Three Toys Floating

November 14

THREE TOYS FLOATING

I bat the ducks across the surface of my bath. Soaking is supposed to calm me. I’m waiting. I assure you my impatience is no help to this process. These yellow, tub-bound misfits grinning at me don’t fill me with the joy of living, either. I have blown bubbles until I’m blue. I smell like a French elevator from the bath oils. My hair is stiff with conditioner; my face packed with mud. “Do the right thing," said my sponsor. She is such a pain. Here I am bubble bath to my armpits, and not a hint of peace. Her question rings, “What do you want?” But isn’t it obvious? If I knew that, what would I be doing wrinkling in this swilling vat? I wouldn’t. I would be out doing my ‘thing’, whatever that ‘thing’ is. How I’m going to figure myself out I don’t know. And ‘she’ is no help, (you know who ‘she’ is, she the sponsor lady)
So what do I want?
World peace.
A clue.
Maybe just a hint.
But I know part of it. I know more than I admit.
I want sobriety and happiness, dignity and respect, enough time to do these things, and love.
“Well," says she, “those things are easy. Work the steps, then the traditions; practice them, do service, and take the advice you give to your own sponsees.”
I stick out my tongue in her general direction.


Creep toward the unknown.

Wrong as wrong can be

November 13

Wrong as wrong as wrong can be

To be wrong in my family and in my past meant to be tortured and I prefer death to torture, so being wrong meant death or longing for death. I tried never to be wrong as a way to stave of the desire to leap from tall buildings; I did not turn into superman, wonder woman or mighty mouse through my efforts. I did turn into someone else; I became a cartoon of a real person, two dimensional and overflowing with irrational color. Now I see how wrong, wrong can be. Wrong is not an allowable excuse to be tormented. It can be the turning point for knowledge if I choose or the stairway to something deep dark and ugly; my choice, always my choice.

Quilt your stories and sleep under their protection

*

ASSURANCES OF GULLIVER

Poor Lilliputians and my egg shaped conundrum.
At least they have the strength of their convictions
When I have only pondering to share the space between my ears.

What sense could the world make if there is no right way
And each person is free to open the egg from either end
Or leave the thing intact, having instead maybe a bagel.

I have been looking for the combination to unlock the universe
When possibly it’s an egg shaped thing with no doors or locks
And all that’s left is to break in or out.

Olive Juice

November 12

Olive Juice

For whatever the reason olives are often pitted and once they are pit-less there seems to rise an irresistible urge to fill that wound, whether with pimento or children’s cubby little fingers as they fish them from the can. There is an opening, an answer must be found. When I find my center gone I have that same yearning, fill that hole! It is an imperative, a need that must be met no matter how poorly. I will stuff just about anything in that gap; the list is longer than the Bell directory and yet none of it is an adequate replacement for what has gone amiss. So here I stand rife with questions. What to put in there what to keep out. Is cream cheese preferred to cobwebs? Prosciutto better than ice? Nothing is better than some things and the right thing is better than having given up.

Maple leaves change the world, so do you

*

THE FLYING MIND

When my brain flies out my ear
Destination unknown I am left mentally bereft
I feel intellectual convolution and show no affliction
Other than my inability to fulfill my assignments.

I stare out, sure a ring of blue birds circle my head
Or maybe stars like any other cartoon patsy.
What to do, these parodied wingdings ridicule me privately
Leaving the impression of idiocy with onlookers and supervisors.

My focus and perceptions quaver and I lose my place.
I have to find a way to spot and keep emotional balance,
The way I stay upright during pirouettes
By watching one doorframe or light switch.

I need an unmoving object in a sea of swimming thoughts
I still need to make the mental turns
But this should be much easier
If I stop landing on my face.

Picture Window

November 11

Picture Window

When G-d sticks His face in my window it brightens my day. What that shining face looks like in other windows I do not know, but I try to memorize the eyes, the brow, the winning smile before my time is up and the wind shifts. The flash of a friendly face lights up the house, my yard, the corners of my soul. I imbibe the rich glow before it moves on, letting my core charge with incandescence, warming my mettle. I am long and longing for this happy countenance and only when the blocks tumble in my mind do I realize that it is two- way glass in that window and stick my face in it and offer it to G-d.

