The simple is crafty,
It's driven by thriving,
It's cool and it's artful
Envisioning the sublime.

Allow me be simple now,
That's not outrageous.
All sorts of one substance,
All forms of dim treacheries.

A smooth olive sparkle,
Not the one with the edges
Abiding with the peeves,
Deeply drowned in dry Martinis.

Too diligent to continue
Because if a life is only simple,
It becomes completely unbearable.
Taste makes me feel all the complexity
Of it, but the simplicity is just a scale
At which I am capable to create.

yesterday i tried my luck,
i played the lottery,
and it is safe to say it is not like pottery.

why can't i be happy?
i have everything i could dream of
except i don't have u
so how can i be happy?

An unexpected trigger arose today. I won a brass mirror in a raffle that I was able to take home to use in my house. The staff helped me load it into my car, but now I have to get it into the house.

I helped my friend, who won a shelf from that same raffle, load it into her car. She took it home and her husband helped unload it and put it into place.

All of a sudden, a wave of sadness washed over me.

I don't have that.

I don't have someone to help me carry in the groceries, someone to sit next too while I talk about my day, someone to offer me a hand with the dishes, or someone to help with the heavy things.

There's some sort of double meaning there that one could uncover. How I not only have to carry the truly heavy things alone, but also how I have to carry the emotionally heavy things alone.

So much of my life I have been independent - practically taught to be that way from a young age. It was expected that if something needed carried, washed, or felt, I had to handle it alone. Typically I would consider independence a good things, but this one wrecked me. It reminded me of how truly alone I am in this life.

Of course I have friends to talk to, people who can help me move if planned far enough in advance, and friends who I can have dinner with - but every one of those things is circumstantial and temporary.

I consistently try to be comfortable with who I am enough that I don't NEED anyone but honestly, sometimes that isn't enough.

I may appear fiercely independent and self sufficient, but inside, I am still that little girl who feels forced to do the hard things alone. The little girl who was taught that help and companionship is a luxury only some people find. You can't buy it, you can't manufacture it, you can negotiate it. There are just some things in this life that alone-people will never have.

It reminds me of this movie I saw where the main character is so used to being alone that she invents things to make her life easier as an alone-person. Specifically she makes a device that helps her zipper her dress without the help of another person. Its so sad to me that the world and the way it works is created for community, its created for people who have people. True self-sufficiency doesn't exist.

Now I'm forced to sit here with this mirror in the backseat, reminded by it's presence that I am alone, at the core, in this world.

So I'll walk out of here, go home, and sit alone on my couch, eat dinner alone, and cry alone, while the mirror stays, unmovable, alone in the car. Like me, forced to understand that without help, you can never truly be powerful enough to be completely independent.  





-t.s.

Some days are harder and
Then there are days that are easier.
Right now is a medium day.
And it's hard to explain so
Now I'm just gonna
Go watch some shows and relax.
Everybody goes through some not okay days.
Relax. Rest. Recover.

Tomorrow is a new day and
Here will just a faded memory.
I will only remember the important things
Now and here in this moment I feel at peace and free.
Go live your life to the fullest-- Life's too short
So go live how you want & BE KIND!

It's strange what we remember,
What memory decides to stay,
In the corner of our individual galaxy way.

In the midst of all the madness,
In the midst of a daily day,
With no expectations, you dropped my way.

Words were not shared, never to meet again,
Your dazzling smile stole my breathe away.
It was a fleeting moment, etched in my brain.

It's strange what is important,
A smell, a song, a way,
Being so small in this galaxy way.

It all started with a walk through a graveyard.
We came to sprinkle glitter,
we came to ring the claw bells,
we came to read the eroded epitaphs on 200 year old tombstones.
Instead we found a “working” aimed at killing someone.
A black bird without a head.
Lopped clean off.
Some kind of voodoo.
Consecrated with a dark blessing by a tombstone.
Naturally we took the bird home.
Laid it out back in the freeze.
It was a “working” aimed at killing someone.
A santera over on east King street informed us of the details.
Told us to burn it and take a sweet bath.
Told us to put water next to the door to catch the demons off our shoes,
tracking in all the demons off the street.
I put water next to my bed to catch the demons in my sleep.
I wondered to myself just what exactly was going on.

A cat got to the bird before we could
but it left us the wings by the fence in the yard.
Monica stretched them open and now they are drying in the garage.
A set of wings to fan the smoke once we light the sage on fire.
I didn’t have a good feeling.
I wanted to burn the black bird.
I wanted to stop the “working”.
I wanted to leave a green pumpkin for Oshun by the waterside.
But instead I only watched it lying on the leaves
out back under a tree
from the kitchen window each time I did the dishes.
Then one morning it was gone,
but I didn’t say anything.
I thought about other things until I saw
the stretched wings in the garage,
until I pulled the Raven card from
the Oracle deck.
Black birds came to visit me.
I was advised I better start getting crafty.
I had been diligent with the water by the bed.
I purified the demons with the singing bowl every morning.
I bless my demons in the water so they don’t use
my mouth to scream
and my eyes to cry.
But the raven came to see me still.
The one without a head, and the one in the oracle deck.
And the ones that fly around the power lines outside where I walk,
cawing and cackling in a crooked ******.

Fancied myself a priest
baptized by the Holy Spirit
home of the Sacred Feminine.
Found myself screaming in hysterics like a little boy in his blanket
after he's told nothing shall be as it was.
So much for the priest hood.
So much for the New Earth.
I pulled the Tower Card.
And that,
along with the ravens
and old man Saturn…
I had never been so afraid for my body in my life.
Now we walk around town and find bird heads on the sidewalk.
Starlings, and a little wren.
I learned my demon’s name is John and that he stands behind me.
Big and wooly like a wild thing on two legs.
He doesn’t fit in a glass of water
so I brought him to the Lemon Street Cemetery
and said bon voyage.
Buried him by a gravestone tree stump and said the prayer of two deaths.
The walk home smelled like ginkgo nuts
and the dust from the crumbing of the Tower hasn’t settled yet.
Now it’s as if I've been inoculated.
I lost my sense of taste for a week and didn’t break a sweat.
I’ve pulled the rug out from under my own
two feet so many times
that if I don’t learn to levitate
my poor tailbone won’t have a chance to heal.
Home of the root
Abode of the World Serpent.
I wasn’t prepared for what was awoken within me
that day up in the promised land,
and it's been climbing my spine ever since.
Now I bless the water by my bedside every night
in case John comes back to roost.

I cover my floors with happy feet
I paint the walls with candle light
I light frankincense and tie prayers to the smoke
I watch them float to heaven
I ring a singing bowl
I put the demons in the water and I drink them.

I feel everything, and nothing at once.
Sadness: that others seem to always
Stand with their back to me, and
Sorrow: for the indifference
That lies in my heart.
Walk away,
And with each step that widens your gait,
Run.

Reach escapes velocity, and
Pull yourself from my gravity.
Like a white hole I repel
All good natures from my orbit.
A perpetually scarred surface, from
Periodic collisions.
The heavens send their vessels,
Like tears raining from the sky.
Only to be burned up in my atmosphere.