The meaning of life is that it ends
The meaning of love is that it does not

Winter Solstice 2016

 A rare, bright  December day today

Mouths on my leg, I am an octopus
 Inky cloud that known longing
draws the curtain down, the thought of you devouring me

 Dizzying tentacles, cranes moving cargo
the countless goods for trade,
 totems of primeval attachment

Giant grasshoppers
foraging on Elysian  greens
laying to waste  the ravishing

Illuminated, draped with unmovable clouds
refusing to cry collected tears, the mountains sparkle
a myriad of streams swelling with their ire

I am old, dreams still moored, desires yet to be launched
buckling from haste and guarding the safety of lair
this aberrant love the lone light to winter's grey

Be still, be filled, be grateful
on this solstice day,
a darling consolation of brilliance dawning

I will refuse food, I will sever my third arm, to mate with you

You

How can it be explained
the endless hours, minutes, heartbeats
spent on you, loving you

How can it survive time, distance
irrelevance, impropriety
wisdom and boredom alike

How it grew to sustain me
in the desert of pain and want,
a water less sea of internal life

Why this hiccup of attraction
became the lifesaver
in an awful, compromised fairy tale

Honestly, it makes me want to believe
in heaven and hell,
the insanity of the bell jar

Connections

There is no use-
 the trail of apologies
the rationing of musts
the ice storage of shame
the addict's sincerity
to cut the imperceptible chains

All a fire back of
 branding, a searing
that changed you forever,
and left you holding
a melted lock without a key,
the melding of the two of you

A knot, untangling it, if ever,
will destroy the weaving of us

Lavender hue


The bluing of nail beds before soul
flees its holding cell

The iris's snapshot of rainbow's
 last door

The captive essence of cerulean
liquid sunshine

The beating of my heart, rendered
to its knees

Why I chose you, or you me

Gratitude


To participate in the joy and sorrow of others,
as otherness blends in with you

To measure comfort with all senses and limitless
values of truth

To become what you have lavishly received,
love, un-compromised by time and weariness

To welcome pain and failure as
the ultimate stage of your own drama and deliverance

To be thankful

The dulling of age


Like sea glass, smoked, etched
with years' worth of ocean breaths
before becoming sand grains

The tales penned, memories committed,
experiences assembled
before the white-out of bones

The harvest of falls
amassed goods stolen or plundered,
or lovingly gathered or even let to waste

Is the final cut, the wrinkled membrane
a shell of that unspecified desire
that brought you into being

Autumn light

Waning, indeterminate warmth
responding to darkness
as I never perceived it will
eventually come

Seeing the brilliance
just a moment before it
is snuffed-
an errant fool

How Pathetic, you voyeur!!

Freight

The stairwell, too narrow and contorted
would not let through the new chest of drawers,
a keyhole to a life imagined and held in confinement

Collected and  plush, feathers for her nest
meant for wounds' cover, improbable burden carried for years
in all, downy dreams that turned nightmares

Chest on chest, she felt his slight ribs
and shallow breath beneath- wondered if it would be another
box car to add to the long line

Missed the passenger train and rode
the freight cars, a vagabond journey
needing not a destination

I wanted you so



 I imagine biting that full lip,
hitting your one crooked tooth hard with mine,
sweeping your  rough stubble and deeply carved filcrum
 with my mouth

Tasting your bittersweet smell low on my tongue,
swallowing your tall pride in one gulp
and never shut my eyes,
taking in all the grey water of yours

Salt in the wound of loneliness
is this desire, fermenting slowly
the wisdom of love, when lust
is the only highway to travel on

Sex is far from a perfect way to reproduce. It imposes a huge cost on a species, and that cost is called “males.” If roughly 50 percent of a species is made up of males who are incapable of producing babies, it is at a serious reproductive disadvantage relative to another species made up mostly of females capable of reproducing on their own.

And an animal that reproduces by herself has a big advantage when moving into new territory, because she doesn’t need a partner to be fruitful and multiply. Every single one of her babies will also produce its own offspring. Sexual reproduction “seems like a simple thing, but from an evolutionary perspective, it’s so inefficient,” says Rob Denton, who studies unisexual salamanders at Ohio State University. “It’d be so much easier if everyone were female.”

Brains don’t come pre-wired to act male or female, but are organized by sex chromosomes, hormones, environment, and experience.

