Rain

Fevery freedom in the hot fog of thundery midnight rainstorm, that peeled me open in the crazy dance of warm and wet rebirth.
Hot liquid laughed a spiraled path down my fingertips and kissed the very skin this Life has worn.

The clash and flash of Zeusian power above ignites the Sky.
The Light and Dark battle before me. I know they spar in play.
The Lion and the Lioness, aggressive in their lovemaking.
The Earth and Sky are lovers. The Earth and Sky are one.

The smell of fear and of adventure.
The Earth, itself, is laughing, maniacal and violent.
The Floodlands, Heavens, torn broad open, screaming, screaming down.
Down in torrential love and madness.
Down unto the Earth.

I run muddy through the grass, water-sponged and thirsty-quenched.
I, the Watcher, the Accomplice. I open up to both.
The bold. The cold. The understood. The mystery cast open.
And I, the Dancer.
I, the Crazy.
I, living, breathing Goddess.
Dancing feral in the rain, laughing wild into the rain, living madness in the rain.
The warm and bloody rain.

The Beauty of the World

People die.
People move.
Couples marry. Parents divorce.
The world turns. Beauty presents itself daily.

Pain is felt. Sadness wallows.
Moments are experienced. Time becomes tangible.
Things are lost and things are found. Feelings change and people move on.

Chapters close.
Doors open.
Hearts fail.
Nostalgia sets in.
New games are created.

There is death and love and darkness and light and the world turns and our lives go on. And the most beautiful, beautiful thing of all is that it is ALL beautiful.

Every Single Moment.

And the only ugliness is that we close our eyes.

Phoenix Cry

I am the Multitudes
Rising from the ashes
To soar the skies for as long as time allows

I am the Mother,
Who slipped into one suit and peeled off the other,
Left hanging in the back of a closet,
Who learned she could don both in the same 18 year timespan
to find within herself again the difference between happy and coping.

I am the Invisible
Who disappeared behind a low-lying cloak called Self-esteem
Ran blindly toward extremes to feel anything
Who finally awoke grinning in the midst of genuine pleasure
to wonder when she had ever stopped laughing.

I am the Divorcee
Who wore Failure, Unloving and Unloved as his badges
And lived too long as what she said she saw in him
Who finally recalled that he’d once floated on Lovable
to a girl who slept beautiful beside him.

I am the Human Journey
The cyclic renewal

And I am the Phoenix
Who cries out from above to all those grounded
That they are not the ashes
and that they may rise again.

The Collector: A Tale in Triplicate

I collect people.

There were ups and there were downs.
There was a shifting of roles.
Classmates. Lovers.
Then enemies.
And finally - Friends.
A mad genius.
Gifted, confident to a fault,
yet lost and lonesome more than he’d admit.
Driven by an insatiable need to prove himself to himself. A need stronger than any other. Stronger than our bond.
We ate sushi one night and spoke openly of our now evident mistakes, made during our 6 years of shared life.
For him I hope all the happiness I couldn’t seem to give him.
That is what I’ll never walk away from.

I collect people.

Bohemian soul to the core.
Frenzying, frazzled passion.
Survivor, struggle, attitude and angst.
She is not a white light but a pulsating purple vibrance.
We make blood orange martinis at her kitchen table in her underground flat
From oranges plucked rawly from a backyard tree.
We drank over 2-year-old catch-up conversation that felt as natural as if we’d never left off.
I feel I am closer to living when I am with her.
Hers is a voice I will do most anything to share.

I collect people.

He wanted to be a Rennaisance man. He wanted the world and all the experiences in it. It maddened him to near paralysis once that it seemed the world didn’t want him back.
I watch as life seems to implode within him. The beauty, the passion, the adventure – inside him yet out of reach.
A mirage in a desert
A treasure under glass
I see all the things he’s yet to do. Things he will do.
With strength, with belief, with full pockets and support.
3 years left now on a self-imposed Army sentence.
Seems a minefield of those implosion stretched between him and those million things.
Me be damned I don’t insist he be ready to change the world when it’s time.

I collect people.

I see where they’ve been. I see where they’re going. Better perhaps than they see it themselves.
We the artists. We the dreamers.
We live a Bootstraps Life.
A Persistence Life.
Of Human Strength.
We soldier on.
The Beautiful Endurance.

I collect people.

Whether they like it or not.
I put them on the hook, I will not let them off it.
And I will not let them forget who they once told me they were.

On Leaving

I have sensed moments of leaving Chapters in Life.
I have felt the turns of the pages.
There is a nostalgia and a pain that goes along with that kind of leaving.
Often times it didn’t turn out quite the way you’d planned it.
Often times thus the leaving.
It feels sometimes in looking back that you got off at an unfamiliar station and you watch the train pulling away into the distance of your old life.
You look around to see the new faces of your new life.
The ones who will populate the “present” of your days.
Sign above the station door says Welcome to Your Next Chapter.
You feel your stomach somersaulting and you thrust back into Life.
It’s funny that you thought the people in your little life would remain the same.
It’s funny that you thought at 12 you knew what you wanted from life.
It’s funny that at 25 you are only now realizing what you think you really want.
But you were so certain at any moment where you were going at full steam ahead.
It’s funny the Leaving
could also be Coming;
it’s only a simple matter of facing engine or caboose…
and of which way the wind is blowing.