A Game That’s Not

There is this game where 2 (or more) people say anything out loud at the same time that comes to mind. It can be any noun, any adjective, any small sentence or description. The objective is then to step closer together in the universe of possibilities by finding the middle concept between what’s been said.
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example 1:
Player 1 says “stampede”
Player 2 says “a butterfly landed on me”
The middle might be “meadow”.
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example 2:
Player 1 says “pouring rain”
Player 2 says “gilded mirror”
Might the middle not be “puddle” or lead it’s way to “reflection”?
*This is the 1st time I’ve played with myself.
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example 3:
Player 1 says “pontificate”
Player 2 says “well I’ll be”
This is where players will have to *at the same time* begin spouting words after 1,2,3, to meet in the middle, eventually.
One might offer “thoughts”, “pondering”, “opinion”, “sermon”.
These words will then lead to another destination that is unattached from the original word.
It’ll sometimes lead through a vacation out of the cosmos, but hang tight: you’ll get home together.
There is a metaphor in this, & like every foreign film I’ve respected for not spelling out the conclusion; I’ll leave you to interpreting your own design.

This morning was an early one. I awoke before sunrise, when the darkness molecules were all still packed tightly in the room together. Slowly watched the tree silhouette emergence- contrasting against a small grey sky, the size of a window- that would hold not a bell or whistle for the fancy sunrise show I’d hoped for.
I lay in the dark flirting with poetry.

A candle really knows what to do. How to light up a room. 1 flame! 1 flame can really remind you that fire is a relative of the sun. Every candle burning- the baby brother…
Commanding the room as we speak. Trimming the wick is akin to sunscreen. Everything requires at least a moderate amount of care to be it’s best.
I do not want to imply that it is Human intervention required for all to function best; au contraire. And still, there is an operating system far beyond our hands.

Our hands come in so many forms. Care. Desperation. Greed. Concern. Curiosity.
To touch the earth with only presence. With only love. That’s the best one.

How to get back to that middle place.

Sunroom

The west facing, pale yellow back room of my house is bordered with plants & keeps warm in the warm months .
The light feels doubled in there, & it’s wise to request specific positioning from whomever is looking east; use their head to block the sun. This’ll light up ears though. Rudolph adjacent.
It can be hard to take conversation there seriously.

I left home to listen & to talk to others, & met a poet I admire in a bar. She wears dresses in real life too. I searched the moment for normalcy & wound up offering a quick quip I’d picked up in a class on pathogens, about not touching wet things if you don’t know their origin story. My brain defaulting to an awkward dance I’ve been unlearning the steps of since the world took to life behind masks, uncertainty & over-tenderness.
Be careful what you say to poets- every stitch can be fodder. I was not looking to feed.

I heard an interview with a singer/songwriter who likened his writing flow to that of being a court stenographer; when he’d uncovered a vein & a song emerged- he was hard pressed to keep up. I’ve ridden that river before. I don’t visit enough to to be carried. The shore is one I’ve come to countless times. Take me, waters. I am yours.

There’s still sand & very fine particulate matter between my toes from very possibly very distant shores. To think there are swells that carry shipwrecked contents to dump all on one beach. 1,000 Hello Kitty phones for a 2 mile stretch of coastline. Plastic or shells. To think what beachcombers are privy to in the earliest parts of sunrise. To think we’re all made of star dust.

You never know how your influence may reverberate. Everything has an echo. I heard of a cat who slept in the same position as its dearly departed dog friend only after the dear dog had departed this bodied life. I can catch my phrasing coming from my friends. I’ve imprinted. Who do I parrot, unknowingly?

The sun is in repose now, in this corner of world. No need for bodily inadvertent illumination, lest you count shining a flashlight to spy on the family of raccoons climbing to their home post to settle in for the night, or to snack on high hanging fruit in our yard. They’re not quiet, but are indeed deceptively adorable looking. I love to catch their eyes flashing. They roost on my garage; sleep on one side, shit on the other. Another argument for rain. When I work in the garage I can hear the sudden drop of falling apples. The sound of seasons. The staccato percussion of slow poetry. The occasional scampering of tiny footsteps – far smaller than the 4 legged bandits.
Those plants in that pale yellow room are cozy, tucked into pots respectfully. None are root bound, all drink on Sundays to a consistent hand. Still- they know what time it is, flowering on point & shedding with their outdoor brethren, passively absorbing the good western light as the old day tucks itself away. And darkness threads together to coat the day.

