Mortification

August 10

MORTIFICATION

Lime with envy, I built a wall around.  Love and hate are enclosed, brick and stone.  Rigor of extremities, the discipline of ages falls so short.  I make no in-depth connections; I coat externals with glue, stack reactions and let the bombs fly.  I mix and crush old habits and bad ideas, make a paste.  I am setting myself up again.  Abstinence becomes the pestle of bludgeoning and abasement.  I am hard and I am hollow; with wounded pride, I subjugate my soul.  My life is reduced to a powder.  I am mortified.

Spread oil from your navel out.

*

Michal Rovner

I have numbered all the blocks in my ancestral walls.

This has enabled me to recreate them

stone by stone everywhere I go.

It all fits to create the tomb I now have to learn to leave.

I must change the equation and reorder the numbers

allowing these rocks to be recycled

and find a wonderful useful life

as a stairway out of this pit of despair.

What was once an edifice to lives unlived

is now able to facilitate elevation,

a restoration of a level playing field.

It was not wrong for me to catalog the stone

and there was no way for me to leave them behind,

but nothing matches the satisfaction of using them to build a life,

except for the ability to live in it.

You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault

http://www.amazon.com/Sober-On-The-Way-Sane/dp/1440417342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576888&sr=8-1&keywords=sober+on+the+way+to+sane

http://www.amazon.com/More-Lines-From-My-Life/dp/1448677203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576956&sr=8-1&keywords=More+Lines+From+My+Life

Mosaic

December 6

MOSAIC

I couldn’t prevent this plate from shattering, so I saved all the pieces, losing none.  I laid them edge-to-edge and made a design, secured it with thin-set.  Pieces of pattern framed with grout are seen, as they never could be when this dish was whole.  I am part of this construction more than just handing china onto the table.  Integrity has been lost but replaced with fractured openness.  The plate has lost personal unity to become an ingrained part of my personal archeology.

Fly your kite in the wind.

*

The Way West

The sun reflected in the windows

winks at me as I fly over.

The plane climbs higher

and the reflected light no longer reaches me.

I slip from my eastern bonds.

I am west coast bound.

The carpet of snow was laid down

to quiet the passage.

Clouds take over the task,

then part to reveal the patchwork

of the middle ground.

We cross the Stateline without a sound;

a few more miles then touchdown.