That's Cool

I walk on lines made of
something like spun glass
pulled too far apart
I'm twisted like that too

I try to keep from leaning
on the arms of people who
take them away like
Lucy tricks Charlie Brown
I keep trusting

I keep trusting

Looking at sunset
remembering
the elaborate game of peek-a-boo
we play each night
I forget that you do it too

But that's cool
We took too long in trying to see
the veins of broken in the other
now all I want is..

all I want is..

A Way Out

Cornered
can't move this way
can't go back
Risk looking crazy
for not speaking
or becoming crazy if you don't

They enjoy it
the closer they come
oozing disingenuous feelings
like pus from gangrene
they enjoy the pain in your eyes

but don't hide it

Every whisper
wiping away your credibility
every eye looking you over
you know
they are tearing you down
to prepare the next victim

They plead the case of the innocent
getting others to perceive you
as being off balance
when others don't see
how they lay the full weight
of their treacherous intentions on you

Don't forget
they enjoy it
Don't forget
you are an object
Don't forget
there is a way out
even if it's hidden behind your tears

Trust Me:

  They've been caught AGAIN! And if anyone were in front of your bedroom door, they would swear you were practicing lines for the Broadway production of the Simpson's. "Doh! Doh? Doh." You KNEW it! The tickling feeling inside, when you first addressed the issue; morphed into a roaring, pounding, piercing scream when the truth ripped open your gut. Now, instead of asking " Why me?", you ask " Why didn't I see?"  The answer is: You did, but you're so untrustworthy within yourself you wouldn't believe you.
                         *record scratch*

 I know you might think that's a typo (my typing is pretty bad), but it's not. You are the untrustworthy one and you have proved it to yourself AGAIN! How? How can it be you, when the words are coming out of someone else's mouth? You are untrustworthy to yourself, by not believing the truth you already know. The pattern and cycle were set, you repeated them and ciphered through enough to know that, even if there have been some adjustments, nothing has really changed. You feel all the unresolved questions and comments rolling within you. When confronted with the lies, the half-truths, and the omissions; You were already familiar with the truth, but for whatever reason you allowed the illusion to put you back to sleep.

   It's the illusions that we build around ourselves that keep us from seeing what we already know. We have collected them from every source available to our inner space and we use them to protect ourselves from the pain of living. When reality gets to trill, we take out an illusion or two to keep us from seeing what we are looking at. This is where you are being an untrustworthy person to yourself. You aren't hearing the truth, to keep yourself safe from the pain of the lie. You aren't trusting yourself to be able to take the necessary actions to protect yourself from a liar.
In turn, you are becoming a liar to yourself.

  How can this stop? Answer seems simple, trust yourself, but often it's not that simple. We have spent months maybe years lying to ourselves about what we know. We have to build trust with ourselves again. It takes time and a willingness to act on the truth we know, every time, even if we are wrong! Yes, I said it! Even if you are wrong, you have the ability to be a big enough person to apologize, but you have honored the voice inside. You have also learned that somethings you know may not come from that center, but from what you are used to experiencing.

  I don't claim this is a fix all. Hell, I just endured it myself. What I do know is, when you hear the truth within you, it comes with the courage to act on what you hear. You don't need anyone outside you to validate the "knowing" for you, because you can trust yourself to do what is necessary to protect yourself from a person who seems allergic to speaking the truth. Treat the illusions you have learned as a sink of cold, dirty, greasy sink water. You have to stick your hand in it and pull hard in order to be able to pour in the clear, clean truth.

