Figuring Out Life While Aging
I find myself lost again struggling for breath in a closed up car, riding on a road not yet built invisible between two cities The undrawn map - (and breath) take shape in the dark, outlined by the headlights. The search party won't come until I am found
from Mapping The Wilderness
The dreams I don’t remember
disturb me:
my mother’s mink coat,
thrown on the floor,
over something.
That lover in the closet,
offering disinterested kindnesses.
The flowered skirt
I never wore.
All memories of failures
or escapes.
| What do I know to be true? Hmmm… Love exists and is more than chemistry and convenience, although those can help start or reinforce it. You never know what will happen next in your life, no matter how much you try to control it. Other people are endlessly mysterious, no matter how well you think you know them. Cruelty, both unconsciously and consciously intended, is real and dangerous to both the causer and the victim. Everyone suffers sometime, and some people frequently. You never fully understand someone else’s experience of the world. What do I believe? Hmmm… How you feel about yourself correlates with how you feel about others. You can never know for sure what is true in life, but you can chose to experience life through the lens of what you believe to be true. You can never know for sure what “God” actually means, but you can chose to live “as if” “God” is “real”, because your life will be better lived that way. |
Perfume in a Pandemic
is pointless.
I watch, listen to your
simulacrums, your untouchable
screen ghosts.
I yearn
For smell and taste..
Perfume in a pandemic
is comforting, I shake
the tiny bottle, my finger as stopper.
I stroke my pulse points,
bathe in, breath in, grasp
the memory:
the clutching joy of
your embracing warmth
as we hugged.
Perfume in a pandemic is essential.
“Sea change or sea-change is an English idiomatic expression which denotes a substantial change in perspective, especially one which affects a group or society at large, on a particular issue.” Wikipedia
My heart stumbles
as our world’s clutch
misses,
and the gears judder
and jerk
stripped of their connections.
We don’t know
when or what
it foretells.
How do I decide
how to live
in this strange wilderness?
I lived in libraries and classrooms,
More solitary among the living,
More alive in pages turning,
Building my armour and bridges.
The silence at home covered
Flattened noise; obscured dreams and
muffled resentments, darkened mirrors
Seeking to display projected images.
O, Boccaccio,
Where are you now?
I need you to take me away from
graphs and maps and the tv’s heavy breathing.
I flee the city but yearn for
its pleasures:
smiles, touches, and fearless
encounters.
I need absorbing stories
and happy endings.
I see the world
through a scrim of
books.
I ride on words woven together,
carrying more freight than
just solitary singles, side by side.
Sentences and paragraphs,
pages and chapters.
books – tap feelings and understandings,
echoing the fingers that tapped letters, words, pages –
and built, shaped my mind.
You, with warp and weft of words, created
this floating, flowing, close-woven
jewelled net-lace I ride on and pull
through the ring of my mind,
accepting joyfully your gifts.
Homes are ceremonial,
ripe with obscure patterns
absentmindedly repeated.
The Dining Room
where eating
is an uncomfortably full altar;
The Living Room
where family mementos and the tv
sacrifice lives;
Even the Kitchen,
recipeless and hurried,
has ghosts,
although its necessary
Partner, (for defecating and self-presentation),
tries to be polite.
So the young
flee and refuse the rituals
that triggered their fears,
So the older
submit to the comfort
of their ceremonies.
Learning Living 