Plunge

Plunge…

into Forbidden Lake
warm waters massage aching feet
pushing pain out through pores
orgasmic dispelling of anger
defecation floats to waves above
resurrected desires sink
into ripples of light

Funeral for a Friend

Funeral for a Friend

They cut away at her
attempting to starve the demon
possessing her bones
They force her to run
using all remaining strength
to a chapel door
An alter candle burns out
the ascending medicated confusion
wafts and dissipates as
the door closes
Where was I?
Puking in the ditch
back on Zion Road

Diligence can’t prevent
the birth of guilt at death
Intercourse - an awkward exchange
of secret emotions in this pew
I don’t belong here
They judge me unfit
Disfellowship me

Gone But Not Forgotten

I took these photos back in February on my last trip to Galveston. I've been meaning to post them for sometime now, but have been very distracted lately.


This was taken at the east end of the island where the bird sanctuary used to be. Somebody named Chris spray painted the words "gone but not forgotten" on the steps. The clean up process after Hurricane Ike is going to take a while, but the birds are making do. There are more photos of birds on my other blog Silk Creek Portal.


This is where my favorite restaurant used to be. I'd park at the east end of the island, and walk about 2 or 3 miles, eat lunch, and then walk back.





I was so happy to see that there were still so many birds here.

Flying Blind

Missing in action, marked
by defective compass -
absent medications
dissolve his directions.

Magnetic arrow points
to twisted perceptions
Blindly navigating,
hurricane confusion,
he's high on delusion,
thinks his conscience intact.

Absence of his conscience
invincibility,
freedom - insanity.
Medications reveal
limit of directions,
compass calibrations,
labored navigation,

altering the compass
consciously


Invincible


Chemical Abandon

Special thanks to Ashok Karra and Sharon Warden for all their help with the poem!

Avatar Projections

Avatar Projections

Is there anybody out there?
Can you feel my cyber quivers -
fidgeting mouse uncertainty?
Hear my mp3 groans -
cracking backspace key?
Smell my electronic friction -
running fetid program RAM fumes?
See my pixelated facial expressions -
stuttering keyboard skittish smirks?
Am I real or virtual?

To be in the present is
to be alone
Winter feet blue
Hard drive hums speechless for days
Candle scents lack of hygiene
Week old pajamas can’t remember a smile
What do you see when you look at me?


This poem was inspired by an article I read the other day in a Psychotherapy Networker magazine called "Screenworld" by Michael Ventura.

Rants and Vents

laying in a bed of piss

cradle of birth
dried up
prolapsed -
once nurtured
topiary progeny
now lays in a
bed of piss

fruited heirs
drop buds of blame
divesting their guilt
“She did this to herself”
angry at her for
being angry at them


Cured

how many times
will you be cured?!
do you really think
I’m that stupid?
how many excuses
repeated time and again?
do you really think
I’ll come running?

you’re so much holier than me
God has chosen you
above all the sick and dying
healed, yet
you can not control the voices

you can not keep a job
you alienate those who care
do you really think
I’d believe you’ve been blessed?!


I Can Choose Not To Listen

“Thank you Jesus, for healing me”
He cries out
Wanting more pain meds
Refuses to take his psychotic meds
Doesn’t care how the hospital bill gets paid

“Just be strong and take care of things”
Clueless fatherly advice
Running thousands of miles away, so
He won’t see the mess he’s left
Thinks he can buy respect

Two generations of
Self righteous rhetoric
Spat out
Condescending benevolence for
Their own benefit

At my expense

Illustration Friday: Contained

The Caretaker

What use are you to us
When you make yourself sick
Wallowing in self pity
Won’t listen to our advice?

Because we’ve spent our money,
You have no excuse
You owe us an explanation
Nothing’s free

You are not living up to our expectations
We have given you what we deemed necessary
You have been judged to be in arrears

Now you need to return to
Your previous role!

