Stumbling through...
I am: a poet, an idealist, a realist, a lover of life, an extroverted introvert, a seeker of challenges. I don't want to just walk through life but, rather, dance, laugh, cry & stumble through.
Unedited you.
Dear you,
Stop all your f*cking thinking. What good does it do? My intuition tells me it drains you like a plug in an electrical socket. Wasting, wasting, wasting your reserves, your fire, your enigmatic spirit. Cause what good does thinking do?
I heard you've a conference room in your mind; and the meetings are back to back. There's a lot of arguing in there, a real power struggle, huh? Fists pounding & raised voices: everyone thinking they're right. And the coffee's strong as cocaine.
Isn't it time you took a vacation? Took off to the South of France and found yourself a Villa where you could sip wine, breathe vineyards, exhale fresh baguettes. Hot from the oven. Cause that's where the good shit is, in between the spicy taste of basil and fresh mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil. Yes, there you'll find yourself, amid a four course meal where the meat falls off the bone.
You are the flavor of mushroom sauce slipping over steak, the saltwater in an oyster shell, the smell of lilacs in bloom. Don't you know those cubicles you've housed really want to be rainwater and moons; they want to be earthworms and Amazon trees? There's nothing inside you that wants to be a spreadsheet. Stop making business deals with squirrels. Be real, be authentic, be the earth, air, sky. Be the smell of wet skin on a warm day. Be the silence in Church, the laugh of a child, sweetness of jam. Be nature's offspring and soak in the sun like a seal on a hot summer's day...
Comments [10]
Things We Do Not Say
It was a day in fall (warm) and the sun
shone through the icy morning. An old man
limped down the sidewalk, dirt
smeared across his face.
So much of life exists in the
things we do not say.
Like I am scared and don't
leave me. Because we don't
want to relive our birth.
We seek that envelopment all our lives.
And leaves blow down
the street, alone. Crumble into bits.
And the old man's shoe catches one,
drags it
alongside him, and that dead
leaf, it makes a sound
like the feel of a rough man's beard.
Filed under //
poem
Comments [1]
me home
I walked away,
hand over heart,
waiting
for the pain to sound,
waiting for it to open
its wet mouth and
cry, noise
falling
like crumpled
newspaper from my lips.
Waited patiently for that pain
but all I heard
was a whisper
rising
flesh covers your bones, my dear,
I am
still here
foryou
So I swallowed those sounds, swallowed
each last letter and
picked myself up, cradled
me home.
Filed under //
poem
Comments [3]
Never leave
My mind's r u nn ing rapid- you
you , you . I can't stop
thinking about the
lack of you
that surrounds me. There's
too much space to breathe.
I'm getting light headed off
this e n d l e s s flow of
o x y g e n . Block
it.
Box
me
in.
Tangle me
in sheets until
I can't move
and then, and
then and then
leavenever.
Filed under //
poem
Comments [1]
Realty Sets In...
Ha. Emotionalism. Sensationalism. I appreciate my mindset when writing my last post. But man, reality isn't so sweet. All this falling away from crap slapped me hard in the face. The move was a bust. It was awful. A seven in the morning till nine at night sweat fest that left me bruised and broken the next day.
Due to a ridiculously unrealistic timetable, I spent most of moving day in a mad rush, trying to get everything in boxes. What started out as an organized, labeling of boxes became a mad rush of throwing salad dressing in with WD-40. If there was a space, I filled it. Bathroom items ended up with chicken stock, blankets with shoes, hair brushes and tea bags and coffee table books jumbled together. It was madness, mayhem, and I was in the middle, huffing and puffing with the two movers.
I carried bikes and night tables down three flights of (steep) stairs, moped black airconditioner water off the floor, disassembled desks. It was a nightmare. The tap water was warm and the truck was tight. By hour five I wanted to call it quits, wanted to buy a warm sandwich and call it a day. But there was no quitting on this job. No, ever last, half-assed box had to go.
I regretted keeping the stationary, ridiculed myself for all my socks, rethought the humidifier and tossed the stand alone fan. I laughed, groaned and all about cried when it came time to unload.
With each box emptied from the truck came one more corner of the new apartment fully packed. When the move finally finished, I groped around for floor space, crawled between the boxes like a stray cat and managed to fall asleep unshowered & fully clothed.
The shower, of course, came the next morning. When, only five hours later, the sun came into my new & naked window. Realizing that I hadn't packed the shower curtain but seeing the grease stains on my arms, I showered in the new bathroom sans curtain. Water sprayed everywhere and soaked the floor, the Kleenex box got saturated and fell apart, its corners softened & sloped.
I ran around wildly so as not to be late for work. Couldn't find any clothes and ended up in a mismatched outfit of old checkered pants, a black nightshirt and grey cardigan. I put my makeup on while sitting on a box in front of a mirror that was situated sideways on the floor. I tilted my head to the right to see. Scrambling and clawing, I found my new keys and ran to the door. I was sweating in my winter coat (the only one I could find) as I rushed to work, praying that this was something I was not going to have to do again for a long ass time.
