my divine

There is nothing that compares

To when we touch

No precedent

For the feeling of your soul

As it rises up to meet me

Every time our lips part

To kiss.

For when your lips touch me

We’re joined

Because we are connected.

The blood of the earth

Flows through us.

I can feel a thousand stars explode

And touch the face of god

Through you.

Through you I can know

I can finally feel

What it’s like to love and be loved.

What we’ve made here is something more than ourselves

We’ve connected to heaven through earth

We’ve been kissed by creation

By stardust, by time

As we partake in this ritual our ancestors know well.

The orgasmic shattering of that mystical door,

The partition between ourselves

And the divine

Joins us together

And unites us with what makes us all one.

It is so much more beautiful than I ever imagined...

The Shape of Me

 It's like a quiet disappointment. A frozen strand of hope. The silent crashing of one crystal vessel...shattered to a million pieces without making a sound. So my heart stands broken, frozen in time and space, still and quiet with no plans to move or grow or breathe. My heart wants nothing, it yearns no longer, it feels no pain, no sorrow, no grief, no agony; nor does it feel any joy, any awakening, any love, any adoration or any hope whatsoever. I am but a plastic life form set in motion by a loveless universe, here to complete my earthly tasks like some robot programmed by a maniacal creator. I will go about my days and nights and seek nothing, feel nothing, be nothing and hope for nothing. All I have is what IS. Nothing more is coming, nothing more is possible.

For all that I hoped for, all that I longed for, all that I believed was true is no longer. No amount of faith can make true what doesn't exist. I cannot wish into existence a love that isn't real, nor can I change him or his life or his decisions. I cannot look to this god for comfort for it is this god who has slapped me so hard, awakening me from the dream that I perpetuated in my blindness. It was not god that I saw, not god who guided me. For god is only some unfeeling, uncaring, distant prime mover who cares not for our trivial lives or desires nor for the stories we tell ourselves. All that I believed in, everything that gave me joy, it was all nothing more than my own thoughts and dreams.

I believe in nothing anymore. No god. No dream. No love. No hope. No joy. No pain. Belief is immaterial to my programming. The joy I felt with you was nothing more than a glitch in my brain mass. It wasn't any of the things I believed it to be, wasn't the universe telling us something nor was it god speaking through you to me; the earth wasn't really moving beneath me when you touched me. You and I didn't actually become one when we made love. My heart didn't actually overflow with love when I thought of you. My soul never cried out for you nor did it really recognize you at first glance; it was nothing more than my misguided misinterpretation of neuronal interaction.

These glitches in my mind have done nothing to help me, done nothing to make me happier. Perhaps they provided a period of time, the time I spent with you, that I thought or believed that I was happy. I believed I was joyful and that God was smiling on me.
I was wrong.

It's better I recognize the reality of actual living, that we don't get to create our own happiness nor do we have choices about our own lives. We think we do, but in the end we really don't; we're trapped adhering to our pre-written protocol. Those moments of sheer joy and utter bliss that I spent in your arms are not real life; real life does not ever feel so good. Real life is THIS, is what I am now, is life minus the feeling, minus the ups and downs and the trap of belief and the lies of faith. Love is an obligation not a feeling; feeling is extraneous, is useless, is overrated, is a waste of time. The love I have felt for you must have been an illusion, part of the neuronal overload, a sad glitch in an overworked system. Any lingering love, those moments of intense feeling that grip my heart and produce a physical feeling of suffocation in my chest -- those feelings are the remnants of my recovering mind and heart as they bounce back from the depths to which they sunk during that time that I was so filled with feelings. Too much feeling will ruin my life.

In order to protect myself from this danger in the future, I will stand guard against feelings whenever they threaten to creep into my life again. In fact, it is better that I remain stolid, unfeeling and cold. I will accomplish more, I will feel less and will generally be more productive. I seek nothing and no one to warm me, nothing to move me to feel. Much better that I should march forward and never, ever feel that way again lest I lose my mind for good. My heart is not needed; it can exist locked away. My mind is something I need but when engaged with my heart, it becomes useless therefore it is much better that the heart will no longer entice, no longer tempt, no longer whisper dangerous words of longing and desire to my mind. I've broken, frozen and packed away the shards of my heart he left behind, no longer to be brought back out. Only now is my mind safe to proceed without the temptation of the heart. With it, my heart takes all its feelings, all the love, all the pain, all the hope and faith....and good riddance. Without it, my mind can function, can focus, can move on without you.

