to walk in, questioning my inaction.

Never before had I taken such liberties, nor had it occurred to me as an option.

Busy brain owner extraordinaire, my mind is likely like yours; always diligently working to produce fruits.
A perpetual growing season.

When traveling alone I sit on the bed & have another big nothing. It comes over me.

The luxury of this
is everything.

Life doesn’t seem to crop up with these moments very often.

Being beside a forest stream is sweet. There’s a whole different kind of calm. A care & connection that are sparked. And full of so much. Our linkage is summoned. Our hearts become busy. The ocean is much of the same; as is a city in a foreign country full of floating strangers’ heads.

I suppose this is the draw of meditation. Where the emptiness grants a fulfillment.

Is it much like when the night is so quiet that it’s loud?

Try to tell a kid these days the value of vacancy & they might understand better than how I’d have received it as a child. These are over-stimulated times, & I wonder what’s around the corner for this, as we can only crest so high before descending. That is nature, which we still are.

In this hotel room the traffic whirs past, seems to sound out of the thin wall holding me apart from the interstate highway. The lights here cast a soft, welcomed glow. The television is flat before me, but it does not beckon.
My brain is happy as a clam with the gift pile of nothings sitting naked, out of their wrapping.

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In Wait With The Desire To More

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 18, 2022| 2 Comments »

Blank canvases exist in infinite examples. A clump of clay to the potter. A spread tarp to the painter. Pulpy paper to the sketch artist. Glowing blank screen to the journalist without assignment.

When my mind runs out on me again I’ll find a comfortable seat & wait for an idea to start to take shape, follow it with a soft, inviting gusto, & try not to scare it or put too much weight on it, as everything seems to be a game of nonchalantness.
Even inside my own self.

This is my sneaky way or twirling my hair while waiting. Looking at the writer’s block before me as but a cold cube to melt on a slow moving, cool morning. I’ll observe the dewy clover. Feel my shoes get soggy once more. Give some thoughts to getting better at preemptive dressing…
Jumping jacks are always there to help raise the temp.

It’s all process if it knocks something loose.

One time I walked around a dusty, Mexican border town just because I was too close to the country not to go in.
There were dogs running around whom I longed to connect with. Horses stood, idle in small, fenced in areas. There were multiple, bunches of balloons, deflated, tangled party remnants spiffying up the telephone wires. A siesta fiesta. I’d forgotten all my pesos at home.
There was an unexplained, long-ago-discarded fortress in the center of town.

Sometimes I feel like that structure is what my art looks like after a long stint of neglect. Do most people see themselves as structures? As small towns? As cities? I tied myself to that place without meaning to .

So it’s a small blank canvas after all. Or it could be long wall on a short block. Waiting for color & shape; in the darnedest of places.

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Lion Dreams

Posted in Uncategorized on December 21, 2021| 1 Comment »

It turns out you have cat to you; your sleep sounds border lion’s breath. A choppy purr that tells often of comfort & sometimes disruptions-

In bed I come in often after you; our schedules off-kiltered from differing responsibilities & priorities of self care; my skin is -these days- a pampered baby.

You- warm. I- an ice cube- that sun-bakes my edges on your heat.
I set to thaw- compliment of you. You bring me back to room temp.

Once the cold cold cold subsides I am myself again, more cozy & too awake to recognize my own sleep creature; safely assuming I’m mouse because I’m quiet, lay still, & wake so easily. I curl up small & am soft & my sneezes are in high register.

Waking life I am no mouse & you no cat.
Just when you breath you are forest king. Your vibration- my calm. I listen to the lull & am invited to join.

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Owls of Autumn

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »


Across the street from our house is a grove of old, tall tall trees of cedar & fir. This block is terribly lucky- most of these spaces are filled in with flat bottomed homes; not this patch.
6 trees. From where I sit it looks as if 1 or 2 more could have fit; a small forest reenactment, but the history of future city planning is fraught. In other words- this grove is a gift that I pray remains as is.

2 nights ago owl calls began. Owl calls are so woven into the background of life’s nights that unless it’s specifically loud- I fear the sounds might be lost to the wind. Like walking in jeans & no longer hearing thighs scrape. These owls- new neighbors. Last night was the 2nd night of their hooting & my heart is growing hopes that they’ll love their new accommodations & feel to stay.
Where were they before?
We walked in the dark to stand amongst the strong trunks, below the shaggy boughs, the burnt limbs- a nod at June’s oppressive heat dome. Soon the ground will be crunchy & snappy, but last night I don’t think we caused much of a stir with our presence. 2-3 owls could have been heard. 3- if the high pitched one was the baby my partner assumed it was. My own jury is out.

It is morning now & I am awake a bit more early than my preference, but having this still time to my lonesome is also an offering of sorts. A offering of time- which is one of the greatest offerings when the place is right.
A single candle has been lit, tea is steeping, & apart from the noise of being under countless flight paths- all of the rest I hear are other birds.

