my life is a walk spent dodging traps
I walk into with my mouth open to them,
even though I don't want to get caught,
I also don't want to be alone,
so I trap myself with men who
stop me in my tracks
keeping me from where I am really going,
which is nowhere at the moment,
except that I want it to be somewhere,
only I'm having trouble finding the path where
I am walking unrestrained, the winds freely blowing past my body
and the people are still there with me only they are walking with me
rather than being in front of me like a concrete blockade or a tar pit
something I might run head on into or die being stuck.

It's like
a story we can't tell
it's like
we ****** ourselves into pain and risk on purpose.
It's like
we don't look before we leap.
It's like
we run into the fire.

Only now
I am stopping
before the edge of the cliff.
I am not jumping
straight away,
I am looking
over the edge and listening first.

taking a very long listen, I've heard that wind before, no, I am not mesmerized this time. This time I will observe for a while and believe my soul when it runs away from the inside.

with grace I hope
fraught with wickedness
to my shame.
brought to madness
through lies and sin.
I forgive you if I am able.

Found and watching,
this is my singing place
simple and slow.

That is how I will fight.

I will return to my own land
That sits lost between continents
And the countries of other people.

I’ll not look for a place to fit in,
Wanting acceptance and for them to fall in love.

Goodbye to following hopeless trails. Them always doing just as they please and me always dying over them to please.

Traveling solo.

Finding the world that opens its arms to me.

Not worried that they are lusting after something tastier.

My ranking was 115 out of 300 or so
people at the high school I attended in
Kansas. Ineffectual. By most standards.

The university denied me membership into
the honors community, blacklisted by peers,
ignored, forgotten like a transient looking through
the cafe window at the revelers eating and drinking.

young voices contributing to publications, singing
thoughts, shaping the tenor of future days, heralded
like shining angels transcendant of mortals, supremacy
allowed to decide the shape of our cities, schools, feelings.

Entrusted with the duty to chisel our lives into a shape, the approval to think for us, or be the catalyst of our own thoughts, or rather simply, the winners who wrote it best, they ran faster, they ranked higher, they knew more.

Not one of them my voice. my voice was silence,
shoved back by the bouncer
at the threshold of influence.

Words floated inward, I witnessed the streams
of phrases float passed me on soundwaves,
reaching the ears of luminaries, academicians, renegade thinkers.
crowds rallied, wept, and devoured the ideas embedded in the poems, essays, articles allowed to reach the readers of the day.
Minds opened, wealth shifted, a flight towards a new horizon saw people preparing for the liftoff.

Yet, nothing changed.

The wounded continued to bleed upon the sidewalks
outside my apartment. Tiny children ignorantly ran past schools
refusing to walk inside. Men and Women preferred to dance viciously, like celebrating heathens, rejoicing in their ****** rituals, unashamed to entice one another into poverty.

SHOULD things even change?

Would the presence of my voice even make a microscopic difference? What vanity did I carry that imagined one hope
of a thought birthed from my mind might create the tipping point for human recovery? Wouldn't it be better to remain silent and let the masters continue with their work? Let the fittest push me out of their way, leaving me in the trench to camp and rebuild my primitive shelter. I will die soon enough. My dust enriching the soil as best it can, preparing the earth for tomorrow's crop of leaders.

If I didn't care who loved me, then I would wear my hair any old way, curled, ******* in knots, shaved, I would try a new style every six months if I could.

I would be fat one year just to see how that felt, and see if I could get back down to skinny again.

I would dress up in costume and wander through town singing loudly operatic.

I might speak at an open mic, publish my poems that didn't sound too good, laugh more at things I thought were funny, not worry if things were cool or chic or hip or fire.

I would enjoy the sun for just what it is, a great glowing ball of fire.

I could be content in my skin and comfort others struggling with surviving because they can't see their own value in the eyes of all the others

Here is an image of me  walking down a long staircase
stone stairs
cool and dusty in the shade of the rising sun
chalk white stairs
Maybe somewhere in Greece or Italy
Birds sing their morning song
The air is cool
of course I am wearing white
my hair has somehow returned to it's chestnut brown hue
because now I am young again
walking down these stairs
strolling in the day
with nothing to do
except think
and now I will mourn all the losses I've ever known
the weight of them
rested in my heart
and I'll not feel poorly for feeling sad
because sadness makes life real
and I could even be the deity of sad
because it is like a blessing to hold sadness
living with it,
accepting it,
and living the next day with it.

