on the eve of the eve

trembling
inside the deep of bones...
when darkness comes, the shadows sway and loom and laugh
that I can't do this.
I can't get in that car and drive and dive
into another spiral of mystery.
that I can't leave this nest and fly and feel what sky is again.
that I can't be the bird with unclipped wings.

I usually forget that
I can.

hungry ghost

I've awoken to a stillness.
I am alone.

all night I've wrestled her, tended her, scorned her, held her, tried to love her.
tried to love her.

she wants to talk about her pain. she is a hungry ghost.
it does not end.
it does not end.
she will swallow the world and still feel empty.

implosion.

he says he no longer knows if this is something that will work for him.
he doesn't say it's what he wants.
he's not sure.

he says that today was all about destruction. that nothing about it was
opportunity
or
growth.
just destruction and failure.

he can't do it anymore.
he says he no longer has the resiliency for this kind of thing.
that it can never happen again.

and in all the sideways ways, he punishes me.
I've said sorry and I've rolled to my back and told him what wounds got scratched and where the pain is and how it haunts me and how I'm working on it with every resource that I have.
And, his eyes stay flat and he doesn't even cry anymore.
He's gone.
I've lost him.

Tonight we sleep in separate rooms and my insides collapse like a building imploded.
all ash and dust.
all ash and dust.
The feral child in me, who rolled this ball into motion, wails and cries and laughs, "told you so."
I want to die.
That's her again.
I want to die.

I've failed at love again.
He said so. He calls this a failure. And, because it started with me and because it is mine, I am responsible for this failure.
I have lost the man who lit up to see me, who loved me through everything, who loved me as me.
except this part of me. Because she has scratched him with poison claws and now he is sick with hopelessness and sadness.

How am I here?
my emptiness is endless. my sorrow without hope.
my love lies gasping, waterless and alone.

note to a younger you.

ok, let's you and me talk.

clearly you are feeling pain and we've got to get together and figure out a way to help you share and express that without burning the whole house down.

because,

I love this man. I love him a lot and we have a good life together.

and, lately,

when you show up with your gasoline and matches and start pulling up the floorboards for kindling...well,

that's not cool.

it's really not very fucking cool.

and, you and me,

we have to either get on board with each other and work this out or we just might go up in flames,

for real.

so, how old are you now and what is hurting you so deeply?

All I know of you now is the urgency to destroy and the immediacy of escape. That tormenting feeling of being trapped with your own chaos and confusion, rage and fear. I know that when you show up there is a whole lot of flailing and kicking and screaming.

But, so much has happened that is good since you got stuck in that moment.

Please, come, sit and let me listen to your pain, let me help you fight it out, flee and feel the ways you are all shattered to bits. Please let me help you piece it all back together. Please, come home.

I know your dad didn't love you. I know he told you mean and terrible things. I know that when your father tells you things like that it is hard not to digest it as the gospel of absolute truth. Even when you know better. I know it's hard to pull those words out of your heart, the way they are embedded like shrapnel from that and every other bomb that went off in your war zone. I know that nobody else knows what that is like for you. Except me. I know.

I know.

I don't know how to remove those scars or how to make those words feel less true. I know that I can tell you over and over how much you are loved and how much love you deserve and that you are perfect just as you are and I know that probably none of what I say will land. I know.

They're wrong, I know. Sticks and stones will break your bones. And bones will heal.

Words will always hurt you because there is no way to remove them.

So, how bout we just let it be as it is right now.

You are pissed and frightened and you show up unexpectedly and trample the flowers it took a whole winter to grow. That hurts everybody. We're all in pain. 

Ok, ok. We start with feeling it. That's it. We feel it.

Let me listen.

thanksgiving.

I am thankful that I woke up, day after day,
and chose to live.
For this black bear who paws at me before sinking her weight into my side and stretching her almost as long as me body next to mine, breathing into her safe and happy sighs.
For this tarantulacaterpillar little owl of a cat, perching on my side and sliding her soft as the wings of a stingray paws to touch my lips.
For this joy that overblooms in the universe of my heart that has no fences; for this love.

For this bigger than me bear that finds me in the dark woods and leads me home. How he curls me into his belly and sings me songs to remember who I am. For he who loves me back to love and waits for me to tear the brambles from my skin and let him see. For him, with whom I learn the fullness, pain and joy of that word: love. How it stretches and tears and insists on the courage of dancing with the shadow things that smell like fear and sing like emergency sirens.
For this grand opportunity to reclaim the wilderness and still be invited to live amongst the wolves.

