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