unending, unforgivable mountain

Mountain Dream # 2

we are at Parkdale again, at the foot of Mt. Hood. We are looking around us, trying to see the mountain through all the clouds. I am really excited because we weren't able to see it last time... then we can see it even though a thin layer of clouds surrounds the mountain, and it is covered with evergreens- no snow. I begin to look up to see how high and how big it is, and as high as I look, the mountain is higher, and bigger, and wider. I scream and scream and scream, I feel terror. I try to calm down to enjoy the view, but it's difficult.

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when the mountain is all you can see

and you find yourself lost in a sea of screams,

where can you go at 6am?

trees with no leaves only needles and pleas

to see the sky and no more clouds

stand dark and cover the atmosphere here in this place.

Light seeks its kind but crawls through the dark

to find home

and waves of night swallow waves of white

like a velveteen blanket in an apathetic unrelenting tide.

I walked past shards of broken heart that lay cold but not yet

scattered and I let the street cleaner sweep them up.

At least he would give them an appropriate place to be and

I had to go to work.

Wide eyes close and open from nine to five

and focus on objects in the mirror that are

closer than they appear,

and they do not note beams of light-

stepping on a piece of broken glass

explosions disappear into television screens

and your eyes holding my hands

don't comfort me

the moon is full of earth's stories

and silent as a rock

but has no one to walk with

bridges cover the deep

while divers plunge so far down

and you float on top

somewhere in the middle

sitting on a raft of plastic ideas

as you drift on and back again

mistakes sit around in books

on shelves of sawdust

that dream of what they once were

glasses clink and crack

amidst memories and pictures of dreams

and I am one of them

here i am sitting wishing waiting sometimes hating

and Here I sit

and there I listen

and somewhere someone hears

the call to be.

but for now I lay down this drivel

to curb the cravings

till I can scribe my ravings

that follow your mental pavings

and now this rhyme's gonna heed the

stop sign that just came into view and I'm

gonna go brew

some coffee and these freshly ground ideas that I

just picked up from you and the Gaarder.

Beach Glass

While you walk on the water's edge,

turning over concepts

I can't envision, the honking buoy

serves notice that at any time

the wind may change,

the reef-bell clatters

its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra

to any note but warning. The ocean,

cumbered by no business more urgent

than keeping open old accounts

that never balanced,

goes on shuffling its milleniums

of quartz, granite, and basalt.

It behaves

toward the permutations of novelty--

driftwood and shipwreck, last night's

beer cans, spilt oil, the coughed-up

residue of plastic -- with random

impartiality, playing catch or tag

or touch-last like a terrier,

turning the same thing over and over,

over and over. For the ocean, nothing

is beneath consideration.

The houses

of so many mussels and periwinkles

have been abandoned here, it's hopeless

to know which to salvage. Instead

I keep a lookout for beach glass--

amber of Budweiser, chrysoprase

of Almaden and Gallo, lapis

by way of (no getting around it,

I'm afraid) Phillips'

Milk of Magnesia, with now and then a rare

translucent turquoise or blurred amethyst

of no known origin.

The process

goes on forever: they come from sand,

they go back to gravel,

along with the treasures

of Murano, the buttressed

astonishments of Chartres,

which even now are readying

for being turned over and over as gravely

and gradually as an intellect

engaged in the hazardous

redefinitions of structures

no one has yet looked at.

--Amy Clampitt

And So it Is: from 4 september 2005

The events of yesterday: fixed
Easter 2005: irrevocable
my hair: curly
infinity: immeasurable
baby's birth: miraculous
mind's capacity: growing

The events of today: impressionable
communion: soul-full
war between love and hate: lingering
overcoming disappointment: hopefully
cleaning and dishes: practical
resolution: essential

The events of tomorrow: inevitable
my dreams: malleable.................................. perhaps
infinity: unimaginable
someone's death: ordered
truth: discovered
beauty: revealed

the music is loud in my head when you're around

but quiet when you talk

i haven't decided if that's a good thing

you just woke up from a bad dream

and I just woke up to a new idea 

that maybe we live in two different worlds

that never touch each other but stay

connected by something we never see

and something we always hear

why do so many voices seem like noises

meant to drown out the music in my head

i think the music has more to say than most voices

but rarely do i heed it or feel like i need it

and float on by your world while i keep wrapped up in mine

a thread on love

I remember when I didn't know how to say "I love you"
as words had not yet met my tongue.
And when they did I felt no need to say the phrase
but proposed marriage to my little brother instead.