Change

I watch the demons
so I don't have to face them

I try to ease
the reality of this life
it's instability
with soft sounds
and sweet words

But I feel the truth
I feel it deep
it scary
this feeling

this is what being born
must feel like

but I will not turn from it
this time
I will not run

Permission

I must have

I must have asked to be here

because they act as if I did

it seems from the moment

my fusion and division took place

I have been asking to be

I asked the womb to let me go

it took it's time in expanding to set me free

all the while forcefully pressing to get me out

all I needed was space to present myself

all I needed was to feel safe
they said I needed things determined to keep me alive

over what I actually expressed I needed

From the moment 

it was determined I was a girl

My role in this world

was woven into the fabric I never asked to wear

all I needed was cloth to keep me warm

they insisted it describe my function

all I needed was protection from the elements

they insisted it express fragility and instability

As I grew

and gained the ability to think

I asked for the right to be seen
to be heard 

my extensive emotional vocabulary

was interpreted through the filters 

of mental chains and false respectability

I was forced to yield to the emotions of others 

before I could protect myself enough
to demand understanding

all I needed was to be loved and accepted 

they told me I could but with condition

Now I find to move in this world

I must act like a ghost

acting from repetitions and broken experiences

I shift myself into subtle acceptability

but never gaining a way in

all I need is to take my place
to walk in the present life has given me

they tell me I can do it

only according to prescription
only in the way they say is right

I must have 

I must have asked to be here

because it seems as if

I spend my life 

asking for permission to be

Postcard from the Edge

I sit on the sideline taking notes. I listen to the words lavished and withheld. I listen to the receptivity of welcomed advances and variations of approaches. I make side notes which offer explanations why it's not me you're talking to.

I understand the dynamics of conditioning, but it doesn't ease the ache. The longing, to have thick lips arch upward at my coming, could be pulled out of me and used as a cloak. The envy alone makes my gut feel overripe. I would love to spend time under the gaze of your eyes, to be lost in the passion you pour out with ease. I could grow tall and straight in love like that or maybe I am seeing grass painted green.

There was a time, somewhere deep in our DNA, where you  held me up like that. I was as precious to you as the night sky to a sailor. You loved me so much, you created your gods in my image, believing I had to be their ambassador. A mutation of evolutionary necessity must have happened or you listened to someone who wanted to take your place.

I am jealous of how her hair cascades over your face. I fight the pain inside every time you whisper her description in the air. Comparing her to ambrosia and aphrodisiacs while you leave the worst labels to me. It hurts to see my features on her frame, my words fall from her lips, my being imitated. It batters my soul that you lose yourself in her while blaming me because you cannot find your way.
I understand really, it's easier to love someone else's image.

Don't worry though, while I'm out here on the edge, I still think we can make it. I still believe you named the stars in the sky after me. I believe you dream of me, covering you like first hint of warmth after standing in the cold, when you touch her. I still believe it's in your DNA to love me, in spite of the grass being painted green on the other side.

Twist

Stick out your tongue
lick
I don't mean saturate it
take the tip and lean it against it
when you do
exhale
I won't be held accountable
for what comes next

press your lips against it
feel the pulsing
you did that
the sheen on your lips
let me taste it

There's a formula I need to write down
between the feel of your lips
mixed with drippings of pressed pleasure
It's a chemical that makes me
twist it
it makes me

Stick out my tongue
lick
I mean saturate it
take the tip and lean it against it
when I do
exhale
hold me accountable
for what comes next

press my lips against it
feeling the pulsing
you did that
the sheen on my lips
let me taste it

Switch

I told myself to gather together
as many old inner dirty things
I lined them up
I thought allowing them to be beaten
by the cruelty in someone else
would make them give up
It didn't

So I tried to exchange them
for some ideas of ideals
of a future me
evolved from a present me
I can't step into yet

I thought letting myself
gather together some more words
to bind the lazy things would
create a will power made of iron
but the lazy things wilted and died
the ground they occupied fallowed
that's what I get

Again I exchanged them
with an idea of the truth
peeled words away
to take away the meaning
so I could learn again
a full grown tree broke ground in me
I never thought to answer
a full grown chicken came out an egg

Now it's time to switch
to a definition of living
I can live with

Interested

I wonder if you heard his voice, would something shift in you, too. There's something harmonious in it. His face is magnetic, it draws the eyes and they relax there from the strain of searching. I soon found myself brimming, one more laugh or syllable, could send me over in slow moving rivulets.

