[photograph]

The distance closes in from the picture in your hand -
Without it all is dying.
An arched and splendid daylight
Brings a calm to all this trying;
Closer and you come closer,
With this love is living -
Love I'm living.
Salvaging the truth
Of a sweet and bitter youth,
Closer fully always known;
You'll never be alone.~

[farewell]

this is about meeting my father, and then saying goodbye...its called [farewell]:


theres the why,
and then theres beneath it -
the pit, a stone
to wrought in my inside,
as i conjure up goodbye.
and to watch you turn your eye;
a sullen whale over a wave -
dismiss the love in the way
i tried to wave goodbye.

theres the how,
and then theres beyond it -
the question, a mark...
really not understood, but i vowed
to save myself, i’m saved til now
and then when i cry like now;
your child lost while you’re away,
looks for you at night and day,
presses hands hard as she prays.

theres the when,
and then theres behind it -
the dream, a door
closed to the yesterday
i knew, but you were hurt;
couldn’t help for well its worth,
farewell.~

[wax on water]

funny how the smudge on the lens
lent itself to the truth -
the blends of bold hues,
the bends of hard lines;
oiling together until clearly
clarity floats on reality,
like clouds off the coast (a birds eye view).
i fly over a moment captured, gone,
given and taken in the same breath;
the same life and the same death.~

on the exhale~

and as i took a breath i watched the mess wean/ much of this chaos has stormed from stale air/formed from resistance/the force of pain/an inevitable wind/within/
peace/and quiet now/on the exhale~

suffix

the clouds are trying. they will the season. the landscape breathes out a quiet surrender, ready or not. am i ready? i turn my glance against the wind, water fills the lens, stings as i contemplate my progress. the things i thought were important to me are only important to other people whose thoughts were important to me once.

i turn back down the mountain and across the saddle of two, affixing my desires on a very personal agenda. i reflect on myself through a pond of honesty, below the crisp and subtle fog. this is real. i'm tired of trying to meet life where other people say it should be. what if this is where i'm at? this is where i'm at. life will just have to meet me here. if i know all that i know, my whole heart and soul understands the only way to reach pure happiness is to define happiness for oneself; a reasoning unencumbered by others' variations of its meaning (even ones' own). one must consciously afford the will to make someone else happy or to truly make the self happy. and if life is really as short as i know that it is, then may i sigh relief and understanding; for all these things i'm after,...all these efforts towards something i'm scurrying to do… this idea of completion, happiness, success... have a way of keeping me from the ultimate joy. what i actually end up "being," has little substance if through the process i was never actually being.

the weather approaching hurries us: prepare, prepare, prepare. and no matter how much we prepare, it often feels as though we are never ready enough. when is just being, just enough? how much faith do i have in the now, that what i have right now is enough? if i weren't ready, it wouldn't happen. if it wasn't meant to be, it wouldn’t be. ready or not, i'm ready.~

woman in bed

Was this her last? Its easy to remember, easy to forget whose feet we are washing.

As the washcloth rubbed over her edematous soles, the cloth took with it a dingy orange residue, the texture and look of iodine.

She moaned as we turned her. All four, five of us to pull, push her from side to side. We cleansed her, not knowing who we cleansed. We bathed her, not knowing who we bathed.

God forgive me that i didn't have you more in mind.

Thank you God for even in this moment, is your will for me.

Forgive me that i didn't give more of that moment to you.

One eye averted from my business, I kept watch of the lab results, test results printing every so often...more bold, more red numbers...more negatives more parentheses.

Hours hour on; pacing by her room, I watch her monitors settle into their noise now crowded with neighboring noises as if the room is actually quiet.

But now God I have you in my mind.

Now God I'm reminded of why.

I give thanks even in these times. These troubles I give it to you, for I know not why but I know You. ~

pray.

my heart is in deep prayer. we continue to walk with our hands in the air... God we give this to You. we give this to You. we give it all up to You.