I remember when I didn't know how to say "I love you"
As I'd never had the reason to.
My eighth grade boyfriends surely never provided one,
And I learned to substitute a kiss instead.

I remember when I didn't know how to say "I love you"
As I'd given away my heart
And without my heart what could I say?,
But I ran away instead.

I remember when I didn't know how to say "I love you"
As I didn't know what that meant.
And meaningless words will always steal the sense from others,
And I believed the imposter instead.

I remember that I don't know how to say "I love you"
As I sit here on this hill.
And I'm not sure when you learn it or if I'll ever say it,
But as the wind blows and I don't see it, I know that in me love is there.

re-vision

Somewhere over the rainbow my mind wanders
until I realize I'm soaking wet outside with no shoes on.
Someone's conversation is nagging me, tapping on my shoulder,
Oh, please listen to this twenty-first century travesty telling us to
turn our lives into ecoperfect, fashion-sensitive, orderly messes.
Somehow inside this noisy place I close my eyes
And so clearly I see a blue square of ocean,
I'm dreaming,
it's an explosion of vibrant liquid, greens, blues, spirit, contained
on all sides but bottomless and unlimited as though it were
the portal to another universe --
dreams are thoughts are true are present.
Modes, perspectives, spheres lose their rigid lines
to merge and blend as one and I dive in down deep to realize
here, I'm not soaking wet in a place so real and honest.

homely

the word home probably should not be thrown about

the way that it is every day.

I'm on my way home right now, aren't i?

or will i be home when we move all of our belongings into a new house?

I doubt it.

i feel at home right here in this coffee shop, 

but of course I don't live here.

I will live in Portland, but who knows when i will be at home...

I understand many people to say our true home is not of this earth

so I have a feeling that when we feel at home in a place,

we are connecting with the Spirit in that place.  

we are encountering love in that place, a heavenly love, 

a love given a portal to this earth.

As we are given to awareness and learn to be cognizant,

we recognize this home, this place where our hearts find communion

with their own.

I believe this to be home.

You've got stars in your eyes

Where are they guiding you?

Compasses of old, now they are clouded and forgotten,

until the chaos of this age's mind drives your face to heaven.

They peacefully beckon you to embrace it all - 

From their heights they send their comfort yet

call you to walk on.

Once upon a 1am dream, a plot of grass and dirt I was looking at became a conscious being.  The grass and dirt swelled as it began to breathe air for the first time.  And as I watched it come alive, I looked down at a patch of violets where its hand should be if it were a large human lying there, and I thought Hm, how clever that the flowers would bloom there.  It looks as if he's holding a bouquet in his hand. 

Things I like about Charleston SC...

1. Our sea-green hostel building
2. Slanted porches
3. Tiny houses and buildings
4. Old brick structures
5. City Lights Coffee
6. Bonfires with Canadian educators/educationists
7. I know water is close
8. Nutella
9. Taking pictures of Bill and Matt
10. Taking pictures of anything
11. Polka dot sheets
12. Good conversations, and we know we're changing the world
13. The colors
14. The farmer's market

blues meet greens meet polka dot sheets
after lyrics have floated, climbed over bright embers
to purport polity and maybe some social equality
into foreign ears and familiar faces
The End.

Introduction to Poetry

By: Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.



"keep my mind from control, my mouth from slander, and my pen from violence. Let me be to poetry what it is to me: hopeful, open-eyed, open-souled, alive, and offering a place to be. And always, always, keep us in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon Thee."

On watching the couple next to me

Her glass of red wine is a little less

full than his is, and the 

bottle is almost empty.

His mind of jumbled thoughts is 

a little less clear than hers is, and

his glass is almost full.

That merlot only sends away thoughts

if you let them go.

His are wrapped around his mind

like an ivy, and I can't find its

beginning or end.

A single candle flame shines between

them on the table and is scattered

through its broken glass holder into

tiny reflections, such as this one, on the 

wall at their back.

