Revelation (~~Robert Frost)

Revelation

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really finds us out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

~~~Robert Frost

01/24/05 Monday 11:00pm

... for instance, last night I had this incredible flight of fantasy as I dozed off unwillingly on the couch -- it involved the back door, (which my mind reminded me I had forgotten to lock after I finished carrying in a bunch of files), the soft blanket which I had pulled partially over myself as my body temperature dropped into a doze, the soft satin slip of a nightgown I'd donned after my bath, and an acquaintance of mine who (at least in those few moments of time my mind created) had a man's hands w/ blunt, workworn fingertips, warm lips, unbelievable sense of humor and - Hallelujah! - a functioning brain to go with it, a voice layered with nuance, a rich laugh that warms parts of me I don't need to go into, a heart beating desperately in its effort to be heard, a soul which harbours hopes which he stifles even as they struggle to be born... and Hutzpah. Lots of hutzpah.

It was an exceptional story. It was. I had some struggles -- some of the descriptive nuances were so layered with contradictions that trying to capture them all ... explain them all... left even me confused. And that's finally what tipped the balance -- that and a warning to myself that clarifying a sleep-drenched fantasy onto paper in this case might just be a futile gesture laced with frustration. I know unrealized potential when I see it... but eventually, even I have to conclude that potential which remains unrealized remains so for a reason. Or reasons. Or simply through choice.

Do you want a person? or a set of circumstances? Ah, well.... perhaps, like me, you want them both. As I told another acquaintance of mine in intimate confidence .... "I'm greedy -- I want it all". And I'm confident enough to wait for it to come along & drop into my lap -- the "all", that is. But damn, that was a fine bit of fantasy... what a shame it's slithered away into the ether! 'Cause I sure didn't bestir myself enough to get up & really write it down... and even hutzpah didn't bring the living through my door.

01/24/05 Monday 10:00am

You know... I really like the concept of a blog... I just can't bring myself to write in it every day. The real problem is that the things that come into my mind that I want to put out here are terribly insistent about getting written... when I'm anywhere but at the computer. Driving... waiting for an appointment... Dr's office... at the gym... most often when I've juuuust settled into bed, gotten a comfortable, nice warm spot all cozy & perfect, close my eyes, relax, begin to doze off... BLAM! A tantalizing fragment of thought tickles it's way into my head. Then it's either stick my naked toesies out into the cold cruel world, get up & write... or let it go. 'Cause of course, if you don't pursue it RIGHT THEN, it's gone, never to be thought of again. Tantalizing fragments of thought are fickle creatures. Geez, but that's a hard decision. I don't know how many wonderful concepts have been lost to the lure of Morpheus & 400 thread count sheets.

Elsewhere, Elsewhen

Could we go to a place
where all is sublime --
Somewhere... someway.... sometime?
A place where your eyes find beauty
And all our hearts see is kind

Where the coffee is always the perfect cup
And the latte is smooth & cool
Where conversation never lags
Where chance leaves you never the fool

I wouldn't want to stay there
Only visit now & again
I'll invite you along to be there with me
Before the beginning & after the end

And any time fate tweaks us wrong
We could offer one to another a hand
Extended in hope, strengthened by trust
"Yes, I'll meet you -- Elsewhere, Elsewhen."

Phantom Lips

It's phantom lips I feel
And the warm rough hand of a man that cups my breast
While blunt fingertips roughly graze my nipple

When someone loses an arm
or a leg
They say that sometimes they feel
a "phantom pain"
Impossible sensations from a limb
that is no longer there
One would think the brain would be on YOUR side
being, as it is, connected to the whole
Wouldn't one?

Perhaps it finds itself unexpectedly perturbed
that its sovereign right to escape
to travel hither & yon into the ether of experience
has been imitated, duplicated, by hitherto body-bound
parts of its whole

Well, it's phantom lips I feel
Warm lips press against mine
Entreat me to open
And my lips part - of themselves - in a slight silent gasp
The breath I almost feel
escapes me instead

I can't even tell whose lips they are
that my psyche twists
so ruthlessly from the air
fraught with empty promise
But these phantom lips follow me
taunt me, tease me
haunt me
I would erase the sensation!
Could I only find something more corporeal
To chase away the spirits
That haunt me so.

A Little Ditty

When I think I’m on the inside looking out
And then I find I’m on the outside looking in
Then the friendship that we’re founding
Is by other measures floundering
It isn’t really a relationship within

When the time I’ve spent since seeing you
exceeds the time that you’ve spent being you
Then something’s altogether wrong
There’s no music in this song
And I fear I fear I fear that we are through

When the notions that you proffered up for future melodies
Are left in Future’s pocket, not brought out for Now to see
then I think that you’ve exceeded
the notions you had seeded
Overstepped your own unknown of what might be

When the living that you’re living you don’t choose to share with me
And the living that I’m living is of you quite free
then what’s the point of wondering
what roads we each are wandering
I need the people in my life more present - don’t you see?

When I wake up in the morning and the birds don’t sing
when the man I met last night wasn’t just a sordid fling
well I didn’t take the offer
That that muscled hottie proffered
He wasn’t you - I didn’t want what dawn would bring

But the telephone’s not ringing and the mailman’s come
And there isn’t any letter in my inbox or my home
I suspect that you’ve gone on
With lives and loves you’d once begun
In terms of love, not all roads lead to Rome

I thought I was on the inside looking out
But now I feel I’m on the outside looking in
Can you tell me that my thinking
Is just faulty synapse linking
And that what we might yet be is not ‘has been’?

