barbed dreams

Since the Gemini full moon last Friday, when so many corner shards met to create a glass vase we then let shatter, I've been waking with a head of taunted dreams. I never remember my dreams and now all of a sudden, in the black of night, each one presents itself to me clear as day. Under white down blankets my legs are folded bare and I can hear the wind rip it's underbelly on the top ridge of the canyon while I string each nightmare together on a barbed wire I wear around my neck. Once there was him being pulled out of bed and arrested, another an image of blood on my wrists and the faint knowledge that it wasn't mine; the hungry question of whose it might be. This morning I woke with the faint echoes of a panting dog from another world. But here's the one weekend dream that has stuck with me, just under my ribcage:  It is last call and there is one last bottle of IPA and I can't find you, though I feel myself circling empty haunted rooms with the intention of sharing it with you. I woke with this overwhelming thought that even when I fall asleep tormented by you, twisting in my sheets, my dreaming self betrays me. She tries to comfort you, plots journeys through bar rooms to rid you of your thirst, holds ice cold bottles dripping at the neck in a fervent want to serve you. Like me she wears white to reflect a purity, but then blows soothing air kisses that smack where my jawline meets the dreamworld.  In my waking life I have cut the cords where you once drew comfort from me, but this lovely troubled dream girl, still only seeks to provide for you, cup your chin and smile to melt your heart. She desires to nurture what's incumbent to my nature.

on cold.

Remember the winter we spent on Magnolia trying to thaw out? It never quite got warm enough but for brief lapses of time with the onset of sleep. Every waking moment we spent huddled together watching breath make reckless statements, counting splinters in our fingers from the wood we should have stacked, bare and chapped backs pleading with the fire daring contact. To fit the form of you I lay with my breasts to your back and we would curl limbs to meet at the base of the space heater. Layered socks for sleeping, we spent lifetimes under an electric blanket and tried in vain to chip the ice from our bones.

You- you must remember the cold, the constant gnawing, and the faint reminder that maybe we would never warm up again.

the feminine force

for my friends

We are women of impossible dimensions
We shadow the crag rock and follow Coal Creek curves
Despite our depth we approach you casual as side-slung leather
We call hearts to soften and we chisel flint tips
we taste like turmeric because golden ancient stories stir our bones

We are the careful turn of phrases
and the soft smooth underarm
But be warned some cut forelocks of red hair on new moon and
others chant to ward you off when curled up in determined sleep
thumb to forefinger, we can mostly dance alone

We are sharp eyes and hips
the cleavage of a culture
and despite distance, death and danger we are bonded

You may think this curve of cheek
or the steady slap of tongue,
a supple slip, is invitation
to take- you can try but you must know-
there is boldness behind our breast.

vi·cis·si·tude
vəˈsisəˌt(y)o͞od/
noun
a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.

synonyms: change, alteration, shift, reversal, twist, turn, downturn, variation

the stars were right about you

I used to drive down the interstate and play myself the maiden reckless
I knew where I was headed and I knew it was dead wrong- and that made me smile
you, dark star, you are the big hot stones I stand upon
you came from the fire and you blister my feet
but oh your heat

I found your secret on a Saturday
it felt like the first snow
how the earth tilts her chin to her chest
a white and ribbed spine that is so flawless it makes you want to bite
and yes suddenly your scent and silence makes sense so early in the night

Now your heavy eyelids are more of a tale
and already i'm watching myself decide how your memory will rest behind my temples
how a storm did torment behind your eyes
and your palms did turn so sharply about the wrists
and someday the story will be told of how once it was me
who was made foolish, one winter, on a saturday and from a summer
and how it took me a whole week to tell you what I knew
I see you from above, and where I am not left behind there is spaces of that same storm blue.