The Well Of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath 

the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water

to the place we cannot breathe

will never know the source from which we drink

the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering,

the small round coins

thrown by those who wished for something else

David Whyte

What Lurks In The Dark

Sin, envy, contempt, pride
danced around merrymaking

Evil triumphant, wreaking
safety, order and trust

An irregular heartbeat can execute
even with mercy, the best of dreams

Porphyry blood rushes in
like a  river of return no more

Replication is the safeguarding of
Fates' final say

Sodden

Came too late
a relentless rain
rotted the sweet pears,
fallen to a muddy grave
much too soon

Fell for your charms,
too easy
tall-cake and all
in the sweet shop's
untouchable display

Was it the past
 I wished forgone
or the future I hoped for
too rosy-
should have stayed dry after all

Housekeeping

The windows were cleaned every Saturday
with raki, since no one drank in the house
sparkling, boozy antiseptic control
 to view the world from high ground

Keeping up appearances and shining armors
compulsory liturgy of ceremony were
benedictions to sustain a life
drowning in bad Karma

Order and ritual, painkiller and torture
slavery and freedom at once
A house story, my story, feet planted in the basement
canopy never breaking the greenhouse's ceiling

Companionship

The pace slows, the banter

apprenticed over years of practice and correction

cloaks emotions, thoughts with earned comfort

 Domesticity, a shelter from sudden squalls,

 angry winds, even scorching, boring, summer days

tags along unknown paths, abbrazzo with your mate you saunter

Ignorant you are of the blessing you received
 and others envy, when you  frivolously discard it without doubt,

seeking novelty and do-overs 

Lust

Volume and swells
vermilion and star shoots

lips velvet and skin silk
stubble and forest

limber trunk and supple hands
climbing up a tree to light

dying out coals into funereal pyre

Lust

Soft roundness of your backside
down low sweet halves
a surprise to feel
undressing
your hardened shoulders
holding to
your knees hurt
by so many genuflections
to absent masters
I appraised flesh and soul
like a stolen goods merchant
ravenous for the prize
of bondage

Pain

My joints cry,
 bead by bead
tears hurting

the light of the camera
flooding the dark
sea that almost drowned me

Texture

My responses are cement
cool, stony, grey with that fake gravity

of monstrous  apartments of my 70's youth,
disintegrating
into toxic dust

The bitter dowry of trauma
and fire smothered

Cellophane swaddling


Take sheltering cover, loop a chain
 genes to cells, cord to skin
keep on gathering
time and memory and comfort
and back to feeding
the circle

The auction of things loved,
used and useless anymore, grating on
my heart on my sleeve
the sluicing of life lived
and recycled

And one from the mistress of pain and its exaltation:

Maenad

#14

Once I was ordinary:
Sat by my father's bean tree
Eating the fingers of wisdom.
The birds made milk.
When it thundered I hid under a flat stone.

The mother of mouths didn't love me.
The old man shrank to a doll.
O I am too big to go backward:
Birdmilk is feathers,
The bean leaves are dumb as hands.

This month is fit for little.
The dead ripen in the grapeleaves.
A red tongue is among us.
Mother, keep out of my barnyard,
I am becoming another.

Dog-head, devourer:
Feed me the berries of dark.
The lids won't shut. Time
Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun
Its endless glitter.

I must swallow it all.

Lady, who are these others in the moon's vat —-
Sleepdrunk, their limbs at odds?
In this light the blood is black.
Tell me my name. 

Sylvia Plath

Debate the merit of overexposure and initiating, gambling on blowing a cover, leaving the safety of margins and scurrying ahead: it almost feels like I am out of time for errors or repeats, out of time for hesitance and procrastination.

I am not seeking attention anymore, not even respect, which my horoscope assures me  lasts longer.
I am floating downriver with not an intent in the world.

And all of a sudden, the ride is freedom and peril at once, action and tranquility.

https://goo.gl/images/KqvG0w

Untangling knots

It takes the salt of many a sweaty brow, tear-welling eyes, tight as a rope stomach, halted breath from paralyzing fear, to tackle tangled messes of knots.
Especially if they are not your own, but you can wearily foresee the future strangulation for your loved ones; especially if you feel ever so responsible and inclined to act as savior Alexander without a sword.

Age is a good thing when it comes to messes and complications and twisted paths, it irons smooth the  impatience of youth, it salves the sharpness of anger, it even allows for defeat and letting go to be viewed as just another walk, on the bright side of the street nonetheless.

Thank you!

