Nothing

I am a ghost
dancing in shadows
a passing breeze
shifting the leaves
to a rustling waltz
sigh of the wind only
the drops of rain
are tears of sorrow
out of my control
the storm passes
only to begin again

Grieving

I am not feeling social...nor charitable...nor tolerant right now. I do not want to answer questions, talk about IT, or go to work. I don't want to sleep all day...although rest is what I am craving....I want to be alone but with someone at the same time who leaves me alone...knowing someone is in the house is enough.

Stretching myself out on the stone floor, I can feel the cool, uneven surface of the worn rock. Hundreds of feet have walked it smooth. I want to just lie here embracing this sanctuary in my mind, loving the solice and peace it offers.

Leave me to my grieving, for you can do nothing for me. No word or deed will stop the pain that tears at me. I pray for release that won't come right now when I want it. It eludes me, dancing around me as a shadow in the darkness...reaching out and drawing back in a ceaselessly taunting game. I live for seconds at a time when the agony subsides for just that brief span and then floods back in waves.

Blood coarses...bleeding out...an act of mercy and finality...virtually painless for you...and I am envious of your new freedom! I long for it like I longed for you in those nights to come to my door...my lover. I long for you again...aching with the knowing you will steal up on me and make me catch my breath...fingers brushing my skin....holding me in your arms...kissing me and claiming me...smiling like the dawn breaking...telling me to come away.

But until then...I wait with the longing...the anticipation for my lover to come in the night.

Isadora

Bend back, arm outstretched, gentle gliding step forward....tilting like the moon in crescent. So much that a simple gesture can bestow and portray of life.

The Last Time I Saw Paris...

"The last time I saw Paris....."

.....was in another lifetime.

In the in the last week or so, Paris has being making itself known.

It has surfaced in the books I've been reading, researching art techniques, and popping up in movies on the television. French jewelry, dancing in Paris, eating at certain cafes, dresses, perfumes, dogs....all Parisian...faint and fleeting colors of chalk washing away in the rain.

Yesterday, I sat in my dining room working in polymer clay. The photos I had chosen as the focal points were mostly small reproductions of Mucha posters or cropped bits from Sargeant paintings. I was turning them into Christmas ornaments for friends.

Gold and copper leaf was worked into the translucent clay, marbling and breaking away in pretty patterns with each turn of the press. Flattening the clay and cutting through it to create the frame work, I cut swirls and worked the clay into Art Nouveau twists and curls. Each frame was different...no two are alike due to the coloring, size, and cut of the piece itself. Baked and cured, I glazed the photos and then added loose pearls and vintage rhinestones from the 20's and 30's. Gold thread was attached to the wire hangers and knotted. Ten ornaments in all.

I should have been satisfied with my work. Instead, I was anxous. I have been for weeks now.

Moving about the house, pacing in lion steps...soft and steady. A hot bath and hot milk with allspice, mace and Irish whiskey did nothing for me. I picked up "Isadora" by Fredricka Blair and was inundated with emotions as she made her trek to Paris and then eventually to Berlin and began her romance with Edward Gordon Craig. Teddy.

Slamming the book shut, I thought "Enough of THIS!" Agitation, restlessness and something unnamed. Crawling under the down covers, I sat in bed and wrote in my journal until I began to fall asleep. My pen strokes began to scribble themselves down the page as sleep set in.

Midnight and I had been dreaming of working on ornaments...there was a stress there within the dream...something was making an otherwise enjoyable time feel pushed, pinched, and miserable. I woke feeling stressed and thirsty. I reached for my journal again and wrote of the bits of dream I remembered.

Fooling around with thoughts on paper...self-analysis and unhappiness with things. I push them away from me because I love them too much and can loose myself in them.

It is as if I am on a sea cliff with oceans of things I love...who I really am...what is important to me, lying below.

It would be so easy to open my arms.
So easy.

Breathing them in, I have embraced this feeling before.

I could open my arms to it...
allowing myself to fall into these things
and back into who I am.

I could...am about to... but am so very afraid that it will change me...

but change me how?

That
I will find out.

Harlequin

Dance the masquerade

Calling,
pulling,
sailing away on your soul
you are
helpless
to pull away

Don the mask
and you are what
you have always longed for
release
comes
in
a
breath

a scream

biting the bottom
of your lip
until
it bleeds
to keep it in

but you can't
are not
allowed
to

lick
of the whip
cracking
the air
cracking
the skin

laughter in
the pain
joyful
in the knowing

it's
all
in
your mind

Do You?

Dark. Muggy and no clouds in sight. Languid, but tranquil in the dusky light as I lay across the sofa.

Thoughts of the wind and the rain and the water. Always the rain and the green grey sky of a September afternoon from years ago. Wind howling and the lightening scattering like cat scratches across the dark and troubled sky. You remember...

remember it like it was yesterday...moments ago and the thoughts pour down just like the rain did that dry day...we hadn't had rain for months and were praying for it....

