hidden in caskets

open the lid
awaken the spider
feed everyone wood for

the termites shudder and
grow wings before
summer ends

only today will
the glass-glare vision
begin its long migration to

home, in the wake of spring
falling asleep at dawn
spider’s lid opens

Crawling between their legs

Who are they?
large vehicles in small rooms
Watch your feet, don’t bump the joy stick
Look, look closer, alter time, compose the space

The snail crawls across the floor
Its heart breaking in the wind at your feet
The butterfly dies a slow death on the pavement
We feed ourselves meds, ice cream, tofu, no prayers for redemption

Each leg is an individual unto itself
Fifty legs, fifty arms, 125 limbs all together
Look left, look right, look up, down, tilt your chin just so,
Swivel your hips, bend at the wrist, reach, turn, bow, bob your ass

This is the dance of fools
This is the dance of unexpected artists
Is this high art, low art, art or dance at all?
Life is concentrated here, don’t add the water yet

butterfly on the pavement

 

snail's heart break

 

large vehicles in small rooms

 

balloons

She untied the cord,
untethered she looks down
knowing she can no longer fall.

It is okay to get angry at God
for her absence during the pain of childhood.
I suppose it was the only way to convince me
to cut the cords myself.

They recoiled like springs, flying away and now
I cannot return to normal;
when denial is impossible
can we find a way to live at peace?

In a world at war
sanity is always in question;
flee, hold fast, let go
the balloon has floated away.

When you pop the balloon
you never know where you will land,
or if you will land at all.

falling down

He was right, desire is my downfall
my vulnerability, and my strength.
When I lose its container, I spin.

Like the wheels on your chair, I spin
the sound of tires in the rain,
the breath of early morning air,
the thread pulls me yet again,
I spin, like a top I spin.

Desire doesn’t leave me although
people come and go from this house
the cedar and the fir remain to hold me.
I fill this empty space, posed, squirming alone.

I hold your eyes and I listen
knowing that beyond words
there is language in your flesh
you will speak and I will listen.

We will find a temple, a place
of holiness, complete unto ourselves.
In my bed I am alone again, only pillows to hold while
I toss and twitch myself awake to your gaze.

memory

Under my skin, on my skin
anointed, I smell your sweat
your touch lingers
I cannot let it go
and I am afraid of that memory

I want to be putty
because you would never want me so
I want to surrender
and because you desire strength
I will surrender again and yet again

Your respect nags me
controls me, overwhelms me
you never ask for anything and yet
the subtlest motion is ecstasy
when we forget to move at all

Words became the distraction
but I still can’t get your smell out of my hair
I shake my head and your breath returns
embedded in my bones, my skin, my sinew
I have become your memory

silence

Silence. No one woke me up this morning, not even the dog. I listen to the songs of birds, the tap of the key board, the gurgle of the coffee pot. Every minute or so a car drives by. The computer hums, squirrels chatter. Lawnmower starts.

I rest in the silence. There is much to do and yet I don’t feel compelled to do very much. I could clean the house, but it can wait. I should turn on the sprinklers and water the ferns.

My muscles are deeply still and satisfied. My mind searches for the same satisfaction. As long as I don’t read the papers or surf through much of the web I can stay in the rest of silence. I’ll go for a long walk in the woods and listen to mountain song. I’ll keep my eyes high off the ground and look into space between branches. Breath the exhalation of tree and fern and poison oak. Tread as softly as I can. Continue to breath and experience this simple life. Then I’ll read the papers and decide if I need to write to the president. There is so much I would want to tell him but he doesn’t seem to listen. So, I just keep going back to the woods and listening quietly to the earth speaking to me. I go back to the dance floor and listen to the bodies of my friends. I spend time with my family and listen to their struggles and their joys. It is enough.

 

morning thoughts

I don’t want to think about the world. I don’t want to make profound comments on life this morning. I just want to do my own life. Take care of my children. Make them breakfast. Nag them to make their beds, brush their teeth and hair, pick up after themselves. Play for a few minutes, draw, laugh at the comics together. Then help them pack up the car and wave goodbye. They’ll get in the car with Dad and drive to LA. Silence will descend on my house. I will love it and I will hate it. I’ll be able to bring order here. Clean the house. Leave for the day and return to a house that is still clean and orderly. I have a full two weeks alone while they travel, will even see them in the middle of it. But still I know an emptiness and silence will be here that I both covet and am fearful of. I’ll be writing from the silence soon enough. Now I am going to enjoy the noise of morning.

Birthday Party

Fly away Mr. Birdman..... 

