Postpartum epiphanies
I'm shuddering against a stonewall
taking into myself the smoke,
snowy hills and the quiet of the
pine trees
I feel awake as the noise in my
head starts to dissipate
I go under water between thoughts
and comeback up for air once a
conscious realization dawns as
sentences
blooming in my third eye
The solitude in these mountains is
medicine for me like lighting sage
it mends the holes I possess in
my aorta
This large Earth is turning soft
I can't trace it in the swift grey clouds
or the suns hide and seek game
I'm tongue-tied on the ecliptic orbits
I trip over the luminaries movement
The trees whisper faint
stories but i am
ear-less to their memories
I wish I could close my eyes and
fall asleep to their song-tales
like a child at bedtime
I'm faceless to this circumstance
I feel like shattered glass
The future seems at once
both short-sighted and vast
I'm getting through on faith
believing my time is precious
and too rare to spend it in a cage

In my room about to
turn out the light and
as I shut my eyelids
I become aware of the riotous
laughter raging in the other room
hysterics and horns like it was
New Years right at that minute
and I'm all alone in the dark room
missing the commotion that will
become the subject of many stories
starting off as
"Remember that one time....?"

So I'm about 12
at my mother's Alamo-esque
apartment with a scarcity of
children my age about
and I'm staring out these
lace-dressed windows at the buildings
and mountains feeling like so
much is happening on this sun-soaked day
and I am still inside watching all the cars
race to places I was never invited
and all the motion I'll never sway to
with this rampant feeling of being
In the wrong place for destiny to strike
It was the wrong time to sneak onto
rooftops at early dusk to spy at
the streets below

In my dream I'm with faceless friends
some look almost familiar
and others features contort as
smoky personas' I somehow recognize
and I'll notice my shoe is tied or that I left
something behind so I
casually tell them to wait
but not one phantom stops
they keep walking with fading chatter
I can never remember
I'm left tying my vapor shoelaces
In a rush
with no hope of ever catching up

I would stare from the edge of my bed
watching the quiet of Charlotte Parkway
while all the neighborhood was sleeping and
I was wide awake
and In those twilight hours when
existence seemed dreamy
I sat on my back and wonder
Was I alive at all?
Was I disappearing...
My body fading into a shapeless mist?
Would I just slip through my bed
when the transfiguration took place and
through the carpet-floor then pass through
the cement basement into the ground
as an etheric substance to the core
of the Earth? Finally becoming
One with the lava turning in the
pits of the planet too far inside
for any soul to find.

I would walk suburban sidewalks
waiting for that mother-ship to comeback
waiting for angels bedecked In
star-freckled garments with fire
caressing their opaque limbs saying
"It is time to leave your old life behind"
Completely with their mind
No angels or aliens ever woke me up
In blinding lights or gusts of wind in
my room at night

Moments life hits you all at once
You're still here breathing
Alive
And memories of jumping on trampolines or
Sledding down mountains
And face paint pave way
For new memories
Babies, engagements, funerals, promotions
Isn't it strange getting older?
After years of trial and error
Becoming yourself
Learning who you are and
Where your heart lives most
What mattered once seems irrelevant
Letting go of time spent
Wasted
Glimpses of roads to places you
Never knew you could be capable of
Treading
All while the suns setting
And through a series of "accidents"
Through questioning if you're on the
Right path
You've come to a place that feels correct
For no reason other than
The sensation in your chest
Blistered past
Comes together
And you let go of
What's been strangling you for years
That locket on your eyes is wide open
Like breathing for the first time
Releasing all the weight you've carried
In vain to nowhere it seems
Blossoms
You release yourself from the illusion
Of being tied to the past
Time has come to start anew
And embrace those things you thought
Didn't want you and It
Was only a way to trick yourself because
Once that was comfortable
Once you couldn't conceive in the possibility
That you are valuable
And your capable of surprising those
Voices that told you
You couldn't or
Would never
You start to believe in something else
In those moments