BluerPrintReview Issue #19

The new issue of BluePrintReview is out, and my article The Season's Solace is included in it! Here's a note from the editor:

"the new issue of blueprintreview is online!
#19: beyond the silence

silence:
the absence of sound. refusal or failure to speak out. a period of time without speech or noise.

and beyond the silence?

unified fields . and voids. a terrible beauty. and a claustrophobic little boy. flowers. and a meeting with Oba-chan. the shape of grief. and the way it should be. the season's solace. and rain, rain...



yes, this one is a vast issue, both in theme and in size. it also marks a new level: again, there was a new peek of submissions. plus, blueprintreview was listed as one of the 100 favorite online journals by the Women's Poetry Listserv. parallel to that, i received my first hate-mail. (karmic balance, i guess).

here the shortcut beyond the silence: blueprintreview #19

and here the quick guide to the issue:
to start the silence, erase all the sacred texts.
to end it, remember the things you know by heart.

thanks so much for adding your tune to this issue ~
have a beautiful, inspired and magic year 2009 ~
doro"

Hippy Geometry

Hospice Engineering

Step into quadrilaterals
Stand and pivot for transfer
Train track keys of a player piano
Strike chords with apathy
Reverberate on rails of life and death
Geometric notes
Measured begrudgingly
Side by side into the next depot
Dirge of a run-away-train whistle

Step onto meshed polygons jumbled
Indifferent symmetry spirals within
Lounge car player piano
I’ve become an inconvenience
No scheduled destination
Black and white parallelograms
Depress and release
Clack-clack tracks below

Stand and pivot or
Remain confined to this berth
Parallel rails don’t reconcile



Linda Perhacs' Parallelograms
Paul called this "Hippy Geometry". LOL, I love it! Thanks for sending it to me, Paul.

Dream of the Gifted

Dream of the Gifted

long hair thick with power
a genetic gift
voice written with
celestial notes
underscored with chords of callow haughtiness

small stature belies her strength
delicate child climbs
ancestral monument
ancient stage carved with her heritage
searching through faces of history for
the source of mystery and power

suspended center stage
long sharp spear
once grasped, androgynous dancer
appears, amusing and entertaining until
self-indulgent curiosity pierces its human neck
rabbit face distraught
turns ominously toward her
“What have you done, child?”

daylight obscured
nature’s balance blackened
dance ends in death
severing lyrics from melody
darkened stage
keeps performing on its own
haunted, materializing
over abundance of food for her family

a score of negligent indulgence
is written
for her repertoire


I submitted the first draft of this poem to The Critique.
Dallas, an editor, offered many helpful suggestions that you can read if you follow the first link. Below is the first draft. Let me know what you think.

Gifted

youthful hair thick with power
and a voice written
with celestial notes
underscored with chords of callow
haughtiness
her tiny frame climbs
an ancestral monument
an ancient stage carved with her heritage
searching through faces of history
for the source of mystery and power

suspended center stage
a long sharp spear
once grasped, the androgynous dancer
appears… amusing and entertaining
until self-indulgent curiosity
pierces it’s neck
it’s rabbit face distraught
turns ominously toward her
“What have you done, child?”

blackened balance
ends the dance in death
severing lyrics from melody
the darkened stage
keeps performing though,
materializing
an over abundance of food
for her family

a score of negligent indulgence
is written for her
repertoire

Inspiration

I thought I'd post the inspiration for the poem From Vatnajokull to Sargasso. My friend Paul e-mailed me this picture he created, and explained it's inspiration, which is partially quoted below.



"30 years have passed since I was in the Sargasso Sea... named for the seaweed that reminded early Portuguese explorers of Salgazo grapes. I take a sip of wine. It is true that the only company I kept during my churchyard haunting was that of the local wildlife. I can remember leaning against the heavy ancient tombs, listening to the wind tickle the the long thin meadow grass; the birds sweet twittering only there to distract me from their nests.

The hawsers stretch across the deck, over windlass and into the becalmed Sargasso. They drag there until the sea unknots the tangled hemp.

I'm looking at a painting I started some years back - a Photoshop enhanced version appears above. I started a few like this. I was responding to the patterns that I saw in nature.

The bark of trees...

Lichen growing on stone...

Sand ripples left by the receding tide.