The little lies we tell

Like a clasp, holding a string of pearls,
like a heel, guarding the balance
of unmerited heights
like the so very sad fantasy game,

-curtain to a gaping wound-

They come undone,
torn with a soundless tear
caving in castles and all
drowning us in the moat of outcasts

Gentle into the night


There is no more fire left
just the bright embers
the memory of flames
will help the long slumber
the warmth of loving you
a fuzzy blanket

Hiss

Thrashing torture is the hold of envy
Worse, when guilt laces the owning it
like the snake's broken back, full of infertile
frozen moves

The dust of crying inside a lock box
is choking me

Ripe

When the time comes,
you know

when the sugar is spun,
the sweetness crackles

when the blue bird darts over,
happiness rains stars

when the bitter registers empty
hunger is captive

when the hug envelops your heart
in blazing fire

when your black saffron
speaks redolence

you are ready

CRUSH #3

You are smiling, strained grin, unconvincing,
 eyes
 wandering, their contradicting sorrow
speaks
of traps and alliances made in hell
holding dear
my gaze that you cannot claim
like continents apart
we drift
the sea in between endless
drowning
love that should not have been
there


https://youtu.be/1s1Z8i-e4hs

Question my abilities, I do

Walk to the other side, I will

Crush #2

Notice the chairs, discarded at street corners
usually the stuffed ones, the pillows
deformed from cradling bodies
and backside embraces,
keepers of stories, of moments and years
stained from love, boredom and tears
of life's endless short takes
of rest or confinement
The last appeal, on the street, to find new bodies to hold-
rare may be that this wish will be granted
 it is the bony, skinny-legged ones
 that might convince the squirreling re claimer to bring them home
and scrub, paint over, to make new relatives
like middle aged women who still hold their figures, hoping to catch the last train
They reach a hollow part in me,
a sorrow of repeating step,
a longing to find the way back,
redeem the lost and left behind

I miss you

Just once more,
but I know
I can't go there

Just one time
but it is
a lie

Just until the end
and when it comes
let it be hell

I loved you

Yesterday it became clear which wolf in my heart I was going to feed: the vengeful, angry one or the compassionate, loving one. In the old Native American story, the wise man replies to the supplicant's question,"which one will win"-  "the one you feed"..

Your appraisal of me was unjust, assigning responsibility for your "personal" loss. I am withdrawing from what never has been to begin with, emotional entanglement that I had no wish to participate in- friendship and intellectual stimulation was the sum of my intention.

In the past year, exactly give and take a month, I endeavored  consciously to heal, to resurrect love in my damaged heart and find joy again in whatever form the universe would send  my way. It took un-glamorous discipline and hard work, and as you know, I am pretty good at that.

 I have spent the last 13 years in agony, defeat, misery, crushing pain, abandoning the true me, my ebullience, creative energy and passion-filled identity, while watching my married life come apart piece by piece, my partner tearing up his soul and our family, and focusing on just holding on to that raft of survival. Survival is an  ugly battle, inherent of scarcity and unbalance, and now that I had survived, it was time for revision: one more go, hopefully this time with better equipment to weather the rapids of life. This is my truth and unfortunately, not your scenario. This is where I am coming from and not where we are heading. I do not have any energy left in me until I close my eyes for good, to spend one more iota of emotion that is restrictive, painful and "less than".

If this feels like the coward's way of a parting shot, take heart, it is not.
I clear my head and chest when I publicly state what you did not hear or were not able to last night.

I will feed the white wolf.

And one from my dearest cousin Χριστινα Γωβετα:
RIP  Andreas, 1950-2013

Kατερινη

Θα ενδιαφερθουν για τη ταφη
θα προσκαλεσουν συγγενεις
και φιλους απ' τα ξενα
Στους ενδιαφερομενους
θα πουν
ανεκαθεν υπηρξαμε
πολυ μυστηρια τραινα...
που με αποσκευες βαριες
γεμισαμε μεχρι σκασμου
τις αδειες σκευοφορους

Μα εμεις χωρις αποσκευες
παντοτε ταξιδευουμε
περιεργο
πως πληρωνουμε
του αιματος τους φορους...

(16. 08. 2013 )

Hurry up,
one more jog
before the light is snuffed
before the sun hides, your heart
in long winter's grip

Hurry up,
one more story to finish
before the pen dries
before the love is fogged
the road is gone from view

Hurry up,
the last dream beckons
 before the cold morn
before now dies
and last drop overflows

Another favorite from the master..



"Heaven"—is what I cannot reach!

The Apple on the Tree—
Provided it do hopeless—hang—
That—"He aven" is—to Me!

