Today I donated almost all of my clothes, shoes, books, household goods, old toys and bikes to the Mounds Park United Methodist Church. They will end up in Liberia at the end of this month. The books will go to a school and the clothing, toys etc... will be dispersed accordingly to a needy group of people there. I wanted to take a moment to say -

give, please give, if for no other reason, give for your own good.
 
We live in a culture that is overwhelmed by constant consumption and that is driven by our societies never ending message of self worth being measured by self status and ownership, which never gives us anything real to base our spiritual value on and many of us have very little. American culture has ceased to provide the everyday man with a sense of self in his role in the world. In my worst moments I have always known that it is crucial that I give as much as possible to people who need. It is the cure all of the broken heart to let your self go, let your material things go and to do good in the world. There is nothing like knowing you have helped another person and no area of modern culture, bar stool, or isle at the local mall will satisfy you the way reaching out to help someone will. We have too many things and too little ideas, whether or not you are aware of it or feel you contribute, it's wrong to allow people to suffer when you are able to help. There is enough food, clothing and housing in the world today for every single person that exists. Distribute it, share, make yourself count. Let people know that they are loved and that you look forward to what they may contribute to the world and I assure you, they will...

In the end
It was a place to sleep
Huddled together
Is huddled together and..
Walls don't always take precedence
Over wide open spaces
Some so weak
They crumble when you shake a stick at them
Dried mud and sand
With no real substance
Still capable of blocking out the sun
The power we hand to that which deflects light
It's almost fantastic
I miss the filth and the dusty roads
And the warm rays sneaking through walls
Are the furthest thing from distant
The sky pierced through like your swordfish eyes
It was the perfect thing for puppet shows
Sometimes a bird flew past and
For one moment
It was very dark
Just like now...
The silence was a seamstress
Creating the fabric of future
Out of the threads I spun when
I couldn't find what I was looking for
On the hottest July day
The mud stuck to everything
My legs were buried and wet and it was always
Dripping down in between my fingers
I can smell it
Pungent and rich
Alive with creepy - crawly, dirty things, like
When you lie on your stomach and bury your face
Deep in the grasses
Mainline oxygen and a million other gens
It smells like the earth
Sometimes I look at your neck
Just below the ear
Long before the spiney part
My history is written there
And my heart softens into
The butter I made in pre school
With cream and a telpia jar
When I try and sleep
I can hear you laughing in front of the theatre
When I noticed 10,000 perfect things
Growing directly out of your head
I wanted to smoke about it
Call up the Anishinabe on my heart string phone lines
Bury my face in the mud of you
And sleep
I wanted to remember running my hands up and down
The dirt walls of Eraclea Minoa
And picking the tiny flecks of
My imagination out like lice
I wanted to go back to the moment
When I stood there, feathers and beak
Looking out at the water
There were no ships
I could smell you from across the sea
It was actually much stronger then....

 

I can feel you around my neck

the falling snow is a trillion finite shards of insulation glass

setting in motion natures supreme police state

If I were to run out into the city street, it would only be a moment

before I was covered in the blood of my own revelations  

there are candles on every table 

like fairies bound by spiders threads

floating in the purgatory of their tiny votive heavens

I want to blow them out of their misery

a man sitting across a universe of candlelight watches my silence

his mother waits for me to respond with perked ears

she's standing in a room just beyond the pacific, where

my sun is rising and hers is in a deep orange display of evening

I can't hear over the fluttering singe from burning wings

my fingertips are secretly searching for a safe place

like the celestial home of each other's print

a thin veil of skin separates me from god

one pearl equals my life

of all the grains of sand and bits of broken glass

you opened your mouth and let me inside

where I metamorphosis in the soft, safe flesh of your deep sea arms

I feel an angels chorus fill a tiny pond in my throat 

and a flood beyond the capacities of the deepest ocean 

tears through the water color images of my deserted history

I would never have even known how to pray for this...

I'd know your thighs
across seas
and decades from here

since you wrapped them around me
peppered me with baby kisses
and the hot heat of summer had it's way with us
 
I know the weight of your feathery limbs
like my own skin
loose with years
and freckled with anticipation

so don't worry

time is like a child
crying in the corner
because he didn't get his way

while we make love up against the back door
our pasts pounding from the other side
begging to be let in

I collect with great diligence the boxes things are packaged in 

and save cottage cheese containers

in the unlikely event that I run out of Tupperware

need to store something

and never know it's contents again

I own Lava soap

and keep things in coffee cans

that don't belong in coffee cans

like hardware, dog food

and jewelry

I can make an entire meal out of corn starch,

eggs and salt

I label things with masking tape and crayon

the sexiest car I've ever seen was a white, rusted out

1970's Ford with an old dog in the back

I can appreciate a nice pair of steel toes

I like radio shows with no music

I know several uses for sawdust,

and I've had frostbite that was sport related

I know the Hams beer jingle

my favorite place in the world

is the middle of no where

and no, I don't mean Cambridge, Minnesota

I like the smell of motor oil

but prefer synthetic for performance reasons

I don't have a television  

but

i have these great stilettos

black patent leather

with baby straps and tiny buttons on the sides

a man once told me he was going to marry me in those shoes

he had perfectly cut hairs

and asked me to feel the fabric of his shirt

between my fingers

'you see..' he said

'you see..'

and I did 

we left in separate cars

I don't get out much since I came to the city 

but I have often played the Nat King tune

I sing along with bare feet

and solitude counts its blessings when I shut the door

kick my shoes off and dream of better days

not the days before here

the days before now

in between the Silph and the shape of me

ever changing from overexposure to concrete

and

con men

and the constant battle of making peace

and piecing it all together

when I was a little girl my mother told me

if I married right, I could be a princess

then one day I realized that meant I couldn't ice fish...

