I Mean It!

This one's inspired by the GOP and corporate executives and all the rest of you out there who bravely bear up even though everything and everybody is against them at every turn and persecuting them, and they're really not feeling very well, either!

Turkey Vultures

Your cry attracts more scavengers
Than rescuers. The swing shifters
Shake their heads and sigh.
If you've got enough breath to complain,
You can wait for fresh heroes
To haul you up. We're off. We're done in.
They trudge off to have a drink and forget you.
It's easy. Laughter breezes in without you,
All the ones like you, left behind again.

Maybe there's one who stays and waits with you.
A matronly type. Secretly, you're disappointed.
You think you're entitled to someone more in your league.
A handsome one like you are,
And still not yet middle aged.
You smile yet at her kind hand-holding
Out of habit. It never hurts to get your hooks in.
You might need her someday.

She leans close to talk, to help you pass the time.
She tells you: "The vultures, you know,
They're so much more sensitive than we are.
We hear a stifled cry, a brave protest against aid,
And we rush to reward you with more
Admiration and affection. The tale of your courage
Makes you twinkle like a star.

"But the birds, all they see is your weakness.
They don't know from fake. You lie there
And they see: You're weak, you're ripe,
You're going down. Careful what you wish for,"
She chuckles, tucking in the blanket.

You'd smash her teeth to shut her up
In an outraged flash; but no, that was
You years ago; today, you know better.
You put on your best wounds.
The dignity of your protests is impeccable.
You are deeply sorry that she has misunderstood you.
Perhaps it is her plainness that has made her so mean.

She tells you:
"As soon as you asked for pity,
It was a signal to the skies: You'd gladly die
To get one desiring look. Here they come gliding.
You're so sweet to them. If you stood up now,
How disappointed they would be."

The Post closes its suburban bureaus to save on leasing and equipment costs. The reporters will pick up these costs individually, and they will not have a moment they are not working. The 21st-century news business is now just like the 19th-century one. Every man for himself, and glean your own straw.

Photo: Entrance to Abita Mystery House, Louisiana.

Civil War Surgery

Sorry to be such a lameass correspondent. I was traveling -- road trip through Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Va -- and then to the beach and then camping and then the hospital. Appendix is gone and I'm happy about it, I really am, and I hope it will be happy wherever it goes and I don't bear a grudge in the least. I just want us both to be happy now. But I didn't need the pain. It was too much. Sometimes you just have to let go, even if it is a bodily organ. Just tell yourself it's vestigial, and make that clean cut.

I have a bunch of stuff I'm writing about civil war sites in Mississippi and Tennessee. Very haunted.

If you're in Annapolis, I'm giving a reading Friday at 6:30. Details here. It's an open reading afterward--why not? It's an easy crowd, believe me. They're all hopped up on those oversize chocolate chip cookies.

Cosmic Hump Day

Cleaning Out the Attic

It's the cosmic hump day, the sun's spike,
The midpoint. Quarter and cross-quarter
Days slice the sky into a pie. I can't let this
Day pass without thinking of Daisy:
Do you always watch for the longest day
Of the year, and then miss it? We almost missed
The window for spring cleaning.
But it's not too late to get a fresh start.

We keep moving our shards and scraps
From one side of the divide to the other,
Kidding ourselves that we'll sort it out
Someday, but today there's light enough--
Let's take it all out and get a good look.
Sigh. For the rest, it's all berries and gingham,
While we work, our hands accruing
Dust and spores. Fans fruitlessly
Push waves of humidity around the room.
I kneel before you in this inherited kingdom
Of mosquitoes and mold. Old letters, ragged bits
Torn from old notebooks. Water-painted photos.
Full baskets, empty suitcases.
There might be something here.
Something we can use.
Even when the room goes dark, I stab
My finger at the square of light that remains.
Love's amateur archeologists, that's us.

But in that fragment of a moment
Comes release. Let's wash our hands.
All we need to to carry us
Until the longest night is all
We see in each other's eyes.
Let's go to bed now.

We long for a holiday, a walk in the sand,
But in the peace of escape, you find still
Tugging at your ankle, a string of seaweed
Charmed with rattling coquinas.
Pull it loose and let it go.

Bubble, Bubble, Barney Rubble

I've been telling people this for years. Demographics are not dollars. If newspapers, which used to provide something of value and still do occasionally, can't find a way to "monetize," how could social media possibly do it? LinkedIn is a ghost site making a cash grab. Groupon should have sold out when it had the chance. Now there are scads of imitators, and Groupon's only strategies are to divide into areas of concentration and/or go microlocal and/or buy up the others, all of which will cost more than they have, even with a vastly overvalued ipo. Or they could hang out and wait for the competition to myspace. That's "myspace" as a verb. I would have said "betamax," but you're too young to get that, I bet.

Actually, hidden in that linked story is an excellent look at why advertising too is dying. Only a few rich people have anything left to spend, and it doesn't take too many people or much imagination to pitch to them. Most of the advertising I get paid to write is pitching the federal government, who's a rich guy no matter what he says.

Sorry, sometimes I have the illusion I'm still in business. I'm fascinated by what the world values and doesn't, and how it assigns these values. Because nearly everything I value has no value to the world. Like right now, I should be writing for pay but Ima write a poem. And speaking of young folks.

Bikram at 50
Beware, young women, beware. I dare
To place my mat square in the front of the room.
Every pop of my knees and hips reports
Like a shot in the dead of night. I am your
Gray and sweaty wake-up call, girls.
I come from an abundant, careless time,
A time before we knew that none of it was good for us.
Weak weed, full bush, lead, white bread
In the balloon-festooned plastic bag.
Bowl after bowl of eight essential vitamins.
Sucked dry by Count Chocula in the heavy metal parking lot.
And look where it got me. A pretty young thing
Orders me: "Down, dog," and I obey.
I am the memento mori among your still life
Of flowers, ripe fruit, shimmering, freshly opened
Oysters. What a spread those old masters
Used to lay out, didn't they? They knew how to live.
But there, in the middle, they'd place
The grinning skull--skulls are forever
Grinning in bad writing, aren't they?
You smile at me and tell me:
"Keep it up. You're doing great."
I grin back at you.

"This One's From The Hip"

Usually I come back from my special camping trip with short, simple, amusing poems. And lots of em. This time, I get long, drama-laden, prosy stuff. And thank the gods there are not lots of em.

The Great Celebration
I.
When the world failed to end
On the day the preacher said it would,
The day went down in the books
As "The Great Disappointment."
Here's my proof, as if more were needed,
Of how much we humans fear being alive.
Better the devil we know, we say,
Than the angel we may never meet.
Living means not knowing
The appointed hour, and so much can happen
To hurt a soul in an hour.
How often, maddened in love, have I said:
I could die now.
Beneath that pure lotus of acceptance
Spreads a swampland where an
Alligator swims. I'll name him "Wish."
Take me home now, before the party dissolves
Into cigarette butts and muddy footprints.

II.
A year and three nights
Of drums and frogs and
Our sweat fusing our skin.
It's summertime, and the living is easier
When you don't always get what you want.
You can be certain of me now:
As certain as you were that you would die young,
As certain as you were that you would always be alone,
As certain as you were that the world would end.