Last night I learned the earth is coldest right after the dawn

When all solar heat has finally drifted,

Waves of geothermal energy pulse and then lift from the surface

Like dead skin

I feel cold and light

As I peel the last of you from the tips of my fingers

Thumb prints give way and all that’s left are old ridges

Of the places I once touched

There is inherent knowledge in an object storing radiant heat, and

Then steam off the surface, the froth of loss

When the sun breaks gregariously; and even though it is every day;

rays reach like collarbones across the gaping chest of an unexpecting sky

foreplay with the world

In slippers on this stool the world unbuttons her blouse for me,

One delicious button at a time; (of which there are many)

the pearl at her throat she unclasps with nimble fingers, incandescent the Italian shell

a grape to burst below, perhaps from Moterosso, Vernazza, the vineyards of Manarola

la terre, del mare, with a honeyed tongue I wander

From the kitchen counter I plot my week in Paris

Where one button below, at her heart is a button that gleams, is bronze, is brazen

It dizzying and glamorous and all too suddenly falls away to expose

The bamboo slide at manipura, the world opens up Indonesia, a silence so thorough it buzzes

And the blouse, silky white, lets a breeze through that is laden with the nutty smell of rice

the bottom bead lies at the root the wooden bead of the amazon, where I will begin

Undulatus asperatus

I drove down Magnolia for the last time in the late afternoon of September’s end, and I took a walk down all the paths that once lead me to you. It had been one day since we’d talked, four days since we’d actually spoken, and twice that since we had really heard each other. The truth turns as easy as the rounds of sun I followed through Caribou open space with a hit of L and banana chips, and mid-afternoon in an Aspen tree I thought about the time you told me that those leaves looked like they were winking. Clouds came then; do you know they recently classified a new formation? They realized there was no word for the ominous draft clouds that always dissipates, and so undulatus asperatus was born: “ agitated waves “  these are the storms we think we prophesize, though they never come. I’m painting golden leaves in the grass when I realize you probably haven’t heard of this, and that I hope I get to tell you. Now the sky undulates, it is early evening, and you and I are twenty-two holding hands on the path to the Caribou Ranch barn, my hair is the longest it’s been all summer and a photo is taken, later it is painted into a watercolor. Later then the painting is lost. My hand aches because it’s empty and likes being held and I remember how well the painting depicted the way you walk. I cringe from crows, you all well know this, and just then at sunset I heard one laughing at me. She said time sweet sister you scared little thing, your angst is vicious your soul subdued you wait for him and time is your master, time is your lover, time is the injured man who wants to be yours as you are for him.

For now at least I let time travel in my front seat as I take the backroads to the west side of Magnolia.  It’s dark and I plan to drive the length of it and absorb the turns and thoughts and glimpses that used to be the woven fabric of my most textured twenties. This is the time we were we. I do not pass Ponderosa Way,  I turn into it, and follow the breath as she folds herself into my lap and I find myself on our old porch. Midnight wraps around the room we once shared and I glimpse the past shadows of us curled up in an abalone shell. The black crow winks, glints. You are standing four years ahead and forty miles away and clouded in what feels obtuse to me, I do not know this man, but here is his soul and the turn of his neck and his gray pajama pants in a pocket in my lungs, I am breathing him in (now and always). I am shaking at the steering wheel without your hand on my thigh, our old road, but then morning breaks and I find myself sunning on a black smooth stone, I am topless, I am softened, you are gone and I am glad.

the winter I was warm enough (to leave you)

When the last curl turned loose across her forehead she felt her inner wrists open up and offered everything she had to the wolf moon. It was January. She knew everything would change once the sun, hung in opposition, would pounce across her pillow.

It had been four years since she woke up feeling alone. She welcomed the emptiness in her chest, the gnawing from behind her ribs. Scrape of her clavicles and she lifts herself, starts a fire, sneaks outside.

She feels lighter already.

Ode To A Naked Beauty

Pablo Neruda says the things we wish we could.


"With a chaste heart 
With pure eyes I celebrate your beauty
Holding the leash of blood
So that it might leap out and trace your outline 
Where you lie down in my Ode 
As in a land of forests or in surf
In aromatic loam, or in sea music


Beautiful nude
Equally beautiful your feet
Arched by primeval tap of wind or sound
Your ears, small shells
Of the splendid American sea
Your breasts of level plentitude
Fulfilled by living light
Your flying eyelids of wheat
Revealing or enclosing
The two deep countries of your eyes


The line your shoulders have divided into pale regions
Loses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple 
Continues separating your beauty down into two columns of
Burnished gold
Fine alabaster
To sink into the two grapes of your feet
Where your twin symmetrical tree burns again and rises
Flowering fire
Open chandelier
A swelling fruit 
Over the pact of sea and earth 