Nine Years Old
a willingness to suspend time
and to rest in the shear joy of body and motion
to be dirty with glee
to weep over a lost scab and then rejoice in finding it
to hide underneath the tires or to climb to the top of a tree
sweat, eat, run, literally roll in the mud....
Summer is nine years old and not afraid to wear purple with orange

Roll Over 

Spinning around 

Around again 

Portland Pile Up 

Madness

My friend Veronica told me about a TV show she watched. They interviewed a woman in Bangladesh that worked in a sweat shop for 17 cents and hour. She worked 12 hour days and still did not earn enough to feed her children anything but lentils. They brought her to the United States and took her to WalMart or KMart or wherever it is they sell the clothing she makes. One pair of pants sells for more than a month’s wages. And then they interviewed a woman shopping at the store, she had two pairs of the jeans the Bangladeshi woman sews in her basket. They asked if she would pay a little more for her jeans so that this woman could eat chicken instead of lentils. The American woman went off on a long rif about her car payment and her house payment and all the money she owed. She justified, in front of us all, her need to purchase her clothing, to live her life, at the expense of the woman standing in front of her. She publically stated she was willing to cloth herself in the blood and sweat of another human. She was willing to wear, literally, another woman's suffering.

Yesterday, I listened to Laura Flanders interview Joseph Margulies discussing the legal situation at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. I read the piece in Time Magazine last week about Detainee 063. Margulies quoted the Time article and I was struck by the what I had missed. The missing is my own denial. It is self protection that keeps madness at bay. It is my own justification for living in a state that can use and abuse others, around the globe, in our own drive and need for affluence.

Part of the torture and questioning process at Guantanamo is a focused effort to dehumanize the detainees. Just using the word, detainee, is part of the process of dehumanizing. We never call the captive men by name. We treat them like dogs or cattle or worse. And don't doubt, it is us that is doing this. A Republican Senator justifies the centers by saying they are in a lovely spot that could be a resort: a lovely resort with chains on the floor and walls where people are taken to the extremes of physical pain to break them. We are willing to hid our torture and pretend that we are holding our detainees in affluence as well. And it is us, we Americans, our military, who is torturing captive men every single day. In our name, your name, my name, this is happening.

And of course we dehumanize ourselves in the process. We become people without names. We are the captors and the torturers. We see the worst of what it means to be human come out in ourselves, in our ability to deny humanness to another so that we may purchase cheap jeans and cheap oil.

Who are we? Why are we not screaming at the top of our voices for this madness to stop?

learning curve

“Community is a word used to describe the recognition of a group dynamic. It is a popular idea yet I have found it somewhat homogenized: everyone had to be alike to be part of a community. However, “village” is more representative of our human diversity. A village holds all ages, sizes, and kinds, from the introvert to the wild politician to the great grandmother with few teeth. It is a place where ‘other’ can be a mirror for me and I can come to know myself more completely because we are together. ‘Village’ can be embarrassing, provocative and inspiring. It can help us appreciate our glory and confusion as human beings.” Barbara Dilley, 2000.

I crave the provocation and the confusion of the village. I ache for those moments when I see myself in the eyes of someone different from me. I enjoy being pushed beyond the edge of my comfort and ability. I want to see people. I am learning to move beyond the “don’t stare” teaching of my childhood and to watch others with a loving gaze. I love my solitary long walks in the woods. And my mind and body are craving to take that same intention into the city: to walk with equal presence amoung the bodies, smells, touch, and sound of humanity. I crave those moments of learning on my edge, of being with someone wholly different than I and seeing how similar we actually are. My experience is that this is what will heal us: touching, hearing, looking deeply into the eyes of the 'other' and seeing ourselves reflected there.

too smart

the earth crumbles open and out pops my head
an aura of shattered mirror surrounds me
hands on the edge of the hole, I pull myself up and out
carry one child after another across glass

one runs away down the path, looking for the next thing
another stays to study the damage at hand
blood soaking through the fabric of the land
staining our clothing, our hands, our hearts and souls

don’t lecture me, just speak your truth and walk away
hearing your words again grates against my skin, wounds me
laugh easily at the mess you’ve made around your own hole
stop believing you know the answers for the world

too smart for her own good, they might have said
no longer smart enough to let go of the earth
look up, eyes on the tree tops you can use those wings
let the blood, the water and the wine splash at your feet

nice 

hold it 

sound effects 

pof 

suspended 

Go through 

taa daa 

great smile 

back to back 

flying over 

montage 

School Yard

Two of them swinging flailing and laughing in mad abandon
Deliciously unencumbered by the limitations of their gender

Not true Mama, look at those two over there:
He has the slouch, the visor, both hands in his pockets
She saunters in her short skirt, balancing on ridiculous shoes

Mama sighs, hunkers down, plans a summer freedom campaign

Perhaps we are all rabbits.