For Those Who Won't Take Their Medicine
What I wouldn't give
To give that man a handful
Of something--god knows what
He could use. I'd find something.
I'd take what he gives me, and then--
The direct route. A bungee jump, they tell me,
Into the abyss and out again.
A lifetime of digging done
In a puff of smoke. Take this,
And you will push through
Fifty years of pain,
Just like that.

But the man with the medicine
Won't look my way. And that's okay.
Because it's my way, the hard way.
At the end of the day, my legs trembling,
I sit at the table and struggle to scoop
A small mound of rice with my broken hands.
Damage strengthens muscles.
I train my hands so they will be strong enough
To dig myself out of my grave.

The world conspires against
My ease. I won't be allowed
Pillows and stroking and tea and friends.
These are things others are offered freely
But I can't even bargain for.
The arm, extended in welcome or comfort,
Will not find my shoulder.
If I crumble, not one of you
Will pick up a single piece.
I've always known this in my bones.
My only medicine is the breath of the trees,
Harvested by my own hours spent running, running.
Each journey I make alone.
Each day, I will have to sweat,
And plant seeds, and wait for them
To sprout. Many of them die.

They Smile In Your Face

Ten of Swords
Wounded Healer

It's been a while since I've kissed the scars
Of someone I love. The indentation in your leg,
The star shape to the left of your navel,
The weal sewn over your heart. No more
Delicate fingertips and wide-eyed awe here.
When you first know a body, you count the scars,
You wonder over them, you hear every story
These marks tell. You are hungry for the news.
You would push the point of your tongue
Into a tiny, still-red canyon, mining
For information, for emotion, for the undeniable
Truths of the past. Now it's an act of faith
To overlook what hurt you so long ago.
It's tempting for us damaged
To worship the wounds, you know.
So I resist, slide my lips quickly over and past
Those places, over and past for you.
These next few moments are what I live for.

The interpretation of this card, counterintuitive as it may seem, is that this could be the card of highest revelation and enlightenment in the tarot. The woundedness forces the subject into deep inner knowing. Think of the swords as acupuncture needles along a meridian, and it makes more sense. His head is turned away from blame or martyrdom and toward the clearing skies.

Let My Freak Flag Fly

Mother's Day means I get all the real grated parmesan cheese I want on the pasta, and that I can get up in the middle of dinner and add some lines to a poem.

Entanglement

I.
I always read while I brush my hair.
It keeps my mind off the pain. I used to cry
When my mother used to brush it,
So she started taking me to the Navy-base barber,
Along with my brother, to get it all cut off.
"Pixie cut," they called it. I looked more like
My great-aunt's skinny chihuahua, shivering
After a dip in the deep end of the pool.
(Oh, for heaven's sake,
Yes, let the record also show that
My mother had five children and a job,
And found time to sew our clothes
And matching Barbie-doll outfits
And crossed the border to Tijuana
To get us the prettiest birthday pinatas.
The fault is not with her, but with me,
For never being cute enough
To carry off short hair.)
I am reading, or trying to read
"Annals of Science" in the New Yorker:
"Dream Machine: The mind-expanding world of quantum computing."
I never took math or science past 10th grade.
My mind leaps to the easy part:
Play with the words, think about sex,
Wonder what this science might tell me about love.
I learn that like a poem (you saw that coming)
No one can really say
What a quantum computer is good for.

II.
We are sweating in your apartment
Over a canvas so large it fills the floor.
You have just moved in, and there's no furniture.
You are trying to show me how to draw
A perfect circle, using a string and a pencil and a pin.
The cord knots up on itself and the canvas
Wrinkles and I give up, tell you,
"I can do it, I can draw it freehand."
And I do. The circle becomes the sun.

III.
My solipsism is not a closed circle;
I am open to new experience.
If I am only just bright enough to learn through my senses,
I would pray you admit that there may be
More of these than five, and I (and those like me)
Might understand in ways we don't yet understand.
I live by language, and today I find myself
In another world, where pronouns
Are entirely ambiguous. Who are you?

IV.
I read: "a brilliant and distressingly thin physicist"
And I feel my hands pressing for (and not finding)
The place in your shoulders where the pain hides.
I read: "The fabric of reality" and I see my hands
Slipping under your shirt. I read: "Quantum mechanics
States that particles can be in two places at once"
And I see the faces in the firelight, and those
Sleeping at home. I read: "two particles can be related,
Or 'entangled,' such that they can instantly
Coordinate their properties, regardless of their distance
In space or time," and I remember staring
Into your eyes, and starting to cry
Without knowing why.

V.
"Einstein found entanglement
Particularly troubling,
Denigrating it as
'Spooky action
At a distance,'
A telling phrase,
Which consciously echoed
The seventeenth-century
Disparagement of gravity."

Of Safety And Surprise

Of course it's not really the end of anything.

Celebration

So this must end
And that must end and
The other must come
To an end as well.
Even a rock will crack
Under such seepage,
Split as sure as rot.
Under a dark moon, void
Of course, here's
The formula, the slime
And vine whose twist
Found the fissure and
Pulled the granite
Beneath the creek's surface.

Photo: Legit and my own for once; Sunday run on Soapstone trail. Nine stream crossings in .9 miles, big fun.

Your Tulips

Got five minutes to write the poem I started yesterday!

Thanks to all who voted for me for Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere(R). I love the registered mark. I'm going to put it after damn near everything from now on. I was not a Winner(R), but I feel very warm inside(R) nonetheless.

Beltane

From early on, I stopped paying
Attention to the numbers
Of books lent, kisses given
And received, numbers of nights spent
Crying, either on each other's sofas
Or in each other's arms, or beers,
Or any rounds passed around--
The return on keeping
Track of these is mean.

But track I did the phases
Of the moon, the path of sun,
The rise and fall of bodies
Of water, the week to expect
Certain fruits and flowers,
When to look for mud or drought
Or storms. The earth's clockwork
Fueled my faith in abundance.
I knew more would be given.
On Beltane, at my feet lay
A nectar-sticky tulip poplar flower,
A full month before blooms of other years,
A full month before the bees
(Fewer every year) come to harvest,
And I felt the outrage of betrayal.

A Vote For Me Is A Vote For Strippers and Chickens!

So inspired because my friend nominated me for Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere(R)! Go to this link and vote today because this is your only chance! Vote for me, Maria Padhila, vote for one of the other nominees, check out today's poem about chickens! You will just love it.

Shadow Floyd

He didn't know the word
Shaudenfreud, he thought he'd heard
Something else, under the music, and he looked around
Wondering who I was talking about. That guy
With the powder clinging to his pornstache? The glowering one,
Or the old man wheezing through the plastic tubes,
One hand twitching, in a weak, repeated beckoning?
No, they are themselves, not enemies,
Not projections, not paper targets, not yet
Beings of light. The young man has, like me,
Wanted the curve of her hip under his hand,
Wanted the music to go on all night.
The old man is not like my
Father, who will have the grace
(And let's not forget the money)
To vanish quickly and at some distance removed.
This old man, this young man, will go on and on,
Peeling off bills for the strippers,
With every huff getting thin enough
To pass through the eye of a needle.
A wave goodbye would knock them over
And yet here comes the force of the whole sea--
Overkill. This is where I defy god and say:
Let the angels sing. The song
Is a beautiful mercy, a gift
As they are rocked away.

