Monthly Archives: October 2014

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Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

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The Universe or God or Physics or Karma or the Grand Design, pick your word, they are to me just different ways to say the same thing, the magic that keeps my life ticking and keeps me smiling. I have so much of it. So many miracles in my life, most recently a friend who really gets what its like in that period between scans and results. This is one of those periods, and she and I are both there at the same time this time, so if you have any prayers or love or a spare dime to give and you want to be inspired, click here, http://razzzberries.blogspot.com/

If you have two prayers, to dimes, or two “GAF’s” I would also appreciate your help.

I may have more Freedom soon than I have dreamed of in a long time. I am going to start selling my stuff off again and reducing as much as I can while trying to acquire some income. It’s the third of the month and I am $1000.00 overdrawn, no rent paid, minimal groceries, less than half a tank of gas in my car and with one more whole month (at minimum) of tests and missed work. Last night I was soooooo tired, and thought, yet again, about just giving up and letting the PTSD, the Cancer, the negative and naysayers win; but I joined this poetry thing.

So I looked for the prompt.

While I was doing that my Golden Retriever and Yellow Lab decided I looked like I needed a nuzzle and a lick and I remembered my second suicide attempt (my first I was 7, so yea Internet Doctors, I get it, I am followed for this and my depressions are like Type 1 diabetes is to Type 2; my depression is as physiological as it is psychosocial, and yes, I am taking my meds, LOL) and I wrote the poem about when that particular wound healed, and once again I gut-level got it. No permanent solutions for temporary problems for this Leo.

I know to most people this won’t make sense. That is really OK, you don’t actually make sense to me either. I do not now, nor have I ever really understood so much of the human condition. I take stuff to heart that others blow off, and completely miss cues that others take for granted. The last day I peed in the ocean (another story, if you haven’t heard it yet, you will someday; I am old, I retell stories) was the day I realized my goal in life was not to change me to fit in or to change the world so it fit me; but to just keep warming my own little circle.

This has been one hell of a summer. I have lived and loved and laughed. I have broken personal rules and forgotten tried and true routines. I have also discovered again just how amazing people are and how much love I am capable of sharing, if even just for a moment. And I have been useful.

My circle is warm.

(Which reminds me, not only was my EKG fine, my blood work looked awesome. Go liver, Go kidneys!)

And this summer I faced (again) the same merry-go-round of issues of chronic life altering illness. I have learned that my way of dealing with it for the last few decades isn’t working. I don’t know what is next for me.

I still have a job I love. I am still surrounded by amazing and loving friends and family.

And even if I were to lose these, I would still have me.

Gonna be a tough week-end trying to decide what goes; pretty much already down to my favorite dolls and books and music.

But these are things. I am so much more than things; and so I am fine, and I am happy, and everything is going to be OK.

Poems

I peeked in to say goodnight…

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Present Pluperfect

The beads were pink, a perfect opalescent pink
Plastic my adult knows, but my child believed pearls.

So very pink, perhaps I should have chosen white
I will never know,
My mother’s life leeched away before I even knew her middle name
Let alone a favorite color,
I was six, and the Ben Franklin jewels were pink.

I’d heard her wish for pearls after the lady with the driver came,
It was the final fitting for her New Year’s dress,
Mom was sitting on the stoop with Miss Darlene’s mom
Darlene was Roxanne’s age
And had real Barbie dolls, not the hollow plastic kind,
They were talking about the sparkly earrings the Lady kept twisting as she eyed herself in the mirror making it hard for mum to mark the hem

“You outdid yourself Marlene, the dress is stunning, ”
She wiggled a hand dyed pump, “Do you Really think these are the right shoes?
My mother’s stained fingers touched them with the reverence saved for holy things.
“The satin is perfect.”

The pinning and the preening done
The woman stood and waited impatiently for the teeth to seperate
The new zipper making a soft munching sound between the satin and the bugle beads.

“Well I need it done tomorrow instead of Friday.’

“Yes ma’am, ” my mother breathed, “but that will be-”

“Not extra, I won’t pay it” And the woman wrinkled her nose and sniffed disparaging,
“I can’t bare the smell of cabbage, how can you eat it so often.”
The woman stood there in her bra and girdle
Unashamedly aware of no one there.

When she left my mom plopped on the stoop.

“She’s quite a piece of work,” my neighbor laughed, “Wish I had just one rock half the size of those she was wearing in her ears.”

“I don’t much like diamonds,” my mother replied, touching her hand to her neck
As if remembering a time
When the flowers men gave her
Didn’t bloom blue beneath her left eye.
“I had pearls once.”

The beads were pink
And 3.99 plus tax and required a sisterly co-conspirator for the ransom.
The tag said “Santa Claus” that Christmas morning
When I was six.

Poems

Let’s Start at the very beginning…

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Prompt 1 from 31 in 31 over at Poewar.com

Heart Change

Zack was my best friend in a childhood parsimonious with friendship
Bought by my father to hunt birds, a pedigree and blue ribbon progeny
Who herded me away from the ditches and crosswalks
while parents were busy with important adult things
I was just 12 when I woke to be told he was gone.
No good-byes.
I cried inconsolably and at a bottle of baby aspirin I stole from the neighbor.
I threw up and no one knew
And I swore I would never love again.

 

When Buster first appeared,
We were still we
And all love lasted forever.
Sick with the desire to please,
I agreed
And I said the dog could stay
If you kept him off the bed.

Now his golden head drapes across my ankle
Warm brown eyes smiling approval as I drift towards sleep.
I think of him then,
The vector for this, my most infectious love.
And how you again gave me forever.