The Fire Eater

wants to swallow
the feeble flame of me
standing alone
neck deep
wicking a puddle
of melted sadness.
I chase him away
with a slap
to his maw
and tell him
to go
straight to hell.
Taking action
fans the flame
that eats the puddle
of melted sadness
and turns pain
into fossil fuel
               again.

Ancient Love in the Safeway Parking Lot

He and his cane
shuffled over to her

side of the car
to open door.

He tucked his cane under

his armpit to use both

hands to straighten her

collar as she straightened

her creaky knees and

and rumpled clothes.

They tottered toward

the door with steps synced,

canes on the outside,

holding hands on the

inside.

I passed quickly,

then slowed my stride

to ask them how long

they had been married.

Sixty seven years he said

as he looked at her like he

must have looked at her

coming down the isle.

Winking, he said they

were thinking of making

it permanent.

Ahhhh. 

The holy permanence

of seasoned love.

She's Going To Be Alright

While I played nanny 

with borrowed kids in the park

 a little girl came to talk as

I nudged two swings into rhythm

with both arms. One held

 a baby boy in a basket.

The other held his sister

who liked the wind

 teasing her hair. 

She wanted to know if 

I was their grandma. 

I said no.

I wanted to know 

if she stopped 

to smell the purple flowers

when she passed the yard

dripping with blossoms 

on the way from preschool

to the park. She knew 

which yard I spoke of

 but said no,

 I always want to 

but we don't have time 

to smell flowers 

because everyone 

needs to hurry 

and stay together

 in line. 

She shrugged 

the tragedy off

 and let it lay in the 

playground chips, then

turned her shining face 

up to me and the sun and said, 

I'm a princess because 

my mama's a queen and 

my daddy's a 

king.

Polyamorous People Practice Polyamory

I just started studying something called polyamory. It's a lifestyle for people who are polyamorous. They love many people. They have open, honest, trusting, and respectful sexual relationships with several people. There is no cheating, sneaking, or lying involved. You get a family, a tribe, friends, and a full social calendar. Sometimes poly people are married, and one partner has one or more partners. There are many variations and different configurations. Vees, quads, etc. It is not the same as polygamy where a patriarch has several wives. Women have equal freedom. Sex can be heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual and/or a mixture of it all. Short term and long term connections are made, and broken. Really.

Spouses turn into spices (plural for spouses). Spices deal with jealousy by becoming enlightened enough to practice compersion, i.e. an empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced when another individual experiences happiness and joy. If you happen to feel a twinge of jealousy, you haven't arrived at the pure place of true transcendence. Yet. Keep at it, it will come if you try harder. Really?

Poly people speak of monogamy, faithfulness, and fidelity in a condescending and patronizing way. The implication is that monogamous marriage is "numb, boring servitude." Really?

People I know and love have experienced drug abuse - both prescription/street, alcoholism, pornography addictions, infidelity, voyeuristic sex/orgies/prostitution. Really.

Polyamory seems to be a more destructive lifestyle choice than any of the above because it comes packaged as love, light, enlightenment, a better way, the more. If you're hip and sophisticated, cool and avante garde, you'll not only be open minded enough to try it, you'll promote it. It attempts to redefine love. To me, it mocks and insults all four kinds of love -- Philio, Eros, Storge, and Agape. Really.

I feel heartbroken for the young, newly married people who are indulging in this lifestyle. It's like they've been brainwashed by a cult. The Emporer has no clothes, but nobody dares say it, because if you do, you're one of those archaic religious freaks without a brain, liberty or freedom. There is no shame or guilt or stigma attached to this latest craze, this new fad. It's the latest greatest 'spiritual awakening'. Really?

I weep because maybe they haven't experienced the warmth of familial love.  Maybe they don't have the tools for a healthy, growing, nurturing marriage. Perhaps they haven't ever seen one. Maybe they have had spiritual, emotional, or physical trauma with unprocessed, lingering grief. Really.

I weep because I do not believe they've had the privilege of being around older couples who have the loving intimacy of 50+ years of fidelity. The Berry's, The Hoytes, The Goodwin's, The Peterson's, etc. Because they haven't been around these precious people, they have no way to play their own movie forward. Therefore they'll miss the sweetest part, the part that comes later, after years and years of faithfulness, loyalty, and fidelity. Really.

What disturbed me most in the many "Poly" sights I visited was that the writers implied that polyamory is the best way to have friends, family, a tribe, affection, love, friendship, freedom, trust, playfulness, spontaneity, liberty, and healthy families. Really?