~~~04/2004

Know Thyself

My heart stirs in its slumber
in its hibernation
in its incremental dying
I encountered you --
It wasn’t just a “meeting”!
‘twas too dynamic, too vital
too full of promise to simply say
“we met”

Hook, line & sinker
I took the words you wrote
and created you
in their image
Visions filled with promise
I raise my glass in toast
“to Becoming!”

This is why I do not gamble
- the boats don’t count my dollars!
I was willing to bet on you
roll the dice
spin the wheel

Now here we are
not Becoming… except
Becoming
further strangers
than when we met.
~~~04/19/2004

Coda

The conductor raised his baton
instruments to lips
all eyes on him
a sharp intake of
breath
and then….

Nothing
Simply nothing!
Symphonies poised to flow in
unheard harmonies
and not a note was
heard

All that potential
all those dreamed of melodies
sit out there
poised
in some unattainable limbo
aching with promise
but no voice

You didn’t even let me
love you
long enough
to get a good poem out of it
~~ 04/19/2004

Listen 08/2007

The problem is, at least, twofold
First - you have created lives & relationships where you are not one, but two-in-one. You develop them, nurture them with all understanding that you are inseparable. That what one thinks, what one does, the other echoes. There can be no separating. Like conjoined twins, you may have a foot that is "yours", a hand that is "theirs", but in the end, all is one. So when this heart shuns or breaks, who can say which "me" is really the cause?

Second - you have shown me how you love, how you heal. You have shown me how you - each of you separately and together - act when you truly care. You surround people. Quite literally, you surround them, engulf them, immerse them in yourselves. You place yourself in their lives, and draw them into yours. You become a part of every decision, every activity. You get so close to them that skin becomes an impediment and bathe them in breath, warmth, life, love. You put yourselves physically into their presence so that the things in your heart shine into them like sun on a hot summer beach, so that it soaks into them, willing in the moment or no. And while one half shines, beats, throbs, sends their heart and soul out shining warmth, acceptance, love, the other whispers words to unlock the ears & the heart so that it can begin to believe the messages that are being sent on silent channels.

You know. You know what things the dark whispers. Dark corners of the room... dark corners of the heart. You know what sibilant doubts, nasty thoughts, evil soul-sucking knowings come out when the light goes out of your life & you're all alone. You know. When you came, you said to me in your silence, "I know these things. I have heard them." And you shared light & warmth with me, and I heard your soul say, "I see you. What those whispers say are not true. You must not listen. I see you. I know you. I don't speak well or often, but I love you. I will lay beside you and I will hold you so that your heart can hear what my body will say for me. Look into my eyes while we are close so that our souls can merge and raise and bask together in joy and celebration. Lower your sheilds, throw away your defenses so that we can hear one another. Listen to what my heart says and we will melt the darkness away. Listen to the things I send you through our very skin where it touches, to the things I spill into the air around us while we hold you. Listen. Trust me. I will hold you, I will not drop you. I will not leave. We will drown the whispers from the dark in waves of pleasure, in pure peace and bliss and stubborn acceptance and even in everyday nothings that are everything. We will hold you close in our life, close to our body, close to our heart. All is One. Always. Listen to me. You are good. You are worthy. You are ours. I love you and I will not let you go. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me."

And I, having only one self to send all messages, heard the You. And I listened. And I believed. And I held you and cherished you in your entirety, regardless of which body was speaking or which way it spoke. When I had trouble hearing it, I tried to say so, trusting come hard but given, believed that missing pieces were not missing, only misplaced. Only a matter of time & effort to find, to find the right spot to nestle them into, and that it didn't matter how long that took as long as we just kept trying. And I sent back in every way that I could find to send all those things you said to me and more so that sorrow shared could be broken into many tiny pieces until it became insignifcant, and joy shared could become joy tripled, joy rippled, joy sent outwards into those around us and into the world itself.

