just another sunset with jill

after we have left the beach

and i am home

the sand that had gathered in my shoes

follows my toes through the house

and the flying fairy bugs

still stuck in my hair

find a sad demise

in a tangled braid

 

the twilight quiet evokes

the memory

of the sliver of the moon carving

a piece of cloud and sky

for our rising evening

through the blushing clouds

as the sun skimmed

a descendant in the island horizon

a sinking of one day just touching

the ascendant of a new night

just like any other but

a myriad collection

as worn green sea glass

is coveted

into the deepening  pocket

of an abiding companion

in another day of bonded gems

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I can’t seem to resist my urge to post this dialogue from a Buffy episode. BUFFY GEEK! …Just a little teary every time I see it… I may be testing the waters to see which bloggers are with me in Buffy-fandom…I may be posting it for purely personal reasons for a particular person….I may be posting it ‘cos I adore Joss Whedon…I may be posting it cos my Muse is taking a rest in the sun and won’t join me at the keyboard today to help me type a poem so this is the best I can do (I will join her on the deck in the sun soon)…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4, Episode 19, New Moon Rising…

Oz to Willow: I shouldn’t have come back now. I just thought I had changed.

Willow to Oz: You have changed. You stopped the wolf from coming out, I saw it.

Oz: But I couldn’t look at you. I mean, it turns out…the one thing that brings it out in me is you. Which falls under the heading of ironic in my book.

Willow: It was my fault. I upset you.

Oz: So we’re safe then, ‘cause you’ll never do that again…But, you’re happy?

Willow: I am. I can’t explain it.

Oz: It may be safer for both of us if you don’t.

Willow: I missed you, Oz. I wrote you so many letters. But I didn’t have any place to send them. I couldn’t live like that.

Oz: It was stupid to think that you’d be just waiting.

Willow: I was waiting. I feel like some part of me will always be waiting for you. Like when I am old and blue haired and I turn the corner in Istanbul, and there you are; I won’t be surprised. Because you’re with me, you know?

Oz: I know. But now is not that time, I guess.

snark

anybody else feel particularly snarky since the eclipse yesterday evening?

and what do you do if you post something with a bit more snark than usual, then end up with some followers that enjoyed your snark differently than you intended (as you erase their comments from your inbox), then when you view their blog you really wish they had not found you?

it was simple snark, yet such snark has since been removed from last post in the hopes of not attracting the same in the future…

curious about anyone’s thoughts here.

a believing brain

The beauty of belief

Is in the credence of choice

Belief: a simple word indicating

A complete absence of proof

Save our conviction

 

Those who would force faith

Upon another

Turn belief into a convict

A cell-bound

Slop-drooling

Torture choked

Choiceless and fearful

A snapped-trap ruse

 

Patrick asked me once: How do you believe?

I answered: I just pick the One I like best

(Why the Hell not?)

 

The Eden of my birth

The Wheel of my release

The Heaven of my homecoming

The Rapture of my re-emergence

 

Set faith free:

What splendor would I shower

were I the Loving Creator of each life blooming?

while failure often visits my attempts, I still strive

to live like I am the Silver Lining

 

So with every choice

that the folds of my consciousness empower

as convinced as I am of Now

I believe in Afterwards

Many Named Gods and Goddesses might be there

Pantheons from all the eons

Or I may be alone in Paradise

Its existence the enigma of Non-Existence

A comforting concept

sketched by a cave-drawn evolution

governing our prolific species’ survival

A collective gathering

of a frontal-lobed weighted  balance

of love and remorse

 

Faith may just be a reason to believe

that we have a Reason

I still choose beauty

Believe me

suki’s garden

this is a poem-spell written for and then read aloud repeatedly during a ritual officiated by Laya at Suki’s birthday celebration honoring the opening of her gorgeous home, land, garden, and self to her friends and loves this weekend…thank you to everyone who passed the poem and shared in the reading!

for suki and her garden…

once, the ownership of this land

and this home

passed

through the hands of another

to the hands of you

a key in the lock to a deeper opening

 

this land passes still

through your hands

gardener

and opens at your summons

 

a shoveled spell of soil

a spaded cauldron of roots, starts, and seed

a soulful terrain daily sifted, shifted, lifted

an enfolding synthesis of loam, clay, and earth

cocooning your spirit in the soil

to arise sprout, flower, and fruit

an earthen topography of your heart

a landscape of community seedlings

 

in your hands

any lover

would be as well tended

any friend

would be as well received

any mother

would be such a bosom

any father

would be such counsel

 

may we gather here

to celebrate your birth

and the birth of the land into

your tender hands

a little ditty

A solo base strum

In a song

Reminds me of

You

 

How your volume

And composition

Harmonized fluidly

With the thrum

Of a tune pressing

In the notes of

Me

 

Do not refrain

 

 

life’s metaphors are god’s instructions (otherwise known as evidence for my madness)

Tonight I asked

for a direct experience

with God

at the Sufi whirling dance, spiraling mystics, we

singing, spinning, trancing

 

then I put on my coat and came home

where the power was out in our apartment

 

following the fretting

and switch flicking, switch flicking, switch flicking

and talking to the neighbors

and calling the power company

and pouring batteries into flashlights

and lighting all wicks

and making sure the daughters have bread and cheese and the small seedless satsumas they like so much

then wrapping the children in more blankets

kissing cheeks, and tuck tuck tucking in

 

