Before time began I had no name
nor face, nor home
I needed no future, nor plan
no clothing.

only skin
with sand blown against
the rough dry surface,
tan, dusty.
desert worn.
Earthened.

The days promised to carry on without end,
I never aged, never grew old

the silver in my hair fit.



I could climb the sierras, scale rocks,
swim the American river if I wanted to.
Men and women smiled at me.


I had beauty.



Time steals,
and now I only wish to make peace

so she might return my aim towards grace.
So my silver might return,

so the sand of my skin might roughen me
into a well worn woman

of the hottest day.

Old
Dead
Left
*****
Fat
Pathetic
Ugly
46 yrs
Wasted
Used
Unwanted

Lost to the tides swept out,
all the days in California
loving the forests, knowing the prospects
of opportunity that waited for me around every corner.

Life could happen, all my dreams lived there.
The ocean rolled out towards Japan
We rose last and stayed up later
the countryside rolling out between each of us
there was room to breath and be happy in our nature.

My home, my tiny corner,
my clean pine bench and sweet drop-leaf table,
my wicker chairs with linen-covered, feather-filled pillows
padding the seat.
Gone now. Gone.

And where am I? Far away in a land that does not want me.
There is no sunshine here, there is no hope.
There is no health here,
there is no love.
Only ageing and death to follow.

Will I fall down in failure here?
Unable to hoist the weight of any task,
inept at thinking, speaking, answering.
Tick Tick Time
Tomorrow's answer will arrive.

Why does it matter if you start something
by starting something I mean creating something for yourself
a job, a project, a goal, an art

When I look out at people who are optimistic, who seem to be carefree, I see they are starters, they work for themselves, they look for the answers, they ask themselves questions.

What else do they have?

Here are some great contemporary writers who are alive, active, really dynamic, and really making their lives and the lives of others happen.  I wanted to share, and please add your own "writers that inspire" in the comment section! (please make them living writers!)


D. Watkins
Deborah Ager
Rita Dove

It's difficult to believe I even have a purpose,
millions of people milling about on this planet,
hungry, dying, hurting, fighting,
all more desperate than I will ever be.
How can I believe I should even have a voice?
I am not one of the beaten down, not really.

Still, I am driven to help, I want to help you.
I want you to be the best version of yourself
and I want you to believe you are better than
what the world says you are.  

I've been poor my whole life. I used to want fame, maybe money,
when I was young. I wanted to be an actress. I was good too.
I had a lot of pain to draw from, but not as much as you.  

I've never wanted money enough to commit a crime to get it.
I don't really understand that mindset.
I've always known there was a better way, and there is.

I want you to believe people are on your side.
I want you to see people on your side.
What is your American Dream?

If I look behind me as an old woman,
silvered and tired, plump and forgotten
honored and pitied, floating on the ice,

The days were long at times, youth spent angry
at the injustice that was stability unrecognizable by my
troubled adolescent mind.

Praise this moment I sit within, the air warms my arms,
my belly full, coffee hot, praise this moment, yes.

When I look back as an old woman I hope to find all the days
I savored each day left with my son, listening to his whispers through a closed bedroom door, waiting for a glimpse as he passes from room to room.

As an old woman will there finally be no more injustice? Will people know it is all about their own hard work? Make the world for your self, especially now. We all gotta eat, and ain't no one can take THAT  away.

looking back now, I missed all the chances, running forward.

It's a predictable cycle
Peaceful Nature.
The hum of the streams
layered by the whistle and the **** call.
Sunning spring green grasses
dew soaking the new season's blade.
A croak interrupts the morning,
calling us out to the field.
Only we hold our position, listening in anticipation.
Nature excites us as though the unexpected will appear momentarily,
only it's the regularity that surprises.
Our nervous system is poised for action,
until we realize the day is relaxing, breathing deeply,
Sat in prayer and obedience.