But woe to the accident of fate that might awaken my sleeping heart....for only YOU exist inside. If my heart is ever to feel you again, that awakening will pour forth such passion the likes of which will overwhelm my senses and destroy my equilibrium. To liberate my love for you from its dark sleep would take a miracle; it could only be done by you and for you.
Without you to share it, it would become nothing more than the instrument of my own death.

Hope Is a Gaping Hole

There is a gaping hole, still; a void that was never here before. In this fully wonderful life that I lead, I opened up and made room for you because I wanted to, because love always has more room to share. But the withdrawal was so intense and so devastating, torn away from me so harshly, that love flaps like a deflated balloon. That space created just for you still there, and will probably always be there for you in some way, but it feels like an empty home that's been vandalized.

Rather than trying to scoop meaningless flotsam into the void, I'm just sitting here holding this "thing" - this empty sphere, just sitting with it and feeling its emptiness. What other choice do I have?

I'm getting on with life because I have to, because I have other things, other people that I love, who love me, who depend on me and ignoring all of it isn't a choice. Or at least isn't a choice I would make. But I wonder about you every single day. I think of you. I dream of you. And I know I'll never see you again. Never hold you. Never feel you breathing against me. Never feel your hands or hear you whisper to me. Never see your smile. Never hear your thoughts. But I still hold your soul. Pieces of you stay with me, will be with me forever. Nothing can change that.

frozen

frozen in time
a place i never want to leave
but know i must

wondering of the cruelest
actions of man
the choices of god
lead us where we've been

when each step
seems to take us farther
from where we want to go

what is the plan?
what is the point?
where is the reason?

you ask me to trust
you ask me to let go
how can god have a plan?
what happens to our will?

i can't believe
a loving god
plans for so much pain
that is not the god i believe in

i can only surrender so much to you
before i give up
when you leave me so little to believe in
o great and mighty god

i have emptied my heart and soul for you
and come up empty handed
sorrowful
what then do you want from me?
what more can i give?

everything in me is frozen

empty
barren
don't ask for anything
i have nothing to give
not now

i wait for the thaw
view the destruction
and at last see the smallest buds
of new life...
maybe then, god
maybe then i will understand

Companion to Our Demons

And I fear

I have nothing to give

I have so much to lose

Here in this lonely place

Tangled up in our embrace

There's nothing I'd like better

Than to fall....

I've felt for so long that I have nothing at all to give. For so long I've been an empty shell, a shadow of the me I used to be. Now I have grown into the fullness of the woman that I've always been inside. It's taken time. It's been slow. 

But now that I have so much to give, you quiver at my touch. The sound of love falls like clashing cymbals down a set of metal steps, blood-curdling and inducing a fight or flight reaction. These are the demons you live with, the demons I share. We all walk hand in hand with the deepest beast inside of us, though at times we choose to bury it. Bringing it to the surface to coexist with everything that we are is the only way to take the sting out of its bite. Exposing it to the light of our lives and our love boils it down to nothing more than a sticky sap, something inconvenient but bearable. 

I've cried like you, I've died a thousand deaths like you, though our demons may be different. I've hidden myself away, unnoticed by time, unnoticed by love. Too afraid to feel the pain, even the most wonderful feelings get buried in the rush to avoid what is so unpleasant. The larger part of you is trembling at the touch of love, terrified by the pinprick of its searing heat. Even the smallest show of love throws up your walls, the pain too much to bear, even to endure the beauty of love. When you've lost too much, this is the response. It becomes a twisted knot to untangle the pleasure from the pain, so the pleasure dies with it. But deep inside the soul there still lurks an innocent; pure and beautiful and bright, it is your essence waiting to be rediscovered, uncovered, brought to the surface, no matter the consequence.

Wind and time

Rapes the flower

Trembling on the vine

Nothing yields to shelter it

Without taking a leap of faith, without the risk of losing, there is no life. Trees don't cease to grow because they fear losing their leaves; crocuses don't stop forcing their way through the late winter snow because they fear the cold; caterpillars don't decide not to become butterflies because they fear turning to liquid inside their chrysalis. Love is in our nature and we cannot stop it, no matter how our ego tries to protect us from whatever baggage we have attached to love over time. Keeping this in mind, feel love in your life and focus on any other feelings that surface along with it. If love produces anxiety, ask it why...if it produces anger, trace it back and find what happened...if love causes fear, consider your life and your history. The things that have gone wrong in the past when we've loved and been loved become attached to our expression of love no matter how outlandish or inappropriate they may be. It's called conditioning. 