I love September...
today the wind hit me
and my future pushed forth
as I tip-toed across the street in
plaid high heels
with brown bows on the tops
and a darker shade at the heel
I wasn't rushed to meet someone
or make supper
fall nights are empty
I rush home to nothing
and no one
I sit on the bathroom floor
eating skittles I find in the bottom of my purse
skittle, skittle, star burst, skittle
while the bathtub fills with frothy
sweet smelling samples
from the Macy's perfume counter
there's a girl there who looks like she walked
straight out of a magazine
sometimes I think I'd like to kiss her
but... bye bye free samples
hello full priced perfume
I'd rather close myself up in the bathroom
with Troi's forever thankful
and think about what September's back side
is going to feel like when I get that far
not like magazine girls lips
or Ame's arms
much more substantial
like what's left of the tree
constant and watchful inside
once the color of the leaves has been spent
the trunk and branches
stand stripped of beauty
solid and real
leaving their possibility
up to my imagination
I dream about root formations
while other women shop for shoes
this summer I bought a dusty pink motorcycle jacket
at the animal arc thrift store up the street
the woman behind the counter was withered
like the leaves in fall
not so much the sepia foliage of late
but the deep crimson that lines highway 61
inside my dream scape road trips
my mind races some nights
I lay in the water and listen to the voices of my life
and try to make sense of the unknown dialect
of my spiritual process
on a good night
the letters come together
form words that bring peace
and I find sleep
on a bad night
the letters come together
form words that bring peace
and I find sleep
my ability to reason
makes love with my physical exhaustion
and there is always an answer
waiting in the wings
to be uncovered and viewed by foreign eyes
and familial hands
running up and down the spine of my
darkest hour
this season of my life
resembles the infinite colors that lay before me
when I stand too close to the ledge at Maiden Rock
Poincare holds his breath
knowing my next move
could never be calculated inside the frenzy of a life
the season wraps its arms around me
mistakes itself for some other self
and we watch the seconds of the chronophage disappear
reinventing freedom
from the asphalt up

the final toast in Gods kitchen
a sacrament of blind trust
separated by names  social security bar codes  
breaking the chain of our conjugal history 
myself dispersed amongst the ruins
it eats us from the inside out
spread out across thousands of miles
along with so many others
we lead silent lives
solitary, quiet, simple 
we take to gardening and the arts
sometimes the wine
our solace from shunned memories
both pride and disbelief
nestled in between the two
the truth sleeps with one eye open
we dream of better days and
honest worlds
where we can break bread at the same table
eat and drink with our loved ones
have the windows open 
and not hush laughter 
my name is a port of ships
followed by a calling from the cosmos
my soul never crossed the waters of separation
and my heart will always belong to the tyrrhenian sea
my husband looks for me from the deck of his entire world
he looks to the sky not knowing I walk freely among a ocean of incredulity
I live in fear that he will never find me here

when I was a little girl
I thought my mother could shape shift
one minute
we would be walking through a forest
lady slippers and
lightning bugs
the next
sleeping on a basement floor
children on all sides
fighting over the same flowered sheet
my mother smelled of patchouli,
cheap alcohol and virginia slims that wouldn't wash off

she could paint
like translation from the gods
were in her fingertips
begging forgiveness
for the condition of the world
she could dream
like you wake up and
you're still sleeping
the room is a different color 
and angels tell you to go back to the other place 
she could dance
like the whore of babylon 
thought no one was watching
but
the symphony of the world
played for the movement of her limbs
broken and small    
she was the loveliest thing
any of us had ever seen
or ever really will...

today is damp
although completely devoid of rain
my thoughts are in epitaph
and with each action
I give penance for
life kept
and thus feel the
endless, dark, ocean - internal
complete with sunken ships
and little sea fishes
feathery tendrills
and vast nothing...

I'm in the garden
my hands deep in the dirt
and moist
I am committing war crimes
against dandelions
while simutaniously each seed I sow
is an act of my faith in miracles
I pray that I am not
just unearthing tiny mass graves
to mourn in fall
the sea welling up inside
churning small ripples into tidal waves
that tear through homes
wash away families
and release the nothing
with no regard for the integrity
with which I have planted

this small plot of land
an empty canvass in prospective
under aurora borealis
the ocean is a slave
to the impassible commands of the universe
and the greater good of gravity

I try and keep that in mind
as I sink my dreams
into a future
plagued with floods...