It's a predictable cycle
Peaceful Nature.
The hum of the streams
layered by the whistle and the **** call.
Sunning spring green grasses
dew soaking the new season's blade.
A croak interrupts the morning,
calling us out to the field.
Only we hold our position, listening in anticipation.
Nature excites us as though the unexpected will appear momentarily,
only it's the regularity that surprises.
Our nervous system is poised for action,
until we realize the day is relaxing, breathing deeply,
sat in prayer and obedience.

It's a predictable cycle
Peaceful Nature.
The hum of the streams
layered by the whistle and the **** call.
Sunning spring green grasses
dew soaking their new season's blade.
A croak interrupts the morning,
calling us out to the field.
Only we hold our position listening in anticipation.
Nature excites us as though the unexpected will appear momentarily,
Only it's the regularity that surprises.
Our nervous system is poised for action,
until we realize the day is relaxing, breathing deeply,
Sat in prayer and obedience.

plain days, plain
grey sidewalk, *****
springtime tree buds
cold rain falling.

old lady wet hair,
brown paper bag,
fresh zucchini sliced in rounds,
climbing up the stairs.

I find myself stranded, dangling, isolated, unrepresented.
I am a woman, though I won't march this January.

I believe in equality amongst all nations, races, genders
although I have no argument for the lack thereof.

The outrage of vibrant young ethnic men and women
is not mine to share, my white skin paints me guilty.

I am poor, have been my whole life.
I am not mad about it, had I worked harder, read more, wrote more, even cared more, I might have enjoyed the spoils.

I realize there is a stratosphere where dazzling ebony dancers,
stained with dye, decorated in braids, colored like Amazonian royalty
move their minds through a dreamspace whispering the laws of tomorrow.

I do not have an access pass to this heaven.
I can not feel it,
hear it,
find it.
I see it, I  stumble upon it from time to time, only to watch it
envious.

Hey All,
Ploughshares is having open readings for publication in their journal...some of you should definitely submit!!

https://www.pshares.org/

You need to go, you have ruined this road,
There is no market for redemption here.
Christ hangs in a tree over yonder,
Pray there, he alone offers relief.

Mine is a human heart,
Aching and torn.
Seven years it takes mine
To heal and regrow.

"What do you do?"

"I create shelters for peace. Places you can go to when you have no where to go. I buy shacks in the desert."

He nodded, looked to his friend. Their social class hung on their East coast shoulders as they lifted a paid for beer up to their pampered lips.
  
I said, "If it is not something you need, it has no value to you. Much like a Bonsai or Christ."

I felt secure, knowing they couldn't grasp the feeling of being lost in a Western desert.

Because there is no cause to hurt one another,
I will stand miles away leaving you in each of your days,
Your full laughter filling your airs.

I will stand on my side of the line,
Staying hidden here in the years,
Turning right down this ally
In my city, straying farther in the opposite direction.

Only providence could force us to meet,
Because there is no cause to hurt one another.

My search for God has not led me far,
just into a bed with a man
Who spoke from scripture.

His holy spirit spat at me,
taking advantage to persecute my ignorance.
I thought God was there, his name came up,
The man believed, I am certain of this.

I spent small moments sitting in pews, listening,
Watching the moment of transfiguration.
A glistening, a subtle odor of Christ, I swear.

Wanting to believe so I might receive the sacraments,
Baptism, Holy Communion, Marriage.
I walked near, then turned down a stumbling road,
Never finishing, never marrying.

Still walking to God, in search of God,
Wanting to find him holding
A palm leaf, an olive branch, and a man.

Still walking, I'll plan a pilgrimage,
walk to a monastery,
Eat dry bread dipped in hot salted broth,
Walk until my soles tear,
My clothes dissolve into rags.

Walking,
I will walk to God
Until the end,
Even if a man denies my effort,
My head is down.

I'll probably end up
wandering on the road
Driving anonymously
Forgotten,
No one checking in,
You being the only
People to know my whereabouts
Unless I decide you too
have stopped caring.