[oil burn]

speak speechless like you mean it.
say the words in the movements of the sound.
move in and out of the sound you make;
make me speechless with the breath you take.
living in and living out of the love we make;
each word carried in the act of.... taken by reenacting the words we spoke;
we hope, we love, we laugh... let in the faith that keeps this path.
say speechless acts of words; a rhythm of facts to learn -
i touch you and my heart burns. ~

[city lights]

me and the extremes;
comin down and so much closer than you think.
between the candle and the flame,
we put away the smoke and pick things up again.
take away the night and the sun;
heaven is here between the lines of love.~

[september tenth]

i wait, and as the wait through's through me now,
having in and having me now; take me now but,
but hold breath and hold faith and refrain ;
life waits in the capture of God.
we are captivated by the beauty that remains;
sways patient love; it comes, it stays.
we wait, for a better day and come softly now, for
i will be the last to know.~

[tredge]

the static prevailing clears in clouds,
smoke edged clarity of once upon;
a time will come, a now we’ll know-
for now we know...
this tredge through thick and patient days,
fog (so far) rolls in my heart.
I walk through time and I’m alive.
In you I feel alive.

[more like one]

i'd like to believe in something
no one could take away,
or tinge, or fade into other schemes of faith.
i am a believer, but i believe outside the box.
there is a God inside and out;
with us whether we are there or not;
not to take away but to contribute.
i'd like to believe that through something we become
more like one. more like Him. more like One. ~

[oblivion]

leaping over oblivion -
i could not subject myself to tyrrany.
so in my act of opposition,
i pirrouetted ’round the irony.
with a focus on my Orion…
landing my life violently -
in line with destiny.~

[arid eye]

nothing to wipe from your vacant apathic eyes;
no water to collect, just whimpers for affect
lack of tide to me, no rain no bow no cry;
no shore to line the isle, the ithaca, the eyes.
the stoic in your step stammers at my soul.
the depth of such amazing tears, no cry could ask for more.
carry on the mess of depthlessness and blame me for the chaos if you must.
watch the sand as it hits my shore...
those dreams were made of dust,
collecting in clumps behind closed doors.~

[relief]

shamed by my presence, alone,
i slept in the graces of God tonight
and welcomed the love as it lives in You.
impeccable, God, your love...
thank You; i cannot forgive Your time.
Lord God, You give me strength
and a beauty that is all mine. ~

Isaiah 54:10

"Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,"
says the LORD, who has compassion on you."

Isaiah 54:10

song of ascents

1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills—
From whence comes my help?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not allow your foot to be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The LORD is your keeper;
The LORD is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.

7 The LORD shall preserve you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul.
8 The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in
From this time forth, and even forevermore.

psalm 121:1-8

truth

"Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit." the genius, Ralph Waldo Emerson

[ribbons]

God seeks
ribbons through the heart
traces the depths for intentions
i pray to be forgiven
goodness and light crept
felt through fate
of chapters, words, lines, run-ons~

[virtues]

Your time;
should i have taken it so quickly?
but Your love;
the crown, the jewels -
forgive me God but i keep You in mind.~

[avenue]

havin' down the avenue -
down so far...
kept in the graces of face value;
pain so old with pain,
splinters down the spine of someone new.
time gets borrowed; borrowed time.
my home belongs to a heart not so oh so ziploc blue.~

down through time

I can’t configure in my mind the time of day.  In some memories its dark, in other memories its day.  All in the same memory, the same moment in time.
Then there was the night before.  The phone that didn’t stop ringing.  We all sat there as it rang, slow to respond.  As I finally realized no one else would answer it, I got up and sure enough, it stopped ringing.
Then the morning after.  Again, the phone rang and it didn’t stop ringing.  Slow to answer, my mom sleeping next to me, said,
Is that the phone?
Hours later (so it seemed; light to dark), my mom slipped on clothes and hurried down the hall to answer the endless ring of the phone.
There are no words to explain what happened next.  Just,
“What did you do to Mike!  What did you do to him!”
And the next thing I knew, my brother was dead.
Not one of us questioned how he died until we were told how he died.