Parked car headlights flash on
Driving down some road
Everything is white
And seems to glimmer
Reflecting back a pale moon
I drew a sigil in the snow as my hands
Started to dance
Dazbog coffee and
Cigarettes
Under a heat lamp
Spreading love in dissipated breaths
Moving in quakes
Sipping against the breeze
He was the man of my dreams like a
Basket of oranges
Illuminated reds, blues and browns
Along sunshine through the glass
Houses on the hills
Surrounded by daffodils

He was the man of my nightmares
Nervous when the phone rings
And when it doesn't
Singing devils to wrest in
My spirit and then
Stirring them to covert
Mechanics at turns
Tumbling as it were in
Between crossroads
One to paradise promised in
Modern fairy tales
The other to inherent destruction of
The self made malady
Knowing what it's like to find that
No matter where I go there's no
Peace of mind
What its like to hide
Somewhere dark
Because no one understands
They all seem like strangers
So many, too many strangers
Who was I five minutes ago
Those neon signs got under
My skin
You know you have to be careful
With wishful thinking
Strips of hair in the sink but your
Not there
But I'm not giving up
I've been down this road before

VW buses headed to Haight
and Ashbury
In San Francisco to
meet a man
We brought the acid to
expand our consciousness
that's what Tim Leary suggested
And you need to feed your head
like Jefferson Airplane said
Just go ask Alice
Yes we brought the psychedelics
and our bus is painted
in pastel peace signs and
purple Shiva's
We wove flowers in our braid
we ran barefoot
and climbed the trees
They said that the hippies are dead
but The Grateful has yet to
perform their last gig
love love love, man
it's our religion
R.I.P John Lennon
***** Warhol's banana and
Campbell's soup
But we miss Lou Reed and Nico too
Yes the summer of love was in 67'
and Woodstock was a muddy heaven
We watched every episode of Laugh-In
but it wasn't always sunshine and dandelions
like when a runaway overdoses
from ******
It was a wave no one remembers
but to everything there is a season
Freaks with beards at the drive-in
R.I.P Janis Joplin
We were all California Dreamin'
Jack Kerouac the dharma ***
was friends with Neal Cassady
the other-worldly monad
A time of innocence
a time of confidences
And so we are here bumming
cigarettes and joints
with talk about the Manson Family
and Sharon Tate
We are all here so come along
but in the meantime
I'd love to turn you on.

I'm trying not to become
Co-dependent
On someone
Someone I like a lot
Who brings solace to my fears
When they choose to talk
And I'm trying to appear sane
If only on the surface
To not throw my fondness away
For said person
By expressing it too often
Cause in the static of my mind
Time moved in heartbeats and
In solitary reflection I find
I've found a semblance of what
I seek
It's true I could die today
With a flashback of your voice
So I'm hoping that you'll stay
Because I'm still awake
I couldn't find it in art
Small-talk or T.V
No words seem to explain
This sensation that's posessed me
You think I'm a wreck because
I'm young and
Glorifying your face
But the truth is that I'm numb
When a cold wind replaces
Your embrace
You see romance never wanted me
Affection left me alone
All I knew were scissors to
Snip petals off of roses
And pills of all shapes and sizes
To keep my mind off of the
Affirmation
Believing I was fated to
Constant suffering in silences
My shiny new rational is this:
Life's too short to never fall
In love and life was meant for
Just two to amass a
Treasure trove
I'm trying to stay myself
And share my completeness
With the one
I'm trying to remain intact
When all is said and done
But that's only theory
I can't build a house on
The foundations more like water
That consumes the cement and
Stone
So I'm a little bit dramatic
I know what you're thinking
But who are you to tell me
That my therapy's not working?

Tethered leather locket
sing me to sleep
make all the noise disappear
down to a hushed whisper

Satchel me dreams in color
turn all those indigo blues
into murmured violet hues

Promise to wake me up
shake me from my disease
so I can once again know peace

I will hold you like a charm
to carry me through the days
I'm stuck within a violent daze

May your lullaby ring clear
confide to my weary soul to
have faith in the things that I'm
unsure

Lay my bones to rest
and mail me letters of light
so I can sleep at night