Image: A detail from Fred Folsom's famous Shepherd Park painting used completely without permission. If you know and love this one, you should check out his recent work on his site. I wish I could buy one. Maybe if I become Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, fortune will follow.

Update: That old subject/verb agreement thing. Correction made.

Desert Island Dicks

Dag, should wake up early for yoga, nope, writing this instead.

Caesura
"It's easier if I pretend you're on a mission in Antarctica." --Christopher des Sots

I have cultivated a smile that smoothes time over,
Glosses the inevitable awkwardness in the shuffle
From you to you, the span when I am on
My own. I compose a way to face
Not knowing, and hope this calm mien
Will someday be mine, naturalized, spreading
Bright serenity like the daffodils on the lake shores.
Stupid flowers. Tinny little bobble heads. I could sob
And lie down in the mud. But I will frame kind words
And thank you notes, something I never write
Enough of, my gratitude, truly, profound enough,
These days, to shock me, to give the sense that it
Grows outside myself, yes, it dwells in a hole
In the center of the deepest part of the lake
And a stone tossed there would never be recovered.
This is how much I love you (and you, a plural pronoun)
For what you have done. You must know.
I run the caged ramp, around and around,
Up to the caged bridge over the train tracks--
Fences surround me, and looking back,
Well, there's the lake, small and far away.

Tea Party, Donner Party, Hurricane Party

For Preventing the Rich from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to the Public

It is a source of sadness for those who walk our cities or travel in the country when they see the streets, the sidewalks, and the buildings crowded with people wearing Louboutins and Armani and driving Mercedes and BMW cars and SUVs. These people, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in aimless shopping, cell phone nattering, and bribery to protect what they believe are their entitlements.

The numbers of the rich do to the present deplorable state of our country a great additional grievance; and therefore, whoever could find a fair, cheap, and easy method of making them sound, useful members of society would probably end up with a building, or an airport or two, named after him or her.

The problem of the rich has proven singularly intractable and has only worsened in recent years. First, there is the matter of their children, who should probably be removed from rich families at birth, if it cannot be that sterilization is applied before the fact. The children of the rich, neglected as their parents pursue their whims and addictions, are uniformly warehoused in a series of schools whose administrators seem to care little how well children are educated. The only concern in our country's schools for the rich is to move the children on into the next class, and the next, on into college, regardless of how they might have failed to earn such advancement. They then emerge to become a drunken menace on our streets, a burden to our hospitals, and spawn more generations of profligacy with their indiscriminate, promiscuous breeding out of wedlock. They rarely excel in any area, from science to athletics, but continue as a drain and burden on society. We who work--in the government, in services, in small and large businesses--can no longer carry these bloated, irresponsible sons of CEOs.

Not only the children of the rich, but the spouses and the rich themselves seek constantly to further enrich themselves through schemes that suck our government dry. Two of the most prominent of these are the establishment of the "clothing line" and of the "foundation." While there are honest tailors and charitable organizations among us, the rich have been permitted to evade paying their fair share through these types of "make-work" enterprises, sucking money away from community organizers, fair housing organizations, family planning clinics, and others who are actually trying to improve the world, not simply putting up a show in order to avoid taxes.

If the money the rich thus procured were put to any decent use, their schemes might not be so galling; but it has been shown throughout history that most rich people simply don't know how to handle money. Much of what they have appears to vanish. They are like children, stuffing themselves and their homes until they are sick. Our government shows its foolishness in giving money to the rich. The rich promise, over and over, that they will spend the money to make jobs for the many, but again, like children, they forget these promises or slyly lie, spending the money on handbags.

And the burden on our health care presented by the elder rich is greater still. We pay over and over for their surgery and transplantations and tucks. Rare is the rich person who has the will and strength of character to work for better health--they look first to the knife, and ask us to pay for their mistakes and poor decisions again and again. It is not unusual for a rich man to have had three or four heart surgeries--not due to any inherent weakness of the organ, but only to his own weakness for food and drink and cigars.

For this reason, the first proposal and the one that seemed most fitting, that rich people be used to avert the coming food shortages among us, had to be abandoned. They simply are not fit to eat. Their bodies are crammed with toxins; they would, continuing true to form, do more harm than good, even as fodder for animals.

Nevertheless, something must be done with them before they ruin us. I now humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. As global climate change continues--a fact rich people also foolishly spend money in order to try to deny--and the waters rise, entire nations are at peril of destruction. But the rich of each nation and their possessions can be removed to the shorelines, forming levees to protect the land of the interior. I have been assured by a very knowing American that the tiles and granite of a single McMansion can easily protect a mile of shoreline, and doubly serve as mausoleum.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, not myself being rich.

Painting the Roses Red

Lugol's Iodine

First, I trim and paint her toenails,
A coat of sparkle white covering
A coat of sparkle blue varnish. Her choices.
Then, while she's still sitting in the big chair,
Her legs stuck out straight, legs still
Too short for her knees to reach
The bend in the chair, I kneel to her feet
And paint her soles with what I am told
Is the right solution. It smells so clean.
I remember the painted gash
Across my own belly where I was
Opened up twice, once to save my life,
Once to save hers. The stain
Is a soft sepia, the tint of nostalgia,
Of spilled tea, of the evidence
Of a leak in the ceiling, something
You watch spread a little bit each night
As you fail to fall asleep. Is it getting worse,
Or are you just imagining it? You really should
Do something about that, it looks bad, but what?
She wriggles as I hold her
Foot and laughs that it tickles.
She tries to pull away from me,
And I let her foot slip easily from my hands.

The Last of the Seersucker

Season Finale
It’s time to find out what happened to your favorites.
Under a sliver of that song you couldn’t get out of your head
All last year, their futures unfold in artful montage.
All over the world, people are watching. They’ve set
Their clocks and arranged their schedules for its sake.
Some, and their number might include me, took time
To compose responses previous to this episode.
Don’t let them fool you. Most of them don’t know
Any more than you do what will happen.
It’s just an old habit of those perpetually
On deadline: Be prepared. A few lines,
A frame, even a full scaffold on which to hang
What you’ll have only minutes to get out there
Once it’s done, can serve you, they say.
But here’s a funny thing: I’ve always trashed
Anything I’ve written in advance. It doesn’t
Measure up to the moment. I demand
Fresh language and images from myself
Even as I’m secretly amazed to see just
What I’ve anticipated unfold. See? I knew it!
With everyone else, I watch the fragments:
The ship tilting, the muzzle flash, the crash,
The embrace, the solution, the hospital bed,
Hoping we will learn everything we want to know
About what happens next. Like you, I will not accept
With much grace a finale that offers us less than this.

Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid

Don't think it didn't cross my mind that the bill may not ever come due as I tried to bury myself in consumerism to offset anxiety about the end of the world and not think about death. But it's kind of hard to rack up much of a bill when your shopping places are a yard sale and the closing 30 percent off Borders books. The vastly reduced discount haul:

--yoga mat for my daughter, turquoise with a planet inside a peace sign, her choice

--a plastic facsimile of a movie popcorn box for my daughter, her choice again, to keep important papers in, plus a koosh ball and a pair of dangly earrings that look like orbit patterns

--a travel book on Tennessee (hoping to do Memphis this summer, waiting til it gets real hot; won't take long)

--the Vision tarot deck

--an astrology book called "Cosmic Couplings: The Sextrology of Relationships," from which I learned that Virgo men stay hardest longest, Capricorn men have the biggest peens, Gemini women are "typically bootylicious" and Aquarians are most likely to be genderqueer. The relationships I've had that have mattered have all fallen into the Virgo, Capricorn, Gemini, and Aquarius decants, and I'm starting to think there might be something to this here star sign stuff after all. Oh, I forgot the Libra. He's still charming as hell. Hey there Tennessee!

--the Sonic Youth bio, "Goodbye to the 20th Century," which I'm looking forward to diving into sometime before 2012

--an Emily Dickinson collection

--the best of it: a stone chip impregnated with pyrite...a friend's mother was a spiritual practitioner, and after her death he invited others who shared similar practices to take a spiritually charged item from her things. I was moved to take the pyrite...fool's gold, the courage to be a fool. It is sitting near me with an orange candle burning right now.

Because it is foolish to write poetry as a nuclear reactor is melting down. Go Coyote Go!

Breath

Taking my last breath alone, I could survive
Knowing that's coming. It's having just one I love
And not the rest that would kill me, relative
And irrelevant as that would be at that point.
Hands on the wheel and 24-hour news on the radio,
I wonder if the flash will find me in the dentist's chair.
Will my face be broken out when the world ends?
It would be nice to be pretty on my last day
On earth, or at least attractively disheveled,
Like a heroine in a movie, inches away from
The crashed asteroid. Whew! That was close!
I idly assemble a cast for my Decameron--
A medieval frame, like that carved and gilded
Around a triptych on deadly sins, both boundary
And elevation for the realities enclosed within.
You need a little distance, like that. Because this,
This is Scheherazade flipped on her stomach,
This is telling stories not to live another night
But to distract from the night closing in.

[And furthermore!]
Windfall

You might as well yell to the wind to slow
And stop nudging my car into the next lane
Of the elevated highway that affords a view
Of the Pentagon's rooftops, the top
Of the treeline, the hawk, the jet trails.
Engineering has put us all on the same level.
Tomorrow, we have contrived to gain more daylight.
You might as well tell the sea to stop
Rolling in, the rocks to stop rolling
Into the sea, the sea to stop knocking
Over the trees, the jet trails to stop
Flowing into the air, the hawk to drop.

Image: Pasolini cast himself as Giotto in Decameron.

How To Drain Your Dragon

Faced with contemplating a "terrifying and exciting" experience, I drew a card and determined to go with exciting.

King of Wands
Salamanders' Song

Like you, from fire, we crawled, you rose!
Our King, spring from your wand
Life, our bliss surges in our tongues,
Our bodies once more starred
To herald your return, your right,
Your seat once more yours, so yes, we sing.

One, inquisitive, approaches your throne
With longing, our tiny tongues long
To lick you like flames, our King.
Your wand commands us, ours!
Ascending this day you take your
Right place, sun, we dance in circles,
Present our skins to nourish your visions,
Taste our own tails as sacrifice
To secure your standard's infinity.

Kill the Fat-Free Tofu

I put the Stones' version of Prodigal Son on a mix tape for a loved one the other day, and it reminded me how much I wanted to kick that parable's ass. When you're pretty much born humiliated and humbled and told you're worthless, it's odd hearing that God wants you to be put down even lower, that trying to escape is futile, and that the more you crawl, the more he'll love you.

Luckily, I also understand that there's more to Jesus, that he kicked corporate ass and defended prostitutes. He's not my god, but he's just all right with me, as another song says.

Prodigal

I sleep with swine, I won't deny it even once--
They're smart, they share their food freely,
Like me, true to my true name as I flung
The last bits of my inheritance away from me,
Scattered it all to the sinners and winds.
I couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

I still pray; I pray each night
Not to feel the pull of the road
To the place called home, to the house
Where my father waits with a knife
To draw against the plump throat
Of an innocent and call it celebration,
That place where a family mutters
Under the music of the feast, husbanding their hate
Until after the sun goes down.
You may see my shape against the light
Getting smaller as I move down the road.

Image: The club can't even handle Rembrandt and Saskia right now.

The Cartographer, Far From The Truth

Freud put love and work at the top of the list of indicators of mental health. I have overwhelming amounts of both. Truly, I could do without the work, though, or at least do without the kind of work that comes in my door. I neglect my duties. I'll get in trouble.

This is about a copyist in Battista Agnese's shop in Venice while they were working on the map book for Charles V. It's the little things that get you.

Here Be Lions
We don't allude to unknowns at the borders in these days.
We fill that space with cherubim, puffing away
From the twelve directions. These are in my hand,
Not in my name. Nothing of me will live. In the world
We map, that breath fills sails, never sinks a ship.
In the world I walk at night, I never fear
The hot breath of beasts at my back,
But the sweet breath of my angel beneath
The Rialto has the flavor of my death.

Few fear the winds here; as few as fear
The Pope, or the Emperor; a shrug and a smile
And they're banished. We have turned our lions to stone.
We copy the copies of copies of maps
Of lands left to others to chance, and in this repetition
Press out the mysteries and bind them
Flat into a gift for a royal son.
What I fear is each long day's squint at the page.

One thin thread of real silver runs across the map,
Tracing the route the silver in the hold travels, wrested from
What was another world. Now it is our world, all of it.
That gleaming vein, now that, it could resolve into a garrote;
One bead of blood from a scratch with the tip of a knife,
Or a rat-fed flea in my bed--any of these
Will kill me, will have me long
For the past's mercy of fangs and claws.

Image: Library of Congress.

Half-Marathon

Not really the poem I wanted, but it'll do. I was ready to do a marathon in February, but the flesh was weak and the cough was strong. More chances ahead.

Messenger
You cannot shape but fly
Cannot spin but bear
Your weight on one foot, air,
For an instant, and then the other.
And the message, of course, you know that too.
Three words to the king, no more.
No honing, no embellishment, no scrollwork on the shield.
Nothing that screams or dances
With each strike of your foot to the road
Need be told. Not the
Clash of iron and bronze or
Bronze fallen on the field, not
Iron on bone, no picture
Of blood-washed rocks, no words
Of the bronze smell of blood.
Nothing about the secret signal
From one royal family to another:
Retreat now, and your safety is assured.
Nothing about the goats: Their bleats deafening,
And still not enough to keep the pledge
Of sacrifice made to Artemis. Too many dead men,
Not enough live goats.

You are the messenger, and it is
Only later, over wine, that poets
Will invent you, give you a vision
Of Pan on your path, and your last words.
Now, on the road, you smile:
Getting to Athens, after all, isn't as
Arduous as getting to Babylon.
Your feet drum out the child's rhyme as you run.
Three score and ten, yes, and back again.

Update: Had to fix the ending and add a photo. Was working via the phone last night.
Image: Pan on a mixing bowl, photographed by Sebastia Giralt, creative commons share.