Siren song
I’ll point you
Towards the gate
Holding my broken heart
Walking backwards
Leaving you in the garden
To enjoy the flavor.

Too much happiness is like an illness
that you lie in bed for waiting until it
leaves your body.

Just as you are laughing, cracking up,
closing your eyes and throwing your head back,
you get well again. And stop laughing.

I couldn't imagine a lifetime of being sick
with happiness. I've never been sick for
more than a week. My immune system
is far too strong.

isolated
solitary
deserted
abandoned
forsaken
forlorn
friendless
­desolate
solo
singly
solus
only
hermit
unaccompanied
detached
lon­esome
unmarried
unassisted
stag
apart
destitute

It’s the death of who I was, who I might have been, who I could have been. Your eyes will never see me again. It is the loss of everything that might have been, but blown to bits from drink. I’m wilting, my garden is more dead now. You looked and looked away. You saw and left. It’s okay. Not everyone buys.

And I’m left talking to myself again.

I lost myself in some cranny
as I moved west to east.

My blue jeans fell off
somewhere along the road
and I can't see myself clearly.

I was wearing dust along my skin
with a tan, raggedy hair, and a cat.

I sang loudly with the radio
opened the window to let in the heat
let the wind dry my lips
and made plans, always making plans.

I had hope, and spirit, I let the worries of the world
roll off the hood of my car.
I followed the sacred om to the edge of the desert
and tried to heal.

I lost her somewhere in the din of the fat.
I have to find her again,
I have to shed the weight.

I'll find her again,
As soon as I am alone.

crying in the darkness or light
you tears falling out of your eyes
onto your cheeks
sobs

the silence after you weep
rings
and you think
God must be watching.

But in life,
only pain follows sadness
cloaked in robes of temporary joy,
waiting to undress
and reveal itself once more.

It's then you realize,
God only watches,
it is Satan who listens.

I can hear him laughing from his grave,
he found a way to take back the cabin.
He sent an emissary from Hell
to conspire,
a ***** Demon riding on the same fiery wind
the Hells Angels fly upon.

God called him home,
I can hear the violence in the house of the Lord.
He refused to go through the gates,
Instead, sailed into the flames,
swan diving into the raucous-
heat, sweat, blood, and laughter.

A throne awaited him.
While he sat in the high backed seat,
gorging on the sights of sensuous agony,
red devils dancing like gypsies upon his lap,
he laid his plan. He sent a dark messenger
to whisper in the ear of the demon soldier,
animating his eyes until he found me.

Out to plunder me. Devour me.
Trap me. Convince me. Surround me.
Bait me. Test me. Sample me.

How many of them were there? How long
had they been watching me?
Sniffing me, digging around,
until they heard the words "the cabin".  

The ***** Demon had the job of waiting.
Of seducing, tempting, arousing, convincing.
And steadily, with solid consistency, with daily reliability,
like the morning train into work,
like a husband who comes home every night,
he sent lyrical promises,
called me "baby",
kept me swooning with his stillborn smile.

Even when I knew he was a lie,
like a fiend scratching the street
for a dollar to buy a hit,
a gambler who can not quit,
I kept asking the sky, "what if he is real?"

But he wasn't, he was sent,
by the other who would not rest,
until he wrestled from my grip,
the cabin.

draft

story idea

You don't know how this feels.

Most probably
there are people at your table
fighting over puffs of corn
or raging pink and blue rings of sugar laced
Os.

You might be wrapped in an embrace now,
a man creeping up behind you
smoldering a fire between your shoulders with his lips.

Or your mother is smashing beans or broccoli,
your father is relaxing in front of the news,
or sweating after a day of work.

Perhaps, your friends are calling to invite you out to play.

I can feel my leg still,
cut off still,
bleeding still.

My leg looks like a cabin,
a dark shingle, logs rotting
from being loved.

Phantom cabin pounding
my frontal lobe, I hear the hammer
pounding still to build.

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 true nature,
he could have known he would never love her.

her home barren of family noise,
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.

