wishbone

... a kind of poem, and the reflection that followed its sudden appearance on the page ...

Wishbone

Will you hold me tomorrow? Can we be like the waxy bitter wishbone stem of a deep red cherry? Will you push into the pool of sweat at my back? Will you sigh? I need to be held, she said, with her heart, if not with her head. Will you hold me tomorrow? On my side, on the hard floor. On the deep-seeded planks that adore our bodies. I'll split the cherry. By turns, you can feed me both sides of the stem until my flesh gives way

(I'm so close)

(I'm so lonely)

It's so clear that I need your broad fingers at the small of my back. Swab circles in my cherry-flavored sweat. You don't even have to whisper. Just remind me I exist. Welcome my lips. Help me remember how to use them, and then help me forget.

Reach inside my chest and squeeze.

I told you it's a pit.

I lied.

It's soft. It beats. It breathes. It needs.

The Note That Followed This:

Perhaps my most eternal quality is my longing. My longing preceded me, and will outlive me. My longing is the seed of my striving, toward God, toward art, toward love. My longing will never be satisfied. I live this life consciously incomplete. My heartbeat reminds me that yearning pumps my blood.

I realize this morning that this is why I love Lorca: The poet of desire. My desire blankets me. Let my appetite never leave. Happiness is not the goal. Oh what sweet freedom! What sudden mercy! My longing is rebellious, the opposite of your peaceful meditation on contentment.

(And longing for contentment - how utterly perfect!)

I yearn for touch. I yearn for you to make love to me. I yearn for your approval. I yearn to produce. I yearn to create. I yearn for words written in the dust of starshine to gleam bright in my magnificent mind.

I yearn, timelessly.

(We yearn for the impossible: to satisfy each other)

Last night these needs came to baptize me with my own waters. And I cried, flooded with them, and writhed on the soft bottom of my floor boards. I am feeling this, like a line pulled taut as it nears its catch.

seriously sweet kicks

I know I said this was not a blog about shoes but ... let's get honest, these are some pretty sweet kicks.

So I'm packing up my silly shoes, and my potential, and heading off to Esalen today for a weekend of poetic play.

happy july 4th weekend. heck, poetry is patriotic. maybe i'll even find some fireworks, in my heart.

the ass i save may be my own

This morning, I consider my options. Suddenly I recall a line from a classic boy-meets-girl flick - maybe it was Say Anything - somewhere near the beginning of the third act. Boy has lost girl, possibly for good. The do or die moment has arrived. So hero boy tells mentor man that he's going to "go and see about a girl." Thus the final chase ensues, and boy follows his heart all the way to girl.

I find myself relating to the boy. And the girl. I am both, I suddenly realize.

I consider a writing workshop over Fourth of July weekend. It terrifies me. And yet. I call and register. Who was it that said, "Do the thing you think you cannot do." Maybe Picasso. I pray at night for God to dream his dream inside of me, and I feel these dreams beginning to stir. With them comes the realization of a longing that has lived and will live inside me for the length of this life.

Like the boy in the movie, the moment feels like the start of a third act. It's do or die. How long have I waited to go and see about this girl and her dreams? These are my dreams. The stakes are high.

I have spent an enormous amount of time focused on what and who is outside of me. I pray for illumination, for freedom from this delusion, and it comes. In the last few weeks, I have learned that everything outside of me is merely a reflection of me. Who I truly seek is myself. It is so much easier for me to see it in you. You stand in front of me, and you are beautiful, mysterious, profound, charming, vital. You have what I want.

And in fact, all of this is true. You are all those things. I follow the path to your doorstep. You enter the house of yourself and close your door. I peer in the window, utterly focused on your every move. Where my time has disappeared, in my life, is in the staying at that window. For my own house, it turns out, is just down the road a piece. The path is a little loopy, and there's brush to clear. But what lay at its end is the most magnificent little cabin I could ever hope to claim.

Somewhere between a thousand boy-meets-girl movies, a hundred fairy tales and a standard-issue dysfunctional childhood, I fell down a deep well of belief that what I was looking for was you. And if I could only get you, have you, and if you would only get and have and hold me, why then all would be perfectly ordered. Goal obtained. Scene. Sunset. Etc.

For whatever reason, God has thrown me a rope. Slowly, I climb out of the well. Dapples of light invade the darkness. Reality is illuminated. I see the knight in shining armor, and I see the princess. They are both me.

a blog about kicking ass