We then avoid love because we avoid the association of what we've learned accompanies love, even when we're wrong. The avoidance is our mind's way of protecting us. But we are so much more than our fragile egos say we are. Our hearts and souls speak so much louder than our minds. Our inner life force comes from those places, sometimes so quiet it is softer than a whisper; sometimes we have to strain to hear its voice. It's hard to do over the constant chatter of our hyperactive brains, but it is possible. When we can silence that chatter or at least hear past it, we can feel the presence of our essence and from there we will feel the pure exhilaration of love without the baggage, without the fear and the pain. 

These beasts will always be with us. Learn to love your demons because they are your constant companion. But then tell them to take the night off. You and love are going to spend some time alone. 

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~ Bertrand Russell  

I am so ready to fall....

Beatific Vision

You've opened my eyes

to a world inside you

a world I never knew existed

someplace beyond this earthly realm

that I never dared to dream about

You bring together all of the hope

all of the love

all of the ideals

that I have ever witnessed

and exalted them beyond my wildest dreams.

You are the mirror

through which I can see God.

For what more is the search for love

in this earthly life

than to have some tangible reminder

that we are loved by God?

Silent but Deadly

The downfall of almost every man is his inability to communicate clearly how he feels with the women in his life. This has been my experience in so many of the relationships I've had. I continue to wish that we could all feel free to simply express how we truly feel without fear. There is no worse feeling than getting into a relationship up to your eyeballs with someone, only to have them backpedal their way out because they misspoke early on. You know what, It's OKAY to say you don't like me anymore. Let me move on and find someone else! I'd so much rather someone say that to me than to string me along out of fear of speaking the truth.

The pinnacle of this callousness is to have someone profess to LOVE you but then start to worm away from you - not for lack of love, they say - but because of random, nonsensical reasons that don't add up, like being suddenly busy all the time. Oh my GOD! Just SAY IT! Whatever it is. It could be that "I said I loved you but I was really just excited by the sex," or perhaps, "This is much more complicated than I wanted it to be." You get the idea. Making stuff up is no way to end a relationship. I'd so much rather someone be honest with me about how they feel. But that is another downfall of man, that the mere SPEAKING of a feeling OUT LOUD is tantamount to emasculation.

"Oh,no! I said 'I love you.' Now what if she expects something from me?"

OR

"I told her she makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Now I feel stupid."

Part of being in a relationship with someone is sharing your vulnerability with another person. If you can't make yourself vulnerable, there is no relationship. When women sit and cry around a pint of ice cream, we are being vulnerable with each other and it creates a bond that lasts forever. Men could take a lesson from this.

Vulnerability = intimacy.

TRUTH.

Then there is the perception that most women are just one nervous breakdown away from boiling your bunny. I'm sick of men using that as a defense. How does an otherwise competent, intelligent woman suddenly morph into a bunny-boiler? Because of a man who toyed with her emotions, maybe even used the "L" word, made her feel adored and special, and then suddenly started to withdraw to the point that he's almost invisible. WHAT HAPPENED? For the love of all that is holy, own up to your feelings! I'd much rather you tell me that you just aren't feeling it anymore, or that things are moving too fast and you want to slow down, or that you feel overwhelmed. I'm not a mind reader; you have to tell me what's going on inside that head. Let's talk about it! It's like magic, I know. We can actually TALK with one another about our concerns and VOILA! A solution might magically appear!

You see, women know this already, we know that if you'd just spare us your shrinking and worming away and withdrawing and generally acting like a scared little girl, and instead used your BIG BOY WORDS - even when it's to convey something unpleasant - that, ultimately things turn out better in the end. Honesty can hurt sometimes, but generally speaking (and exempting true psychos) no one is going to boil a bunny when they feel they've been treated with honesty and respect. But when you try to worm out of the difficult conversations, then bunnies may sometimes be boiled.

The thing is, women are very good at reading non-verbal communication, or reading between the lines of your "heartfelt" text message or email where you supposedly expressed your deepest emotions. We can tell when something just doesn't add up. That's when we start to get paranoid and pissed off. We know something isn't right; your body language tells us something isn’t right. And nothing is sitting right with us.