From what materials
Agate?
Quartz?
Wheat?
Did your body come together?
Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills 
The cleavage of one petal 
Sweet fruits of a deep velvet 
Until alone remained
Astonished 
The fine and firm feminine form 


It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your body
Yet suffocate itself
So much is clarity 
Taking its leave of you
As if you were on fire within 


The moon lives in the lining of your skin"

~pablo neruda~ 

Alone A Learn

New behavior emerged in her solitude

She started dancing naked in front of her living room windows

Made friends with the curtains and the candles, soulmates with the cat

After a shower she'd rub her feet on the raw wood

Use coconut oil in all and unmentionable places

Light incense in the stairwell to honor where the moon hung 

Eat chocolate in bed

Sing old soul songs in the morning

She Initiated a nightly ceremony of brushing her teeth outside,Spitting off her balcony while arching her heart to the sky, praying vigorously to the starline, grounding down through the rugs as she lay on her bare back  

Daring not visitors, but solitude to enter in and join her

She named her dogs wax and wane (for the moon) and called her cats ida and pingala for the shushumna channel of consciousness. As such, she existed neither here nor there but in a realm of her own choosing where the phases of the stars not only chose our paths and pulled the tides but went for walks with her after work, would lay at her feet belly up; where fields of energy would not only regulate the flow of consciousness between dimensions but would sit and soak up the sun in her stairwell, purr as she pet them in passing.

on grapes and your great ghost

I dropped a bag of grapes in the market because I thought I saw you in the next aisle
Sped up on my bike ride for a split second, swore you were just ahead
Every jeep that cruises by I see you in 
and I 
Remember you following me up dream canyon with that grin
You're hiding in the smile of that boy that keeps looking at me
And you're slung back in the posture of the fellow dancing in the front row
You were camping with me last weekend, I felt you and gasped 
Thank you for visiting
I see you everywhere Ben, in everything

Conjure

She thought maybe if she drank enough red Wore enough white She could conjure him up Like a dream or a spell or a bass line He'd come strolling through the den under the loft Whistling softly to his dog Perhaps if she really wanted hard enough Like a jazz tune he might Come waltzing in Turning circles around the space and the time and the sentiment where they had once let things go Yes, she was damn near certain she could manifest his presence Draw him in like a cool breath They would take up where they had left off If she let herself go just enough...

the sacred breath

The afternoon was crisp and cool like an apple waiting in the ice box. I slung a shawl around my pointed shoulders, a cloth dripping in weight and warmth, hoping it would keep me anchored to the earth. But as soon as I looked up I began to float- my heart rose to my fourth chakra, which tightened around its bindis. My open throat twitched and flexed. I pulled my shawl tighter but it was to no avail-  as my feet scraped across the wooden planks I arched my heels and drew in my toes, but slowly my heels left the ground and I began to sense a warm harsh air underneath my toes, where it had once met with wood and was now hovering above the planks.  My fingers quaking, they clutched first the corner of the counter and then as I was lifting drew my hands anxiously toward the next closest thing… garlic to keep me grounded, a chilli pepper to keep me present in it spindling and spiky heat. Baby tomatoes from my plant on the windowsill, plucking one by one like dreams gone by, even the orange heirloom sleeping curled like a secret at the bottom of the pot. Still I was lifting… bracing myself and baring my teeth I waited for my head to bump against the ceiling…

Then  I remembered my breath, that ancient silver key, and as I drew it through and across me I sank, heels pushing into the velvet earth, and the soles and my souls found groundedness.

I watched him leave

 like I knew he was coming back, and I was right. When he turned around and honked his horn I was busy hiding his sandals, washing the dishes he had left behind to hide all traces of him, elbows deep in soap suds and sadness.i braced myself and headed to the driveway, wrapping myself around my jutted elbows, dripping, knitted. He pretended like he had made a mistake and I pretended like I didn’t want to follow him. It would have been so easy to jump into his car- I had already packed my bags that afternoon hoping he would want me to join- but I saw the way his eyes turned down and I saw- how unlike him- how his cigarette had been smoked down to the quick, he still held on to it- ashes falling and he still held on to it, it looked hot and too close to his touch but he still held on to it, and it was time to let it go. So I jammed my toes into those old clogs we shared.