Now... now the darkness laughs at me, and it's worse than any begging doubt they ever tried to send me before I met you, for now they have teeth, and truth, and substance with which to flail me. When I close my eyes, bodiless things come out & surround my feeble bastion of pillows, filling the cold emptiness next to me with mocking. Worse, sometimes they come warm & solid, & in those seconds between sleep & knowing, I think for the briefest of breaths that all will get better - that you are finally there, that knowing how, you have come. You have come while I slept & are surrounding me once again, strong enough to shush me, hold me, refuse to let me go or speak or think until I can hear you in the silence again. Then they whisk away, sucking warmth into their soulless empty whispers, leaving me cursing & weeping for the dawn. When daylight comes & their ugly twisted visages are shielded from open eyes, still they whisper mocking laughter from those dark corners of the heart. "See? We were right all along. Who is with you now? Where is your shining shield, your precious joy now? Where is that warmth and love you so cherished? Vanished. They looked at you and when they really got to know you, they discovered they were.... mistaken. You are not good - you are broken. You are not worthy - you are worthless. And most importantly, you are not theirs. You are ours. They do not want you, they found you lacking, they do not want you, and they have left you to us. They do not want you. They want only a little piece of you. There is noone and nothing that wants all of you. Ever. Listen to us. There will be no other voices but ours again. You are ours. Listen to us. Listen to us. Listen to us."

And I hear them. This is the danger of bringing someone in close - I know what "really" feels like now, and a half-hearted substitute yields no joy. I hear them. The single voice I sometimes hear speak out against them is thin and far away, and comes but rarely now. I almost cannot hear it at all, and being only words it is oh, so quickly washed away, drowned in the fathoms. Even when I am with you, I see you, hear you from far away, surrounded on all sides by buffers of whispering, walls of grey mist. I have to work to hear you speak, work to respond, work to keep them from spilling out of me into you. That is the hardest - I must, at all costs, keep them away from you. I may be worthless & disposable, but I cannot let them spill into you. I cannot let them near you, cannot let them have you too. I must keep you safe. They laugh at how far away you are, how your heart turns to look the other way, stays in its own beating space. The darkness laughs at me, there is no hope left to me to hold them at bay, and memory is but a wisp. Listen. You know what they say - you have heard them. And you have left me to them. You know. I asked you to help me, & instead you have left me. You have left me to them. Knowing.
~~2007

Close Only Counts in Horse Shoes and Hand Grenades (07/2007)

Children laughing, playing together
over a game of Aggravation
The Object is not to lose your marbles.
stay safe.
find home.

Roll... two steps here.. 6 there..
"Home! I made it Home!"
Roll again, jump to the center
"I got one! I'm safe! I win!"
Then, "awwwww"
& cries of "Do over!" fill the room

When you leave childhood,
that privilege is left behind
but the Object stays the same
not to Lose Your Marbles.
stay Safe.
find Home.

in this year
there are too many dark moments
hours where
I struggle for anything to hold onto
some requirement to keep me here
things to require that
I stay

As my soul sits
rocks
curled in on itself
wretched in dispair
I hear them crying out -
laughing, full of life
indignant, but sure of respite
"Do over!"

and I
I whisper a hopeless plea into empty
space
as though now that I'm an adult
respite might still exist.
it is swallowed up
in space and silence:

"Do over"

~~07/2007

Underestimating Anne 06/2007

The year kept stumbling on. Every day, every hour accompanied, encompassed by a silent howl of despair that underlay every breath. The tiniest scraps of good were scrabbled together in a desperate attempt to keep going, and misery was part and parcel of saying hello to each new morning. Sleep wasn't a refuge either. Dreams used to be a mystical fantasy place worth escaping to. Now, if they came at all, they were dull... colourless, flavourless... or bad; bad as the most despairing moments felt in the lonliest deepest part of the heart. Worse, there was this sense of anticipation - holding. As though the very air KNEW there was more in store. Somewhere, sometime, sometime soon, another shoe would drop. Then another. Ugly, unhappy-making shoes that would fall with a depressing thud, knocking another few ounces of goodness out of the pitiful store you had left. It got to a point where it didn't even feel worth trying to dodge the next bullet when it came. Really, the best that could be hoped for was to endure. Yeah, this wasn't going to be a year for joy, or happiness. I just tucked my head down & hoped it would be over soon.
~~~ 2007