This is when we throw our hands up in frustration and say, “JUST SPIT IT OUT!"

Stop being afraid to say how you feel. Don't insult our intelligence or placate us with sweet talk. If you're done with the relationship, just say so! Trying to dress dog shit with frosting and sprinkles doesn't mean it's not dog shit; it just means something is really wrong with you that you'd even do that!

And EW you touched DOG SHIT!

I'm exhausted with trying to get men to communicate and I'm tired of the bullshit "men are from mars" blah blah blah. Enough with the euphemisms; grow a pair of cajones and SAY HOW YOU FEEL! It's not rocket science. Even a preschooler knows how he feels, it's just as he's socialized that he learns to beat that impulse out of himself until he's left simply drooling on himself out of utter confusion as to what to do and how to talk to a woman.

It's not the things you say, it's the things you DON'T that cause us the most pain usually. It's your reluctance to share that hurts so much. In the end, it's your silence that ends up being the death knell to what was once a promising relationship.

Movement of Soul

The parts of you that you keep hidden
that you think no one else can see
I can feel them resonating deeply
Your power is not lost on me

Singularity

There are really and truly just way too many people in the world. I’m not making a value judgment in saying that but rather making a comment about the limits of one lifetime to truly discover the nature of humanity. How is it possible that we say we know what we like in another person when we could never meet most of the inhabitants of the world?


I declare I have met almost half of the inhabitants of the world. Oh alright, maybe just a fourth of them. Or at least a good number of the males clustered around the Washington DC area over the last two years or so; that’s still a lot of people. I long ago stopped keeping track of those kinds of numbers and, in terms of dating I have no earthly idea how many men I’ve met and rejected right out of hand, but I dare say it’s about three times as many as the number who made it to a second date – and probably ten to twenty times as many as those who made it to something more intimate.

Put that against the number of men who didn’t even pass first muster based on whatever medieval precision instrument it is that I use to gauge such things as suitability for dating. That adds up to a lot of people who didn’t feel “right” to me for whatever reason.

Everyone goes through a similar vetting process; I’m not claiming to be unique. What I am pointing out, however, is how truly special it is when you DO meet someone who makes you feel wonderful. Of all the people there are out there and of all those who might be attracted to you in some way, narrowed down to those you like and find attractive, then further narrowed to that person who sounds all the alarms in your body alerting you to the fact that someone special has entered the area. Narrow it down AGAIN if you make that person also feel the same way and it becomes clear that love is a total crap shoot. When we are lucky enough to find it, why do so many of us treat love so badly? What has love ever done to us? It’s not love’s fault that our brains are so limited that we can’t untangle the difference between pure love and disappointment, fear or jealousy. Yet we blame love.

Our human limitations are not love’s fault. Rather than blame love, we should be bowing down and thanking love every time someone loves us, every time we share a special bond with someone.

We would never mistreat the other rare things in life. Think of a diamond. It’s given special treatment, high value, a place of honor, a delicate yet strong space for storage; it’s highly prized and gently handled. Because the process of finding a diamond is so intense, when we are actually privileged enough to have one, we treat it specially and with great care. Why is this not true of love?

Love is rare and beautiful. It is a gift of the highest order. Love squandered is a tragedy of divine proportions.

Psalm

so long have i waited


watched

and weathered

storms and terror

night and vicious day

day and and the torture of night

all without you.





i've waited lifetimes

watched for eons

as stars formed above

rose

shined

brought forth life

and then died

in a penetrating explosion

reaching through time and space

all the while i've waited

for you.



the earth spins

mountains collapse

fires, floods, earthquakes

ravage the pristine earth

robbing us of our treasures

of each other.

families torn apart by disaster

either nature or war

the folly of man

how many have been born and died

how many lifetimes have passed before our eyes

since i've seen you?

since i've felt you?

since i've been one with you?

let me become one with you.



bring to me the torture in your soul

the lifetimes you've endured while you've waited

searching

for relief from this life

from the terrorists of nighttime

empty it all at the entrance to my chamber

dive into me

and emerge baptized

renewed.



see in me the gods and goddesses

the power of soul

the movement of the divine

that i see in you

feel it in my every breath

let every touch bring life

let every sigh erase death

let every kiss empower

embolden

emblazen

encircle

then arise and greet the new you

imbued and injected with your own power

unleashed.



as you fill

so am i filled

as you feed

so am i fed

as you live

so am i alive



when you arrive

the storms shall clear

sins are pardoned

death no longer contains us

but liberates us

through you, through me

we find that life,

that love,

that the overwhelming power of the pounding penetration

permeates to the primordial plane

the perspicacity of our union...

and we are forever changed.



no longer do i wait.

i am.