I held my chin high but this was only to keep the salted tears from being caught in the corners of my lips I tried to visualize the red stone on the floor underneath my yoga mat, tried to call its structure into form, borrow its consistency to keep me upright and sturdy as I made my way to the front door. But all I could find in the spaces between my mind was the last cigarette I saw him smoke, how it stirred listlessly in his hand much past its prime, how it begged to be released. I saw it dropping sweet and slow and painful all at once, imagined its impact upon reaching the rocks below and the sickening peace that would come at its demise.

harvest moon

In my dreaming state, I sensed it rising upon me. It roused me from my back, which I had bore down upon to sleep that night in hopes it would ease the ascending pains which had started like bitter secrets in my groin and mounted with growing certainty, clawing fingers, between my thighs. The discomfort settled at the base of the belly and curled itself like kundalini that wretched and healing serpant warrior, to the most tender and sacred space of my waking self. It quieted as I began to sleep, belly up to vanquish the anguish. And then, I was roused from my back.  The moon is a wondrous and secret thing. It had, unbeknownst to all of us involved so falsely conscious in our waking lives, moaned and creaked and grew. As it waxed above us it laughed like little bells at the top of our heads, for it could see our faces were set upon the ground. I, along with a thousand others, had missed the arrival of the harvest moon. But I did not miss its presence.

            As I was brought of out my weakened slumber, I finally lifted my face. I had been embraced in auburn. To my amazement my window was melting in gold. A russet warmth wrapped itself around me. Tiny bells aureated me. She was glowing, the natural satellite of our tiny earth. Listlessly she has in her flight arrived at my window and was radiating upon me.

            Alas as she had waxed, so had I. I had been filled with life’s ancient life giving secret, the fruits of pain and pleasure. I had met my fullest point at the end of the summer and so the Harvest Moon met me. We, together, had reached a turning point of vantage. Her soothing lunar light embraced me, and together we began to wane.

6 of swords

Like the waves I am

Dependent upon your pull.

Like the bone dry sand I will

Dry you out.

Smooth you down.

When the card of parting is pulled

There is no denying this notion of change

None can ignore the six of swords.

Plurality to unity.

None can ignore the six of swords.

I don't sleep alone

As you believe I do. I’m surrounded by winged things that clasp the wood, drawn to the candle, hot against the flame. I keep nightly company with silver tipped scurries, soft whisps of flight against my ear, paper wings that fold and tuck neatly behind the back like my hands that grasp each other in solemnity. Like the thoughts I have when drifting, my nocturnal visitors are light but carry an under hue of something deeper, richer, something we try to dig. Velvet soil running through a cupped palm; perched in the corner watches with eight diamond eyes, grins because she knows I know and I’m not afraid. I welcome the flutter. I wake and sweep the remnants from the cracks in the floorboards. Against the blonde wood you are incandescent and I mourn for the loss of spark that you once held; right here tucked beneath the faintest curve of a silver veined wind that runs like the river from the base of you to the outstretched fan of your flight. These are the beings that weave and watch and fly…

she...

was the type to always carry a tigers eye stone because she deserved to be protected
hid a knuckle of ginger in her purse- mostly for luck, but also for cocktails
pinned dried jasmine to remember
carried such color in her skin, so much magic in her hands

La dolor exquisite

I am the spirit of the inward

The fever that lives in bones and Tarot cards,

 what is picked Up and thrown down.

The scent of desire and decay.

 I am The new that is ancient,

The hope that hurts,

The budding and the weaving and the stunned bird who falls

You long for me lengthwise

My gleaming ribs a corset to harness

The pleasure and the plenty.

Mine is the double vision

That everything is sacred, and trivial,

the dice won’t tell you anything

you don’t already know.

I am the laughter that bubbles in hot blood,

(Dolor supervivo caro//Dolor sublimus caro//Dolor ignio animus)

And I love the silver spider

Trapping males in my window.

I let her cross over my chest because

I know we are the same.