I would feel hopeless, like the sacredness of a monogamous marriage bed had been defiled past redemption, except I know older couples who have such ease and companionship, such tenderness and intimacy, that being with them feels like being back in the garden again before fig leaves were needed. Really.

"Love makes all things durable."  ~ Earl Palmer

Thanks Loverby, you wear well, love well, keep well, and make love and fidelity well. Really.

Visio Divina

I sequester myself in the garden,

an antidote for headlines
repeated over and over again --
as if only despair and destruction
could make the front page news.

Inspect the throat of a flower,

study the stamen, pollen, petals,

and hairs, or peer into a pear 

or blueberry blossom 

until you finally figure out

how bellybuttons on fruit begin. 

Or sit with a star magnolia 

who blooms without her leaves. 

Stay until the light

 penetrates the white 

and covers the day 

with ease. 

No Wiggle Room

This last crucible left me

hanging awhile. More nails 

than usual were pounded in 

to keep me strung up and out

 until it was accomplished.

Resurrection had no priority

in the plan to finish it once and

for all by walking off the back

of the ferry into night's belly. 

Cold water takes good care

to numb the pain before 

the gurgling and gasping 

end comes, right?

 Grief and sadness can be

 frozen first, right? 

An old friend once told me - 

never make plans or

 rewrite the rules made

 on the mountain

when down in the valley.

I forgot to be scared, aware or 

concerned about this minor detail. 

I needed a sign. Speaking with

authority it came into my field of

vision. The Captain insisted I take 

notice and obey the written rules. 

I didn't have permission to 

disembark the vessel, middle 

of the ocean, eye of the storm. 

Period. Period. Period. 

Please don't call the suicide prevention help line for me. This is way better. Poetry is the best way for me to put chaos in order. I don't know if other people have moments of complete and utter darkness or not. I hope it's a rare thing. I've said it before, I don't want medicated. I'm not sold on the results I see. A lobotomy isn't the answer. Love wins. It does. 

On the other side of a rough patch, I always know I've learned some crucial lesson. I always have a growth spurt. The agony bears good fruit. 

I think I wrote this out loud so some other person facing pain and darkness would know that they are not alone. Leaving's not the only way to go. There is the option of going through it instead of around it. 

I love you. I understand. Here I am in the trenches with you, shoulder to shoulder. Muddy. Bruised. Fatigued. Just like you. I raise a glass to you. Let's scream, "L'Chaim" together. To life. To life. To life.  Where's Tevye? 

Today, I'm relieved someone else writes the rules. And sometimes that same captain beckons me to step out of the boat and double dog dares me to walk on water. I am. And I'm not looking down. 

Tattered Stories

Bindings hang heads

weak with worry. Thread

 rots worn signatures who like 

the familiar neighborhood. Spines

find no sturdiness in molting cheesecloth

clinging like a hen's last determined feather

 or a shimmering snake skin discarded.

Still, the book magic strengthens 

the sentences and paragraphs,

and the pages and chapters 

hanging on for dear life  

to words inked. 

Phoenix Promises

Ivory lace and wedding satin 

coffined by an undertaker 

instead of the local laundromat -

 before, not after the bridal day. 

Six satin covered buttons 

included gratis 

in case closure is needed 

during the afterlife.

Penciled sketches 

sprang to life 

via storyboard design. 

Original haute de couture 

never intended to be flaunted 

down famous runways.

Surrendered, sacrificed, 

unfinished, unworn - 

this weighted lace hem 

will never trail behind 

her barefoot path. 

Habitual sarcasm can't be allowed 

to ridicule the love stitched 

(now needle pricked) 

dreams we dreamed.  

Cram cremated remains in an urn.

 Light candles. Pray continually. Wait.

Her resurrected beauty may rise, 

born again from ashes

 appearing cold and dead. And so
help me God, will I. 

Waiting in the Dark

Encased, chicks, caterpillars and buds 

are not privy to time lapse frames 

speeding by or hopeful endings 

where light lives and wind breathes. 

 They need to wait patient without a future 

till first flights and colors call them out, 

seconds witnessing dawn's duel 

against darkness on reckoning day.   

Morning Relief

 

Could those tiny prisms

dancing on swaying green tips 

be the remaining evidence and 

proof that invisible warm breath 

unthawed night's icy grip

 on perspective once again? 

There's a Yiddish proverb 

that says,"Each blade of grass has 

an angel bending low whispering, 

grow, grow, grow."