The Foolishness of Living 05/2007

I've heard it said that you have to hit bottom before you can come back up. Well, the night I wrote this came pretty close to bottom. Not quite, but close. And just because I'm not there today doesn't mean that for a little while, this wasn't the truest thing I could pull out of my soul. Some nights feel as though they will never end... too many things here burrow deep into my darkest fears to say they're completely untrue. And yet somehow, the night always does end. Perhaps an eternity later, but it does. And when it does, all these ugly things I wrote & felt that might make people want to feel pity or disgust, distance themselves from something broken seem ethereal, unreal, not myself. This is not, on the balance of my life, who I am. It is a dangerous darkess that it would be hypcritical to deny, but it is not how I have spent even a fraction of my lifetime. We are all a mass of contradictions, a melee of emotion, a conglomeration of things that ought to make no sense when you put them together. But somehow, they do. They are "Human". And sometimes being human isn't all that pretty. Here. If you're going to revere me for being strong, then do it knowing how far wrong you can be. And yeah... I'm hiding it deep in history on purpose. If you found this through anything other than sheer chance, you've got too much damn time on your hands.

There is no future worth having. I see no joy.. I see no love.. I see no days ahead with enough sunshine anywhere in the world to warm me again. I see days filled with meaningless nothings and long nights where the darkness stretches endless and friendless and cold and alone. My daughter gives me no true joy, for there is noone to share her with. There is noone to share the frustrations & the challenges... noone with whom to share the triumph of her very existence. Noone to end a day with, sharing warmth and tiny tales, talking over little problems and laughing at miniscule joys. Noone to turn hard work into play. My body ages and withers and all the fruits granted humans therein wither with the passing days, uncelebrated. It doesn't matter if I spend my day in laughter or in tears, in the end there is noone to share them with. Noone to turn back the coldness of utter indifference. "Home is that place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in" -- there is no home. There will never be a home other than my own skin, my own soul, and what a dark & sorry place that has become to call home. I carry pain like a hard stone just under my breastbone, and walk thinking at any moment it will double me over. That it will pull me as surely as a muscle cramp into a tiny ball of agony unable to move. That I will not be able to find a dark corner in which to cry these tears, that I will spill them here in public - over the vegetables at the grocery store, the brass kettle at the antique store, gas station, mailbox, school... I see years ahead of me, dry as dust on a forgotten shelf. Each day breathing only because the body hasn't sense enough to know the soul has given up, and because the soul is too cowardly to command the body to die. My parents anchor me to this world, because I understand the agonies they have already endured, simply by being parents, and I cannot purposefully send that sort of sorrow and doubt and regret and pain into their hearts... while they alone live, I stay. They are the only people in the world whose love I can ever trust, and even there I shy away from truly working to know them as people, because I am afraid that like everyone else in all the world, if I begin to know them too deeply I will find them just as unable to truly and fully love me as all the rest of humanity. I would rather keep the child's sure naive certainty of a parent's love than risk the deeper knowing of them as people: the fear of losing it is far too great. They hold me here, chained to each breath.. .but if today, this minute, they were no longer, I would cease these utter nothings and leave this world that has nothing in it for me. I would run from the beating of my own heart as though the hounds of Hell pursued me. I would hope and pray there is no afterlife, no Heaven, no Hell, no reincarnation, but that it would be Oblivion to greet me when the last breath was done. I am lonely. I am alone. I am unwanted. I am worthless. I have nothing anyone wants for long. I think I find a love that circles round and round and brings joy to all, only building hope and security for all of us with every go 'round, and I am wrong. I am always wrong. I am always wrong. In the end, I bring nothing but sorrow to those I love, and do it by the very fact of loving them. Those I love, I cannot love less. Those I do not, I cannot love more. And neither of those is ever the right thing... is ever good enough... it is never enough. Nothing is ever enough. Nothing is ever right for very long... the years of my life spin by faster and faster and have become a few brief moments of real, golden happiness surrounded by forevers of bitterness and sorrow and unfulfilled longing. A life which began with such promise, such power & strength & beauty... has become such a sorrid comedy of always being wrong. The world.. Fate.. dangles hope in front of me like a small boy dangling a string in front of a kitten... who watches, waits, waits, and finally believing it is truly to stay within reach, pounces, batting out a paw to catch the elusive string... only to have the boy jerk it away. Laughing. Fate laughs at me, and it is not a kind laughter. Fate mocks me. I am a wrong thing. I should not be.
~~2007