Just a minute or two

1. Stop staring, she said, and the lips in the mirror moved in sync.  She felt brand new, or maybe not as much newly made but definitely newly defined.  Perhaps she would leave town, drive a few hundred miles, introduce herself as Francesca Wilds, and become a fashionable yet unbelievably talented dance instructor.  Oh, she could see the dreamy-eyed men and perfectly balanced hopeful young women twirling around her now.  

Excuse me, may I help you? the slightly perky saleswoman asked, leaning over the counter to examine scratches in the paneling.  That is a beautiful color on you; do you wear hats often?

2. He asked so many questions that the posh ladies eating their summer salads next to us actually stopped talking to hear my responses.  Yes, I have a sibling; yes, my parents are still together; yes, I earned my Bachelor's degree; yes, I have volunteered for the United Way for 8 years; yes, I am married; no, I do not have children -- Posh Ladies are still listening-- yes, I have taken drugs before; yes, I have been convicted of a felony (in a quieter but loud enough voice I explain that I ran a small operation that smuggled iPhones to Polk City and Panama Beach, but was actually convicted for the armed robbery of a store formerly known as Burdines).   This long-awaited interview would be postponed until facts were verified; however, the Posh Ladies' small gasps and critically shaped eyebrows told me I had successfully delivered my answers. 

watching

The way you sat across the cafe bar and didn't look

up for 15 minutes reminded me of the time I

fell off of the balance beam twice during the qualifiers

at Ormond Beach and knew both my parents were

still waiting, watching, hoping. -- I hated beam.

Lost in a regretful thought of words

you didn't say, visits you didn't make,

calls not returned, love you didn't let yourself

requite. -- You hated that For Rent sign.

She may as well have put that faded yellow sign

on her heart, and you moved out quickly.

You couldn't look up, but took a slow sip

of the strong full coffee in front of you.

I remember when I used to wish I was

in that cup being taken into your heart warmly.

But I've never been as strong as that coffee,

and she was Kenya, Ethiopia, Sumatra,

offering all of their boldness and spice to you as she

drifted down Orange Avenue every day toward her

ever-changing destination: but she always came back

to her yellow studio apartment to breathe,

and to love you. -- She hated that apartment.

I saw you lift your eyes to the cars rambling

down the street outside. Once we rode home from a

party together and my hair was frizzing wildly;

I imagined you cringing when you

turned to say goodbye and knew you

should never talk to me again. -- My hair hated me.

Now this room is cold and so am I,

and I would like to ask you for your jacket,

the one with the patches on the elbows

and the pretentious collar, folded down.

I imagine you will hold my hands and warm them;

But in real life I watch you hold your

waitress's hand and smile as though

you were imagining warming her instead.

--I hate that waitress.

Yesterday morning I dreamed:

Blood smudged on light green walls irks me,

especially after they've just been painted .

The rooms are almost ready,

And I'm trying to attend both birthday parties; 

I'm invited to both and feeling torn.

You danced that instrumental song, 

the one that almost sounds like some made up

electric piano keyboard instrument,

the one from Thicker than Water, and

You seemed so happy, and I was happy.

am I one?

Who am I?  They often tell me I stepped from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly like a squire from his country house.

Who am I?  They often tell me I used to speak to my warders freely, friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command.

Who am I?  They also tell me I bore the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win.

Am I really then that which other men tell me of? 

Or am I only what I myself know of myself?

Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, tossing in expectation of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making, faint and ready to say farewell to all?  

Who am I?  This or the other?

Who am I?  They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

 

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

After reading this several times, I've decided I'm relieved.  

We are so much more whole than we can understand, but these questions of identity do mock us; they do pick and prod and leave us restlessly lonely.

These questions come from a dismembered and lonely residence, and that is all that they can reflect.  But whoever we are, we are one, not segmented, and not in pieces.  I, of course, struggle to remember and see the oneness in myself: pieces are easier to control and manipulate, if sad and solitary.  Let us be whole beings, believing that we are connected to all of ourselves at any given moment, and as such, we have love and envy and light and anger.  At any moment, we are connected to that which overcomes all things with unmitigated love because we are whole.