Eleven Observations On This Binary Occasion

1. I am a trashy woman who has not yet dismantled her xmas display.

2. I have bronchitis and was up all night the other night coughing and scanning the cable channels when I ran into "She's Gotta Have It." The women in this movie were so cool. Artsy and bohemian and un-really real. With all the humor and subject matter in your face, it's easy to overlook what a beautiful eye Lee shows for composition. Still exciting seeing it. [well, you won't see it here, cause I can't get the embed code right.]

3. Like Nola, I would prefer not to have to choose, but if I had to? Mars Blackmon.

4. I'm not going to compromise anyone's free speech, no matter how violent the rhetoric. Karma is stronger than democracy, however, and it will make you responsible for all your outputs, eventually.

5. Just read a report that Gulf bacteria is doing a great job of eating up the spilled oil. Trouble is, the bacteria also shits, what it shits after eating oil is endocrine disruptors. If you're a man who likes big boobs a lot, well, your future's bright, because pretty soon, you'll have your very own pair!

6. The evil of perfectionism seems to be limiting a lot of women in their 30s and 40s nowadays.

7. I really took Robert Plant for granted as a vocalist for a long time.

8. 127 Hours vs. Black Swan: Both Boyle and Aronofsky deal with people pitting themselves against extraordinary physical and mental challenges. Boyle celebrates the push, for all its hubris and cost, and Aronofsky tells the world, one slip and you're charred toast, see? 127 Hours FTW.

9. Driving home from the grocery store, Joan Jett's I Hate Myself for Loving You on the radio. DD: "She should do yoga." Me: "Why?" DD: "Because yoga teaches you not to be so hard on yourself."

10. I'm hoping dreaming will be easier when Neptune moves into Pisces in April.

11. I wish I could find a kind of bacteria that would do my pay work.

Transformed at the Withers

I'm looking at my Chiron return in March, which is sort of the last stand at the OK Corral to have any hope of budging that kundalini upstream. I'm working hard, truly. Chiron is an area of life where you will be made aware, like it or not; other interpretations say it is where you are wounded and where you have the most to teach.

I have Chiron in Pisces in the 9th, which explains my hopeless inability to get published or educated, and also my lucky ability to learn by osmosis. It is supposed to mean that I am a natural teacher. No one wants to learn anything from me, except about what not to do. I am also supposed to be able to teach psychically and must serve in this manner. Yeah, right. If you would like to know about your Chiron, put your date and TIME and place of birth in the comments or email it, and I'll send you an interpretation.

The Chiron return comes around ages 49 to 51; I'm on the younger side of this one for once. But its looming also signifies that I'm old, and has me reading about things like post-menopausal vaginal atrophy. Which scares the fuck out of me, literally, and has me diving for the Chinese herbs. A cool woman I'd met said she was taking testosterone, and that made me wonder, so I was doing some research. OK, so I don't have to worry about it, technically, for 10 years or more, and OK, it doesn't happen to everyone, but atrophy. Freak. Me. Out. And I'm thinking if it were penis atrophy, we'd have a 24/7/365 Jerry Lewis telethon about it to address this problem RIGHT NOW.

Then again, I'm doing some pay work on prostate cancer, and it's also freaking me out how little is done about this relative to breast cancer, and how often surgery is the first go-to when maybe it's not needed. Who would have thought I'd live to see a time when men go to doctors and don't hear about their choices? Progress?

So here is an old poem that has been aging in the little red notebook since this summer.

Aging Marionettes
What he called us--
The mahogany knob of his--
Wait for it--elbow
Crooked around the cords
Of my neck, hand dangling
At the sanded-smooth
Mound of my breast, pink tip
Only slightly nicked.
Cable-muscled arms and lank of legs
Worn thin by always moving, moving
Both of us still swaying slowly, facing ourselves
In the full-length mirror
In the Holiday Inn.

Misrule

Hoping a little I'd get snowed in so I could indulge my latest passion, a "translation" of some of the works of Maria Rubedo of Tarn, Mistress or Abbess of the Ladies of St. Sernin, a millenariast cult in the Midi-Pyrennes often seen as a repository for remnants of Mithraism. Her community was tolerated for its lip-service Catholicism and ability to create healing liquors, medical service to the rich (who were charged) and poor (for free), and its ability to send money when and where it counted to ensure its Sisters' peace and survival.

However, her extensive alchemical experimentations would have placed her beyond even the protection afforded by her ability to brew the 16th-century equivalents of Viagra and birth control pills. To avoid detection and subsequent immolation, she couched her researches in the writing of "holy verse" in Slavonic, a language approved by the Pope and which she purported to use in order to spread The Word to northern lands. These verses became "The Rubedium," a volume gifted to Sir Christopher of Morova, in the hope, as the inscription reads, that he "might fill others with the Spirit as he has filled me." In a world where Hildegard of Bingen lights up the boards on Amazon, it's hard to understand how The Rubedium remains ignored, but perhaps her chosen subject matter provides a clue.

The verses are loosely arranged around a depiction of the Season of Misrule, a winter festival with roots in the Saturnalia, where traditional roles were reversed, practical jokes abounded, and licentiousness reigned. She used the familiar formula of describing such behavior in great detail, followed by a quick tailspin spin of sudden enlightenment and reformation to the greater glory, etc. Odd bits of such festivals can be seen even today, in modern celebrations of the season. Teasing out her teachings on introvert alchemy and from among the longer passages of overwrought erotic and grotesque description and pious tracts is the interesting challenge in her work (as it may often be in The Work as well).

Two of Three
That my bliss should be divided thus,
And thus multiplied, may remain mystery.
Wood split flares bright, but such kindling
Is ash an hour of this season's long night.
But these logs appear to strengthen in our sleep
Nothing gray at morning but the light--indeed,
They have the power to warm me through the day.

So much could be divined at this year's center,
When in the name of our patron, we celebrate
A Saturnalia, where rules and roles. like night,
Turn on that point and tumble, end upended.
My maid is my mistress; the hands that dig
In cold earth now might root more dexterously
Among my silks; the groom suffered the right to ride.

And I presume an usurpation bold
That in other days may have me made
Myself fuel, kindling a mob's ire, rapt
To a stake like any other, hungry to know flesh.
But beg this season's privilege, blasphemy.
It is just this: My eternal desire
To act in imitation of the One
Brings me to to this unity with two,
For what was He, when once himself made Three,
But made greater in love, and more praiseworthy?
Let us follow this example, and be blessed
At least until the days the Light returns
And such freedom will be crowned, or snatched from us.

Careful What You Wish For

I asked Santa for "a shit-ton of money so I can stay home and write poetry," and he said: "Santa does not understand this 'shit-ton.' Santa does not get the concept."

So I explained that it means "a whole whole lot." Just a reminder that in all requests, whether they be of the universe or an individual, specificity is paramount.

Not writing, not running. The excuse for public consumption, and it's true, is the pay work problem. It is a vampire sucking me dry. It is condescending mansplaining tsking tut-tut-ing wretched day after stick a knife in me day. But there are other reasons, big big wild love dramas and more! Weird that it's not making me write more. My mind is not my own, it seems. It belongs to consultants and I must tear it loose somehow.

It being Mercury retrograde, I'll recycle. This was written on the beach on my birthday, while sitting between my Hot Friend E and her ex-husband.