An ache
high pitched like a headache
tapping the roof of my mouth
as weeping tightens the skin around my bloodshot eyes.

two years this time
of moons falling, suns rising
morning kisses and making love
trying to learn again, like virgins
or bad lovers.

lying again, knowing
each time he thanked me on his way home
like a ***** he'd paid,
there would be an end.

left again. unchosen again.
desperate again.

There is a tide,
I need a conversation,
my language is empty
because I have no one to talk with.

In order for life and art to flourish,
there must be nourishment,
food given through moments of lust,
passion, devotion, desire, and hope.

My people have abandoned this
moment in time, found color in famous shops
and deserted poverty.

I will hide here
Holding my breath.
Music shreds the fibers
Of my muscles.
Leaving me to bleed out,
laughing at me.

Intensity of life
When you look into my eyes
do you see a shallow child?

Depth-
into the dark caverns of the soul
where people roam lost
onto trails in black woods
of uncertainty
wandering blind
newborn
looking for their answer.

Their seriousness,
they were real, worth your time,
worth your commitment,
Something about their lives
touched you to the point of allowing yourself to experience pain.

A beauty found
in the lines of their eyes
mouths, the color of their hair,
the motion of their figure,
moved you to blend yourself
until your colors all ran together.

Then there is us.
Some of us are simply clouds,
puffy, white, silently passing by.

The only person who calls me today is
the creditor man.
God told me I was supposed to date him from now on,
and I guess I'll listen to him this time.
There was a fear I had at 25, that I would crawl out
of an old apartment house each day,
stinking of agedness.
People, that fear is about to happen, and I don't know
how to stop it.
Death has me in it's grip, and despite everything
Christ promises, I can not feel the light.

I am a tyrant
Abusive by nature
Evil and impatient
Hysterical and hostile.
Undeserving of love
A person to be avoided
All my good deeds are abolished
By one act of violence.

No one ever did love me,
Even when I was gentil.
My tyrant did not surface
Until I was …it was there
All along.

No one should love me,
Rich men and delicate women
Look down on me,
I am rejected and ejected
From their homes.
All my kindness
Is forgotten
By one act of frustration,
Exasperation,
But it is more than one act,
It is the makeup of my soul,
It is who I am
It is how they will define me,
It is my nature
My character
It is who I am.

a person's life
because I read your book,
I can hear the song of your life,
I can imagine your flight from
youth, to newly emerging young man,
to pain, to the next road traveled.

You life is now a movie in my mind,
and I will complete the story for you
hundreds of versions rewritten, played out,
crying at some endings, and being jolted from disaster at others.
No...disaster endings do not come to mind for you.

when I am old will I swing in a hammock reading stories of ancient times
or small stories of the travels and trials of humanity?
Will I need to bother myself with any of these collected thoughts,
or will I be contented to enjoy the sunwarmth on my resting skin?

Because no one else will.
Grace and mercy,
How can you live
On when your soul is dead?

“You should be ashamed of yourself”
That is what he said
A woman my age
How dare you behave
With such violence
Towards someone
You cared about!

Old ladies shrieking
Screaming at people.

“I would never treat
The person I cared about like that.”
No, you would just think
That we don’t know what we are talking about,
that you are better than all
The rest of us, treating us
Like morons, like we didn’t know what we are talking about,
so I yelled at you, and you refused to have that in your life.
I need to forgive myself and stay away
from people who drive me to screaming.
I do care about people,
And I do care about myself,
And I don’t know why I get so crazy,
But I need to forgive myself.

You are better now, sleeping with your money in a clean bed waiting for the next beautiful girl to ****** and enjoy. You are rid of my old hag life. Happiness and laughter are right outside your door, knocking, waiting to come in.

I was not like this here. This was not how I wanted to be here. This behavior was not part of my new life here. I have to forgive myself and forget everything that happened here.

Maybe I'll buy a home, a cave of a home, and paint the walls, make my mark, cave art, and save the home, so someone will know, that I was here.

This is what my 30th year looked like:

Running around naked in front of windows

Eureka, California in the summer

A side yard 40 ft by 40 ft shaded by a mature some kinda tree.

No job, just trying to get a life put together

Sitting cross legged across from two two year olds

Your infectious giggle cracking you up

Snapping timeless surf side photos of your sun streaked curls

Making a home at the health food store

Looking for family amongst familiar strangers

Scoffers and fools
wasting away
chafed by the wind
ruined, crumbled
stolen from, rejected.