Ocean waves, the muted green silk frothed with water lace rippling on the rocks at the back of the Sutro cave rippling as my skin in the cold of the fog splintering my nerves on tiny skewers. The shell, pink and white and oh, so fragile, lay in your hand as you thought in the dry, white heat of the desert....you couldn't say a word...not to anyone...but I knew....

knew like the lines that cross my palm or the hunger at the end of the day...hunger coming in waves...the heat of the day rising in mirage from the asphalt...making you think...

wonder.....

why the spirit dances in the dead of night when no one but the stars see...whirling under the branches to the scent of roses and leaves crisping in the summer heat...you are a voyeur, aren't you ...I've said that before , but it's true...like it or not.....yards of cloth sway in breezes and body movements that leave you drunk with desire and longing to touch...you won't...won't allow yourself to do that...and she knows...can feel your breath on her neck down her arms...the breath that is the wind carrying her in the dance...your heartbeat marking the tune as her feet glide and she twirls leaf-like in your heart...is alone and will be so through time...so close you can feel her, smell her scent but never touch her...make her yours...she pulls off the veil to reveal your own face looking back at you and you flinch and then realize she is a mirror and you are the mask...forever hiding from yourself and from her....and you believe in your safety and you believe you are untouched by your desire.....alone in a confessional the little panel slides back to reveal...what?

...staring at the screen only shadows beyond and you still won't reveal it...won't tell you the truth until finally the desperation drives you dizzily down the wire and YOU tell her what you have longed for...what you wish and what you fear...and there is silence greeting you...is she listening...eavesdropping to what is said between the lines...and she softly tells you to light a candle for her soul and say 3 Hail Marys..because surely you are driving her to a hell of your...her own creation clawing at the bedsheets and howling into the dark...unheard

what is this thing that makes you think

you are so civilized?

Sea Birds

Pure essence and emotion

portrayed in dances of the secret heart

and the rolling waves

She flies the music

gently

lifting to soar up

cascading down

outstretched

Pulling away from

the approaching crags

with precision timing

Seabirds dance with the approaching storm

Your Own Version and Mine

A thorn sticks in my finger and it penetrates right into my brain. There are times when I am afraid of my thoughts...scared of what my mind will conjure up for it's own enjoyment or torture.

I have been writing since 5 this morning. Unable to sleep, the poems, no, the emotions ran over in my mind ceaselessly. If I purgue this, will it leave me alone? How many times do I have to purgue it? It drones on and on as a nun over her rosary.

rerun....

change the channel

twilight zone and they are all the same show.

popcorn for breakfast with oatmeal and a dash of brown sugar with my tea. Okay, let's see where this leads me.

Where it leads you.

There is a dark side to me...glittering, knife-edged and very, very sharp. I am throwing it all up on paper, so to speak...the beautiful, bold, insecure and bizarre.

...the smell of snuffed out candles in the evening air and church confessions banging my head against the dark, on the wood confessional and the words of someone anonymous giving me meaningless absolution for sins I haven't even thought of committing.....wouldn't in a million years.

I count candles and rain drops, and tears that were shed over trivialities and nonesense whose intense meaning in my past look absurd in the now. I keep counting them. Collecting them as scattered beads on the ground, something precious to be put away until I have the patience to re-string them and turn them into something truly beautiful.

The night is young and the spirit is believing in the wax and lighted string and wisps of smoke tangled up in prayers so intimate and unspoken aloud . The silence within me echos up and the choir screams. The spirit boils.

Do you see it? Do you understand ?

So much I pick up and see. So much that goes unnoticed in everyday hurrying to work.

People pass by the building fascade and never stop and REALLY see it. They don't know about the beautiful tiles and the rococo. They don't see the gargoyal sitting placid and ready to spout water during the rainfall. The see the piece of yesterday's newspaper and dog crap by the doric column and have no idea there is a sky above. Eyes to the pavement. Attention to the bits of litter and trash.

I see it, too. I just have the nerve to raise my head. That makes me dangerous. That makes me know too much.

Laying down at Sutro gate is a cement lion. He waits and watches the decades roll by with the fog from the Pacific Ocean. He is covered in sun, covered in dew, cloaked in rain. His roar is frozen. He is wise and aware of everything that has passed before him in the stream of traffic and time that has flowed down the hill over looking the ruins of ghosts and laughter and dancing in the dark to the orchestra after oysters and champagne. Dancing on the floors of a building that you can't see above the ruins and the tunnel and the boom of the waves at high tide when the spirits run with your candle through the darkness and snuff it out on the rocks and water at the end of cave. Dancing with their ghost lights and dreaming of us as a fantasy in their mind.

Madness, you whisper.

Silent. So much is.

The Tragedy Lingers

The Tragedy Lingers

Avoidance...

Exiled...

There is nothing to be done

Movement in careful measures

Dancing around the abyss

until my heart is raw

So close to the edge

falling

is no longer a question

Grace has turned to shards of brittle glass

Ancient sorrow

consumes the players

Driving us on

and away

from the truth

that lays

as an ocean between.

Electric Fence and poem are both copyrighted 2006. All rights reserved.