What Oliver Could not Know

October 7

What Oliver Could not Know

One of the complications of being an orphan is not learning about the failings and foibles which visit themselves on all parents. Living estranged from G-d has this same blind spot. When you live with someone day in and day out you understand their dimensions; depravation causes celebrity and the casting of very large shadows in some very odd places. The intimate knowledge of a guardian allows for relaxation and experimentation. Isolation creates an overload of anticipation; fear of risk and the yearning for attention swing a pendulum to the point of weaponry. Familiarity is a breeding ground, which means many things grow. Life in a vacuum is devoid of life and nothing grows up.

Lock away things forever and they only have imaginary meaning

*

HAWAIIAN GRAFFITI

White pebbles spell themselves
across the black of lava grown cold.
Personal announcements proclaim
love, school pride, religious freedom.

The care of placement and consideration of design
make the roadside an on going mineral memo.
What message would I care to share?
What words would prompt me to bring a pail
of crushed marble to the edge of the road.

Is there a truth so urgent I would take time
from paradise to spell it out?
A few more miles and I see the words I live by
strewn down the thoroughfare-------

IT WORKS-----IF YOU WORK IT.

MCBuddLake

October 6

MCBuddLake

Barefoot smokers sit downstairs chatting on cell phones as I wait. Wait for the Doctor to come and tell me what? Tell me that I am ill or hail based on a hammer hit on the knee and a deep look into my eyes and I will leave this place hours late for a life I barely understand but am grateful to be living. Like one of the dancing flowers from Fantasia I am swept down stream, but an amazing journey even while I wait in this six by eight room.

Sprinkle letters on a page and write to them

*

MARMALADE

Marmalade, bitter and sweet, spread across my spiritual toast.
Zest and sticky solution, mix and cover the surface.
I bite down taking in the start of my day.

Past this point anything is possible.
Fame or disaster, a dreary fog filled morning
Or a cloudless afternoon.

See the passing populous
I alternating advance and retreat from this human wall.
Response and responsibility tattletale their way to my reactionary will.

The tightrope sways over the river of potential
Balance is more than a desire, it is a necessity
So I enjoy my breakfast tea.

I watch the marmalade melt as I dip my bread
In my well-steeped brew, the parade will start soon enough
I need this time before I launch into the fray.

Jeopardy

October 5

Jeopardy

Today I tore down the isolation booth. I didn’t live in there exactly; sometimes I stuffed G-d in there and went out for a ride. I left that shack stand for far, too long; a testimony to ill conceived, ham-handed, control freaks everywhere. I said all I wanted was some peace, but a vacuum is not tranquility and escape won’t substitute either. Since the live studio audience has gone home and the house lights are dimmed, I feel pretty foolish for playing round after round on my own. This game was never any fun and the sponsors were death merchants and scavengers whose interest lay in destruction and nothing else. I must not cast aspersions, I didn’t care that the contest was merely an upright pit with a lethal pendulum, I used it as a hideout and a lair, a place whose walls I could keep between me and my Higher Power and an activity I could depend on to keep me free from living a life. It all came to the ground today; I walk over the splinters and shards, I know there has to be a better game and I’m ready to play.

Picture trouble floating away like bubbles on a river

*

MY HEROINE

The corpse that is my childhood
Is mine to protect from the wolves
And rats of denial and collusion.

The infant who commits suicide
In self-defense is my heroine.
The pure thinking of an uncluttered mind
Seizes on the only possible way for me to survive.

Her death at her own hand is my rescue
If the bad had killed her
I would have died with her.

In her plan I was left as the seed
She ejected in her assent
She is gone from this place
I feel her only as the wisp of memory.

The tiny body laid flat on the carpet
Her pressed pinafore somehow more alive than she is

the unfinished business of prevention.

As long as I see her there and do not walk away
From my responsibility and never forget
She protected me with the life she never lived
I am free to live this life.