[My Mike Poem]
your life hangs over like a lamp
from the path i’ve drifted from
when other lights of color
led my heart undone;
and as i rode through ether
caught in strobes of scattered void
your watt improved in measure
and i could not avoid.
though i thought the world was dark
without your strength to light it,
you are the light that is the strength
with the power to ignite it.
if i made a promise
you would have to keep it too;
we’ll take your strength to lengths
unknown to me and you,
and light the way your life insists
and follow it to your transfer.
we’ll mark the exes, connect the wires
and there will be an answer.~

liberation

When the self is alone, this is said to be the attainment of liberation
Restraint for the sake of freedom from remorse
freedom from remorse for the sake of joy
joy for the sake of rapture
rapture for the sake of tranquility
tranquility for the sake of pleasure
pleasure for the sake of concentration
concentration for the sake of knowledge and vision of things as they are
knowledge of things as they are for the sake of disenchantment
disenchantment for the sake of release
release for the sake of knowledge and vision of release
knowledge and vision of release for the sake of total unbinding without clinging – Vinaya Pitaka, book 5

[some perfect]

re you is the most truth you’ve ever known:
the plaid fading into the flannel it really is;
the coffee staining to the cup where it lives;
the eyes you see from pressing to read-
you struggle still for spotlight as you watch
the colors bleed.
this is what it means but i don’t think you’ll listen;
centerstage is no one there when you’ve prepared to glisten.
reality is paisley as it skillfully adheres to plaid~

nicu

…walks into a delicate trance;
slow motion witness,
mouthpiece cupped over mouth;
infant fights to live and life.
a cold mixture of death and depth
numbs the pace;
the prayers gets informal now;
oh God,
then the swiftness of grace;
i am a just a witness to this place. ~

[puffy]

slow and puffy-eyed sunrise;
i feel the dance of the day.
rise and shine but cloud and glow;
the temperature tepid;
wide-side alaskan eyes timid.
its only inside the colors appear vivid,
and the melody plays as soft as the sky
emits light
to my day, good morning~

breath

it occurred to me as it had not before (as summer morning wrestled with spring’s night, my mind delighted in the swirling tastes of meaning, existence, self-reliance and other misunderstandings),

the breath of life, beyond the first, testifies to will.

(like taking off a set of training wheels, pushing off on one’s own for the first time. like testing the waters, the strength in ones wings, we are given nothing more than a head start).

it appeals to me how the nerves expand and learn to thrive on curiousity and confidence. i adore how we cultivate, adding more to our spectrum by the life we find around us. in fact, diversity must be the greatest fertilizer.

it occurred to me, sensationally (the daring of fresh perspective), in one life we are both living and dying:

the first breath and the last, manifest in the hands of God
but the air between them hang in the balance of will.
Beside the occassional stirring of immortal fingers and the mysterious eyes of storms and of course, disease and physiology; largely, to accept life is optional.

[pedastal]

fallen from the
highest shelf,
i hear through the glass
your slams at me:
couldn’t i be less broken?
but watching you fall;
the pieces of my art,
(shards of it embed the heart).
tones of pause
and gut cries:
couldn’t i be less taken?~

leave your problems at the door

Prelude (explanation of the title page), The Scale:




I made 10 hours of time and a half today suffocating in a small hospital room with an innocent woman who thought she’d been rat-poisoned by a Wal-mart worker who followed her from Chicago because she’d won the lotto and the slithering Wal-mart lady was after her for the only four pennies she had left.
I took care of this woman but by “care”, I do not mean I bathed her. I did not help her with anything, really. I sat with her for 10 hours trying to keep her mind occupied on the cartoons; and off the clock or the window, or the thoughts in her head.
This is nothing new for me;
…Nothing new and not because I work there. I mean of course I’ve come across some crazy stuff in the eight years I’ve worked in healthcare: Thrown across rooms, bitten, kicked; punched; you name it.
That’s not what I’m really talking about.
In fact, being around those people takes me farther from my work and closer to the door where I left my proverbial baggage, next to the time clock.
And if we’re going to be brutal here, that old baggage is actually the thing which dragged me here to start.
At one time, yes, this was something new. Back then, (young and stupid) (audience nodding heads) I thought because I was so drawn to these people, I should help them somehow. I could devote my career to understanding them, their behavior; set up some nonprofit thing for other peoples’ old proverbial bags.
But now I know…
They don’t need some stupid .org, generously gifting 20 percent of proceeds to research (salaries of researchers). No psh! please… That makes them seem like monkeys or rats or something, minimizing them to their disease. I mean do we know these people? They aren’t monkeys. They aren’t that at all. They are actually far from foreign.
We, the “normal”, are just as screwed up and strange. It only so happens, I’m pretty good at speaking their language. or making their food,
12 deviled eggs
32 oz muddy black coffee
1/2 carton cheapest menthols
2 French bread pizzas
2 mg valium for a midnight snack
Let me tell you a little more.
I’ve been rather vague and when I am being vague on purpose,
I also tend to be long-winded. Forgive me.

Introduction, The Overhead Compartment:
My brother, who died when I was 12, suffered from manic depression, a life marked by season, pulled by weather… Inducing unmanageable moods.
Mike’s genes gave him this; brought down by his father and his father. Sadly, I knew very little about what ailed him, growing up. as a young girl, I don’t think I even knew he suffered.
When he died, I determined to know more. I wanted to understand this complicated mind. At the age of 13, I stumbled over a very enlightening book: Touched with Fire. It examined the dumbfounding link between madness and genius, citing case after case of remarkable people terrorized by voices and moods beyond their own power. While it was a bit too researchy and grownup for my pre-teen mind to wrap itself around, it also changed the way I saw the world and its aesthetics. Mike was a profound artist…could have easily been an architect, an engineer. He had these mystically detailed drawings…that just came up and out of the napkins he drew them on. his mind was magical, however troubled, as I came to understand.
And so are the minds of these suffering people…plagued with severe bouts of emotion, wretchedly damaging thoughts screaming at them and no one to turn off that damn noise. God, I’ve been there. Haven’t you? Not every day, I mean I don’t think rat poisoning is running through my veins but …I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some things that weren’t there a time or two.
Think about it
Well, it just blows me away…to live in this alt-reality. I wonder at what points in their lives they lucidly comprehend truth.
Or is it them who see perpetual truth, unwritten before us? Only explained in pictures, even those we don’t get. Truth so big that words are not heavy enough. colors they vividly impress us with, our knuckles pale for grasp. We fall short.
Chapter 2, Checked
My mom sat me down in the middle of a mall (where we’ve always shared life-altering conversations) one day and told me,
the person I thought was my (schmuck-for-a) dad actually wasn’t, and my real father didn’t know he had a daughter (which I later discovered was also not true, lol).
Before you jump up with an oh my god or what the hell…don’t worry, there was, in her well-laid defense, strong justification for the whitening out of facts.
Shortly after my parents split (never married), my dad turned out to be sort of a creep. One day she was at the mall in San Diego with toddler Mike. She tells me the whole time at the mall she felt followed…Looking around, feeling uneasy. At one point, she turned around and he’s right there, my dad, Joe.
But get this, he says to her;