The Color, on the Cruising Cloud—
The interdicted Land—
Behind the Hill—the House behind—
There—Paradise—is found!

Her teasing Purples—Afternoons—
The credulous—decoy—
Enamored—of the Conjuror—
That spurned us—Yesterday! 

Emily Dickinson

Dog Days Of August

The new crisp cotton

 sheet rambled only on half side

embracing summer's languor

 chasing after love

that refuses to join the props

of a curated life

A canvas on my bed-boat

solo sailing at high noon-

strange how I pay the price of lonesome

Class of 2011

Some oldies for today..

Class of 2011

In June, in the tobacco fields of my youth,
the strongest one, my mom, would keep hoeing
the longest row
never upending the curved spine
till the edge of the line and back to the next one,
seeding in my young mind
the constancy of effort,
that rounding the circle
is the absolute endeavor of creation.

Breathless, I arrive yet again,
in the longest days of the year
and another school year comes to an end
and young ones have plowed new earth into their own circles of growth.

I inhale deep, the headiness of  graduation,
is like nicotine that fixes the arc of tobacco in my body
and my barren womb that held a child not
is cast again in the substitute mother role:
another class is delivered to the world.


Maria

NORTHERN LIGHT

I fled the whirlpool of loss
and spread weak wings against blue winds
homing to a nest
that I dreamed in vivid yellows and green
of my fields of sun.
And you became the northern gale
that carried me away
and the dreams iced over
in the igloo of our love.
You held me high, to puff my feathers
and I changed course
and left you behind
and watched you die
for the flight was always mine alone.
And I gathered your broken stone walls
and shattered branches
and fashioned myself a house
to shelter new love.
And the croaking of the frog
that feasted in your ashes,
remind me that
I had kissed my prince.

Maria Ling

Perseides #2


My sweet pea,
you pool shooting stars
in the sparkle of your eyes,
you deepen the black
with eyelashes dream-heavy

You hold hearts
in your tiny palm,
 a smile dawning in your
toothless mouth
secures the chain of my capture

You ask to save the daisy
you gave me for nursing
your heaving stomach, "to pretty up your house"
and I swell with waves
of  abundant love

Make a wish on a fire light,
 shine like it comes true

Turning

I first see
your form spilling out of the familiar frame,
now a heap of the giant that you were

I gaze
into your watering eyes, they have lost their sea luster
green and magnetic light

I resist
the hold of your embrace, pulling away
a few seconds too quickly

I miss
 the seal of your kiss, turning a corner
of my mouth too sharp

I inhale
your stale sweat, deeply hemming
the growing distance

I calm
my breath, my heartbeat
down to polite deference

I am stunned
 as my body translates decades of longing
into a code of severing

I destroy
the mold of attachment
with the detachment of an invader

It was never us,
the sorrow is even parsed

Perseid showers

Darkness parts,
knifed by ethereal wishes
burning their selves
to register time

Space flowers brilliant
measures of action,
fixing the arc of my eye
and the sky

I dissolve, sugar in water,
once a year
my age indifferent
to numbering

Suicide

Ache that knows no bounds,
to escort the gone and envelop the ones left

Void that swells and flows
poisoning new wells

Circle that strangulates as much
as it delivers complete the play

Suffocating, open that gate
fly to safe roost

Solitude, sometimes even to live
is an act of courage

Only consolation is holding the hand
of fellow wounded

As rare as black saffron

Anticipation

Is the redolence of nostalgia, the dynamite of eros

In the lobby of desire

Memory roots its potency, the canopy it sprouts knows

Not the death of spilling seeds to the ground

Snare set, you are pulling me closer with abandon

the recklessness is all my fault's battleground

https://youtu.be/t59QTEWtTJo

https://youtu.be/7CAYFIpi89k

https://youtube/t59QTEWtTJo

The tears came, as soon as I was suspended in air for hours, released form the prison of holding it all together,  for each and all. The flight home felt like the fantasy balloon had leaked slowly but surely, laying flat, ugly, real emptiness.

This place, longed for for  months, heals as much as it hurts. There is a switch in my memory bank that is turned on once I am here, bringing all the demons and angels together again. A mad dance ensues and I am dry as a sponge, absorbing, satiating a parched soul, quieting a restless  mind, tending a bruised heart.
I need the space, the mountain air, the fields, the heat and the harshness, to let go of painful love and find me, as I begun, unmarred and intact.