I am aged
Graying
Haggard
Never have been one to stop for
Even less so now.

Turn it around in the grass
it's summer, I'm getting' older
Sun's up hot who knows
If life does get better.
When will all my friends show up?
Today I'll stay level,
Just enjoy the normal,
No need for exceptional,
It's so flighty
And always flies away.

Why does Christ behave the way he behaves
through his messengers on Earth?
To send out his call vibrations
Attracting those who fly into his light
sending away those who become irritated by the sound?

Can't I have my Aum and Christ in my bowl?
Can't I have what was before and after?
Or was all that Satan's pulling,
leave my life behind,
give up what feels right,
spend a life, in fact, with no feeling.
There again, I fly away from the sound.

Believing, I believe, with a question mark.
My people's origins are suspect,
Christ in the cradle, then they ran from God poor Churches.
Most have not returned.
We huddle together reaching back for God
in a way our souls can find him,
or are we lost and wrong?

Who do we listen for?
Shall we play follow the leader until they turn in for the night,
closing the door on our mass,
then leave us to sleep against their door until they rise in their shining?

I'll not follow them,
I will follow you,
and when you lead me astray,
I will turn us back around.

He said,
"You're used to being the only intellectual in your circle of friends."
I am????

I stopped reading in 1999 or before.
I prefer for people to be smarter, most are.

To get my goat, to see my knee ****,
watching the response, then pass his judgment.
Failing, a complete fail.

He buried me amongst the dead
kicked the dust off his boots
left the house in it's peace
wandered in to the next open door
to spread the word.

Now I am buried,
being buried by the dead
You being the dead.

Do we love ourselves
more than God? (Call him/God Christ if you want to.
God is enough for me
with how a name gets thrown around
by those who defile the name
with abuses of their own design. Christ becomes in vain)

Are mystics justified, by their closeness to the divine,
their missions in life to show us God,
to rebuke us in each of their own given manner,
harsh or light as it might strike,
no matter the tear at our inner light they saw as dark.

"We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments." says the bible.

Who was arguing, asks I?

Om Shanti is Sanskrit for peace for the all human kind, peace for all living and non living beings, peace for the universe, peace for each and every things in this whole cosmic manifestation.

"Am I a non-believer for using a Hindu language, Mr. Mystic?" I ask.

Is God that absent from my inner mind?

What it must be like to be a man,
So stable and logical
A mind able to wrap it's meanderings
around machineries.

To be calm and unmovable
in the midst of a changing day.

Reading a newspaper,
Flip, flip
The page turns with a slow grain,
a fiber only to be found
Within the flesh, the blood, the breath of a man.

A good man, kind, with a good ear,
Quiet, with just enough chatter to awaken
Your spirit, your laughter, your curiosity.

A man who holds the answer simply because
It is the man's answer.

Our lives are but a collection of the hours we spent loving one another.

I love you all.

Walking, I passed by a man first
Then a woman.
Rocky path in hot sun.
Desert terrain littered with sages.
Eyes to the ground,
Back loaded with pack,
Thighs trudging,
feet hitting the dirt ground.
Walking now, I pass by.

This day, this day
Brings decisions to be made,
Heavy heart in my chest
Asks what my matter
Is on earth.

What my matter sits here for,
Consuming space
Better spent on another.

This space of mine,
This breath I breath,
Is in fact mine,
Spent on me.

So outward breath
I breath again,
And so I decide
To speak and sing.

Hear these words as they come forth,
May they tap your ears
May they reach your heart.

I sing these songs to you my friends
Rather than ache in silence
Not knowing my worth,
I will own my own divinity
And give you back yours.

Mother Rock,  I sit solidly on the porch
as the May wind blows the lanterns.
Like the family stone, I hold this space
while the children's lives soldier on
to the fields of hearts where swords and shields
penetrate and cover, where new blood is drawn.