Mine is the crone wisdom that whispers

You are everything to me,

 you are nothing.

seek shelter

There are chasms of time, and they are vast, where I want to run to you. I sit still and straight and imagine a swift about-turn, weight pressed on the heel as I make the first move back to the time and space we once occupied together. But I guess in many ways and over many moons there have already been moves made. It was February and I was across the Pacific when you told me I was a genius. Often after a scotch I feel brave enough to tell you you I am proud of you. Between the sinewed limbs of contact (a palm curved upward, reaching towards you) week do pass, jobs and siblings and sentiments are lost, and though I forget bit by bit the subtleties of your truth, in a certain semblance we remain intact. We move away but stay in place. Sometimes you're the breath that catches in my throat. Other times you are a tenseness running down my thighs. Once the sirens started and an ancient war began anew you sat with me in my thoughts when I passed panicked hours in the bomb shelters of Jerusalem. Like you, these shelters are open to me; omnipresent- and yet hidden- and my presence in them tells of both safety and a shameful surrender. I spent years hiding beneath you. Breathing you in when I wouldn't draw air alone. Where will I run to when the next siren sounds?

He changed four flat tires last weekend, each one a testament to the certain type of struggle I seem to always search for. The steady curve of his upper arms a methodical sculpture of the hours under the hood, the soft trail of hair that wrapped around his wrist matted, his neck ridged I would slide my fingers down each one, remembering who I was as my rings winked teal, amber, golden in the sun

on air

In Tzfat the City of Air a heat wave hit us as heavy as the chosen people’s tone, we wove through the north steadily, chewing mint to cool us down, shedding layers like preconceptions.  A long red dress to hug the knees, the length of our limbs sprinkled by the salt in thin air. I held a bag weighted down with figs- it was too hot to eat anything that weekend but the promise of something so fresh hanging from my wrist kept me climbing up the holy city’s endless sweeping staircases. Each ascent a story and a battle and an intention well examined. In heat like this; like a handicap, a curse and a cloak; every movement is a meditation.

Winding through alleyways we found ourselves resting in ancient doorways, plucking olives from a thousand year old tree. Following the long and sure step of my sister, squeezing lemon in our hair to lighten in the sun.

When I think of this summer I will think of the week we spent in the heat of the north of this fertile country, old notions weighting me down at the wrist; a bag full of the fruits we will never eat. Just beyond the palm all the things we will never reach for in unison. The three of us together thinking maybe this will last forever and wondering what would happen when it didn’t.

If cobblestone streets could tell you anything I think perhaps
they would chant to us we are souls who wander
and that we like a certain containment 
because being free is only felt when in contrast 

So when I'd walk those alleys around noon cada dia
I'd let my heart take a little stroll too, and with a bit of a faster pace 
I'd watch it get ahead of me and end up following it around 
the winding corners and those steep stairs and 
press my palms to the cool basalt walls 
as I climbed the hills in Cusco and 
fell in love at every corner

a recollection

She kept remembering she had something to say but for some reason couldn't draw the words up from underneath. An undergrowth of guilt finally made sense again, how it stuck to the roof of her mouth and made her carry tension around the jawline. There was a deep abiding presence beneath her collarbones and it shone, grazing bones with two fingers she'd remember her constant companion nostalgia and recall the way your eyes turned down, the width of bed you shared, the first time you opened up and poured yourself away- how easily it flowed from you, you both let gravity take its toll and dispense, how you succumbed and gave yourself to her, how she arched from the base of spine and reciprocated. She wouldn't let that go not ever and spent the next thousand turns figuring how to show you.

maybe this morning

The bed sagged in the middle and of course there were no sheets

she slept with her feet hanging off the side because the city had stolen her shoes and her soles spent the night picking up all the soot that Frenchman Street had laid down for her

It was heavy on a Sunday and when you woke up the screen door banged

She was outside in that white dress when you sat down and perhaps in your own peculiar way apologized

She said, you scared me in that alley last night

you said, you were scared of her too but you couldn't tell her why, you couldn't give it all away just yet

then, somewhere, a breezy corner lifts the curtain from a window and time becomes the bridge over the fairground and the two of you are walking across it sharing little bowls of the things you want to fill each other with

She is trying to learn what it means when you angle your eyebrows and you keep asking her for words instead of the soft looks she serves you to keep herself away 

now in the shower you are sharing a single stream. Sleep has left you in the same corner where the taxis wouldn’t come

Here she wonders when you’ll tell her the end of your secret and how much she really scares you and why and if she'll ever be okay with letting you in