2 mornings ago when I went to brush my teeth I noticed a long parade of ants marching across the tiles from one door frame, up & over the sink, out to the window sill. There were clusters congregating. Who doesn’t stop to take in their behavior; wondering about social structure, work ethic, goals? How different really are we? A spider has taken up residency in the upper corner of the shower, about a foot from the water source. He is long & elegant. Legs for days. They each come to a wispy point. I’m constantly remarking how handsome he is. When I’m in there -it’s a happy place; I feel so at ease. Never taking for granted the hot water, comfort, privacy, sacred moment of cleansing, using all the elaborate lotions & potions to set me skin to 25 years of age. Spider is with me & I promise no harm. Last night I began to worry that I should take him outside: perhaps he was confused & would fair better in nature? More to eat. But I settled on giving him the benefit of the doubt as to knowing where he can thrive. Some beings can be alone. And he sees things my eyes are not sharp enough for. I spent time observing him, simultaneously hoping to instill no fear with my big human eyes. So beautiful. When I sang softly he moved around a bit. I couldn’t move out of minor chords. Maybe he was channeling. I tried to create a cathedral environment of sounds. I hoped he would only feel at ease. I wondered too- what he thought on, & how far we are from ever understanding each other. I even wondered if he got itchy & instantly he began to scratch his body! So there’s something there, & I have all the more fodder to take longer showers. Guilty pleasure indeed.

All of these observations begs the question- the tip of it at the very least: does the observer have part in interconnection? Or are we mere eyes? Eyes/ thoughts? Are spider & I interconnected simply by sharing space, or are we just coexisting?

Every body is an ecosystem. Every ecosystem interacts with neighboring ecosystems. This ant that has been running across the computer screen the whole time- are we connected beyond virtue of being in the same space? It’s not like she’s found my crumb source- per say. The owls- aside from soothing my last couple evenings & possibly infiltrating my dreams- are we connected? How many degrees? The tomatoes I plant> the rats that eat of them> owl supper… One obvious cycle yes, but this is “city living”, so without a garden – how do we connect? How am I giving to owl?

In the end- is it the tall trees that link us all? And is peace a projection? When I woke up this morning & sat cozily on my couch, looking up sounds of baby owls to listen to recorded distinctions between some; one sounding like static with a high pitched balloon-loosing-air finish, one sounding like a broken pony, one sounding like a sonar mammal- I sat in peace. The way the sun spills in the room, across this mustard yellow velvet couch- it just looks like equinox. Feels like equinox. Something is happening all around me. All the time.

across the street

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Some Sounds of Silence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 10, 2021| 2 Comments »

Do you hear the soft pulse

the purr of the morning;

the heat it crackles in spurts,

are the houseplants bothered at all?

These walls must have layers of absorbed music in them; caked in; packed on; but not this year.
This has been the year-of-quiet in this house. Mellow as tea steam.

I find comfort in the sounds of the dryer- banging around in the basement; the sound of warmth.
I find comfort in the sound of the neighboring, tall bamboo- stalks spanking in the wind; the sound of wild. I’m far from the ocean, but can draw this sound-comfort; hearing it’s rhythm where ever I go. My heart’s sound-twin.
What a lucky gal is me.

These days the birds have a lot to say. We live together now. I listen, trying to distinguish their calls & changes. Thus far I am still but a semi-useless human; unrefined in skills of decoding. Impatient & curious.
They make a lot of love. More than me.
Catching up is on my list-of-hopefuls.

The great majority of my afternoons hold murmurs from the speakers as I work with my hands, teaching me things I never knew or hadn’t understood well enough. I have submitted my mind to the Adult-School-of-Random-Education via strangers with jingles & hopefully diligent notes. I take my chances. My trust is 50/50.

My fantasies are desert-tied. I like to think of lizard bellies pressing against the screens of my window- me- on the other side, sleepily brushing my teeth in the morning, staring out at the pink blue morning horizon dotted with ocotillo, sage brush, pepperweed and other vegetative spirits with volatile oils that smell of perpetual rain when challenged with the weight of fingertips. I like to imagine red brown clay dust covering the tips of all my shoes. I like to picture casually engaging with desert people who tend very old cactus gardens. The countless dry, sun worn abandoned houses in my future beckon.

The Pacific Northwest is green of all variants. I will always remember it for this- no matter where I go. Always thank it for this. Regions can be thanked. There is nothing too big for a blessing. Nothing too small.
This is where I am now- up where I’m portable-heater-and-hot-beverage-reliant; forgetting my hoody makes me feel vulnerable & a few degrees further from happy. I have great fortune not to tend to addiction but these frosty February temperatures bring me close.

How I long to find new colors of feathers & old pottery on the ground; to forgo my woolens; to walk outside & have comfort wrap around my skin; to tend to tomatoes as many times a year as possible; to have the soft silence of a new ecosystem reveal it’s own life-pulse. And tap in.

And take in the purr of the morning.