Today treat oddity as a pearl not a pebble

*

LIKE PEACE

Peace like an elephant on my chest
I can’t breathe but at least we are not fighting.
The rigid air hangs like sheets on the line
Stiff but dry.

Plastered smiles and short salutations
Get us through until bedtime.
But what can hold in standing up
Pours out lying down.

Tender feelings are compressed
And come out only as water
Anger bubbles and brews.

Disappointment lives down deep
And sours the milk of love
There are things worse than cross words.

Moldering, festering, frozen words
Pound spikes in a relationship
Fraught with apprehension.

The truth is I would let these pent up things out
But I don’t trust you and I don’t trust me.

Come What May

November 10

Come What May

Inevitable things are very much like inedible things; you can’t quite swallow them yet they are hard to throw up. It can’t seem to get here quick enough to comfort my fear nor will it pass with any speed once it has arrived. I am like a boa with a hedgehog as my lunch, the shredding is rightfully dreaded and in no way preventable. Not everything that wings my way is anxiety driven, but I have to admit that some things are. I cannot spend my days wishing the storm clouds away so I will put on my slicker and hunker down for the drenching.

The alleys in your mind are for passage not permanence

*

PRIDE GOETHE BEFORE A FALL

In truth, pride goes wherever it wants, it’s pride.
Pride wanders alone, for no one enjoys its company.
Pride travels far but gets nowhere.
Pride rises above reality and seeps beneath the surface.

When pride wears out, love and honesty poke holes in it.
Until it is grounded and transforms to humility
Pride’s past is remembered with flush and embarrassment.
Recounting yesterday is pride’s unenviable task.
Keeping its recreation is mine.

Thief in the Night

November 9

Thief in the Night

The moon ran off the night you left. Instead of west it headed south with you, but I doubt it will stay. You are learning to play a new part, another ill-suited role which I don’t believe you will carry off with much aplomb, though you may have found yourself a kinder critic or a more likened mind. Bad actors have no leg to stand on for critique. What you have taken I can’t expect to return, but what I have gained I will never give up. I don’t think you ever intended me any harm, but protection is something you never provided; something which I was sorely in need of. I was fortunate to return to the house of my father for that is the shelter in which I can breathe.

Ferocity is a gift, but not a toy

*

JELLYFISH AND PEANUT BUTTER CARDS

Jellyfish and peanut butter cards
Make for busy days and cheerful nights
Sunlit at the beach and lantern light
Filled with double-decker solitaire.

Camping as a way of life suits some
As they run from their lives
For more balanced, camp is a temporary retreat
To the overly invested, camping is an aberration
A threat to the foundation of civilization as we know it.

Though I do dread the feeling of coming back
To the life I love and feeling like a stranger
Temporary disengagement estranges me
From the place, the things, the dog.

I need time away,
Variety of experience,
Expanded horizons
I need my entrenched home life.

I need it all and must accept the clock
Never stops running anyplace on the planet
Even if I am enjoying a good game
With sticky camp cards, regaling tales of man-of-war.

Uggs

November 8

Uggs

This is a big hurdle until it becomes a little step. I will struggle with it as long as it takes for me to see it as something I can conquer a bit at a time, then, often as if by magic, it will melt into curbside snow and I can slosh through it in my boots. I am vanquishing obstacles, which seemed insurmountable mere months ago. I am not so much stronger than I was, but I have stopped feeding the weakness in my mind and this has made all the difference.

Accelerate your willingness

*

FLORAL TROPHIES

Captured pet plants grow in my window
Why these specimens are given such regal care
I suspect but can’t explain.

Delicate shoots pile out of sturdy stalks
Roots force the confines of my decorative pots
How many neighborly blooming faces
Stare into my kitchen greeting me mornings

I am amazed what good company
My leafy friends can be when I am loving myself.
Advantageous to my mental health
I breathe their exhaust and they breathe mine.

Symbiotic we live
I grow and flower
Grateful these plants keep me.