HURT

I wear this crown of thorns

Upon my liar's chair

Full of broken thoughts

I cannot repair

Beneath the stains of time

The feelings disappear

You are someone else

I am still right here

What have I become

My sweetest friend

Everyone I know goes away

In the end

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt
********************************
I didn't expect it to hurt quite so much, this goodbye. Nobody likes goodbyes anyway, but we can anticipate them sometimes and cushion the blow by being ready. Or at least we think we can. I tried to will myself, to steel myself against the pain I knew would come, thinking that might take the sting away. I should know better after all these years that it doesn't work that way. The pain still comes, and oftentimes in different ways than you anticipated. Sometimes it comes in waves, others it stabs and stings. The mind conjures up moments and images that were once "forgotten," now so vivid and omnipresent. How did it end up this way? Where did things come unglued?

I may never know.

No Place for the Timid

---- On the base at Ft Bliss just today he sat down to the flask
and his fist ain't been sober since maybe October of last year.
Given time you can tell he's been down for awhile
But my GOD he's so beautiful
When he smiles, I just want to hold him -----



"There has to be light at the end of this tunnel!!!!!"
we shout.
But we're just as far in as we'll ever be out....





Memorial Day is coming soon.

I remember.

I remember watching you leave
the day the war became personal
I remember the way my blood froze
and the world felt like it was spinning out of control
when I realized I might never see you again
or if I did
you'd be in pieces.

I remember hearing the news.
I remember the chill in my spine
The way my body clenched
I remember I stopped breathing
when I saw you for the first time without your leg.

Remembering...
ALL OF YOU

ALL OF YOU who have passed this way

Who have traveled this road
Who have bled for me, for all of us
Your blood, your sweat, your tears,
Your hearts and souls,
Pouring all of yourselves into the task at hand
Regardless of its hazards

Some of you losing your lives

Surrounded by sand and shrapnel

Leaving your blood smeared across a strange land
Surrounded by your brothers
All so far from where you belong.
Too far from home.

For those of you whom the war followed home
For whom it lives in your very soul
For those of you that combat revisits
Every time you close your eyes
It is then you can see your friends
Your brothers
Taken from this life too soon.
It is they who haunt you
to your very core.

For my friends

near or far

alive or dead

wounded

surviving
getting by
For all of you who've done it
What more do I have that I can offer you
Besides my words, my love and my eternal gratitude?
We will never forget what you've done here.

I promise you I will

NEVER FORGET.

~eileen~

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

~Theodore Roosevelt, Sorbonne, Paris - April 23, 1910~

Single Mom Dreaming

I just thought I'd note...

Being a single parent SUCKS!

Most days I'm fine. Most days I just live my life. But then something happens and I realize how hard this is to do alone. My ex and I might TRY to work together to parent our kids, but really it's two separate efforts.

There are days I just want someone to turn to, someone to console me when I'm sad or to comfort me when I'm exhausted. There are days when it is just too much, when I've done all I can do and there is still so much left undone and I'm the only Superhero within shouting distance who can come to the rescue. There really is no one else to take up the slack; I'm the only responsible adult here.

Generally, it's okay. I don't mind parenting alone. In fact, I'm used to it. My ex was gone so much when we were married that I hardly even noticed when we separated. The only thing that made his absence truly stand out was that our fights were louder. Oh, and I had less furniture.

So honestly, I can do these things alone. But at the end of a hard day when I collapse into bed tired and despondent and worried as hell that my kids are going to grow up miserable and misguided because of all we've done to them -- those are the days when I wish I had someone in my corner. I wish there was someone who would put ME first, or at least near the top of the list. I wish there was someone who cared when I was feeling overwhelmed. I wish there was someone who didn't always WANT something from me but who was content just to be there for me. In no way do I want to rush this experience of "relationship" again; that has been an unmitigated disaster! The longing I have is probably more ethereal and less real. It's a dream that has no resolution or satisfaction.

Still, I continue to dream....