I put on another coat

the table and I are alone

 

the dripping candles

and the one battery-powered

tick tock tick tock tick tock clock

the only breaks in my silence

with the blinking winter Solstice moon

 

it may be cold cereal for breakfast with day old morning coffee

tonight the orange candle spills

and the thought comes, as it often does

in a quiet heartbreak moment, the yearning yawn

the lonely prick whisper

Distant. I love you…I love you still

 

like a lost child or a wounded bird

a pardoned devil  or the sum of a life

I love you like my lips

 

you are gone, so

the candles hear, heart flame

 

then there is a tickle

like a small crawling thing

or an itch with wings

or an infant sigh

or the prelude to an orgasm

 

the candle sputters. I am

and speaks

I love you

and I fall into

the arms of God

crossing paths

if they whispered

the distant hills would be fluent

in remembrance

 

the paths of time and forest

that we walked

if I traverse this way, or that way

the view changes

like a slant of light as the sun sets

one shadow lengthens, another contracts

denial or truth

lie or hope

lust or love

chained or mated

ensorcelled or ensouled

 

there is the flat place along the trail

where we stopped to breathe

and embrace

held hands, hearts

the sweat dripped down my throat, then salted your lip

the orange sun filtered through the green

and the yellow light glanced back

through the gold in your beard

 

the fragrant lake

the winding trail, commemorate

a place that once filled me with joy

if I distill enough tears to forget

in the rain, it is just a road

I once crossed

innocent lucidity

Tom Waits sang “We are innocent when we dream”

post surgery recovery; vicodin and diazepam cocktails chased with bromelain, turmeric, and arnica

i dive nightly into dreaming innocence and i confess, i have wished to return to every drug-laden dream

…in which David gained a thick Italian accent, swept me under his muscled wing and ensured me that “he would not rest until all the wine and cheese in the world was yours, my love”

…in which i was a chocolatier on a ferry boat to England, gaining the favor of my long-lost martial-artist Chinese love with lips as thick as an almond-cream

…in which several days of National Geographic Jurassic specials rose alive in my deepest breaths, where sea-ruling scaled giants swayed in kilometers of shadowy waves

…in which i followed turtles and sperm whales engulfed in ocean streaming voyage migrations, and then huddled with colonies of cuddled penguins on icebergs

 

the one night i slept without the drugged pain-reducing assist, i moaned in darkness at stabbing body pains —and i wish not to return to the dreams of that night; some demented, some ironic…

…in which parts of my body fell off, like coins lost through pocket holes, where we searched the floor for days, and even my caped Super Surgeon could not find them to stitch them to the gaping openings in my flesh

…in which bands of doctors played off-key sea chanteys on stainless steel sharpened violins that plucked holes through clavicles, patellas, and tarsals

…in which my teenage daughter proclaimed she was pregnant with my grand-baby quintuplets and would remain living—with all five perfectly matched offspring—in her attic bedroom for a lifetime

…in which my last aborted love emerged with a permanent scowl and recounted each failure he envisioned in me; his mouth in the eternal scarred shape of the blaming “you…you…you…”

 

yet, still in my lucid dreaming purity, varied and sundry happy endings emerged

…as body parts melded into gracious winding tattoos and studded body gems

…as the physician’s songs ranked with top-ten million-dollar hits

…as my daughter introduced me to the golden retriever who she “was really talking about”

…and my last love proclaimed in a pockmarked drama that “all because of me he would be leaving this town”

fully lucid, this night, i grin and swallow the last pill…

 

loving our creations: to all bloggers

hello!

to begin, i hate capitalization…my alter ego is a technical writer / editor by day, so by the time i don my cape and scarlet W(riter), i eschew convention. perhaps this is why i balk at creating poetry by form…i love poets / bloggers who write that way, but i can’t do it right now. i am not a grammar-phobe, however, but please forgive my lower case (i just can’t take the SHIFT key any longer)…

so often, i find myself curious–do you LOVE what you write? when you write it and post it, does it make your insides do a little flip inside like when you fall in love? are we ego-bound and ego-infused? are we brilliant? are we self-mistaken? are we as grand as we wish? i think YES (to which question?)!

sometimes, even my worst poetry makes me fall in love with…what? words? myself? the trees outside? the sky? you? or the side of me that is not afraid to ride naked in the streets covered in blue paint?…when i read a poem i love, i feel like i could just fall madly in love with the writer…why not fall in love with myself when i write something i love?

i am lately experimenting with writing who i want to be, the “me in my best moments”…often, i have written of heartbreak and pain, and lately surgery, ‘cos darn, if pain does not fascinate us, yes?  cocoon-emerging from that, i am taking a new view on writing–i want to spin poetry that makes me want to ear-to-ear grin.

what makes you write and create? how does it feel to you? do you feel brilliant?

lastly, for my blog followers who are not wordpress bloggers, you can comment on these posts…just send me an email if you are having trouble figuring out how to do it. i would love to engage with all readers as much as you will join me in this. poets, writers, photographers, etc–please post a link to your blog in your reply so we can all easily share our inspiration and creations.

ready to throw more than just poems into the web-sphere, speak to me!

cheshire grinning,

tsena