Your Orders
Tell me. Give me
Directions. Sigh and say
You'll have to teach me. Make me
Banish my consciousness
Of every flaw, the flesh
Marked by seams, the scars.
Command all my awareness to fade.
Forbid guilt. Push me past shame.
Don't let me forgive myself too easily.

Six Percenter

Went on a charity run this morning (ostensibly a Thanksgiving run for a food bank, but it would really be charitable to describe it as a run on my part, as I sloshed and shuffled alongside 9yo DD for about an hour's worth of 5k) then heard Roseanne Cash on a radio interview on the way home, extending some advice a friend had given her: "Sing for the 6 percent who are poets. They will always hear you."

Well, this one among the 6 percent may not hear you, because her ears are fucked up from Meniere's, but I will ask what, what, what did you say over and over because I WANT to hear you.

I was up over and over all night with headache and anxiety. One of those 5 a.m. mindswirls was built around what you can and can't say to people, and how to handle these things with DD. She no longer believes in Santa Claus. But it's a good bet some of her friends do, and so how do you deal with that? It requires a certain amount of social finesse. To not be rude and mean, but to just be secure in one's own convictions, tolerate ambiguity, listen with an open mind, but never let those nutjobs gain an inch when it comes to policy.

It's like me trying to converse about (or to avoid conversing about) monogamy, or Creationism, or the impartiality of Fox News. At this season, with all the togetherness, these things just...come up.

I'm sorry, what was that you said about Don't Ask Don't Tell? My hearing is just terrible.

Bruuuuuuuuuce

Maybe this should stay an unreleased track. Quickie inspired by hangover caused by glass and a half of that box wine that's been in the fridge for almost two months now. I tried to use more of it up in the chicken cordon bleu with mushroom gravy last night, but there's still another glass or two. Maybe I'll reduce it late late tonight, with some rosemary, caraway, and aztec dream herb, and make of it a brew that creates a glamour. Like in The Craft. You think everything tastes great, and maybe it really does, but in the morning you're ready to bang your head into the wall.

Or maybe that's just because I have to go to work. Not again! Why does this keep happening, every fucking day???

Unreleased

No, The River was the one that came when I was locked up.
Nothing but bones, with a terribly scratched surface.
They didn't have eBay back then, but I wouldn't have gone for much.
So they stuffed me with filler until I could fit in my Calvins again
And be declared ready for release.
Darkness was years and so many battles before that.
Darkness came the summer the boy wrote over and over
All the words to Candy's Room, and changed the name
To mine, before I went away.

Photo: Frank Stefanko outtake from the photo session--probably decided he looked too good and consequently "inauthentic." I would have chosen this one, which is yet another reason I admire photographers. I go for the easy pretty and the good ones go for the heart. I took it off a tumblr website? called Byronic, which has so many little buttons and fussy stuff on it and so few words I can't figure out how the hell to give anyone any credit or even do them the courtesy of letting them know I took it. Sometimes things just get a little too complicated, especially for someone whose bones hurt.

It Makes a Great Lei

Boneflower

I plan the night garden, down to the last detail
A distraction from a leg cramp, or
The med tech bending, sterile paper rustling,
Cold metal or needles against skin, or the
Techno beat bashing as you lie so still
In the long white tube. You'll get out of here,
You remind yourself. Laboring over the imaginary garden
Is a way to not be here, now. My fear: I know
We won't have time to make the garden; we will never
Be granted that stretch of space to grow
Omixochitl, whose night scent young women
Are advised not to breathe. No such cautions
For old ones. Our gardens are choked
With weeds and frost-struck stems.
The table is a cold slab. I take my mind back
To details. Tuberose is a perennial in this climate
And will take a year. The roots are rhizomes.
I wonder: Can the bay overwinter?
Where will I get the seeds for the black poppies?
You would know, you would know. I dream myself away
To the place where I touch the boneflower
Blooming flesh-pale against the darkness,
In a few hours, coming. This could be
The only night garden we will know.
Only as big as this bed, in this room,
On the night ahead of us. This must be enough.

It's, It's, A Barroom Blitz

You go out as a devil, with a woman dressed as half-devil, half angel and a man dressed as a priest, and it's going to do something to you, metaphysically speaking, especially if you made the mistake of trying to poke through Graham Greene's The End of the Affair just before going down for your disco nap earlier that evening.

And then there was the tequila and the cafe libido.

Plus I'd been looking at a friend's copy of the lovely annotated T.S. Eliot The Waste Land with the facsimiles of Pound's comments? He (the friend,not Eliot or Pound) was all, see, I thought the person who thinks she shouldn't have to revise anything should see this. A glance revealed at least one piece of good advice--he'd circled a "may" before the "put a record on the gramaphone" part and written: "Make up your mind!" Even a crazy-ass fascist stopped clock is right twice a day. I was getting all up in that argue-with-the-Christian-god space. Good thing I didn't touch the Antonia White, or you'd be hearing from me in the convent round about now.

So yeah, the gods will speak to you, too; just ask. Always pissed me off how he had to kill her off.

The Beginning of the Affair

Yes, the gods want to watch you
Press your mouth against
The brutally scarred cheek of the young atheist,
And they want you to eat the onions with your steak.
They want you to write the letter,
And send the letter, and to take
Lovers, and to make that abandoned
Sound you make. They want romance, wine,
Inconvenient conceptions, missed connections
At the station; they want theater, they want wit,
Wit, they never get enough of that.
They want explosions, and they want you
To dig yourself out of the rubble
Without any help from them at all.
They want you to walk in the rain,

True, but they also want you to come
Out of the cold, and believe me,
Even if you don't believe in them, believe me,
You can get very hot in here, we are waiting,
We will help you do what the gods want.
Because the gods want you alive. The gods
Want you steaming. Even the Christian god,
He'll spit you out if you're not hot enough,

He said so himself. The gods do not want you
To end anything. You're the one who wants that.
The gods, they desire everything
You can do. They want
What you want. They want you
To reach out right now and grab it,
Like a baby trying to pick up the water in the bath.

Photo: Who doesn't like some Julianne Moore?

Gift Economy

Back home, at the computer, searching images and writing poems and having a smoke. Comforts. Almost got sidetracked by the Vanity Fair with excerpts from Marilyn's diaries. I loved her poem about her then-husband Arthur Miller, watching him sleep and seeing his mouth return to the shape it must have had when he was a little boy.

Gotta admit, that's one nice mouth.

So here are a few poems from my special camping trip. I'll put some notes and backstory on my art project page when I get a chance.

The Goddess Pose
When you are the One
For so many
Your face becomes worn.

Lamplighters
You can rely only on yourself
For light. You must illuminate yourself
Not only for yourself, but for others' sake.
You know these are the rules in this place.
Yet in the evening, the lamplighters come slowly
Down the road. They carry a gentle fire,
Its swing and crackle subdued in their stately pace.
Have patience, and they will make your way simpler.
At home, where light is at your fingertips
Flicking a switch, my daughter sings in the bath:
This little light of mine,
Let it shine, let it shine.