All the passion evaporated, now just an imitation of a limp flare, the dopamine only stingy droplets.
Stripped emotions are comforting in their lean honesty. The red clay is as defining, as Tara is to Scarlett, crude but with an everlasting stain.

Farewell then, I will descend the 33 steps to a new madness, and maybe, just maybe I will find the savior's icon and the thirst-quenching miracle spring.

June earthquakes

Maybe fear is the amulet for perishing improper. The fear of losing back pages orderly leads to the forfeiture of dreaming a future and the certitude that tomorrow will be better. It is such a looming catastrophe that you attempt to exorcise it, at any cost..

Maybe the void that grows larger with each milestone, each graduation, wedding, birth announcement, death, whatever amplifies emotions and fixes them on the canvas of age, is but a useful foreboding of the dimension to come. And it is not all gloom and death!

Maybe the sun, finally on a light-abundant power mode for these mossy northern loins,
bleaches out reservations, propriety, doubt and inference in exchange for simplicity, decisiveness  and stealth execution.

Maybe my heart is, at last, opposite of scared and small.

Maybe I can hear my own roar triumphant.

Wisdom is knowing which road is the right one
Integrity is taking it

The purse

Carrying the load,
only what I need
 granting banishment
to all left behind

The transit, a symptomatic purge
of buds refusing bloom,
 launching to unknown seas
 in one man's boat

Elemental

The wind in my longer hair,
 running away, whistling a love prayer,
 lifting the cloud

The fire in our hearts, a burning star,
travelling through the sky quicker
than lightening

The sea in your eyes, a constant pulsing
 life, plunging into each other's
fountain

The dust, our touching nakedness
  building a snake less garden from the dirt
 that we became




https://youtu.be/k4V3Mo61fJM

The exchange

The seam of the joint folly

was coming apart,

revealing not fit for relation parts

He forged the distance

with truths and pain from his past

She tempered the alloy

with silent caresses

Gold glistening in the gap of broken trust

-will never hold water tight-

the love of kintsugi became the lone honor

Love in the brambles

You said don't get mad

we will trudge through

plenty of time left

for fun past this field

of thorns

I said how did we stumble here

there were straight shots

to follow long ago

but the berries beckoned

and led us astray

We fell bloody

in that nest of nails

and broke the rule

Always the exception

that we were

You left with  hand outstretched, open, in a gesture of touching a final time or letting go; I am not ready to decide which.

All the confidence of decency can be explained away once  the camouflaged intentions are uncovered.
But who is flawless? What determines the affinity we feel and  makes it a trap?

These days I respect my inner compass's veracity, after decades of trusting obedience to others.
You should do the same.

The collateral damages will be covered.  It is after all the dividend paid, for sacrificing ourselves to insure others' life of security.

Another June

Rushing to the finish line,
 all the ruby cherries at once
June is awaiting summer's glory to begin,
so heady just before it arrives,
so much lovelier than its memories in the end

June is the promise, the celebration, the last mile
the first passage, the longest light and the sweetest pain,
the exclamation of the year,
 the point of no return
of life's voyage

And one from a contemporary master:

Life will break you. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken or betrayed or hurt or left or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an  apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.


-Louise Erdrich

And one from the master...


You left me, sweet, two legacies,-
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had he the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.



-Emily Dickinson

Lead

 Reflection is Eve's temptation

to clone knowledge, assume power

Cells divide to live forever, and

love was made the fuel for their quest

The two way street became the curse, at once

the snake's lure and condemning deceit 

The circle is the absolute perfection of parallels

abandoning  Eden for the pleasure of connection

The lead chiming the harmony of sparkle

is the mirror's poisonous prize

Light fare

The fire inspection is today
Saving the candy thought
for the afternoon pick-me-up treat-
Kyomi, this one is for you!

Deliverance

Memory bank is empty
All the notes repaid,
forgiven or burnt

Fly little blue bird
for joy, and not hope

was your prize

Consolation

Heraclitus said "No man steps into the same river twice, for neither himself nor the river are ever the same again"

The fossilized leaf lays in pieces
on the concrete floor,
prisoner no longer at least,
still bearing faintly the green
that once had been

She bends to hold it,
the size of a heart, shattered
like the spring ice storm
that broke that branch once before,
shivering, alone again

The touch unlocks the chamber
of the crossover, and knows the sin
waiting behind, prepared this time,
 the sole antidote to blindsiding love
is a sealed tomb of longing

Scarcity

It makes me cry when it can't even be thought of
and the touch is the Judas
holding the seeing glass