Why did you follow me here?
(… uh… ….)
No … you followed ME here.
My mother locked the deadbolt after that day, even slept in her living room with a baseball bat.
Fast forward, 16 years later… Phoenix, the middle of another mall, my mother and I sat. In my hands, I cupped truth and irony (the irony, an entirely separate blog post lol). Months later, I set out to find this man, Joe. After all, he had the right to know about me.
After writing to several Pitkat’s (his last name) across the country, I finally found my father (relatives I’d apparently written to found him for me). He wrote me a letter. I knew it was coming, this letter I’d been waiting and hoping for…still checking the mailbox that day, it seemed so out of the blue. On yellow legal pad paper, Joe explained to me, he’d been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when attending the University of New York, years ago (majoring in English and Art History…what I also majored in at the time).
Creepy mall story, finally made sense.
The Duffle:
The genius and magic once glittering around mental illness, as I perceived it, quickly faded into a murky hopeless pit with vacant eyes as I endured a year or so dabbling in father-daughter relationship.
Joe marveled me, nonetheless, with his fascinating talent of turning this tragic, deep, dark disease into something…almost, beneficial. Indeed, his mania seemed to get him a lot of things (leather couches, drugs in the mail) and out of a lot of things (prison, state hospitals, guardianship). I could never figure out if he was just manipulative or if the poor man was being told by several scary voices in his head to be this manipulative. Either way, being schizo had its perks, at least for him. Innocent by the name of his disease yet guilty by the genius behind the scheme. Every untruth worked to protect him.
And so be it, shit. If you have to live with shadows and the phone talking to you all the time, my God, have a beer. Ya know? Collect political buttons, blow a lot of money. Whatever. Take your drugs, get your government check. I can’t say I wouldn't!
It’s survival. There are these schizophrenics who seem to be in this state of survival, often. Like pigeons, they rummage and never stay in one place for long. They know they need shelter and cigarettes, food on occasion and all of these they’ll find because they have to. They don’t have the capacity to live in a society based on earnings; career; monetary success; picket fences. Money would never be their friend; in fact it would kill a dying man. And drugs don’t really help either because their mind is the thing which is already high.
In its raw, frazzled state, genius abounds and so in its natural wild, this creature transforms canvas to art. puts its stamp on life that says: THIS IS WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. And we the “normal”, stand before it in pencil skirts and legal pads, criticizing a level of genius we know nothing about. (Written off simply, insanity) In museums and studios across the globe, we buy framed complicated concepts and hang them on our walls so that we appear more genuine and sophisticated.
Meanwhile sleeps the loon in its empty sea of padding, overmedicated, tamed by tazer now after the weeklong episode which finally manifested into the painting which you spent 7000 dollars on. But they’ll get better. They have lots of doctors blending precise concoctions of antipsychotics for the individual, an art itself. Somehow, these ungrounded spirits settle into their illusions…Befriending, if possible, the spiders and snakes, shadows and voices. Befriending the enemy, still never sleeping sound without its haunt.
The Claim
I don’t want to help them anymore,
but when I’m around them, as they should stumble into my rocky ascent, I want to know how they can help me.
So I always start with the universal truth: Art.
Do you paint, I asked the woman?
Her eyes lit up. It seemed to bring her the most joy in those ten hours; sharing with me, the beauty she creates – the light she’s made for her darkness.
I don’t try to understand anymore. I don’t have to know how she’s helped and why she’s here with me and not the other way around. I watch the clock as she watches cartoons. I look for the door, eager to claim my proverbial baggage, get the hell out of here.
Nothing new.
Getting the hell out got me here, watching the clock, the door. There’s no rat poisoning coursing my veins but my father’s blood taught me something. Mike’s suffering, the book I read, the dizzying list of illed people I’ve met, from it all I’ve learned. Winged things live in the most vivid spectrum; they live inside the rainbows we chase and we’ll never get that close to the truth. We don’t fly.

