Freudian Finger

You ask me how it is to be alone,
I’ve tried to keep myself at home
I’d blame the vultures, but they know
it’s me

There’s a digit that beckons “come along”
Luring me with crafted prose or song
But I can’t utter “so long”
it’s not me

Scanning the inked dermis in italics
My heart gets all dazzly metallic
deciphering the phrases in phallic
speaking to me

Reading between the loins
I get the message where the legs join
and that Freudian finger points
at me

I am a geysering ink well
Sir, you speak, I spell
Sharpen up the quill
you’ll see

There are stories in my folds
And empty pages to behold
Etch what you want told
on me

We are not so alienated
when skin slipped syllables are sated
living dreams read aloud, dissertated
with we

Learning to be a competant breather

Life is as hard as diamonds and cuts like them too. But if you slice a diamond just right, that rock can sparkle. For most, life is a longing for that sparkle.

We spend long hours in dusky air-choked mine-shafts looking for that glimmer of hope. Statistically, it eludes us and we settle for some nicely polished granite stones engraved with our names.

Then, there are the few who see the sparkle within themselves. There is no longing or searching. They have dumped the contents of their soul onto the proverbial floor, surveyed the goods and have determined that what they see is everything they’ll ever need.

They exist in the moment. When life gets hard and cuts, they take a cue from time, knowing they can only live in each second. They understand their enigmatic human body is designed to heal from the inside out. Living isn’t any easier for them as it is for anybody else, but their realization carries them a long way. Such a person hardly cares about polished granite stones.

I surmise those who search don’t think too fondly of those who just exist. Perhaps someone who is content to merely exist has actions, motives and words that are foreign to the Searchers. The Searchers must think, “What fool can be happy with so little? They should be trying as hard as I am. You haven’t found anything and shouldn’t stop now.” A frantic person does not appreciate a person who is still. Ask a person who is about to be late and has lost their keys if they think they will still be alive in 45 minutes.

I know a woman. She has the good sense to know she had that sparkle inside. Searchers pull her like taffy and guilt her into their dank lair, not for the sake of appreciated company, but to rid themselves of their own misgivings about their fruitless quest.

I try to understand the Searchers motives:

“To be okay with myself, I must validate that the way I live is right. Therefore, if someone is doing it differently, they must be doing it wrong. I will feel better about myself if I point this out and save them from their erroneous ways. I cannot bear the thought that they might be living the right way, let alone better than me. Because I am showing them the way life ought to be, in a way, it will be like saving them. I am a hero for having tried.”

It’s another fruitless pursuit, Searchers. Once an Exister has discovered the art of being, that awareness cannot be undone, only forgotten. The most vanquished soul is an Exister who has lost their way. They have resigned to searching but are unconsciously awaiting instructions as to what the prize actually is. It is absolute unnerving futility and it leads to inexplicable madness.

The woman I know will remember the sparkle. Unfortunately, it may require an earthquake that ruins the very foundation that supports her, reducing it to smithereens.

Buildings will crash around her like plaster waves, scattering their pulverant debris in the typewriter ribbon streets; sin sitting in knots in the pits of the bellies of all the victims- merely lost souls who never found their gem. She’s never willfully brought harm to anyone, but she will initially feel like a roach- alive and despised.

She is not a heroine.

But alas! She is! She breathes!

When she rises like a phoenix from the disheveled mess around her, bewildered and distressed, her clothes, strips of muslin hanging loosely from her frame, ragged and mangled like a ship’s sails; she will not be remembered for valor and fortitude. She did not perform a feat of incredible strength or save a fellow man’s life, let alone a kitten. She will be momentarily regarded simply because she clawed her way from the rubble and chose to stand up. Her victory will be in the modest effort she made to continue breathing when she could have sacrificed herself to despair.

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” ~Japanese Proverb

partially executed bravery ususally results in painful failure

examples:

the time when I thought I could spring up very high on a diving board and curve my body up and over like a rainbow, to get in to the water pin straight and diagonal, hands pointed above my head. The classic dive. Whilst midair I realized it was not going to work or I got scared. Whatever the reason was, I belly flopped HARD! It jolted my neck like sedan whiplash. That plane of water slapped me hard and taught me a lesson. That lesson is the title of this blog.

One time I thought about making a snappy comeback in jest by using the voice and words of Eric Cartman. I chickened out on the voice, and what I said didn’t come across as being a quote from a foul mouthed cartoon character, but rather as my own feeling about the situation. That lead to a big misundestanding later, and a great deal of awkwardness.

I was in the spelling bee when I was in sixth grade. I studied my ass off. I was so sure that I was going to do great. So many times I had stood on the stage at church and sang, my knees quivering, and would go cry after I was done. Not because I had done poorly, but just from the sheer terror of being watched by so many people made my nerves fray. When I went to the spelling bee, I had unusual courage. I bombed. I was the third one out. The word that was the nail in my coffin was one that my mom gave me a pneumonic device to remember. It was wrong though, so I had memorized it wrong. I wasn’t mad at my mom. I was mad at myself for having been so bold, brave and confident. Never again, I vowed, would I ever be so sure of myself.

