Moving On

A furball's sleeping on my bed
Sleeping like a log.
My pillows used to smell like you
now they just smell like dog.

I chucked your toothbrush in the trash
I finally threw it out.
It took a month to have the nerve
But then I fished it out.

Your dirty cigarette butts
Are piled where you threw them.
The dog's been checking out the pile
A now begun to chew them.

Your soap's still in the shower
Your towel is on the hook
The sheets we used, still on the bed
Can barely stand to look.

I'm throwing out the bar of soap
I'm cleaning up my lawn.
When I finally throw that toothbrush out
I'll know that I've moved on.

hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers.....emily dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Love is Reckless - Sufi Poem

Love is reckless; not reason.

Reason seeks a profit.

Love comes on strong, consuming herself unabashed.

Yet in the midst of suffering love proceeds

like a millstone, hard surfaced and straight forward.

Having died to self interest, she risks everything

and asks for nothing.

Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;

without cause give it back again.

Right-Brained Lover

Hand in hand we walked, dampness clinging to us as we made our way across the path and around the side of the lake. The sting and smell of summer still lingered in the air, a heavy humidity clung to our skin. His legs were much longer than mine and I expected his strides to reach far in front of me, his arms dragging me behind him like a wagon. But he walked slowly along with me, both of us gazing in amazement at the other, a surprise to find that we were real and we were together. It started as just a walk, a wandering through the woods on a summer day. As we climbed farther up the path, the crowds that populated the areas around the lake thinned out and soon we noticed that we were alone.

Suddenly he broke from my hand, a quick turn to the side, and dashed between the trees ducking and leaping to avoid smacking his head. I turned and ran behind him, wondering what kind of chase he was wanting to play and hoping something fun ensued if I caught him.

In a moment he stopped and turned toward me. He was standing in a clearing inside the thick of the woods, an area clear to us but totally hidden to the rest of the world. The perimeter was thick with trees, shrubs and fallen logs. Nothing stirred. Not a soul was near. In an instant his hands were on my face, fingers were in my hair. On his lips was my name and I became lost in the warm, wet sensation of his kisses.

There was nothing that could have prepared me for this moment, nothing that warned me of the passion to come. There was no way for me to know that he would lead me out of the world of my mundane existence and give me something to smile for, a moment in time that existed only for him and only for us.

I can still feel the roots beneath the ground pressing into my spine, the weight of his body and the smell of him; the feel and the taste of sweat comingling with the earth and with our bodies. What started as a walk became a passage, from one part of life into the next. Baptized in earth, we returned from whence we came, hand in hand just the way we started.

Now that the time is over and the moment has passed, I find myself searching my memory for the details of that time and they are hard to grasp. Memories spin through my mind in strands almost too wispy to pull in and hold and I wonder if it really happened at all. Perhaps it's just another trick my mind has played to keep me from sinking into this abyss of misery that otherwise surrounds me.

Wasteland

Mine is a face with no features
Every line that recorded every smile is gone
Every time that I thought of you my eyes used to close
To imagine the feel of you being so close
Now that you're gone my eyes cannot see
Everything in front of me is nothing at all
The sound of your voice was music to my ears
When the music died the world fell silent to me
No longer will I look for you or hear your voice
No longer will I smile
Now I'm only going to feel the space
Emptiness where before there was feeling
I remember the feel of
your hands in my hair
I remember the feel
The heat of your presence
No longer will I taste your love
I'm not this strong
I'm a featureless wasteland

Falling Inward

The phone. Ringing and ringing, the sound was more insistent than usual, my mother's "Hello" stunted and pinched. I looked on vaguely aware of a world about to change.

My mom. She broke into near hysteria as soon as the phone hit the cradle. I wanted to run, fast, to get away from that scene; I hated seeing her cry, but more than that, I was preoccupied by figuring out what to wear to my Junior Prom. I didn't want her hysteria to overshadow my happiness.

Through sobs and gasps, I was able to gather that my father had had some sort of accident with his car. She said the word "pills" and "gin" a few times and then I heard the word "Jail." I waited to hear what the impact on me would be. If there was a problem, hopefully she could go take care of it.