This, my whole heart.

I am thankful for the late night talks with monsters and the moments when we burst into shared laughter. For the small steps towards each other. The wide reaches into holiness.

It wasn't always so.
And, I wonder if it will always be so.

I wonder how some survive and some do not. If it is a great plan written in the notebook of a curious artist or a random scatter of stars and migration patterns.
What kept me from the reckless step that might've toppled me into infinite nothingness? What kept an ember lit through winter after winter after winter?
Why did I live through it without any guarantee or promise that there was a light that would penetrate the darkening?

For fire to persist in such fierce wind, such dampening despair, is either miracle or chance.
I feel I am the questioning that lives to search for more of an answer than a finale that ends with a bang.

but, then again, there go I but for the grace of....god, goddess, divine, protectors, angels, allies, purpose, path, luck?, soul, stars, mystery.........

so it is
a simple and sincere expression of gratitude, every breath, every moment
that I live to savor one more sip
cry one more tear,
step closer to the holy,
embrace and brace and embrace and brace and embrace
this
precious
life
of
mine.

the leaving to become

part one.

ugly.


i am black,  i am yellow
i think i sound like you, i think i look like you.
but, i'm not and i don't.

i try so hard to sing the songs you sing.
i find a note and belt it.
i close my eyes and dance.
i flap my wings and spin and soar,
my heart is exploding with joy.
i feel so much me and, so, a part of you.

i open my eyes and all of you are standing at the wall,
one armed stretching towards me,
one finger pointing.
your laughter is deafening
and cruel.

i stand at the mirror and see nothing but ugliness.
nothing but wrong.
nothing but different.
nothing.

i tear at my feathers and curse my voice for being so awkward and strange
and,
other.
i mourn the space around me and hate myself for wanting any of you.
i hate myself for wanting.

i know i am black and you are yellow,
and i am yellow and you are black.
and, still, the need is greater than the reasoning.
a nest is a nest.

heart to bear.

oh, great black bear,
you remind me
that grief is large,
bear sized,
and it lumbers through dark woods
and it paws at soft earth
and it enfolds tiny cubs into it's enormous and soft, wide bellies
and defends them with a furious purpose.

oh, great black bear,
you have fallen,
mouth agape
and heart stilled
and,
in your silence,
and in you absence,
you will to me the cries of the world.

your babies wander and whine for your cover,
the world coils around itself and weeps for your leaving.

I am lost without you.

I called upon your Goddess, Artemis, and begged for her to come.
I implored her to launch arrow after arrow at the moon so that it may drench you in
protection,
so that it may strike the hearts of those who seek to end you;
to change them, undo them in some way that they would lay exposed and, all at once, see who you are, see who you are
and cast their arms down and bend their knees to serve you and your greatness.

Oh, great black bear,
she did not come.
You were brutally and mercilessly slaughtered one after another in dozens and then, hundreds.
Your bodies collided with the thundering sorrow of the earth.
She held you, took you in, kissed you into sleep
until the hunters gathered you in nets and trucks and laughed at their easy victory.

They beat their chests proudly and promised to hang you high above their mantels to show the world their failure at humanity.
You trusted their presence. You did not defend or run or seek shelter. You had no memory of this threat. You had not known the hunt for over two decades.
There was no warning to be alarmed. No time to defend.
The odds were stacked against you.
Your gentle benevolence was met with the tiny cowardice of a bullet fired into your brain.

Oh, great black bear,
you remind me that the greater is the love, the larger is the grief.
I did not know I carried the whole sky in my heart or that all the stars could dim at once.

I am lost without you.

I am bereft to share genus and species with those who have disowned their wilderness. I want to join you in the animalness and lose the language of the lost.

Artemis, where are you?
The flood of loss has come and there is no ark.
Artemis, where are you to protect the voiceless wild, who cry and cry and cry to a world deaf to their suffering?
How do I continue to laugh or live or breathe in a world filled with such devastating, justified and sanctioned evil?

she answers me to come to the grief in my own heart.
walk through it and bleed at the knees with my own heartbreak,
to sit with the sorrow of betrayal and the amnesia of nature and belonging.

oh, great black bear,
I love you so.
I grieve for the loss of you.
I belong to you.
You are alive in my heart.
you are the reminder of gentle wilderness, fierce wisdom, boldness of heart and the bigness of love.
I weep at your body and thank you for your precious life and painful sacrifice.

where were you when

the day before I stood in horror as his body was thrown about thirty feet across Oxford Street, right in front of our house. someone was speeding. someone later told me it was becoming a problem, people speeding through these residential streets. something to do with drugs. and, Scooby, who never needed a leash was a few steps into the road when the car came blurring through.