I tried to devour his ideas. They were sifted through the best minds and, somehow, seemed truly original. 

There's something to the turning of his mind which caused me to fold over in myself. I was trying to dial a woman in myself to meet him. Then figured out, I was already all of her. I stopped dialing.

Somewhere in it, I got to experience his touch. It made me remember those times when I thought I looked damn fine. It came without censorship, all of me was welcomed.  If only I could take back my first touch, though. I remember the symmetry of his shoulders. I remember his kiss on my third eye, it's still blinking in response.  

I just forgot to ask enough questions. Thinking I would run out of me, I forgot to draw out the between essence. The essence between suffered from the twisted words and thoughts bound in their own limits. Reactions, so well worked-out, conditioned by people we both could not unravel our true selves from. 

I couldn't show I was attached, it would be too much. I couldn't show the fear of chipping off his being from mine like nail polish. 

Now, I know what it means to be interested, to be curious and fearless. I know what it means to investigate someone, not for my benefit or enhancement. I can feel the depths of what it means to know someone, wanting to know what the silence between words are saying. The inextinguishable being inside of both of us that we share. I'm interested in knowing who you are, because of him. 

Say Love

You say you love
I ask
have you drained the
lake of tears
you created in ignorance

You say you love
I say
go and recover the secrets
of your geometry
tell me the givens
show me the patterns

You say you love
I see
my inability to conform
to the pictures you create for me
my being's too large
it's busting the seams

I say I love
you hear
and before dawn
you become a misty memory
floating away on the dew
adding to the lake of tears

Playing The Part...

Life roll out the repetition, please...
It seems like that's exactly what I asked for and Life is obliging me every step of the way. Good thing I took the advice to notice what I notice or I would be missing some important lessons right now. One lesson being the ability to relate to others while being myself. Seems simple enough, but when you've spent a good part of your life living through other people's perceptions, knowing who "you" are is a pretty daunting task. Then, once you are introduced to yourself, there's the task of knowing how to discern who to share your life with and who should remain in orbit. I haven't reached this pinnacle yet, but I've learned how to recognize the path to it.
We can't escape being in relationships. Even isolated, we are in relationship to ourselves and whatever is in our environment. To me, this means, at our core, we already have the essential things we need all the time. It seems, our issue is how to take off our conditioning long enough to recognize it and learn to harvest what is already present. I'm finding the space between conditioned mind and what can be is very narrow with too many doors to choose from. What's frustrating is going through the same door over and over again. What's frightening is learning it doesn't matter which door you take, if you haven't first learned how you got in the space in the first place. From this space, I can see my choices weren't actually choices. They look more like repeated reactions based on things I'm afraid of or what I've agreed love is. These thoughts lead me to this lesson.
Much of our living, if we do not awaken to the patterns, is spent repeating our past. (duh! I know.) Much of what we call learning, is taking the past and bringing it present. Sometimes we try to change it, most of the time, we leave it as it is. We repeat this in our relationships, too. We take all of the memories, conscious or not, of all the relationships we've ever had and bring them to the present then wonder why they don't work or why they lack something essential. Like in learning, memory is the boundary, the limiting factor, of our relationships.
Around family and close friends our memory is a script we hand to each other. Often, we use these scripts to elevate the perception of our value and worth to ourselves and to others. We remind people what their place is in that circle and any deviation is taken as a treat, especially if that person is doing better than we are. Around acquaintances and strangers,our memory acts like an invisible assessment sheet that evaluates worth and value, always according to who we think we are or who we want to be-- aka projections. Until we can look past our memory, we cannot have authentic relations. On every level, we will repeat the patterns either with others or on ourselves.
Having an authentic relationship is about being able to perceive it as it is, not as we wish, want, or hope it can be with using the past. Righteous judgment is revealed when we've moved past the past. Until we are able to look at people as they are, we don't know them. We may know things about them, we may even know their patterns, but we do not know them. We can only know a person when we are intimate with them. Intimacy happens when we can share the smallest, most insignificant things of ourselves with another, without feeling less than. It happens when we can share our present experiences with knowledge that these experiences are inexhaustible. This is the moment when we know who to become intimate with and who to let stay on the periphery of our lives, in love.
If you find yourself surrounded by people that can only speak of what you used to be or do, they no longer know you. If they cannot speak about the person you are now or the things you are presently doing, you can either refresh the relationship or let them go. People who are unwilling to let you grow in their minds are invested in the role you play in their life. Give them back their scripts and walk off the stage.