The car. I sat in the driver's seat angrily staring out the windshield. Mom stood at the door waving at my urgently to start the car and get moving. Somehow I had been drafted into this family drama in spite of my resistance. My mother had quivered in fear, her sobs coming hard and fast and I felt pity and disgust in equal measures. She explained that my father had hit someone with his car after drinking too much and taking some sort of tranquilizer pills. No one had been hurt, fortunately, but the police came and found my father slumped over at the wheel. He was revived by an EMT crew and sent off to the local precinct cell to dry out overnight. Now here I was in the car left with the task to pick up my father's belongings from jail and to gather his things from his car, which was behind the police station.

I finally shoved the car into reverse and peeled out of the driveway in a showy display of anger. I can only wonder what my mother thought as she watched me drive away. I was enraged at this latest insult by my father to bring shame to our family, the latest in a long string of drunken and outrageous behavoir that made our suburban-family life appear too torrid for me to tolerate.

Jail.

"I cannot believe this." I thought, as I pulled into the police station and got out of the car. Suddenly, the reality of what was happening poured down on me and I broke into a cold sweat. Shaking, I reached the door and walked inside. I felt conspicuous, like a criminal myself. I didn't even need to explain who I was when I arrived.

"Mr. Joe?" the duty cop nodded to me. "I'll get his things."

He was off without even waiting for an answer. What if I was just a regular high school girl wanting to sell ads for the lacrosse team? How did he know that was my dad? I went cold with embarrassment.

As the cop walked back through the double doors with the plastic tie-top bag, I could hear yelling and a horrible inhuman moaning coming from the next room. The cop and I looked at each other pretending not to notice; I was trying hard not to contemplate the fact that the noise was my father.

The bag. Inside the bag was my father's belt (so he couldn't hang himself, according to my morose little sister), his wallet, his keys and his handkerchief. I rolled the bag tightly into my fists and walked around back to his car. The bag clung to my sweaty palms and I almost couldn't unclench it to remove the keys, which I forgot were inside. I didn't want to reach inside the bag. I felt like an invader, taking my father's freedom from him, even though upon later reflection, I realize that was something he did to himself. But at the time, that bag and its contents WERE my father, all that remained of him at the moment, frozen in time, when he surrendered and passed on the responsibility for his freedom to his eldest daughter.

Lunging at Love

I must seek out the things that bring me joy. Trust the universe to bring me to those places and then EMBRACE them with all that is in me; squeeze every drop, every experience out of life; shrinking no more into apprehension.

How dare you not LUNGE for any shred of happiness!

Vee for Venice

Posted: Feb 20, 08 7:22am

Just remembering the assault brings a flush to my cheek and a flame to my thighs. My heart pounds at the memory, embarrassing, passionate and confusing.

We were in Venice, Vee and I, girlfriends on a mission to find culture and wine among the alleys and canals of the old city. The wine we came by easily. The culture was a bit harder, but of course it depends on your definition. Instead of touring the city with a guide and a nod to history, we meandered through the dirty cobblestoned alleyways, ducking into one shop after another, watching people and places and things.

The Florentine paper shop had a smell of must and dust, and the old man there seemed to have apparated out of the books themselves. The glass shops displayed horrific gaudy glass animals and breathtaking vases and jewelry all on one shelf. We pushed past the tourist clutter around the Rialto Bridge. We were starting to get hungry. As we burst through into another tight alley with a small bridge, several men stood in the doorways beckoning us into their restaurants.

I spotted Him in the doorway and immediately veered in that direction. Vee grabbed my elbow.

"What are you doing?" she asked, head tilted knowingly.

"How about that restaurant?” I replied, all innocence.

She sighed and gave in. We were hungry and she knew I had a weakness for Italian men. After all, I had married one.

Entering the restaurant, we accepted His hospitality with smiles and exuberance, and even Vee, in spite of her protests, couldn't deny that he was very, very charming.

"Sometimes I just enjoy the company of fine men." I stated for the record.