we rushed him to the vet and, except for a few astonishingly minor abrasions, he was pronounced fine. we were told to keep an eye on him overnight. according to xrays, he didn't appear to have any injuries. miracle. but that night, we kept an eye open and payed no attention to sleep.

the next morning, he was fine. same old Scooby. I happily, yet still worrying, got in my car and began driving to my morning rehearsal with Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble. Every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:30. Trinity College.
I flipped radio stations and, finding no good songs, left it on a station that was breaking down the morning news. It was background chatter. I heard something about a plane crash. Whatever I heard, it was far away in my awareness. Enough information to feel a moment of quick prayer, the way I do when an ambulance whirs by me. Someone is in crisis and my small, simple prayer is all I can think of to do. Send a blessing.

I entered the dance studio and the other company members were talking about the plane crash. It had crashed into the World Trade Center. The gravity of the situation slowly seeped in. Very slowly. "How horrible," I thought, "a plane crashing...all those people on board." wait. "into the world trade center? Into a building?" No.

worse.

All of us decided quickly that we needed more information and we ran over to the cafeteria. Televisions were on and many students were fixated on the moment to moment reports. Workers were busy with a project, running drills and loud power tools. Others were still carrying on with their morning, completely unaware or unfazed that the country was in the midst of irrevocable trauma and change. That didn't last long. at. all.

I stood slack jawed as I watched, on live television, the second plane scream into the other tower. Everything slowed. The hum of drilling continued. My friend, Alicia, usually mild mannered, sweet and fairly quiet, hurled her panic at the workers and yelled at them to stop their noise. Her fiance worked across the street from the towers. He commonly walked through the buildings or went upstairs into them. It wasn't unusual for him to be in them. The black billows of smoke engulfed the buildings. Everything was silent. A full inhale with no sign of an exhale.

The crying and screaming came when the tower buckled and fell like a shadow sliding quickly away from the sun's glare. The reality of what had just happened was ungraspable. There was no way to comprehend that an entire building full of people had, in the space of a breath, dissolved into a cloud of ash. gone.

then.
worse.

The second tower broke and crumbled with the speed of a match. poof. gone.

my brain struggled to add it up. what. is. happening? what am I seeing? what do I do? No instinct came. No urge to run. No urge to fight. Nothing. Just still. Sometimes things move so fast that they hardly seem to be able to move at all. That was my brain.

And that is as much as I remember of that day. The moment that the trauma locked itself into my cells. At some point, I knew that another plane went down in a field somewhere. Pennsylvania? And, yet another plane, crashed into the Pentagon. I knew that I had the thought that this was the end of all of us. That plane after plane after plane would find it's way into every innocent and unsuspecting place. I knew that the world had gone mad, but I didn't know how or why. I couldn't begin to fathom that another human being would or could orchestrate something like this. I hadn't yet grasped the capacity for atrocities. not first hand. or, at least, not like this.

and why?

I don't know how I got home. I have no memory of driving my car, greeting my fiance' or calling my mother to see if she was okay and to tell her that I was okay. I know that I did. I know that I had the thought that maybe this was just New York and DC and Pennsylvania and that maybe other equally terrifying events were happening in the country but the media was so preoccupied with these places, no one yet knew. I know that I went to a church, alone, and sat and held hands with strangers and cried and cried and cried. I know I hugged the woman next to me, who was about my age, as she told me how afraid she was for her family member who is. who was. who, who knows...was a firefighter in the city and she didn't know yet. we held each other and cried and sang songs and said prayers from many different traditions. Ministers, preachers, rabbis, imams, gurus, you name it....everyone was there to pray. I don't know why I was there alone, without my fiance. I don't know.

the story of my story, as is true for everyone, continued. Our country changed. Our innocence taken. And, of course, our rights, our truths, our trust, our healing. All taken. We've been corralled into a culture of fear and suspicion, exploited in our trauma and hypnotized to follow with blinders on. There is trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma. In so many ways, so much healing remains. There is so much still frozen in the glaciers of this shock. When people tell their story, it is alive and frightful as ever; there is very little indication that we have regained our movement and vitality. There is so much to thaw, then grieve, then rage at, then grieve some more. may we all have the blessing of that healing. May those who were taken be at rest and at peace.

crybaby

stillness, finally. quiet.
I have moved this moment to the eye of the storm.
technology fails, buffoons in the spotlight, surgeries, recoveries, breakups and breakdowns, missed connections, lost loves, torpor and rage, resignation, surrender and hope. the planets are down at the disco, spinning and sliding on their backs.
I had neglected my words and now they sit stalwartly, arms folded, with a thick lower lip and a side saddling stink eye. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. forgive me for my absences.
one beat at a time, I will retrieve you, restore you, revive you.
for now, we will wrestle and growl, burn our knees on the floor and steady ourselves for one step at a time.

sword.

it is a funny thing to feel the spirit rise
when the muscles and bones of the house are leaning slack
and weathered from a
season of electric wind and dry, thick rain.

