walk to the river

hello, you, weaving your web, strand by strand
geometrically, intently,
methodically.
the little one next to you, watching.
you pull a thread, you walk and circle.
you pull a thread and gather
and begin again.
tomorrow the little one waits in the center of your hard work
and I wonder if this is your way of giving to the next life.
teaching by doing.
and leaving the design for the next generation to catch the mystery.

************

saskawahawinee
laughing and giggling
playful
with light and life
mallards sing by
insects swim around our dancing arms
the sun is in the dance.

I am here
this time
to let go of the stones
in my pockets.
to finally recognize the red thread that has knotted and tied
and tangled
around my throat.
to talk to darkness and call it out to speak.
to accept it, but not endorse it.
to insist upon it's voice; tell me what you think you're accomplishing here.
and to wonder if it doesn't at all belong to me.
to tell stories of skeleton woman, of tangling, of singing.
to tell stories of China, of tea, of double lives, of roaring violence.
to sit by the fire and
listen.
and summon the words.
and utter the unutterable.
to toss shame and guilt and secret into the flames.
to watch the burning
of exoskeletons, like insects or crabs, dissolve.
of soft bodied, unformed I don'tknowwhats, melt and pour through the hot wood, like soup.
to recognize the past of smallness and the selfishness of motive that kept me trapped and sick.
to finally see him as not a friend, at all.
not a nice guy. not a compassionate guy. not loving. not kind.
but mean, cruel and self serving.
to see it would've killed me. to stay.
and to know that I was rescued, in the real way. in the only way that matters.
and that life was given back to me.
all this time later, all those yesterdays thinking I did him wrong.
when all I did was stand up again and start to sing.
all I did was stand up again and start to dance.
all I did was stand up again and start to live.

and that was never going to be ok for him.

he needed me smaller, sicker, less than....
so he could be free and better than, and healthier and so he could feel like an angel
to ward off the darkness of his own soul.

me as big as I am born to be,
was never going to be ok for him.
so he had to kill it.
just like my father.
just like skeleton woman. sedna.
tossed in the sea and
left for ages upon ages.

I rise. I rise. I rise.
and my heart is beat like a drum
and his tears are the salve to my awakening.

god, I hope so.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I placed a wager down at the astrology 
pool. I bet that sometime in the next three weeks, you Capricorns will 
shed at least some of the heavy emotional baggage that you've been 
lugging around; you will transition from ponderous plodding to curious-
hearted sauntering. Why am I so sure this will occur? Because I have 
detected a shift in attitude by one of the most talkative little voices in 
your head. It seems ready to stop tormenting you with cranky reminders 
of all the chores you should be doing but aren't -- and start motivating 
you with sunny prompts about all the fun adventures you could be 
pursuing.

fear

I dreamed of a giant alligator last night. It's a theme for me. I've been dreaming of them since I was a little girl. Subterranean, mysterious, frightening, dark. Feminine, Divine Mother, Wisdom, Fear. all the same isn't it?

This one may have been the biggest I've ever dreamed.
She was in a small canal. She barely fit. It was an unnatural setting, not nature....more like a pen. Concrete. Separated from others, I think.
In the dream, I think 2 people were eaten.
The latest was a woman, young woman, wearing red and white gym shorts and a tank top. I remember seeing her and then I saw the shorts hanging out of the side of the alligator's mouth. Just like that.
Robert, except I don't know if it was Robert, you know how dreams can be, went into the area where the alligator was and he was being playful. I was understandably very nervous. He displayed no evidence of caution or respectful awareness. Against my pleas, he jumped onto the back of the alligator and danced around, jumping back and forth from her back to the adjacent concrete dock, which, of course, the alligator could also have easily grabbed him from. I remember turning my head so that I wouldn't have the sight, burned in my memory, of my Robert being devoured by a giant predator.
In the dream, this moment didn't come. It doesn't mean it wouldn't have. I woke myself up pretty quickly and was hot with fear.

What a dream to wrestle with ontop of a day and evening full with so many of my own monsters. fear and misalignment and discomfort with the existentialism of my moments. dark and gnawing self reproach and doubt and otherness and aloneness and awareness of the aspects that are readying to drown me.

We Are Water

Today my father, Si Houshang Azar, would have been 80 years old. All day I have felt a heavy and complicated weight. And then I remembered today's date. It is strange, and not strange, how tangled and timeless grief can be.

I have wrestled with demons. They have not let me rest. They have raged and cornered me, smoked me and screamed me, pinned me down and bullied me. They have tried to convince me that I am worthless, messy and a terrible trouble for anyone who tries to love me. They have pulled at my lower lip, gut punched me and kept me from water. They have punched holes in my arguments that everything is different now, I have grown, I have healed so much....they laugh and call me hopeless and stupid.

I have not let them win.  I will not sleep it off or talk it off or walk it off or curl into a ball and surrender. This time, I call on soul.
My Soul. My Divine. My Wild. My Wolf. My Wilderness. My Fire.
And I write and write and move and agree to feel it one molecule, one bitch slap, at a time.
And I wrestle and stay in the fight.
And my knees bleed and my teeth fall out and patches of my hair lay in my peripheral vision. But, there is skin underneath my fingernails and gristle in the teeth I have left and I can see, with the one eye that is not swollen shut, that I am still in the game.

vulnerability.
honesty.

this is what I am feeling. this is what I am ashamed to see or say or have seen. I take responsibility for that, this. I hear you. I own my part in this. I set a boundary. I will not agree to hold your share of the rope. I'm in this with you. I will not retreat from you. or this. or us.

and, then I remember the date. and I tell him. and then the glorious flood of pain comes surging and sea is in motion again. My ocean rocks into his own tethered harbor and he swings loose, too, with his waves and crashing. And the seas are in motion again.
And we are water.
And we are water.
And we are water.



*it was unintended and unplanned, but that last line, and now the title, are tipped hats to the novel by Wally Lamb that I just finished listening to on audiobook as I drove to and from the Blue Deer Center in New York. Thanks Mr. Lamb. It is exactly the way it is for me right now.

dive

this is one of those times of dusk
when the bony, withered hand clutches and wrings and wrenches
my heart like an old rag.

and I am soaked
in my own drowning pool.

lungs full and tears dried,
my mouth gapes in a last surrendered exhale.
there is no grasping. no meaning making. no struggle. no fight.

there is only a steep and steady falling
into nowhere.

a starless well,
a soundless song,
a hollow hurting
emptied of all reason or remembrance.

I see gun barrels loaded and leaned into my skin,
hearing the click, the click, the click.
the firework explosions of a raincloud, done with its raging.
the still hum of an ordinary night.
life goes on.

lights blink on and off
all the time.
just like Christmas.
just like the stolen holiness of the darkest day.

or else, everything goes somnambulant,
all haze and faze and fog and smoke,
like a perfectly forgettable dream.

just two stars on the left,
and I am away and in
the saddest chair,
pondering
every moment of waste and wanting.