Vee nodded enthusiastically and we continued to agree about the charms of Italian men over a bottle of Chianti, which we were well on our way to finishing before He returned to take our food order. He was extremely polite, well-dressed, and well-spoken in both English and Italian, which I spoke fluently with Him. There was a spark, some chemistry passing between us, something innocent that I brushed aside while feeling pleasantly enchanted and a little buzzed from the wine.

Some fragrant food arrived. What it was I cannot tell you, so far into bottle number two were we. But Vee and I both agreed that it was lovely and smelled like rosemary.

He materialized beside me with a small tray. His fingers touched my arm and immediately drew my attention upward to his blue eyes. The blue-eyed Italian? I gasped, unaware that he was holding out a bottle of Limoncello and a glass for me to take.

"G-g-grazie." I stammered, somewhat embarrassed and flame-red by such an obvious appeal to his eyes. He set the other glass down and walked away with a backward glance at me. Vee chuckled. "You better watch yourself, girl. Remember, you're married," and she winked, laughing. We giggled a little at this innocent game going on between me and He, remarking about the romance of Venice and draining two shots each of the Limoncello.

When I stood to go to the rest room, things were a little wobbly, but not so much that I couldn't walk in a dignified manner. While in the bathroom, I started to wonder if He had intentionally delivered all of that alcohol, most of which we hadn't ordered. I was totaling up the bill in my head, which was quickly surpassing 100 Euros. "Oh shit." I muttered to myself, realizing the possibility that we were getting taken.

When I emerged from the ladies, He was standing in the dark hallway which separated the bathrooms from the rest of the well-lit restaurant where Vee was sitting. His hands were on his hips and He was staring me down, blocking my way. I smiled politely. "Scuzi." I mumbled, trying to get past.

In a flash, His hands were around me, seizing my long hair, pulling and entwining it through his fingers. His other hand was pushing the small of my back into Him, pushing me hard. He was a strong man and he hit me with such force that I didn't have time to react. Suddenly we were kissing, something I had no intention of doing. The kissing was so passionate and so unexpected that I could do nothing but kiss him back. It was a violent act, so sudden and hard, that I was pushed into a row of sinks behind me. He pushed on my mouth again and again, so that I could feel almost all of his teeth; then I cried out in pain. He had bitten my lip, hard!

The bite took me so much by surprise that my reaction sent the whole tense bundle off balance and we both tumbled over a sink, hitting the swinging door to the bathroom, my head tearing on the hinge. When he saw the blood, he suddenly transformed back into the charming gentleman in the doorway.

"Oh, Senora!" he declared, as if I had breached some sort of 'attack etiquette' by falling over. He helped me up, brushed himself off and disappeared into the restaurant.

In the mirror, I found myself a ragged, tangled, bleeding mess. I was still shaking from what had happened, somewhat aroused, and cursing myself for being so vain and stupid.

When I finally emerged into the restaurant, Vee had a look that told me things were even worse than I realized. The bill was laying on the table and her face was pinched.

"The bill is over 200 Euro" she whispered between clenched teeth, "and what the hell happened to you?!" she continued, her gaze shifting to my dishevelment.

I related the incident to her calmly and very quietly. She considered me for a moment, then said loudly, "Go wait by the door."

I did not dare argue. Obediently, and with tail between legs, I shuffled to the door.

Then, in a move that was so bold I will never forget it, she rose and walked over to the bar where he stood. She handed him 50 Euro cash and said, "This is for the food. As for the rest of the bill, you already took your share from my friend."

Once outside in the alley, we saw him standing behind the bar, the cash still in his hands, mouth agape, yet resigned. He never argued, he never came after us.

A few streets away I bought new clothes, changed in the bathroom and threw my blood-stained ones in the trash while tears formed in the corners of my eyes. My head throbbed, my lip was swollen, my heart was still pounding, and I was still aroused. And OH! The embarrassment! My reflection in the mirror was a confused mess, a reflection of life that showed me nothing was innocent anymore.

From http://www.tbd.com/content/post/75079#comment-75804