As is so often the case with this kind of doodling, I started to see half familiar shapes emerging from the squiggling foam. A creature here and there. The hint of something hidden just below the surface. A place from the past."

He also sent me links to Chris Watson's Vatnajokull and Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon. Thanks Paul, for letting me share this :]

Illustration Friday: Similar

Serenity
Poured through a sieve
Every hole similar
Nothing changes
In this room
No windows
No doors
Yet, luminescence varies in the passing
Red, yellow, green, blue
Beads in a prism
Strung on daisy chains of light
Waiting


The poem is for CPCCC's Saturday Share. The picture for Illustration Friday's Similar.

Winter Colors

Remembering when this time of year wasn't so depressing. I don't care for the poem much, but again, kind of like the picture. The poem was written for Legacy Writers of Harmony Pub picture challenge.



Twenty one years ago a church bell rang
Tolling pale azure and white
Against an iridescent midnight
Refrains of devotion, candlelight sang

Olden ritual with white rose petals misted
New birds chirp warmth into the frozen
Borrowed from time, sterling vows are spoken
Blue, truer than all ancient affections listed

For fifteen years the colors tolled
Now silent, their hues have faded
In shadows of grey, winter is shaded
Rose petals withered by the colorless cold

Reflection's Passages

I went to the arboretum yesterday, sat at my favorite spot by the cypress bog, and daydreamed about traveling into the reflections of the fall leaves.




Reflection’s Passages

Diving into reflection’s passages
I soar high above the oxbow
amber branches give way
greeting
entreating
casting amber beams of hushed petals
to the path before me
vanishing far below
where mirrors ripple
with Eleionomae sighs
displaced
Forsaken waif

Deeper into the golden embrace
I discover
the point of origin has been silenced
the bejeweled resin is no closer
the vernal vibrancy is dangling from the
thorny arm extended toward me
Exhausted

Dark Dance

Here's another one for the Saturday Share. I'm not crazy about the poem, but I think the picture turned out kind of cool. When I was layering a couple of my photos in photoshop to go along with the poem, the girl just mysteriously appeared. I airbrushed her a little to make her stand out. Originally, I had no intention to have her in there, but I guess she was determined to be a part of her own dance.




Dark Dance

Stark Cypress sway in celebration
Child of midnight spinning round
Shadows explode with symphonic elation
Lost in song on this frozen ground

Where turbulence and placidity abound
Gusts of pine needles sprinkle
Oh how mystical melodies resound
Around disembodied eyes a twinkle

Moonlit reflections wrinkle
And echo harmoniously across the bog
Sleepy curiosity rouses a jingle
Timid choir huddles under a log

Winter woodland rug rustles agog
With the dance of the dark child
She cloaks the night in frigid fog
Silhouetted hoots and howls are riled

She desires daylight to be beguiled
Breathing an elegy in anticipation
Between timbre wild and tone mild
Swirling disposition resonates sensation

Surfs Up

I've been traveling the Atlantic lately. ...In spirit, anyway. And, while journeying, I've been trying out some new forms of poetry. The first is a Villanelle.



Soul of the Sea

Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea
When operatic coral awaken under an argent moon
Bear an azure sanctuary for me

Sympathetic waves lave from Charon’s ferry
Ungodliness into the tidal hands of Neptune
Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea

Dissolving error through a rippled melody
Drifts of celestial glitter’s serous rune
Bear an azure sanctuary for me

Kraken, Leviathan form fondness for me
Where edenic reefs are hewn
Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea

Their luminosity wanes in the Atlantis of anemone
Misty chants that wisp ere shadowed dune
Bear an azure sanctuary for me

Oh that starry fluidity would serenade soon
My ashes to ebb and emancipate my boon
Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea
Bear an azure sanctuary for me




From Vatnajokull To Sargasso

Icelandic groans of spectral profound
Ripple forth from frozen wombs
Augural creaks ominously resound
What veiled chants Vatnajokull assumes

Squiggling chimera within frothy blooms
Traversing rampart currents to where
Sargasso lichen cover sunken tombs
Crumbling reflections exhale arctic air