If you ever feel like putting yourself on the line, make sure you go full balls out and see it through, or have the wills or skills to do it in the first place. Otherwise, it’s gonna hurt. Have you ever seen a tattoo where the person chickened out half way through?

The Dead Dyad

My friend, he came

to drag a boy

to my doorstep

sure that we should

know one another

And so we did,

from the tips of our very souls

to every ripple of our brains

to the soft curves of our hearts

It was history

in our own books

like a hieroglyph

of important events

“The world is atrocious”

we would say

Together, we piled

our soft clay emotions, views

melded into a lumpy heap,

working, forlorn, as one unit

towards the formation into something

functional and beautiful

The pain, the truth

which could have nearly paralyzed us,

exercised through poetry and song

let us bleed in monochromatic synchronicity,

a freedom from the bulging strain

in our adolescent brains

from realizing the repulsive side of humankind

We discovered a golden force

glowing within, an ability

to forget our woes

and accept every fleeting moment

as a euphoric one

Many magical moments followed,

steeped in ultra-cognifizance,

a sparkling wonder of intense awareness

I have had to let go

of him

and the puzzle

as to how he could just

walk away and be

the antithesis of

it all-

all we felt

learned,

lived,

loved,

discovered

as if all along,

he was just an imaginary friend

libation, vivation, celebration, consummation

 13 Years of Grand Bliss!

I guess we’re a little dab of quirky quaint as a couple.

Lucky 13 was a monumental day for us. I had lost the diamond from my ring earlier this year. Because we’re both sentimental softies, it was quite a blow. I went without my ring for several months waiting for the time, money and gumption to get it fixed. My grandma came through with the lonely diamond earring, saying I should have it since the other was lost. It was the exact right size. The setting belonged to my husband’s mother. Now that is has been set and repaired, I have a wonderful blended family heirloom to prove my fidelity. I did not tell him she had given me the diamond, or that I took it to get fixed. We went to about the swankiest restaurant in our area, ordered whatever we wanted, lobster, wine, dessert wine, you name it. We really maxed it out! I gave him the ring and had him put it back on for me. Finally, I feel complete again! We danced, laughed, played bocce… It was like falling in love again for the first time! I love that man, and if God has any mercy, he will allow us a lifetime together.

The Collector

He collected stories like stamps,

gluing them in his mind’s spiral bound leaflets

and on occasion he would part those pages

brushing the dust away gingerly with his fingertips

to find they had aged, and cracked,

but more interestingly, had morphed

and only slightly resembled

the charming anecdotes they once were.

 

His stories were not usual ones

full of adversity, heroism, or moral.

Instead, they were whispers of depravity,

debauchery, and delicacy.

Loosely intertwined were blots of humor

dropped in the most indecorous places.

 

His stories were not fictional,

but they were in-credible and un-believable

to the audience of a few whom he cornered at debutante parties.

He was odd, and ofttimes avoided, but respected for his brilliance.

His hobby appalled and fascinated at the same time.

And his listeners in their black bow ties and tinsel gowns,

wide-eyed and rubber-necked,

once having eavesdropped,

would focus intently on his words, and still

remain to display disgusted looks on their faces.

 

This gentleman, with his idiosyncrasies,

like a ringmaster to circus freaks, yet

still warm and convivial,

and a restless insomniac,

made his nightly junket

into the dark passages of the world without slumber.

 

He befriended lost souls

that luck had ignored

and took their confessions, their plight

with an anthropological wryness, and

recorded them into his mind’s spiral bound leaflets

for no one’s sake or pleasure but his own.

 

He had no goal to educate his targets;

the slumberless, or the aural party voyeurs,

nor did he intend to change lives.

His tales were not wrought with sympathy.

Like a grandmother’s teacups on a shelf,

he sought different patterns, and stockpiled

not something so rare,

as something so rarely treasured.

 

But as time promoted his body,

so his yarns became tangled.

The bindings that held the pages were loose.

Some pages had drifted out into oblivion, undetected,

on the occasions he would finally sleep long enough to dream.

The gritty details which made his gems so tactile

had disintegrated and left, mostly, the core of the chronicles.

  

With little to preserve,

he fumbled to save them,

confusing the delineation between events, instead

weaving an incongruous braid of torpid remarks.

In his confusion and mournfulness,

he staggered through the shadowy sleepless underground

trying to repair the finer membranes of his memory.

 

Whilst striving to re-piece events with those he’d collected from,

he’d get it wrong, and mistakenly divulge private goodies

to those who trade such secrets like currency in the underground.

His sufferance increased as those who sought to silence him

paid him in pain and harassment.

The congenial man with the sardonic wit,

trusted and revered by many social classes

and always sure to repulse with a calm and matter-of-fact demeanor,

had become useless to everyone, even himself.

 

His only choices were to forsake his quest to reclaim his joy

by retreating into his lonely apartment,

with little left to draw fondly upon

for the rest of his long nights and miserable days;

or to go full balls-out into the sooty depths

of the whores, the beggars, the addicts, the sociopaths,

the gamblers, the cheaters, drunkards, and thieves

to howl at the moon in anguish

and become one of the very objects he spent decades ogling…