And know the houseplants too- are cozy.

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Bones About It

Posted in beat poetry, corona, covid, mindfulness, ordinary madness, poetry, poetry in motion, prose, Uncategorized on December 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Equate me with foot dragging on carpeted stairs to squat quick & pensive at the outlet-God of cheap-thrill shock-therapy, for my inner-child needs a cold-water start to wake up from the monotonous boredom that’s got us all tangled up; dragging beneath the slowest car, riding on puro rims- over potholes & pits, with a blackout blotch smeared right over arrival time.

2 weeks that bled into 2 months, that bled into 9 months- at present, that bleed still. A vacuous wound unresponsive to tourniquets, & the pressure persists, but no mind, no mind.

I used to take my thinking-saw when I’d grown into my shadows & saw my skull open to let my head-moths fly around & land in unlikely places, & write about what came home, attached to their feet. I’d witness a white crow 2 times in an unmistakable flock of black ones & felt closer to the mystics; and stranger to common concerns like days of the week. I touched magic more often but also got my feet dirtier in the process. You can’t walk through a long field & not step in shit.

I struggle with recognizing my own web of fault. Have I trapped myself in the monotony or am I too close to my own nose to see my victimhood in having little to do for months? Everyday is a grand Groundhog of reminder, edging margins of subtle variation.

And now with cold cold air to wrap reliably around my leggys & weave it’s way through my hair & around my scalp, & penetrate my body top down & bottom up- I trap further into myself in inaction & the dullard’s company of a grey, cloth couch. My guitar will call & I will answer, but where once I had magic beans that rolled around my pockets of song snippets & poetry shreds I had hung without protest- on thin blue lines of spiral bound pages; storing them like orphans hoping to get chosen when I pull up in my petticoat & emerge from my Cadillac Roadster with clicky heels & feather hat. Dahling~ I am ready for you now. Prepackaged sentence pluckery. Those beans- where are they now?

My tea leaves carry-on unread, for my cup filleth & filleth again, I sip on & on all day long, working with my hands, trying & forgetting, repeat repeat repeat- to steady my mind- & search for cheap thrills or expensive thrills or I’m-open-to-suggestion-thrills-please-change-out-my-tea-now-I’m-ready-for-a-new-flavor-of-thrills.

Time is my sweet, yellow dog growing older. It passes without asking or telling, as it takes without the same pleasantries. One day we’ll look back with rosier lenses, while now we must find our way through the darkness of the un-knowing. Generating our own sparks again.

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Night in Shining Alloy

Posted in beat poetry, musings, ordinary madness, paranoia, poetry, Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Oh the possible punches packed by the brain from an empty tin-can when it comes to tumbling too loudly, pushed along by wind, tricking on ears at metallic kick-along footsteps causing neck double back and double back and triple back.
Just me and that wind.
Just me and some trees. For all I know.
Just me and my dog- too busy darting untethered in the dark, bush to bush bedeviled by his snout- to sense my woeful paranoia.
This fear of sunless-sky time rapidly twists into sadness, as I’m well aware that I’m likely my own worst enemy- worrying myself so- amongst the blocks surrounding my domain, and even more-so that a place free of those lurking in the shadows is easy to imagine. This is the thought that I must hold between my throat and belly in a sustained inhale. Also, I have to remind myself to continue with breathing.
These notions dance erratically against the dread of the cumulative grouping of every horror movie I’ve watched, trailing me, or the fear of furthering my connection to the Me Too movement as I unintentionally create a target of my sole self in the street. Forced comfort causing friction against collected phobia. Like Rachmaninoff dropping from a dream to somehow share a stage of opposing sets, simultaneously with Siouxsie and the Banshees. Or trying to shimmy to Parliament Funkadelic, in synch with slow dancing to James Taylor.
It can be an easy endeavor to entertain this vision of harmless walks, as experience introduced myself to itself in tales sunk in from traveling fashion.
In the city of Florence. In the country of Italy.
There was an occasion that lasted a night, that lasted a lifetime in a seed inside my heart or soul or mind or maybe all at once or sometimes it may float around, where I became enlightened in an evening to a coupling sense of rawness and security; who’s mathematics equaled a unique sum of awe unknown to my own certainty before.  Walking along the drunkard’s-dream of cobblestone streets, gliding through Moorish marble piazzas and the basilica’s double colonnades, exploring  the banks of the Arno river, over uneven bridges, beyond Donatello’s conquering breast of Judith, past dizzying, extending stone structures, in the middle of the world, protected by an angelic omnipresence, cradled by an exotic energy in that the threat of an attacker was nil. News to me- it was- that this was even a conscious idea before this moment.
How natural keys fit between fingers. How deep the wagon wheel grooves can be driven before even questioning beliefs.
And all of this experience to have a tin-can maddeningly rattle me out of a purifying parade through the commonwealth. The uneasiness of the unseeable nipping my heels and herding me by invisible hand towards the absolute calm of home.

alloynight

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