Have Faith

October 4

Have Faith

Strange and wonderful tragedy takes you away from me and I don’t know how it is that you return, but you do and I thank G-d, but I’m not sure it was G-d’s idea that you went away or that you came back, though, I am sure, He missed you every bit as much as I did. I revolve the freshness of you in my mouth like candy; I swirl, but don’t want to crack it open. Honeymoons are for people who live comprehendible lives; we fly to each other and cling like raptors plummeting to the ground. You leave your mark upon me I do the same for you; we are none the worse for the wear. I stand in the gush from the hydrant, soaked in the pleasure, forgoing the safety. The world may burn down again tomorrow, I remember that it has before, but I am wiser for the singeing and weathered with soot in my eyes and charcoal piled roundabout my legs, yet I’m still standing and you are back from the dead and I think of you as Lazarus. And now we will live the comedy for life is what lay ahead, we took the hit of death before its time and so must be off the hook for the rest.

Try not to long for Santa

*

FISHING FOR CONTENTMENT

Fishing for contentment

Is a wonderful past time.

But what is used for bait?

Is there a delicacy

To dangle before contentment

To lure it into my life?

Can I crumble the best biscotti

And leave a trail to my door?

I don’t believe contentment

Swims around waiting to be caught.

I think it’s more like the wild yeast

That finds its way to my starter.

If I put the ingredients in my life

Contentment will rise to the occasion.

Sackcloth

October 3

Sackcloth

Tragedy is a tale unfinished. Life is far longer than calamity can endure. I will not give up, not even when hope is lost, for life carries forward; more is filled with optimism. Threads break, but the fabric is woven still, flowing off the living loom waiting to be used. I will cut my swath and fashion a garment to wear and if sometimes it is filled with ashes I will sit and grieve all the while knowing that this is never the stories end.

See through your own shades

*

AMENDS

Amends is about truth and change.

The relationships of my past

Were places of little truth

And even less change.

I tried to be nice----not honest

I tried to keep things going

Even when they needed to die.

Making amends has ended

Most of my relationships from the past.

A quick 10^th step keeps me

From starting too many new ones.

Good healthy relationships

Require time and attention

So this necessitates a short list.

Sometimes I wish for more quantity

But I realize in sobriety

I cannot accept less quality.

Saltbox House

October 2

Saltbox House

Refusing to make reasonable demands is quite as dysfunctional as making unreasonable demands. The opposite of an extreme is often twice as crazy and harder to explain. I open my mouth and dry toast is the reply. Nothing should be said when nothing can be done and to do nothing is harder than one might think. I fold my hands but my lap rejects them; I quiet my mind but my soul objects. I must let my heart sing and trust you enough to ask for help.

Check your speed and direction

*

REJECTION

Rejection as a game of endurance,
A boundary enhancing process
A test of survival
Rejection sought or unsought is a challenge.

Sometimes rejection is a flare
Lighting the need for change of tactics or direction.
Though it is hard to view rejection as a beacon
Rather than condemnation.

Rejection is also the counterbalance for acceptance.
Risk is nothing if rejection is not part of the equation
I cannot value yes if you could not say NO.

Rejection is the safety valve
For putting myself in situations where I don’t belong.
I get sent back to the world of possibilities when the kindness of rejection

Ejects me from wrong choice.

No Substitute for Fire

October 1

No Substitute for Fire

I wanted alcohol to do better for me than burning did. I was constantly disappointed, yet I kept trying. I was not to find pleasure in that bottle though I had no problem finding addiction there. This is how I came to believe that there is not an upside to everything. Booze took me to surprising destinations, but never the ones I desired. I sought release, the release I got from a wildfire spreading across my skin and this might have been mine had I poured the liquor on rather than in. But in me it did no good, it never let me exhale the way that the “right” kind of pain did. What I got from alcohol drove me though; fear rode me roughshod and I found my way home, it was a bumpy road, but once there we doused the flames and I live the upside I had come to doubt, because fire is no substitute for life.

Randomize the alphabet, then write

*

MY MOON

I anticipate the crowning of your face

As you birth the sky.

Your rhythmic visitation sates me.

The gravity of my need keeps you close.

The tide of my heart pulls you from shore to shore.

We live in the sweet ecstasy of tethered love

Our souls slingshoting across the open palm of heaven

Your empathy for me transforms these shards of ice

To a tender heart satelliteing

I orbit you

Empowered by your kindness

You are my moon.