Comments [1]
Adieu, Adieu, Mon Amour, Brooklyn
4/15/09
I left my apartment today, a disheveled place with boxes stacked high, packed haphazardly. I'm moving. Mooovingggg. Pull it out, roll it off the tongue, stretch the word wide to make it feel more fluid. Because there is nothing fluid in moving. The pull-your-hair-out search for a new place, the quick fire decisions, the shedding of old objects no longer wanted. It's some sort of existential crisis.
By crisis, I also mean opportunity. I love when situations hold both: loss & gain, tackling each other at the heel. Polarities hold such truth. And so I rooted through these objects from years past: candle holders, photos, books & letters, pieces of pottery, face lotions, socks, winter hats, bags of buttons...and decided what I still had room for and what I had to toss.
Toss, toss, loss...
Nostalgia bubbled up in me. All these experiences in Brooklyn: music shows and coffee shops, long walks, late brunches, dogs & trees & bees, the park and its thick grass. I felt time slow down, sit beside me, root gently through these memories too. The past marks itself with this move. Draws its line in the sand.
Things will be different now.
Different-- a commonly used, kinder word for weird. He's different, my mom always says, as if avoiding the word weird relieves her from owning her judgment. What do we really own anyways? I am faced with that question as I try to downsize my life and fit into a much smaller space. And I say my silent goodbyes:
Goodbye big windows and beautiful leafy trees, goodbye cracked sidewalks and crazy food co-op, bye to my laundry man and stroller packed streets. Goodbye old rug where I practiced headstands. And to the rooftop that I explored with an old friend, bye to the Cathedral's large windows and its slivers of mosaic. Goodbye to the homeless man who sits outside the beer store with a grin and crumpled paper bag. Goodbye to yard sales and chalk drawings, to bike rides and noodles at Song. Bye to the ugly heaters and warped wood floors. Bye to all the hopes and fears I had while living in this apartment...
Like a leaf I fall away from this. Cause nothing ever stays the same.
Nothing ever stays the same: what melancholy & joy I find in this. And my emotions refocus, shift, evolve as I embrace the old baggage and release it, stepping away, watching it as it gracefully falls.
Comments [2]
I throw the cast net, let it catch
air
&
e x p a n d,
billowing outwards,
opening its guttural mouth
to the sea.
But it tangles against
the current, twisting like sediment
in wine.
I pull it in &
release, again.
This time it's heavy
& wet & it
doesn't quite open
the same.
--
I'd thought catching
& releasing
would be easy,
thought it'd be
no
thought
at all.
I'd forgotten you can't force
the wind, the seas
to work
with a net.
I'd thought catching
& releasing
would be easy,
thought it'd be
no
thought
at all.
I'd forgotten you can't force
the wind, the seas
to work
with a net.
No, that
they must decide to do on their own.
Filed under //
poem
Comments [2]
Why I ♥ New York
Reason #94: The Gritty City
Its grime, its roughness, its stinky steamy potholes, and people packed streets. Such moments, scents, sounds, sing with street funk.
Filed under //
why i love NY list
Comments [5]
That b*tch is crazy
Not all labels are good. Sure it's nice, even necessary to have a label on something like a can of tomatoes. It helps you to identify what it is. But labeling hair cuts, clothing tags, or more aggressively, people, is inextricably linked to positive/negative judgments. Labeling breaks up unity and invites ostracism in. Labeling attacks people and the truth of situations.
Take for example, the commonly used cliched phrase, ' that b*tch is crazy'. How many times have we heard a disgruntled man say, 'she is crazy' after a romantic relationship concludes? No matter how forgiving, understanding, hard working she was in the relationship, her entire character gets destroyed the moment her ex announces she is 'crazy'. And people tend to agree with these statements. Men and women alike. Because it's easier to point a finger and place total blame on the other person.
And people feel good pointing with the accuser because it validates happenings in their own lives. Yes, she is crazy. She must be because I've known women who are crazy too. Because in one small cruel word, all responsibility comes off the person saying it. I've done nothing wrong, I am simply a victim. It is a childish defense mode that is eerily similar to 'he made me do it', commonly used among children between the ages of 3 to 14.
3 to 14. Where is our progress? Everyone knows situations aren't black and white. We know because we've been in them, so why does it feel so good to label the person on the other side in an unflattering, and untruthful way: he's an asshole, she's easy, he's a jerk, she's a b*tch? Anyone who supports such labels is no more an adult than a child chewing on a cheerio.
I challenge people who do this to stop looking through a pin hole and adopt a bigger view. The ability to step outside yourself or outside of a one sided story, is the ability to gain more compassion, truth, and understanding.
Rise up and expand, be like a bird and soar; see truth as it really is, this amazing mishmash of light and dark, this blur of colors. In truth, it is no more the fault of rain that a river bank overflows than it is the wind's, clouds', or river itself.
Let's stop the villainizing and leave it for the cartoons. Let's see individuals for who they really are: light, dark, stormy, calm, beautiful, weak. When we allow others to be all of who they really are, we allow ourselves to be the same. This is experiencing our greatness. And greatness can be found in both the shadows and the light. For one can not exist without the other.
Filed under //
consciousness
Comments [6]
Comments [5]