The poverty of the poor is their ruin,
I am in poverty.
A rod for the back if you have no sense,
I make foolish choices.
I worry and dread,
and yes, it comes true.

How much more of me and mine will be destroyed?

Turn me around, O Lord.
Make my mouth, my lips, my words righteous.
Guide me with your instruction
and keep me only along your path
that I may find men and women,
brothers and sisters, to learn with,
to pace my life with, to encourage one
another towards your solid way.

Mother Rock, I sit solidly on the porch
as the May wind blows the lanterns.
I am 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 at war.
My position is still, as the wind washes past my solid form.
This day moves all around me,
washing me away, eroding with each brush of breeze,
my blue jeans fade in sunshine,
my gray hair streaks, as it lingers to my shoulders.

Not I in this life,
though I wished so hard,
and prayed every night.
Not God's dream for me,
though it hurt much
not to be.

Still with each breath, Lord,
though you may not give this,
I can feel one man, arms long, singing
craft, and peace, loving creatures
gently, and waiting for only my tune.

Though a wife I will (probably) never be,
though hope refuses to leave my soul,
it is what I listen for, the sound of
rugged wood, of fire, and reason.

Another day, stewing in the lies you told.
My head aches,
Will I ever feel right again?
Why would men and women do this to people?
One pocket is not emptier than the other.

$139 to get to Puerto Rico.
Arms squeezed in between two solid arms,
Seats could not be more than 16 inches on center.

Brown people going home,
White people going to get brown.
This is a 3 hour and 39 minute flight. One quarter of the time it takes me to drive to Kansas.

My grandmother was a beautiful woman
like a movie star beautiful,
even Jewish, beautiful.

My grandfather loved her
beyond measure. She held his
eyes for so long, he could never
look away.

Chosen as an act of owning,
keeping, knowing what he wanted.
Never regretting or changing his choice.

Staying, playing house, for years
despite the tragedy, the bad day,
the undiscovered dreams you threw away,
the changes in opportunities, changes in mind, out growth.

Two children, barely grown, till death.

You didn’t know me. We kind of pretended to like each other because we wanted ***. And so we pretended to have a relationship. But  we really didn’t. This is a hardship. This is a struggle. Something to take on together. Otherwise, we are just living our own individual lives in tandem. This is the first piece of honesty that has shown itself in our relationship. This is the first sign of weakness. No, I don’t want it to happen again. I want to be cured of it. I want it expelled from my heart by the power of love. I want someone to wrap me up tightly in their arms and shush me as they rock me back and forth promising they will help me to overcome. I want their patience, acceptance, and understanding to be stronger than the anger and frustration that boils me inside. I want their kindness and devotion to give me the time to get better. I want them to watch over me as I grow. I am still the 19 year old girl living in her own flat for the first time in her life. I am still the maiden waiting to be molded by the man who becomes captivated by her youth and beauty. She has never been found, she is still waiting, hoping. Until…time runs out, and then she is thinking of building the walls, so she shares herself with no one, for their own protection.

There is no way to find happiness between us,
with the amount of suffering we have caused one another.

I’ll not cross your path again, and you should not cross mine.

Even though I long for what we had,
I know it will never be the same.

I already feel dead,
not because of the virus,
rather because of my grey hair
I refuse to color over to
hide the white of my nature.

I am poor, I wasn't poor
until I was lied to and stolen
from. Now I am pitifully poor.

I need to rebuild, but I am old,
I am weaker, I limp, I sag, I
have no youthful beauty, I have
nothing to attract anyone to care about me.

I am terrible at the job I
choose to attempt as a second career. I
might lose my job and become penniless
and homeless.

There is no one who wants to help me.
You can read the progress of my life here...
I was not always this sad, there have been happy
moments in my life,
when I was young.

Empty nest of twigs broken
against arms holding,
reaching, straining to take back
the damaged days burnt under
a sunlight.

The land was worth half a million,
with the large log cabin and
the tiny one on the edge of the hill.
He found the property for $10,000 just,
and logged it gaining $11,000 back.

I was worth the potential of half a million,
I had value at last. I had trees, and a home to build
and design, with family history and stories written
along the roadway.

I could have walked that road, carrying my granddaughter
telling the tales of our men,
how they came, saw, conquered for themselves,
and how their women held onto their gold as though they
would have to be killed first before they let someone take it.