Wanting

Words unspoken, plenty of conversations about anything else
bodies guarded, much effort to resist the maddening pull
Doubts mushroom, as ever so deepening the knowing of what it is
that delays the partings, blooms into sharing stories,
paints the canvas stroke by stroke, fixes the sadness in our gaze
 That cord that stretches between us is the executioner's noose,
cutting off air supply, the un forgiven trespasses is the caving ground,
the wet blanket that smothers the flames, but not the fire
Only when we speak of un forbidden pleasures, we no longer need
the language of control, of discipline and punishment

Space in  between

You wake up from a dream, but just before
The final thought of letting go has arrived, just before it is announced
The jumping off the cliff, and the mere moments of flying
The setting off on the ocean of change, in the flimsiest raft of hope
The welling of attraction, before the naming of love

Is the space of purity, and pathos tamed
The stilled eternity in the eye of God

Retour a la case depart

Wilted

The dew evaporated this morning,
the colors darkened
The sheen dulling fast
from the withering flowers in my garden
Petals not boasting youth's perfection any more
 yet their fragrance deepens,
as if the understanding of overdue debts
and paying time's demands
layers scent notes with consolatory dimension

It is for them to take center stage now, the upstarts,
the impetuous darling buds of May,
waiting out one more sunset
before the dawn's blooming glory

The face is somber, almost sad, unsuited perhaps for a wedding picture.
 Her beauty narrating her kin's thousand stories.
The brow barely raised, as if with premonitional worry and stoicism, about what is ahead, the mountain of grief to scale.
The lips closed, nary a smile to share with the nuptials' participants.
The complexion unmarred by time or sin, virginal luminescence so readily read.
The unruly tumble of curls, a sign of her obstinate stubbornness.
And the wide forehead, exposed, strong, like her force and courageous resilience.

My mother, on her wedding day, 21 years old.

m OTHER

Manic winds are blowing again
lashing at the distance of us, that grew bigger
slicing the hopes of kind conversation
much less of understanding

Fear is the fire that obliterates
shelter that took years to built
that umbilical cord, invisible, still strangles
the decades of individuation mere sandcastles

in the blowing khamsin

 Pearls

Brooch, earrings, bracelet
icons of tears held unbroken under ribs,
or  a mere irritation, a speck you can't flick off
that grew into  luster stones,
heaving with love's pain

 Frozen eggs, cursed with eternal suspension
 the ideal spell, yet not a life

Tokens of a cast connection,
fed by the endless ocean,
I don them on, a thespian,
as I pray in your altar
displaying my insincere devotion

A Man, in my God's eye

Strong arms,
to cradle fragile infants

sheltering frame,
 to bolster weak saplings

steely gaze, to launch  a thousand dreams 

broken pride, to honey up the bitterness

infinite mercy, to lavish on trembling sinners

compassion, to float a sunken soul

sacrifice, to bestow grace

A communion of man and divinity,
a resurrection promise

that gifted salvation to me

are you

February 3, 1950 - April 22, 2009

Rest in peace sweetie boy

It is late now, I am a bit tired; the sky is irritated by stars. And I love you, I love you, I love you – and perhaps this is how the whole enormous world, shining all over, can be created – out of five vowels and three consonants."

— Vladimir Nabokov, from Letters To Vera 

Rafts

While here, we float on rafts,
we row, racing the currents of life
 to reach to the other side

Some, mere sticks, held together with twine

some velvety  plush, sealed tight

against disaster leaks and enemy fire

We hold on, we raise flags, beams, canopies

we shift and turn, positioning best for a passage
and destination yet unknown

But I will jump off, midway, and sink to the bottom

  wetness will smother my fire,

 I will let go of air and spirit,

for love it isn't love

until its past

Melancholy

Blooms asunder, bright light quieted,
perfumed air stilled,
what does memory's burden bring
this eve?

A lost boy, earth's day first tribute,
a pain renewed each spring,
a longing that knows no quenching-
my heart be still

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, 
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain 
Under my head till morning; but the rain 
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh 
Upon the glass and listen for reply, 
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain 
For unremembered lads that not again 
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. 
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, 
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, 
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: 
I cannot say what loves have come and gone, 
I only know that summer sang in me 
A little while, that in me sings no more. 


Edna St.Vincent Millay

Desire + Attention = Attraction

Attraction / engagement + repetition = Learning

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965).  The Waste Land.  1922.