I've been waterlogged by the drought of tribe,
left wandering under stars I've never met.
An acid smoke rises into my eyes, my feet are damp with wreckage.
Here, in this small arc I draw with my empty hand, is the old me burrowed into the hearts of ghosts.
I believed you and in you, carved a nest.
Now, this hand, fixed with a wet, metal blade stands over a wooden landscape of hard truth.
There is a time to let go. There is a time to say no. There is a time to rise and roar and walk away from all those things that reach in to hurt us, to diminish our light, to cripple our soul and ask us to shoulder the wickedness of a room gone black. There is a time to stand still, to let fall our arms, to give up the reaching for those things that forget us, that say we are too much, that fail to feed our hunger or water our thirst.
around me, the circumference of trials still smolders.
I say goodbye to this territory of mistaken allies and walk patiently through the wilderness.

pause.

a voice
still
speaking in a whisper.
in tones that resemble something electric and fueled by
fire.
cracking, spitting, hissing.
silent.

I walk to the edge of the treeline. you, young buck,
stand and wait and watch
and then,
return to your snacking,
turning green leaves with the whip of your tongue.
pausing mid chew to contemplate
my presence,
my scent,
my invitation
to allow me to be here. quietly, reverently,
respectfully.

let me take you in.
let me stand next to the magic of you
and try to recall who I've become in this magic-less world
that has bruised my hope.

let me stand next to the certainty of you
and try to remember who I am or who I am
to become.
I feel still full with sleep and do not know
how to waken from a dream that leaves me
restless.

how, I wonder, has the world continued on
while I've stuttered at a pause,
surprised that I am older
and feeling, still, so small and
untethered.

do words like right or wrong belong anywhere in this world?
or shall I sail them from my lips and let
them land and lie and languish
in the sliding summer sun?

thank you for your permission
to let me stand next to the
wisdom of you
and try to forgive my own fears.

refuge.

I watched this video three times today. The first two times, I was alone. It choked me up a little. The third time, I was sharing it with my mother. She is someone I feel safe and secure with. She is someone with whom I can be however I am. As we began watching it, within the first few seconds, I began to weep uncontrollably. By the end, I was sobbing. I was putting all of the pieces together about why this beautiful and tender video was pulling apart my heart. 

Bentley was afraid of the noises of the hospital. Here, was someone with a true and deep heart, holding him, like a mother, doing what she knew to do to soothe him, to give him the message of "you are not alone, you will be ok, I am here, I will protect you." His comfort and need of her presence is palpable.

Through streaming tears I began to speak out loud of how much pain there is for all of the pigs that are locked in gestation crates, sent to slaughterhouses, cramped in trailers with temperatures soaring into a hundred degrees or more. I think of the sounds they must hear. The clanging, the crying, the cold, metallic chaos of suffering and death. The smells, the sights. The absence of kindness, softness, touch, compassion, silence, joy or hope.

The pigs,

cows,

calves,

chickens,

ducks,

goats,

lambs,

turkeys,

geese,

rabbits,

minx,

fox,

sables,

dogs,

cats,

monkeys,

chimpanzees,

rats,

mice

elephants,

tigers,

bears,

lions,

etc.

you get the point.

or do you?

we cannot do this any longer.

WE CANNOT DO THIS ANY LONGER.

WE CANNOT DO THIS ANY LONGER

What we do to animals we do to us.

It is an absolute truth whether or not you want to buy it. Bring whatever fancy and logical arguments you have; they fall to pieces when you bear to feel what happens in your heart while looking into the eyes of a factory farmed animal, a zoo animal, an animal about to be slaughtered or sacrificed, a research animal, a circus/entertainment animal, a dog from a puppy mill,  a dog or rooster used for fighting, a bull in a stadium or running the streets, panicked, an animal at a fur farm.

just look.

and,don't dissociate.

STAY IN YOUR BODY AND REALLY FEEL WHAT IS THERE.

What we do to animals we do to us.