Dreams, you wake up from them.
Fantasies great and small,
too lost in your own vision
dancing in formal gowns
your hair done in a bouffant
He is twirling you around
and you are the only woman
he ever wants to hold.

That is your dream.

His looks more like a harem
with hundreds of women feeding him
bathing  him, grape after grape.
Oils being drizzled over his chest
massaged into his skin.

He may dream of that,
but he rarely will pursue it.

What he won't do either, is love you
the way you dream of being loved.
He gave that to another woman
who shattered his love into
a billion stars.

What you find time and again,
are men who like you only
enough to sleep with you
take your soul's time
distract you from your own music
and leave you wanting something better.

Love is the most imbalanced of things.
teetering heavy like gallons of paint on one end,
while on the other there is a child enjoying the lift.

You wish for someone to value your dreams as much as you do,
someone who will take your image of yourself seriously
invest the time and effort into making you who you want to be,

I guess at the end of the day that is our job,
to be aloof, dive into our arts,
ignore the hearts of the people around us.

Only I've seen lovers love
through the years holding one another
nurturing each soul
being the sounding board that
bounces the words up and down
until they fall into just the right place
and only the most accurate words,
to create a vision of life that
wins awards.

Those types of love affairs do exist,
after you wake up from the dream.

I accept this award for all the other writers who
weave stories through finer mesh with deeper complexity
and with a genius of the human psychology.
I feel as though someone may have bought this award for me.
Although, out of respect for the possibility that a phrase of mine
may have reached out to another,
I accept this on behalf of all of us who speak to one another
through words and characters that tell the hidden thoughts of our own lives. If any grouping of words I have written pierced into your core enough to stir your spirit giving you the feeling that you knew me and I knew you, that we were kin or kindred, then I accept the award in honor of that moment.

Every moment I feel the gaping hole that is the home I once owned.

The earth under its foundation, the moisture of the air surrounding it's log walls, the history of tiny feet padding over soft mud.

My heart dies when I understand I can never re-earn that wealth.
That I am too old to recover from this loss.

And I know, whatever gain you found from the dollars collected from this cabin can not be equal to its true value on the earth.

I am.
they say this is a false self,
clinging to my feelings.

but they are there, I feel them.

"The poet, the wise philosopher, and the saint not only reach a wide luminous consciousness, but they gain certain knowledge of substantial reality." says Patanjali.

but this poet clings to her self, because she feels, and they say this is wrong, I am doing this wrong, this wisdom, this living.

I know I am doing this wrong because I keep getting kicked out, exiled, left out, forgotten, ignored, smeared; and so my feelings keep happening, and I continue to cling, to cherish, only myself, because no one else does.

It cannot be that a mother is happy
when her child is not.
Where is the logic to a mother's joy
and a child's sorrow?
Sacrilege to the balance and order of life
if a mother's dreams emerge
while her offspring withers during the hours of the day.
This cannot be.

It is the child that brings the joy to the whole of the world.
They are the moisture that springs life into being,
children are the songs that move our lives,
the rhythms that pound us into motion.

How can a mother feel the high notes when her child is morose?
Even if she wanted to laugh, her heart would pierce itself with a dagger sent from the mind,
"Your child is miserable.
It is not right for you to feel happiness now."

We’re sitting at the gate, our first romantic getaway together.

It was really supposed to be my first “out of the country with a passport “ trip of my own.
The El Salvadorian didn’t want to take me home with him, so his **** him, I’ll go my own **** self!

Enter Him.
And then the next thing I know we are on our way to Puerto Rico,
Don’t even NEED a passport.

So we’re sitting there,
At the gate,
He’s talking about the next trip we go on
Will be HIS choice,
As if he didn’t pick this one.

Then I say, “Then the next one after that I will REALLY pick!”

And he says, “Greece.” Like a whisper.
And I say, “That’s your pick.”

Thinking, he says, “Greece, Italy, yes, Italy.”
“I thought we were going to Guyana.”
“I’m going there on my own. Maybe Germany.” Where his ex wife lives.

Huh….interesting. Here he invaded MY private getaway, yeah, I let him. But never again.

Wow, what a heartbreak. And here I thought we were on a roll. And here he is, planning a getaway without me, to go visit his ex no less. Fantastic.

Bubble burst before liftoff.