Three Necklaces

I. Ceramic Bead Fair Trade
Those bold round jawbreakers
Cascading down her neck
To a dollar-size disc
Enlivened with painted runes,
Glowing between buds,
Gold skin, no cleavage--
Why should such a big piece suit
So well the delicate frame
Of the little massage therapist?

II. Pearl
Well, there is some advantage to age,
To having had at least a few lovers
With a brain in their heads, readers--
What woman of my experience wouldn't know
The significance of "42"?
My prize for knowing the answer
Pulled from the salty neck
Of the young poet.

III. Sodalite
The smith in the desert
Hammered the silver into
A notched arrow and placed
The blue yoni-shape stone
Precisely in the center.
A gift, for now, for me alone.

Second Harvest
The second harvest comes at the end of this month.
The grass crackles under my feet. Grasshoppers,
Fat and heedless, spring up as I put down my book.
In every conversation, I seem to hear myself sigh:
"I don't know how I will get the time
To get everything done." Anything left in the field
After Samhain can be food only for spirits,
If you try to eat it, your mouth will close
Around ghosts' hands, harvesting.
I reach into the crate for an apple
And he stops my hand, puts into my palm
The last pear, saved aside for me.
Its skin astringent as persimmon,
Its flesh sweet, dripping juice.

The Poodle Bites, The Poodle Chooses

Took a break from packing up the lingerie and printing out poetry to look in the mirror and feel like crap.

Well, like Courtney says, "I'm pretty on the inside!"

This one's been kicking around for days and finally got the last of it.


Widdershins
Bless my oppressors, for teaching me
To choose my words so carefully.
And coyote, vain, striving and scorned,
For his bad example, every bristle in his tail,
His doggie cock and tongue. Bless him,
Every him, every humiliating him
Who ever had his way, for illuminating my way.
Bless the bear, every beast, every back
Turned against the sun and moon and me.
Bless the plague, even the plague of boils
That leaves scar after scar,
That made us who we are. That gave us what we know.
Where was I when the world was made?
I was a woman in the marketplace,
Walking among the crates of apples, pears,
Pomegranates, looking, choosing,
Choosing you, choosing you, choosing
My troubles, my loves, my ancestors, my fate.
Everything spread before me and I chose you,
I choose you and you bless me.

The Human Factor

I believe humans are causing climate change. In fact, I feel personally responsible for tipping the balance of the planet.

I stumbled into Spa World after three hours in traffic, using my Groupon before it expired. Scrubbed, rubbed, sluiced, pounded, jetted, steamed. Dozed. Surreal. Drove home at 1 a.m. in feet of rain sheeting and obscuring every line on the road on I-66.

Have a new computer. Catching up.

The last of my area family has moved to Maui. More than half of them are there now, including a cat and several dogs. I want to eat sushi and scrambled eggs in Paia.

While brushing teeth, before falling asleep, reading this. Had no idea so many giant freakin cargo ships simply vanish every year. I did know, however, that Laird Hamilton is a god among men.

My recurring nightmares are of waves eroding the beach where I'm trying to run.

Busy as fuck. Trying not to spill over.

Photo: Hot damn, on top of everything else, Susan Casey is gorgeous.

Witch, Please.

Here we've got a superpower Mabon moon and we're talking about this Christine O'Donnell trash? This pretty much says it all, but of course I've got a thing or two to add.

OK, dear, witches aren't Satanists, for the most part, and Satanists aren't nearly as common in real life as they are in right-wing delusions. They aren't trying to recruit you or get you to do anything on their altars, from have a picnic to give up your second--or is it third or fourth--virginity. As much as you might long and wish and desire it, no real witch is going to try to overcome your reason and send you into a swoon you can't resist until you are one of us, one of us, in some bizarrely half-assed sublimated fantasy. I'm not going to come twinkling through your window. I don't twinkle, don't give the hard sell, and barely even say hello to anyone without enthusiastic consent.

Real witches don't recruit, unlike those odd Gothy kids down the road by the meth trailer you probably "dabbled" with, if that's what the kids are calling it today. They aren't really witches. They're just disenfranchised alienated jobless people who, if you were a decent politician, you'd be trying to make a better world for. A real witch group is at least as hard to get into as it is to convert to Judaism or Catholicism. It takes some work.

Real witches can be kind of grumpy and solitary and enjoy their own company and a few friends. I know it's a little harsh, Christine, but we're just not that interested in you. Sorry.

We are interested in civil rights, however, so I guess that means we'll have to deal with your crap til someone gives you a Forever 21 gift card and you get distracted and lose interest in politics.

I was actually pissed that Bill Maher kept giving her airtime, but he's a sucker for attractive wackjobs, and I can't really blame him. It didn't surprise me that Sarah Palin got behind her, because she's such a spooky little narcissist that she'd have to fall in love with her clone. Cloned right down to spending the money misguided people donated to her campaign, trusting she'd use it to try to get things done that they wanted, on any shiny thing that she wants right now, right now, because she deserves it, gosh golly darnit!!!

Photo: Loved this, and Donovan, when I was little. Jimmy Page on Sunshine Superman guitar. Season of the Witch was closing credits on To Die For, about yet another evil pretty bubblehead.

"It Really Ties the Room Together."

I'm late to this, and really, haven't even had time to see the episode, but I read about it, if that counts.

13 Ways of Looking at Sasha Grey's Grooming

I. She says she chose her porn name after Picture of Dorian Gray. Any woman who loves Wilde can wear her hair any damn way she pleases.

II. Benjamin Franklin had wise words about loving older women, topped off with the statement "All cats are gray after dark."





III. In another life under another name in the '90s, someone like me might have spent an interview with filmmaker Vincent Gallo discussing "'70s bush" as well as his conceptual art project, leaving a plaster cast of his not inconsiderable penis in every state in our great nation. He was ahead of his time.

IV. The hair on my head went gray at around age 20, almost 29 years ago.

V. Those who object to utterly bare under the argument that it makes them feel like a they're with someone illegal don't really have much of an argument. I mean, they're welcome to their tastes, but isn't there any other way to gauge the maturity of the person you're close to? Conversation always works for me.

VI. Having said that, one of the funniest lines in The Sopranos was spoken by a guy released from prison, who grumbled that all the women now "look like Girl Scouts."

VII. Those who vehemently object to hair under the argument that it disgusts them aren't even worth writing about. Especially those who do it via Twitter. Good god.

VIII. A friend was over the other night after breaking up with someone. She found him entirely too judgmental and snobbish. (I agreed.) She said: "He's so ready to find fault with everyone else, but HE really needs to get his BACK WAXED!"

IX. I would never say that. I like hairy guys. Who are clean.

X. When it comes to women, I refer to the highly apocryphal parable of Lancelot.

XI. Oct. 16 is Oscar Wilde's birthday. I think he would have liked Sasha Grey.

XII. She sure is pretty.

XIII. Distance runners are well served by a landing strip.

Photo: Looks like Bacon! But it's NOT! The artist's name is Nick Harris.

Shamanic Shambolic Shamwow (Plus Poetry Challenge!)

I've been attending a shamanic group that I'm enjoying a lot. I went in because I was interested in adding more of a healing dimension to the kitchen witchery (eclectic solitary urban pagan) stuff I do all the time. Side effect has been getting several poems out of the gatherings. (The guy who leads it does pretty amazing healing massage as his "real work"--if you're someone who knows me and you want contact info, ask me via email.)