I am so sick of the arguments that I have to present to JUSTIFY why this matters to me. I am outraged that I have to explain compassion to people who say to me, "yeah, but...bacon".

I am outraged to see happy photos of people on social media at zoos and circuses, eating hamburgers and hot dogs and posting memes about how much they love animals; how incensed they are that Cecil the Lion was killed. I am outraged  and fatigued by the pandemic denial about where food  comes from: animals. earth. weather. and the long forgotten respect required to participate in a healthy balance of what we take and what we give back. Holy shit, people, at the very least....GRATITUDE and HONEST AWARENESS about what sacrifices are made for you.

I can't change the world. Even as the veils are being ripped off, violently, to the darkest underbelly of what human beings are capable of, I know I have no choice but to bear witness. That doesn't mean I have to innundate myself with horrible images ( I will never again watch an animal cruelty video), but I can remain awake and conscious of the change that has to happen in this world. I have to find how my particular voice lends a note to the song that begins to bring sanctuary, safety, refuge to those who need it most. I can't change the world. I can barely bear the pain. I know why people look away and pretend they don't see what's happening. I know. It's excruciating. It's touching darkness and evil. It's coming close to something foul and sinister to see the unimaginable. It's nightmares come to waking life. It's grief and rage and fear and pain, unending soul pain, to acknowledge what we, as a species, do to animals. 

But we cannot afford to look away, go silent or shroud ourselves in denial.

It becomes us. It becomes that hidden corner in our souls that screams and thrashes in the dark. It becomes our emptiness, torpor, apathy and soul crushing unrest. It haunts us and keeps our spirits restless and unanswered. We dangle loose in the world; untethered to a home, a belonging, a resting place. We become the food we eat. Every molecule of us is our poisoned waters and irradiated soils, the agonies and torments of being abandoned and unwitnessed, tortured and murdered, without names and without stories. We become the justifications.  And we compartmentalize. And we define enemies. We find we are living in a world of genocide, murder, suicide, abuse, racism, speciesism, misogyny, hate, intolerance, war, argument, violence, loneliness, rage, isolation, pain, addiction, sociopathy, narcissism, sadism, trauma.

And we wonder why.

How could this be? How did we get here?

And, still, we can see no further than our own noses. Our own pain. We fail to recognize the global community of people, animals, earth. 

God, I want to believe that love will triumph.

I do.

I want to believe that a song will come to each of us. We will burrow ourselves into the neck and sweet sound of whatever comforts us the most deeply and truly. Whatever returns us back to that God given right to be joyful, alive, safe and protected. Whatever provides sanctuary for us to return to who we are, originally. Whatever awakens our light, our empathy, our compassion.

Whatever brings us back to our true belonging. our home. our hearts.

until then,

I will let these tears rush and be willing to feel the pain of this broken world.

barn wedding

rein in the
animus
allowing the soft center of the universe to
be
soft.
vulnerable.
and let the man become man.

seek the sacred.
connect with the world in the ways that your heart remains wide,
even when it is breaking.

we are the strength of our wounds.
we are bound by the raised flesh of a scar.
we are born,
together,
as the heart of the world.

standing watch as a flicker awakens from shock,
hissing at nocturnal possums stunned by light,
running to break into a dog fight and drawing the bow,
sitting in whispers under the silenced speed of an owl at dusk
dancing the rocks to respect the black snake.

we are living in a time of talking
and we are
being reminded
we
have
to
listen
or we will forever miss the song.

jane

we sat together and dangled our toes into the pool.
and you put words into my hands and asked me to learn them.
protection. bravery. courage. truth.
you said, sometimes being loving and sometimes being good is not about being small.
sometimes it is about showing your teeth and keeping things precious to you safe.
your heart. your tenderness. your soul.

I remember you as a matador, in black and red.
facing off to the downstage light, illuminated in your tenacity.

I remember your green eyes shining
in fire. in joy and in pain.

fall and recover.
fall and recover.
fall and recover.

bringing poetry to class. bringing life into the dance.
wisdoms. affirmations.
It mattered to you to connect the outside with the inside,
the real with the imagined,
the language to the ephemeral.
to live the art in the offstage living, too.
it mattered to you.
it mattered to me.

I saw you as a woman living outside the edges of a deep well.
pacing and leaping and falling and laughing and crying and turning it all into colors. swirling them on pages and sending them as love notes. and sending them as eulogies. and sending them as an SOS. and sending them as breadcrumbs.
I saw your heart, big as the world,  open to love and shutter against it.

rest in peace, dear one. you will be missed.