The Waste Land

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. Love in April, always tender, never easy

I love you so

When the mist veils the first ray at dawn,

when the dusk dims the last light,

when the mourning dove coos a new start,

when the velvet blue signals Orpheus's hand,

I love you so, near me, with me

When the noon heat exhausts the effort,

when the day grows old and spent,

when the spirit of giving is no more,

when it is time to get home

I love you so, by me, holding me

When life is running out of time,

when the years weigh heavy,

when tomorrow is not certain,

when the pain gets louder,

I love you so, with you I can go on

Green and yellow

  The tender green of buds, spring's charge

to reach the sun, fresh, hopeful, untried

like an easy life

an idyll of innocence and intend,

is everywhere I turn.

It colors  the promise of beginnings,

tempers the blues of the spectrum,

  its own headiness,
a delirium of love, lends sparkle

to an ordinary day, same among myriad others,
what a splendid future to be had, for certain!

 The vivid yellow of dandelions,

unruly, undesired, prolific in their advances

like addictions or at least bad habits,

on their way to set bitter roots and puffball heads

casts a shade somber, contrast

to them green buds.

Portraits of chances forfeited, of roads not taken,
or of those you got stuck on forever

of blooms discarded, without fruit

and of acid preservation too,

 wishes  undelivered yet Grace reckoned them saved and absolved

 Comfort and Joy

I pull the lavender scented sheet to my face,
 its soft, white caress wraps my body
as I imagine your embrace would,
warming my core and limbs

I am drifting to sleep holding my shoulders,
 placing an x and and o
on each corner of my being
as I want you to be doing to me

I dream of you coming in the night,
coming in to me
and I find bliss in a borrowed tale,
still all the same to me

Boundaries

The trouble with them is
the obligation to keep

How can I, when all they are is seawater,
and all I want is to plunge into the blue

The trouble is I swim
and you are stirring the bottom's sand

How can I oblige the mirror
and take the chosen path?

The sirens are calling,
the ropes are cut again

The mast that held me bound
splinters, the storm has just begun

Willing wish

Unfurl your temper

loosen your grip

on your abstaining heart

you resisting the blossom's stretch

is as futile as mud dikes

in history's streams

Patterns

I am the daughter of lines,

parallels missing touch

forever extending arms

in their quest

for form and substance

My father died, and hers did too 

much too early in life,

and so did her mother's father,

and my own daughter's fathers

doubly absent, one abandoning her

the other killing himself-

our shared  dowry 

Threading in stories,

the lines occasionally round up

in stations of hopeful connections

sometimes knotted beyond salvaging,

sometimes jumping tracks and rails

always travelling alone

carrying the baggage of others

I am the daughter of heart-shaped stones,

collected instead of eyes of god, countless beach

rocks to shift and poke in that search,
stronger in the end after the damage

that cast them solid for as long as forever lasts

/      \

-------------

Happy Spring!


https://open.spotify.com/track/3FXIaBpwcvPeXAXkVbMQdj

Crush


I smell milk, warm, bluish, thin
I pucker lips around too small of  a spigot
thirst and hunger meld,
a need that is
too vast of a canyon to fill

Years later, the substitute taste is revolting,
attachment incomplete,
past pleasure is a present desire,
a closed loop racecourse
is  this  highway of love


We spoke a parallel dialect, you see
and  translation was lost
forever in the labor of connection

Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUCyjDOlnPU

Penelope's labor

By hook, by stitch, mending

the round of longing

Netting times bygone

catching only memories

 your precious weaving,

a miracle of virtue and toil

will cloth no one's nakedness

will dress no wedding party

will only buy time

to spend it unabashedly

and be abandoned on the loom

on his return

A life wasted on searching,

at last the blaze of a sunset

will shine the dreamed gold

on a union's meaning

Masquerade of Pain


Ascending the steps, labored, determined
twelve, like the apostles
spreading word of salvation,
 the new family of choice


Should I catch you stumbling,
should I be your Pierrot,
or Judas in the midst?