Luke Warm Bod Keeps Score

Bodies. Bodies & their susceptibility to suggestion.
Bodies without brains, all on their lonesome are the most gullible things; no minds to reckon.

Disagree with me? When you’re sandwiched between dreamlike states with a level of 10% awakeness- your body will believe anything.
Having to pee is confusing.
A sweaty partner can draw reason that you’re in an inferno. There’s just no sense.

The rains
-once they begin for 2 consecutive days-
in a rainy climate;
even if the rest of the forecast shows all sun & blue skies-
our bodies take on this dumb readiness. Cravings for tea overwhelm. The drive to go out passed sundown retreats yet further. We begin to crave pants desperately.
In spite of 1 final month of summer.

Summer- how long & short of a thing. How I want you & how I fear you.
Are you my daddy?

This body- my body- is all mixed up. My brain: protecting from future thought; trying not to allow a settling in of concern. Dusting my bones at night lest worry seat itself the cracks.
Deep at night there’s always more room for such unfortunate phenomena.

To think of what goes on between so many ears, behind equal amounts of eyes- when the lights are off.
When the brains are on.
When guards are down.
Such a pity to have more woes moments that wow moments.

I took a poll today, asking how people were & gave 4 answers:
1 I feel really good
2 neutral
3 I’ve got a worried mind
4 just went through it & am on the other side.
21%, 24%, 41%, 15% respectively

Most of us, closing in on 1/2 are plagued with roving emotions.
This is great tragedy & takes toll on our body who is arguably the sidekick to the mind. Whoa.
How to be a better boss: remember this:

Our worries are very seldom the outcome.

I Promise To Hold Coyote’s Secret

A hole in the ground that I never noticed- elbow-crawling-child-sized, in the park that I have a relationship with; visiting daily. A park of fair stature for an urban environment. Never before had I noticed it, at the base on an old, rotted stump with wispy branches spurting out, paused firecracker, perky green, pleased with its nurse log, absconding stories.

I figure it’s where the coyotes live. If you’re a go-get-em’-tiger type & are up to walk through the 5am mist you’re almost certain to see them. Brazen or slender, sleek or spindly, but almost always up ahead with a sideways gait that’s impossible to misidentify.

I’m surprised by this hole; that it’s been beneath my nose for months or more. It must be. It doesn’t look like the work of human hands, but I couldn’t find evidence of tracks or bits of fur.

I pride myself on my secret keeping for others. Ask me to vault & up goes the gate. I keep this a secret lest someone want to intervene in the name of advocacy for the protection of non-native, domesticated animals; this world & its tame tendencies. I keep this a secret in spite of wanting so badly to tell of the mouth into earth appearing finally to me in my ritual place that I love & speak to. The land- also a keeper of secrets. I will take a page from the good book.

The upper field to the south, once covered in crimson clover, & plantain then pirated by menacing foxtail grasses- still a telling host of meadowlark, tangier and hermit thrush & those early coyote galavants before the hoards of running dogs & split tennis balls from cases of too-much-happy.
The great mowing that takes place reliably before each July 4th even seeped into my dreams several times. My fantasies of controlled burns to restore order there; the coyote would only have to relocate for a little while. Would they have a second den? That patch of near-wilderness permitted to reach hip level, where we walk & assist in inadvertent seed dispersal. Sleek systems of carry where we do the bidding if we’re not careful. Are there holes there too? Along the far edge?
What other secrets are being held from the secret keeper?

Water Fire Walk

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?

Home Words

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.

Slow Summer

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.

Nada Mas

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.

In Wait With The Desire To More

Blank canvases exist in infinite examples. Clay clump to the potter. 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.

Lion Dreams

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.