[shored]

these deserted searches
for the self,
drift as is compliant
with the tide.
these reverted senses
of whats good,
recovered by a comber
of a storm & shore collide.~

[training camp]

this evening is my first day on the job. the training trial period, sort of like life:
preparing
for some heavenly duty of sorts; a military nurse for God. The idea is to go
and pick up the wounded angels of Armageddon running along the front lines, (some dimension
prepared just for this) pulling them aside, relieving them of their armor.
i’ll take out my bag of tricks: God’s morphine and His tourniquet. Now and until then, he tells me his potions
are potent and his pre-hospital care is powerful … so i start with this. its small but its a start
and its taken me long enough to conjure up some sense of purpose.


you first have to realize you are small
your big plans are skepticism. your small ones, volunteer work.
your life is a resume; practicing in the mirror for the long awaited interview
i could be wrong but i’m not
i could be wrong but what if i’m not


i tucked in my polo shirt which i never do but they never have uniforms in extra small or even small, because uniforms were not meant to be customized or to fit. i tried to fit the profile, hair tucked away in bun, slippery nose with falling glasses.
i tried to look pressed, ironed, worthy. i go to open the cottage door (cottage is their term for
anything not plastered with stucco and pink paint; not uniform) but its locked. Of course. I knock and a woman twice my age but shorter opens the door, baring the same tucked polo, thrift store khakis hemmed, sliding thick rimmed glasses with question-mark eyes.

You must be the new girl.

yes, yes of course
in time with the persona.


you then have to realize where you fit
because some people learn best in quiet light,
others in do or die situations.
and God lets us figure that out
through one painted window at a time


immediately, i felt awkward, like an intruder. sorry. this was a quiet place with
musky, milk glass lighting; antique static. the living room straightened with old people in rows
of withered skin and aimless eyes. they don’t say hi or welcome me because they don’t know
me but they know that much. Dusty roses and muted green damask tapestry stuffed tautly
forming against their bony backs, paints a false picture. Fake flowers abound, the TV
is just on and a waxy wipe-off calendar blares pathetic goals for each day:

exercise, Thursday the 1st.
bingo, Friday the 9th.

Today is staring off into space with applesauce and Respiradol dried to corners of cracked speechless lips and blank daydreams shuttering only by anything familiar and nothing here is… but that’s not written on the calendar.


the next ambition is discovering falsity,
because where one hopes many doubt.
this will take a lifetime to sift through
but with earnest virtue you will.
if you love this, than you will.


she leads me into the medication room and in my loud young limbs and pin-tucked mouth, i ask too quickly:

what do you want me to do.

let me put some of them to bed and then i’ll show you around.

so i sat there observing, tarrying with the moments passing. is this God’s idea or mine?
i’ve already judged the room and my place in it: too fake. too boxy; plastic antiques. replicas of
comfort. its a shade too quiet for my age and i’m a tad too quick for their hands.
i can’t take it anymore:


Ya know i can help; i don’t want to just sit here.

well that one needs to be changed; she goes at the very end of the hall behind you on the right.
she’s pretty easy but use a high pitched voice, she likes to be pampered.


what is she talking about? i’ve never even held a baby. i’m too proud to ask. i reach for the cold clammy creature, walk with her down the hall. young and old, new and used. its sort of purposeful like Mary and Elizabeth; we’re fulfilling something… perhaps me.

last you realize small hands do big things
your place is where God puts it
The truth is in the moment, what you skim from the top of it.
i could be wrong but i’m not.
and we’re all just really practicing, aren’t we?

i caught on to the quietness. they live in dreams of things that made sense once. so i pretend
with her. its the only thing i could think to do. are we in the 40′s maybe? two young damsels
glorifying our best features in a powder room, fixing a loose hem, a snagged stocking:

here let me help you with that.
i fumble with the washcloth; well this is awkward. what? God i don’t know.

wait Hon’, umm..you’ve got a punch stain your dress.

Oh thank you sweetheart, she says to me.

Can you believe she said thank you? and here i am sweating and shaking trying to work with this discomfort: the interplay of dignity and delirium.

it wasn’t bad for a first day; i broke my own mold and washed the feet of God for the first time.~