We’ve journeyed to where reveries dare
To tranquilize sonorous seas
We find therein knotted waters ensnare
Unattended growth the stillness seize

Swaying headstones in a liquid breeze
Lingering fingers are sifting through
Gardens of silt laden memories
Where foam apparitions stew

In mid Atlantic we rendezvous
With glacial hymns and salty wine
Hawser meshes of the afternoon
Swimming through placid brine

This last one is a Virelay. They're both dedicated to Paul, my travel companion who lives on the opposite side of the Atlantic. We meet half way ;]

The Season's Solace

Dear Mike,

Annually, I make my trek to memorialize the day I brought you home to a rocky land of cactus and Mesquite thorn. Ceremoniously, I cling to you through your family in a silence that is interrupted intermittently by the call of a wild turkey. We gather on this harsh prickly land, and I brace myself for the season’s chill. Your family comforts me, though, within this Hill Country’s beauty that you knew so intimately.

Burnt sienna and burnt umber whisper with a frigid November breath. There, vermillion dotting rolling hills against an azure sky, hushed briars nestle in for winter. A sunset highlights the spiny edges of a Prickly Pear and the golden seed heads of wild grasses. Muted beauty that you are continuously revealing to me still.

I never cared much for Fall. I never wanted Summer to end. You and I together finding so many sun bright things to do. Since your death that blindingly blank summer day, I long for Fall’s consoling blanket of solitude. I long to escape failed expectations of summer togetherness, like the way a fallen leaf is alee the cold Autumn wind. Now the quiescent place you call home mirrors my parched brittle soul that is beginning to adorn new colors of beauty you’ve yet to see.

Fitting it was then, that it was Fall when I carried you home. We spread your ashes among rock and bone under changing trees. We held each other to say good bye and remember you, but that reclusive fire that took you, laid hold of me. It’s been changing my hues to burnt earthen pigments. A newfound beauty decries the emptiness that the fire refines. Fire and ashes in my veins, but my bones are growing cold. Autumn’s beauty carries me beyond the soundless deer seeking shelter, beyond your ashes undisturbed.

Tell Me I'm Here

Saturday share at CPCCC

Blog Award

Mary has awarded me with yet another honor! Thanks Mary! And thanks for your loyal support!

Illustration Friday: Pretend

I've been having computer problems again. I think my computer just doesn't like cold weather. Neither do I, so I snuggled under a blanket on my couch and doodled in my sketch book instead. Pretend this is my brain while I doodle.

Illustration Friday: Wise

I was going to try to participate in Illustration Friday last week, but posted this too late. Maybe this week.

Tuned Out

Trying to learn Haiku.

The Vice

Another Saturday Share at CPCCC. Saturday Share is a poetry challenge that starts on Tuesday nights when Cheryl gives us a line. This week's line was "inside out and upside down". Then everybody contributes lines of their own until 6 pm Wednesday night. Next we pick from the contributed lines and create a poem to share on Saturday. The line I picked from the list was "intrusion, confusion, confound" by Sheila A. It's a lot of fun, and can get pretty silly sometimes. Everybody is welcome to join in.

Ocean Song

Another CPCCC Saturday Share.

Lucy

Volunteering at an animal rescue after the hurricane.

Picture by Lynda

This is Lucy. A police officer found her after Ike. That hurricane left her orphaned. She goes up for adoption this week at the Beaumont Animal Rescue. I wish I could adopt her. She and I bonded.

The Deception

For Saturday Share at CPCCC.

Cards From Mary

Mary is one of the most thoughtful people I have met, and is a dear friend to me. She has sent me all of these cards you see below to encourage me during a difficult time. They are all her original artwork and photography. To see more of her work go here or here.









And here's yet another award she's sent me. Yea!



Thanks Mary!

Alibis

Another one for CPCCC.

Not Myself Lately...

...but seems to be appropriate for the season.

These were done for "Cheryl's Pals' Creative Collab Corral".

Summer Flowers '08

These were taken on my trip to Wisconsin last summer. I have more photos of flowers from this trip here.