One thing one's encouraged to do in the dream journeying is to ask for a gift, something I find very difficult to do. The dream journey on Friday, I ended up in a big old farmhouse kitchen and I got a gift without even asking, something very simple. I gave myself 10 minutes to write a pseudo metaphysical riddle poem about it. If you guess what it is, you could write a pseudo metaphysical riddle poem about what you'd like for a reward.

Reward

The root that reaches to Pluto's realm
Pulls in his riches, gold, copper, and bone,
And presses to share in the properties of stone.
Seeking its sweetness, my hand probes,
Pulls, encloses it in warmth, cleans
Until it softens, shrinks away.
I have work to finish. Now it
Bobs before my obdurate plodding as
My promised reward. Hold me to it.

"Let's Go Someplace Darker."

X. The Wheel

This Must Be the Place

You were gifted with the vision
Of the clockwork, which,
Being a scientist, you saw as
Gears, but more than gears, a
Sprung spiral. Two ticks in an ascending
Key, and a dip. And another turn.
And remember, it never goes back.

I'll surrender you the sword
If you give me the Sphinx:
I can track the descendants
Down, unwind four seasons, then 16,
Then 32, turn the number inside out
And learn its secret thus. I see us

Kneeling on marble, stumbling on sawdust,
Padding over moss, swinging from gallows,
Dancing on grain, marching through sand,
Sleeping on leaves, sinking in mud.
Cathars, killed and ill-sorted,
Burned with our books;
My fingers, once fine, scrabbling in
The blighted vines;
The fine-featured carpenter who has outlived
And grieved for three wives, and still without a daughter;
Spies, yes--(as we investigate the impossible)
It is impossible that we
Were never spies, and thieves, those, too.

In all these ups and downs, well,
There's enough pleasure to make it worth the strain.
I remember times I was on my knees for you;
Even these, I would never deny or erase.
And then--here's another--you tracing
The shape of my eyes on a stone.
Another turn, another turn.

My daughter had a dream the other night in which, she said, she was a little curly-haired girl, and a nice police officer was showing her a view of the ocean, saying: That's Atlantis. I asked her if she saw Atlantis being covered by the water, and she said she hadn't been paying attention in the dream, so she only saw it afterward. We talked about reincarnation, and I told her that some people I know who believe in it say they remember their lives, but they all seem to want to be very fancy people, and that there had to be some ordinary people in our past to remember, shouldn't there be? She agreed.

I have a few I remember, but I'm also wide open to the thought that these may be archetypes useful for me creatively and psychologically. No matter what the truth is, that's how they get used, so there's not a lot of value to me in trying to determine the truth. As in most things, I'm primarily interested in how it plays.

Smile and Wave. It's What You're Paid For.

I get paid to write for these companies that are full of people so much smarter than me, so they must know. They all want web sites with pictures like this:


Even though we know the majority of those wearing headsets, forgive me, don't look like those three. And they all want me to say they "deliver value."

I was walking my daughter to school this morning, and I saw a cement mixer go down the avenue, and it was a nice, dirty, hard-working cement mixer, and big letters on the side of the mixer read: DELIVERING VALUE.

So I am a miserable woman for 3/5ths of my life, and a lot of people would like me to be a lot more miserable, and part of the misery is knowing that old lady writers like me are a dime a dozen in DC, and anyone else could take my job. Here's a taste.



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Deep Insight from a Shared Knowledge Base

Yes, it is true.

We are dying and our planet is dying while we dick around with this. And we includes me. Why did we design things this way again?

And won't the spam roll in cause I said "penis." Because when it comes to maximizing efficiencies, the spammers got the big-city consultants beat all to hell.

Lunaria

A few weeks ago, I found the two of hearts by the Joan of Arc statue in Malcolm X Park, but I've already done that card. Later that day I found the seven of diamonds on the stairs of our apartment building, so that dictated this one being done.

Seven of Pentacles
First Harvest

I just let it happen--
Bindweed's grasp and white-fluted flower,
Joe-pye weed's flesh-purple plumes shivering
With bees, sticky milk of fig sap,
Tomato fruit skin fit to burst
Slippery seeds on the ground, fennel seed falling,
Nettle, thyme blossom froth, rosemary spikes,
All tangled, all climbing, all pressing,
All hiding damp depths careful fingers
Can find, there, in the shade, the root.
And in the center, a surprise--lunaria,
Stalks wire-thin and tough, each seed pod
A coin to be spent on the future.

Here at the midpoint, I learn to lean
And let go, to poise between
The first harvest and the second planting.

Another name for lunaria is honesty. It appears to need to be cultivated carefully.

I just got another citation from the community garden about my plot being too weedy. I just let two phone calls go to the answering machine to finish writing that. I could tear myself to pieces for falling behind in every way, or I could enjoy the weeds and crickets.

I have so many damned mosquito bites, and I'll need to be outside all day and evening tomorrow. I would like to cover myself with a net. No fear, someone will be along to do just that before long, I'm sure.

Agate and Datura

I'm late to this one, but I was on the Godchecker site, which I love and use for work (naming projects--I always slip a few pagan god options into the lists of names for IT companies and condo developments), and somehow got skipped to this story blaming Mars' lassitude on a plant product. I think it's more likely she wore him out.

But seriously, I have been thinking of Venus a lot lately. Today Mercury went retrograde, but I'm preoccupied with the Venus retrograde, in Scorpio, that starts Oct. 8. Lot of convergence there. The traditional view is that love, art and money will suck. Another view: You'll go deep. More so than you thought you could or wanted to. Here's one interpretation that compares it to the journey of Inanna; Isis and Osiris would work as well. Death and rebirth of love (and art). Takes a test, a journey to make it real, to make it live. (I know the link there is to the last retrograde; everything applies except for the parts about Venus in Aries. This time it's Scorpio. Death and rebirth.)

I'm starting late to work with the Venus/Aphrodite/Oshun archetypes. I suppose I should have been praying to her all along, as the goddess of love can control even other supernatural beings and is therefore the most powerful. But I was more interested in playing with Maui/Mercury/Exu and placating Saturn/Kronos. Now I have seen the light, and it's the color of honey.

Beaches mean used book stores, and there I found Erica Jong's Sappho's Leap, and skimmed through it for the poems. Yes, there is ambiguity in calling on Venus at near-50. Are you sure? Are you kidding? Don't you have other things to do? Isn't it unseemly? Lotta people give me a hard time for liking her, and I just say, baby, Rita Mae Brown. For getting this, and for getting Henry Miller, she must have her props. Here's a bit from one of the poems, Jong's original ones, not the Sappho translations.

But you--joker Aphrodite--
send me another man
to worry my pulse
& fill my eyes with mischief,
my skin with false dawn.
What is another man
but trouble?

...Take away this Phaon!
This agate-eyed aging Adonis
wooing me with words!

But even as I say this
your most secret eyes meet mine:
"Just one more tumble into ecstasy,"
you tease. "Who knows what hymns to my glory
you will write now,
at the peak of your powers?

What are the lives of poets
but offerings to the goddess they serve?
Do you think such worship is a choice?
Even immortals
Obey her capricious laws."