I am finally finished playing in the war.
My position is still, as the wind washes past my solid form.
This day moves all around me,
with me washing away, eroding with each brush of every breeze,
my blue jeans fading in sunshine,
my gray hair streaking as it lingers to my shoulders.

within a year they will be as thick as thieves,
elbow interlocked with elbow,
whispering in hushed tones,
hearts interwoven so their laughter becomes one great explosion.

divine grace moved them into one.
from my seat thousands of miles away
I listen to the patter of their new found friendship,
grow, grow, in this sunny day.
He paces in his tiny office, counting the minutes,
gaging if it might be a respectable time to call.
Is her mother okay? Perhaps she must tend to mama.
They are both up late in the wee hours of the night/day,
They share the same life.

They might begin by bickering,
then he will quell her with his need to connect,
he will placate her, explain how he is fair sided,
he sees logically, he sees the Truth with a capital.

Is she still on the side of the psychics? The healers?
Will she bring to him what I brought, only in a sweeter wrapping?
Red rather than Black.
West rather than East.
Or has she cast that away, a relic of her younger days, and now she too has found what he sees. On the Eastern Shores.

This day, they share this day.
I too wait in these hours,
I heal the open **** he cut in my life,
my person, who I am and what I know.
Suture here, stitch there, cry my story until my blood dries.

This sun we all three share, this air, this breath.
All three of us here, in the heat of this day, together at once.
Will she tell him in uncertain words what I had tried to show him?
Will the same healing energy, spirit, power come through her to unite the world for him? Will he find the love he thought was not alive in me?

In me the energy faded, the spirit was dead, for why?
The shade of my hair?
The tone of my skin?
Yes, yes, it is as simple as that.

Do not text me,
Do not send me one more message.

You need to go,
You are not my friend,
You never met me,
You never wanted to,
You wasted my life,
You intruded on my relationship,
You stayed on the phone with me for too long,
You have no gauge as to another person's life.
You have never seen my face,
You can keep your electronic online only relationship.

There is no flesh there.
There is no blood there.
There is no heat, no sweat, no fear there.
There is no breath, no body mass, no feeling of cloth.

I am not there,
The real you is not there.

You turned everything you said to me into a lie.
You erased every feeling we'd created.
You became angry with me.
You hated every word I said.
You hated everything about me.

You would rather sleep with your friends girlfriend
Than be with me.
You would rather sleep with anyone else
Than be with me.

You never cared about me at all.

My small life mini, tiny, micro,
barely memerable save one,
maybe two.

I will die in despair
from never having
held his hand
or even known him
as the other
real women
in his life
Held his face,
kissed his lips,
embraced him,
whispered shared pain,
gave him the blood of days together,
hours and minutes spent in time.

Our friendship was born dead.
Born into offenses of the flesh.
Birthed within burning hearts
crying for a tiny fragment
of the tastes
of our young days.
Days bound in sheets
scented and flavored by love making.

On a solo flight long along the longitudinal
Her, his? scouting mission made a stop along this forest openings way.

Low cloudy day gray skies
as a quiet woman planted seed.

Her circling, I'll call her a her,
as we girls keep our eyes on survival at all times,
rounding and then slowing
while her flapping wings settled her in for a landing.
A landing I'm most certain all aviators study.

She called out through the wilderness,
calling every gander and fellow goose,
"I've found this settlement, this safe place,
with gentle whispers of the wind in the pines."

She waited, paddled, then lifted to flight.
Away, she'd made this known.

The day ticked onward, sun rolling down the sky,
clouds swelling thicker, rolling lower into fog.

The gardener girl gazed up from her work,
listening to a cry flying in from the North,
laughing at the new arrivals, two this time,
welcoming them in to this summer home.

It's so easy to lose faith in God
when the men and women who
preach so vehemently
stab knives into your heart,
call you less than worthy.