Compass and Captain

Grief washes over me like waves on the ocean
A salty mist dries on my cheeks
And I hear cries like seagulls' resounding in my skull
As though they, too, had lost something
And are searching to find it again

Somewhere deep inside
Fathoms beneath this stormy surface
I float whole in a darkness interrupted only
By thick opulescent glimmers of light
Filtered through layers of life

I am cradled in fathoms of pain
Cocooned in anguish
Inured, imbedded, smothered, surrounded
It becomes a buffer
Distant echoes
Sound off the rocks & crags of my life

I still breathe
I still function
The sea of humanity rushes on about me

Sometime
This grief will break against the shores
My goodbyes will no longer be this undulating unending silent wail
They will become a more accepted part of the canvas of my life
And I will sing a softer song of sorrow.

Today, newly bereft,
I must say my goodbyes to Compass and Captain
A salty mist drenches my cheeks
And I hear cries like seagulls' resounding in my skull
As though they, too, had lost something
This grief washes over me like waves
.....................on a very large ocean.

For my mother
On the death of her beloved brother, Lyal Duane Asay

Once Gone

The postman begins to carry a lesser load down your path
The phone rings less often,
it's toll now bringing a salesman's patter.
The sun continues to rise
..........and set.
Tomorrow's news seems no different
than a thousand other days
And that sharp knife slicing through your soul
Is becoming a familiar companion.
Pain leaked into pen & ink
has helped to dull the edge,
And time, too, begins to do its work.
Mostly, the body's mechanisms
simply can't maintain the strain
Of such a Harpy's clatter of sorrow.

But as the world goes on without and around you,
and people assume you healing,
There are still moments---
A sunset, a raindrop, a book's phrase or stranger's laugh...
The curve of a jaw in a coffee shop
a few scattered notes on radio waves...
When sharp and quick that knife slices
clean through every carefully built defense
Leaving ragged searing tears in its path.
Clutching your gut,
Stealing breath & reason, and
shoving you into a spiraling well of anguish.

And in those private moments,
When there is no one left around to hold you,
No one but yourself to hold you up or together,
When all have gone home to resume their own lives
their own loves—
It is in those moments that I will be thinking of you.
It is in those moments I will be praying for you.
In those moments, I will pray for solace to wash over you
and bring you a measure of peace.
In those moments I will grieve with you.
In those moments, I send you my love.