Walls are erected to face winds of change,
pink is the color of watered  blood
communion is  the memory of belong and un-love
the story unarmored, the clay mask of you and me

A tree mudra in March wind

Wish


I open the shutters,
 and let the air
travel the cross
that cuts my house in half

I light the fire
and  burn the incense
it rises, a cloud
to reach your heavens

I tender love
I abandon will
I surrender
and wait for you to join me

Flowering Quince


 Snowy buds, sprouting on splintering sticks
 unfolding each in its own time,
competing for the best theatre seat
One or two of the masses
will turn into
bitter, inedible fruit,
the prize
of a supporting role,
in the cast of  botany's
desire

Green

Darting birds
cut the dewy morning air,
 tireless homing songs fly
like kites in flirty dances

Emerald velvet moss
parts his slumbering coverlet
wakening tender stalks underneath
a brand new marathon of life begins

First belles of the ball,
snow drops and daffodils and crocuses
queue in on the runway of Persephone's return
hopeful, fresh-faced and ephemeral

Verdant, lush, unripe desire
swelling buds and dreams
 letting in light and warmth,
my open heart blooms


Green is the color of promise

Bones BY  Carl Sandburg

Sling me under the sea. Pack me down in the salt and wet. No farmer's plow shall touch my bones. No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth. Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes, Purple fish play hide-and-seek, And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea, Down on the floors of salt and wet. Sling me . . . under the sea.

Expectations

Lists of things to do, the stage my life plays out on

Acts follow one another, without intermission

Bloated or lean, old or new, revised or abandoned

It is all there, the toil of me, the agony of performing

 Perfecting, botching, on occasion completing

Endless entries, scaffolding decades

into facades of decorous accomplishments

The art of managing expectations,

last but not the least of lists

Oxytocin trial is over

Glad I participated, was surprised the hypothesis, outlandish in my view at first, within a certain degree of predictability- and the P value was so large- was proven!

Mirror neurons? Yes sir, and once the plug is pulled, the value of attraction plummets. Apologies to the subjects chosen without consent, although I worry about the perceived  security of my digital footprints.

I am kind of sad that science, while shining light on  the underpinnings of our love wiring, it also renders love predictable, controlled, manipulated and so disappointingly un-magical. Love can be cultivated and cultured in the laboratory, how unromantic is that..

Off to new experiments, " synaptic mark of memory", and the evil of of the tree of knowledge/memory, the prions and CPEB.

Happy Crazy March!

Ιθακη Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη, να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος, γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι, τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρεις, αν μέν’ η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις, αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου, αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου. Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος. Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωιά να είναι που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους· να σταματήσεις σ’ εμπορεία Φοινικικά, και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν’ αποκτήσεις, σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ’ έβενους, και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής, όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά· σε πόλεις Aιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας, να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ’ τους σπουδασμένους. Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη. Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν’ ο προορισμός σου. Aλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξείδι διόλου. Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει· και γέρος πια ν’ αράξεις στο νησί, πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στον δρόμο, μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη. Η Ιθάκη σ’ έδωσε τ’ ωραίο ταξείδι. Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο. Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια. Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε. Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα, ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.

(Από τα Ποιήματα 1897-1933, Ίκαρος 1984)  ITHAKA As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them: you'll never find things like that one on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfumes of every kind - as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean K.Π. Καβαφης K.P. Cavafy

Masserman's neurotic cats,
Nader's forgetful rats



If our life is vagabond
our memory is sedentary

It is the plain truth I am seeking
not in the experience but in myself

We are our own loom,
our time mutates memory

My bourgeois meditation

Rapture recalled

There were five days in the summer of my thirtieth year that are kept in a treasure box, tucked under a rock wall of guilt, brought out for viewing only when the light and task of keep on keeping on wanes.
 The unrelenting August heat, on a scrub-oak cloaked California hillside was coursing through my veins, affirming youth's naive notion  that it will always be as such. Days of  endless languor, where playing, loving were transposed and quilted over rational reasoning,  like been kept in a hell/heaven lock box.

  I can open that lid and find myself on the same emotional flood plain  decades later.

In the waning days of my fifties, reminiscing of that madness, I wonder if a same passion that colors barren, ordinary life's landscapes for decades afterwards will ever spill over the banks of my heart.


Pathos, penance, the luxuries of Eros and sin. Unrequited desire, false memories the steep prize.

 Forbidden Eden, fallen Eve, outcast.

Some quotes for today..


The human definition of the natural world is always going to be too small, because the world is more diverse and complex than we can ever know. We are not going to comprehend it, it comprehends us

Wendell Berry


As we grow, we put away our laughter, our silliness and our childish noises, the great sensory hilariousness of our young lives. We pick up a few notions about proper behavior, like what books to read, how to go about getting married and buying a home and being polite and having cocktail parties.. and the next thing you know, the little child- who was also an enormously alive sensory apparatus- is just another boring adult going to work in a sheer-sucker suit with a briefcase






John Rosenthal