What was it that made me
so wrong? So less than them?
Was it my Jewishness,
my heritage,
my still learning even from them?

What I learned was they can
hate, wound, laugh at, destroy,
throw a human away.

Why?  Because I am not famous enough?
talented enough?
well known enough?

What does Christ think looking down?
Should I instantly forgive? Even though it makes me feel like dying?
Does Christ instantly forgive them?
Even though they twisted me around
so tightly I didn't have time to learn fast enough?
Will they do it again to someone else?
Would they do it again to me if I gave them the chance?

Why did they even want to walk through my door???
What did they think they would find here?
Why did they get so angry when they didn't get what they needed?
Why didn't they just go in peace?

Dear Lord, Christ, I have known you my whole life
as the God of the Jews.
I have met you in the home of my mother as the Lord Christ.
You have walked with me in my youth,
slapping me in the face with the hand of an evangelist,
you destroyed my foundation and inspired me to relinquish all I knew.

My Christ it is hard to accept you as God
when I have known your Father
for so many more years.
How is it he disguised himself in you, as you?

You have brought to my doorstep
Mystics, poets, great men of vision
only to have them wisked away?
Was it my lack of faith?
My resistance to you?

I believe in you,
but I can not believe in you.
You have shown yourself to me,
but others deny me that.
Was that your blood I saw in the air?
Was that your voice showing me the firmament on the hill side?

My walk with you will be alone
No other gives validity to my understanding of you.
I will walk with you in question,
asking you,
knowing you are there, so many have told me,
believing as your gifts for my life unfold.

Our gentle relation
you've answered all my prayers.

A cascading effluence of seasoned moments
spilling while twirling
neath the light and the heat of sand's sun,
a whipping windstorm blowing sand's grains throughout the land,
coloring the whole world in tiny stones
for to filter our weeping.

You can not come near me here in this oasis of lashing,
razor tongue, razor mind,
you lunge to strike at will then sooth it by some song of coo.
Not one more tear of my flesh will be made by you.

My body stays spinning midst this desert's painful wilderness,
wringing out one inflicted cut, replacing it with a wound more pure.

Never fear boy
your smile radiates until
I will never forget.

Your taunts and lies,
jokes and riddles,
I pocketed them
in my ****** sac
and hoist it over,
heavy with so much
of your confusion
and uncertainty.

You see, my love,
I love you where
memories hibernate,
preserved, mummified
into timeless coffins.

Run your legs
walk them straight,
my shattered heart
still pulses helplessly strong,
ruthlessly onward,
even after you turn your
tender feelings and lay them  
in the arms of another.

A frozen house stilled mid life,
while the lives within shed
blood from a tear mid stride.

hearts stopped beating,
loving strokes suspended mid brush,
her dappling with the voice of another
pulled her love into adultery's pouch.

his seduction cloaked in friendship,
his lie of never leaving,
his deception of his true nature,
he could have known he would never love her.

her home barren of noise of family,
empty, gutted, a winter's frozen shell,
she will lie now in the out lands upon the ground,
freezing alone, unforgivable, a harlot, wishing, hoping for death.

There is something about the texture
of a thought meant to heal
over the thought that
tears open and destroys the mind.

Pushing an agenda that needs no pushing
only simple loving,
simple ethics,
time of waiting,
allowing all good to work
in it's own course.

When the pure squeezes
out from between the
grip of controversy,
breaking free,
making it through
to clean breath,
it was not your strife or challenges
that dealt that win,
just the quiet innocence of nature
in it's own course.

you won't take responsibility in the role you played
in destroying my relationship.
You invaded my sacred home,
I let you in loving you.
Why did you enter in the first place
when you knew it was the home of another man?

my dearest poetry world of poets,
did you know there are anti feminists out there
who hate women who moan and ***** about their good men?

Did you know there are German supporters
who cry for the shed blood
after WWI.
Germans massacred by armies
bodies melting in the asphalt.

Horrors certainly.
Death of all men,
except those who should die.