----To Uncle Duane, September 2000

I Wish This Legacy

You will be tomorrow's winds
blowing through my daughter's hair
sparking smiles of laughter on summer nights
butterfly dreams
and lightning bug fireworks
Your picture sits on my heart's throne
In places of honor and glory
In mind's eye, you jaunt your way
Through this world, and others
Arrogant, humble, wandering troubadour.
Leading, trailing, leading again
Always a path that glows and sparkles
Misty magic moondusted paths
Bounded by dreams and fairies and loves
Of many sorts.
When a tinkling laugh comes from her
Small heart
and a smile graces her tiny face
When she runs playing heart on sleeve
I can only pray
That someday
Her dreams, too will be drawn in flesh
And a poet will help her heart learn to love
Different loves
And dream different dreams
And trust without being broken
and fly into other realms
hand in hand, heart with heart,
Someone who can curl up in the corner of her soul
And be comfortable.
So when you are in the winds,
Or the Butterfly wings,
or the fireflies mating glow
Blow softly into her tiny heart
And make a place there
For someone just like you to live in
Someday
The way you've lived in mine.
~~~Sierra Jacobus 09/1999

Untitled 1997

In the breezes through autumn leaves
I saw you
In the spring rains and rainbows
I saw you
From a hilltop, in stars in a deep night sky
I saw you
I saw you in the multitudes
passing by
I felt you, unseen
in a breath at my shoulder
I heard you in my dreams
Misty grey sepulcherous dreams
Without form or definition
I tasted you in my dreams
dreams gone with dawn
leaving only hunger behind.

A Border Conflict

Help me wend my way
'twixt these mines well laid
Step lightly, gently
Speak softly
I choose each word, each smile
lightly, gently
Stalk softly a love well-given
Take or refuse
what is offered up to you
These mines well laid
'twixt your heart and mine
Help me wend my way.
Leave me now
and I will walk forever maimed.

Consequence of Passion

consequence of passion consequence of passion, rethought
by Dave Pitchford by Amy xxxxx, 01-13-1997

ask the lonely man ask the contented maiden
with his broken heart with her soul-filled heart
ask the newly divorced ask the newly married
whose lives are in shambles whose lives have just begun
the new widows the reborn
in their orchards of grief in their joyous feasting
or the wives of sailors or the wives of sailors
whose longing is the wind who've returned on the winds
ask the echoes ask the echoes
of all the forlorn songs of all creation's songs

hear them tell you hear them tell you
this, my friend, this, my friend,
is the consequence of passion is the consequence of passion

ask the poet ask the poet
hidden in the dregs of a bottle buried in creating
ask a one time romantic ask a forever romantic
who speaks now in cynicism who speaks with gilded tongue
the painter the painter
whose colors are all shades of grey whose colors span the sunrise
the balladeer the balladeer
whose voice is silence whose voice is honey mead
ask the dreamers ask the dreamers
whose nights are sleepless whose nights are endless
or the artist or the artist
with a gun in his mouth with brush in hand
ask the empty winds ask the fertile winds
that whisper in leafless trees that whisper in verdant trees

hear them tell you hear them tell you
this, my friend, this, my friend,
is the consequence of passion is the consequence of passion

ask your heart
healing quietly unnoticed
or your friends
bearing patient witness
ask your soul
which longs to trust
ask your muse
as her golden visage dims unused
ask eternity
who waits for you

Listen, friend
they scream but you do not hear
so deep in your cups...
of hemlock, listen
hear them tell you
these, my friend
are the consequences of passion.

Lightning's Flash

As lightning flashed the sky

It began.

Rain-dappled leaves above,

The trees embraced us,

Drew us together in their wisdom.

Apart we lay,

Many nights.

Hearts closer by firelight came.

Stream chuckled under railroad ties,

Tickling your legs ---

We explored together.

By firelight I danced a dance free,

You sat stoic.

By moonlight

I baptized myself anew from you.

Never mix a buzz, my friend.

By Television's gleam we closed together

And your body spoke to me

Your words deny.

"He never finishes what he's begun"

They told me.

I do not want to hear.

Fitting.

By lightning's flash

I bury you to my soldier's field of sorrow.

The sky shall do my weeping.

10/1991

Temptations

Snake coiled in the darkness
A "Hissssss" from the hidden lair
Man-child beckons
"Come over here."
Rouch hands reach out to touch
Ten thousand fingers
hard to sssssstop, keep track, aware.
I laughed. I did. I couldn't help.
But I heard a hiss like swishing kelp.
Morning's light, beside me lay
Just a boy by light of day
Shirt pulled off, hair awry
But I swear by all the gods:
Last night his speech did fainly hiss
And not man-child but Satan
Did I refuse to kiss.
05/1991