Demands

I puffed out my chest to Life
made some irreverent comment about
being an illegitimate child of the sun
about being left to this earth to raise alone
and she had far too many children
to pay attention to me
rolling on her own axis
making love to infinite darkness
she had no time to love me

Snatched from her breast to soon
I spat her milk in her face
threw my head back and laughed
sunlight filled my throat
nearly choking me

I poked my finger at the sky
knowing it had no end and posed no threat
I tried to make it flinch
wildly punching at it with the emptiness in my heart
I needed to feel some kind of power

I walked up on a weeping willow
dared it to come at me
when it reached out for me
I fought it until it entangled me
it tickled my ear
and whispered the sounds of the sea
until it uncovered peace

My fuck face to the world
I tried to grab air by the waist
and angrily pound my way free
slamming myself against unfulfilled hopes and dreams
using the pain to numb myself from living

I demanded life to care for me
I didn't ask to be here
I demanded it do what my parents couldn't
I didn't recite these curses over myself
I demanded it never leave
even though I know it will be
 long after my last breath

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

Calves on shoulders like stirrups

With each application of teeth grazing on ankle

I try to prepare myself

Feet flex and point like ballet

Toes crackle from over extension

Trying to focus closed-eyed is interesting

Looking like sunset

you disappear under the edge of my belly

I envision flicking tongue

sucking lips

Fingers inside beckoning wetness

Hand descends to hair with blessings

“Oh, god!”

Not sure if I’m naming you or calling deity

Head so good wetness comes running

Shoulders rise

Knees lift *insertion* gasp

and

Toes crackle from overextension

Mirrors

fun house thoughts
keep me distorted in my own eyes
other people's words
judgement of being
appearances of reality
I keep laying myself naked
to people who judge my fingerprints
as broken

these other figures
rip me at with imaginings
that what I am is not enough
for myself
let alone Life
I keep agreeing
because I think them
more trained to partner Life
when Life obligated Itself to my dance card too

labels and boxes
stickers with descriptions
of being only what they say is
I scratch at the reflections
blood streaks my face
that's when I understood

the words
the thoughts
the collections of distortions
are me screaming at myself
my attacks on others for my sins
my beliefs of who I am deep down
my resistance to the stories steaming
from the maladjusted psychopathic
collective thinking
I keep nodding
I keep agreeing

then someone came along
grabbing my hand
image just as distorted
I looked at them
seeing light encased in stories
and through their eyes I recognized
myself as one of the distortions
pretending to be the real thing

the mirrors cracked and crashed
and without border and boundary
the Light dances and sings to eternity
and merrily down the stream we go

Frustration

Push.
Push!
Push!!!!

My arms are limp
my face is swollen
my body aches
I'm weak

I'm weak in all the ways a person can be
and darkness is so warm
it keeps me safe from the prying minds
who want to know but don't even care

The darkness says comforting things like
sleep
don't think
that's important but don't worry about it
but it whispers
you will never rest
I will be your thoughts forever never ending
watch it all fall apart, it's your fault

My arms are limp
my face is swollen
my body aches
I'm weak
because I can't seem to
push through these frustrations and fears
I can't give birth to these dreams