Loss of value of all men,
women should love their men more.

I sit in the dark on these issues,
until just recently.
The illumination burst in my eyes,
I was shone the annihilation.

Yes, men die, they are whipped by the tongue of the woman,
they are wasted and not cared for in a manner suited by men.
Men have a life, so much so, we may not play a role in the show.
We may not fit their needs,
and so to the slush pile with us we go.

Back into the dark
where I am undiscoverable
left nightshade cloaked,
no stone turned,
no bell rung,
no tree carved,
no hammer swung.
No strong man,
no whipping post,
no beat down,
no anniversary toast,
no smart ***,
no sassy *****,
just floating now,
alone, alone, where I've put myself.
To find God again, to find God again.

Der Tag war weich,
leicht wie eine Feder,
Ihr Wunsch der Schönheit
links Freude in meinem jedem Atemzug .

The day was soft,
light as a feather,
Your wish of beauty
left delight within my every breath.

I always have to say goodbye to those I love the most.
God wills them away on a higher flying cloud
and I shed those eventual tears
as they take flight above us.

Loss, my loss and my pain
watching them fly,
mixing with a flock so strong.
Them laughing, happy to be moving on,
not one sad note at losing me.

They fly and I wander,
they know and I search,
they find each other,
while I cry out into an emptiness.

The days are almost done, yet still I will beat into tomorrow.

A bottle of wine with insult,
questions surrounding why waste your time
on a no where, out of step, out of economy,
low class, loser like me.

Hours went by.

Wonder if he will call again, and when.
I'll nail him then.
Point blank shotgun style.
Try not to make a joke out of it,
not too light,
nor too heavy.
Just wondering,
why the lie?

Never call again, what a fool.
What is my value?
Only I will know.
It is a figure I alone can cypher.

Today I am thankful for the silent moments
covering the morning hours,
minutes prolonged inside hushed walls,
absent the pressures of what I must provide.
I am serene.

The oakwood blazes hissing out snowfall's moisture,
kittens frolic, fluffily bouncing, pattering in holiday fluster.
The wintertide's sheepish wool in flight,
drifting upon the up-country's chilled breeze,
let's out a flaked trail towards our summit
crystallizing our land into a brilliant Wonderscape.

No toiling for me this day,
I am at rest, as is my whole house.
Thankfully piddling about
at their most cherished past times.
Allowed to delicately gaze at snowflakes
for hours.

pumice
peat
mulch
humus
leaf mold
clod
loam: a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.

marl:  Geology. a friable earthy deposit consisting of clay and calcium carbonate, used especially as a fertilizer for soils deficient in lime.

argil: clay, especially potter's clay.

bole:
noun
1.
any of a variety of soft, unctuous clays of various colors, used as pigments.
2.
a medium red-brown color made from such clay.





clutch
kaolin
loess: a loamy deposit formed by wind, usually yellowish and calcareous, common in the Mississippi Valley and in Europe and Asia.
slip
till: a stiff clay, a glacial drift of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders

all the minutes in each day
ticked by with waking, working,
saying hello, tick, tick, tick,
according to plan.

until the explosion.

Rest, breath, let everything go,
hold on to the stable,
keep your job,
don't spend money,
take your time,
let the fire die.
Let the air blow by,
no need to move,
or build,
or go forward.
Stay quiet, stay still
sleep for a few days,
let the world walk by.

today hasn't been special,
crescendo stilled or spent
in a farther landscape.

today I teetered on heavy sighs,
convinced myself to become more
dignified.

today I wished to wash away
the thoughts of a man in a distant land
laughing freely.

today I think I'll buckle up,
tighten my pack, walk a thousand miles
through thick jungle.

today I'll strip down naked,
wear gypsy spangled slippers,
dance wildly amongst a million strangers.

today I'll wonder If I can alter my life,
add a pound of flesh, and find
what I've been looking for all these years.