Jack takes refuge in rationality.
Jill takes refuge in her heart.
Neither can see the mountain.

Jack and Jill went up the mountain
to fetch their daily rations.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
and Jill came tumbling after him.
and the whole mountain may crumble in their wake.

A rattle shakes deeply in the communal soul
reading of the dead each morning
the rattle thunders as I wonder what sanity is

Michael, front page, above the fold
A rattle snake thunders now
Another diversion for our communal sanity

Are we rabbits absentmindedly eating hay?
Infinitely distracted by sex and reproduction
The rattle snaking deeply into our pelvic mind

Will our souls and morals save us from the thunder
I have no answers to the puzzles that promise enlightenment
only spontaneous combustion as the snake rattles our souls

we spin in empty rooms
spotting a point on the wall
drishte, focus, spin,
around and around the center again

Board Games 

wheelchairs cannot get into my house

Arnold Schwarztenager did a cameo in my dreams last night.
We danced for just an instant.
He answered a question of mine.

Max is more fun to dance with.
The music of his power chair is all I need: bells, beeps and
a soundtrack of wheels squeaking on vinyl.

Only two chairs can get on a bus at a time.
Max had to flee because there was no toilet he could use.
Christina had a van waiting that could take just one chair.

I drove off in the Volvo unable to give anyone a ride.
Back to my valley home and my husband, my sons,
leaving concerns about bars in the bathroom behind.

I have stairs and a threshold; wheelchairs cannot get into this house of mine.

Max and Me 

you are looking at words on the screen

Ironic. I have been thinking, dreaming, weeping for fewer words in my life. And I awake with a desire to write about this growing distaste for words. I laugh softly as I type.

Words are not experience. Words are not my feet walking on the rug. Words are not the sounds of swallows chirping or the roll of tires along Grant Ave. Words are not the smell of coffee brewing. Words are not the sunlight coming to me from behind a cloud bank. Words are not my body awaking with the sun rise and aching to get out of bed.

Words imprint experience into memory. I often remember stories not experience. The events of my childhood that I remember best are the stories that we told again and again, the painful or pleasurable moments that had to be processed. The stories I remember best were captured as photographs and then told again and again when looked through the paper bags full of unsorted photos.

Here are some words and a powerful memory: my father once dropped me from a second story balcony. I don’t know if I remember falling. When I think of the fall I experience an empty place in my solar plexus. Is the experience of the fall this hollowness that spreads from my center? I breathe into the hollowness and feel it spread out to my finger tips and toes, then dissipate into the air around me. I give the hollowness to the air beings to carry away and bury. I do remember telling my therapist the story. I remember weeping over it. I know that when I tell the story to someone I have to brace myself. My body braces to prepare for the hollowness that will open and to prepare for the energy of your reaction. I do not remember the reaction of my parents to the fall.

I find myself yearning to simply watch people, to listen, to not give words to my experience. I find myself yearning to drop the last vestiges of the scientist in me and to stop analyzing observations. I find myself preferring the language of the body unencumbered by words: the language of sound, smell, touch, vision, taste; the language of bird chirp, tires rolling down the street, flavor of coffee, tap of keyboard, green leaves obscuring a cloudy sky, the page in front of my eyes.

Door break open
‘no roles barred.' Every cell is
ready to be seen: blood, sinew, fat, flesh

I touch your head, a bolt shoots through my hand
it takes force of will to pull away.
The shock resonates for days on end

Two prongs forced into a socket.
Heals over head I fall to the side, intact
recoiling to center on the tide of daybreak

Georgia’s clouds hide the sun
What the hell is high art?
I will always be a working class, melting pot babe

Drop the suspenders from my shoulders,
under these coveralls is an unexpected body
washed fresh in the raindrops falling from the oak tree

Blessings

Just one year ago I spent a few days in the household of Sheik Nazim, leader of the Naqshbandi Sufis. He gave me a blessing. He told me to the dance. I will honor his blessing and heed the call of my heart that he saw so clearly. I could not hide in his presence. Dance. Yes. Dance a prayer, a blessing, a miracle. Dance the demons, the shadows, the dark. Not everything evil hides in the dark. Some evil things hide in full daylight, distracting us with their brillance. Dance it all.

Sheik Nazim visits the women's quarters. 

Faces of those called to serve. 

Gathered for tea and prayers.