....From The Tree Of........................Isolation & Thought
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_______________________________________________________ More Does the rib cage protect what is inside, or prevent the thing from beating its way through bone to get away? Our hearts trapped in our lives are the drum messengers of every blood-felt slide from good to bad. From salvation down to damnation again, keeper of what we will abide despite the price or how it snatches hanks of hair, or rips off faces to see the face beneath. We mask at every turn; bargain as it beats just one more drum roll. One, and yet another never satisfied. That fifteen minute crescendo, finest of our lives is never enough--we want it longer, louder, pounding heaven with our fists, we want it all. Life Like Toast First solar flares, then total eclipse of moon. I think the sun will throw itself right through the earth and burn it up. Make orange fondue of moonless night where you go melting up a path alone to meet me. Love is cheesy gold as butter, fallen through the cracks and holes of life like toast: toast is bread once soft and kind to tongue, become a harder version of itself, though sometimes warm- and ossified, the lives that were like liquid. Last night, the restaurant sat under a moon gone black under new management. The french fries limped with grease, and pickle chips were swapped for soggy spears; my tuna melt held chilly chunks right at the center where the .....heart was. Figment I used to look at comic books, the fairytale kind- baroque in illustration, thick, rich colorful frames of Cinderella or Snow White. Much more expensive than the thin ones: Casper, Richie Rich or Little Lu Lu- fifteen cent-ers- they were a dollar and a half. I'd always find my way to the central character, and be her: big-eyed beautiful and rescued, at the heart of things. But truthfully, if I had to choose a character right now, I'm mostly TinkerBell: dependent on someone else's belief in me. A figment. Just a trick of light, and jealous, on the side lines---blinking love for all she's worth. Hares Among Us Hopping Mad The March Hare in November is out of touch. Clothing thin and loud, and so unsuitable; his gunning after minutes is hardly what we're about this time of year. No time for growth, these are days of curling inward. Showing all our bones, stretched black and scratching sky, we take a hint from trees: we want the xray life. Life of minimal distraction, every thought on staying warm and holding tight till spring. Alice thinks it's silly, all his fuss and pomp. And even Baby Jesus is embarrassed to be kicking up a crowd of tired old wisemen, shepherds and their modern version, shoppers who'd rather be home, sleeping in their summer fat, not running around in silky hats while checking out a pocket watch, that only tells the time that we have left. Bugaboo Time for the old cyclical sadness with the holidays coming on: first time it happened, I was sixteen, and one day early in December I started crying in the car riding with my parents, my mother perturbed and worried because there was nothing I could point to and say, "That's it." "That's what makes me sad." Growing older now, it doesn't happen every year, but lately it's been happening a lot. It's as though I've forgotten how it felt to be glad about nothing, supple in my skin, the way it feels to rub against the world. I think I'm a person who's outlived her charm and the arm that has the hand attached, writing this, it may as well be a mannequin's. The stars spin out there colorful, but for color blind me, they could be coal. My soul has taken a longer route than light to open eyeful up and at em, and will not leap. My grief is vexed with no one else to blame. Each finger poking prod's at me, each day's the same but if you listen, what you will not get from me is barking nonsense about how one day on the 'Champs-Elysees, I saw a strange migration of the snow geese'' or 'how I see windmills spinning backwards'--these are lies. I will not say them. What I will say is for some bedeviled reason life seems shit. Now come and sit with me awhile. Hidden Obviousness was never a thing I admired: it is too easy a grab a and I prefer to pick you like a lock. Wonder what wantonness looks like slid across your face without your even knowing I was there and staring. Simmer, glimmer but barely, well-contained, the old hot tongs of sex concealed beneath the sweetest words, its coil of snaking heat back in its basket, sleeping under love. I read the poetry of naked revelation, recollecting assignations, spelling out each thigh and hand position, what the the mouth does, where and why, and there's no mystery; I hear a song of lonely desperation scraping at the glass. For me intelligence and reticence are the most compelling lures of all. I may read the other, but it won't live in me long. It's a sparkler, not the whole shebang. That is found by picking through the rubble of another heart and bravely, both by seeker and the one who's life is opened slowly: incident by incident, word by half-hid, pained and half-said word. To Dance On The Head Of Pin And Thrust It Through This is a day of knocking. Before despair bites the back of the throat, before a prayer hits the vaulted roof of mouth, there is a knock. An odd, concurrent thud of what now next, and in the pretext of not really jumping right or left, in that quick second when there's wherewithal to bolt, instead you hear the knock and answer soft and rasped as God's breath, softly, maybe yes. Eating Keys Watching my grandson, seven months of chubby flesh and wonder, propped on my lap at the desk in front of computer he went from wriggle to still, and when I looked, he'd plucked the key from my desk drawer and was mouthing it. I took it back and felt him lunge for it again, and thought how often in our lives, do we reach for keys so important we would eat them if we could: keys to love or happiness, success or riches, or even something as simple as a good night's sleep, and how often do those appetites begin in the laps of those we love--the keys we reach for, keys to something forbidden, maybe the key itself, the thing we'd gulp right down before they looked. Lesson From Trees Last year I did the thing I always wanted to do, I ignored Christmas. Turned off the sale-a-thon, Bing Musak in the head, the push and crush of bodies, deadlines, greed- this year because of death around me, not visiting, merely tapping, no Marley trailing chains, but the pain of separation from one in the sands of Woe, I go into the bells head first. I need to find there is a chance for ring and rush of sympathetic souls that feel like flesh now singing to prop my own, and here is what I found, here is the thing I learned in the ice storm last night: ........that too heavy a burden held .............will crack the branch. Tarp You can't hear snow but you can smell it coming, its fine, clean, high-up scent. Snow can cover anything: blood or borders, dead dogs left too long in cold, or litter on the sidewalks. Homeless, if they fall asleep and not get into shelter, snow is what you give a child instead of death, not cancer, snow. Snow's the stuff of fairytales. You'll find it snowing on religion, lawyers, prime time TV and politicians; anything beautified that ain't, any real clunkers under paint- just take a whiff, and you've got snow. Showdown Excelsius Sunlight blazing heaven in an orange alerted world, the angels have their crayons at the ready- determined that the sheep are white, and Mary, blue, and every beating heart in reddened worship of the One to wash us softer in a watercolor Christmas, quaking on our hills in won der, clutching at our arms and asking, "Is it time?", our bead on settling ..... this thing once andforall. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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