I-resurrection

My computer went to the brink of death
And came back funtional
But a clean slate.
Gone was all the data
Useful and otherwise

This technical resurrection
required I reboot my Ipod, it did not recognize the computer as mine
and could not agree to also regenterate itself unless it, too, was a tabula rasa
These older generations do not have the ability to regenerate
and communicate that the younger Ipods do.
30 Gigabytes of empty memory now sit in my palm
where once my musical library hid
The white dead thing no longer
crooning my favorites, lulling me in each activity with perfectly selected playlists
waiting to sneak and resurrect some small snippet of melodiuos genius
some forgotten or neglected track
with its almighty “shuffle songs”.

I must now decide which of the 3215 songs I had on there before
I will choose to reload
and in what order.

Where to start,
And what matters most
are always the hardest questions.

I try and visualize later today
Anticipate the needed soundtrack, who will I be then

I reach to touch the future
and fail.

Grabbing instead a random handful of plastic cases
And starting here at the letter “F”
I listen, humming along. adding some pieces I didn’t before, leaving off others I added and mostly ignored
choosing to ignore those added and played too often in homage to some wound
or soul deep sore;
humming and tapping my feet
Rebuilding my tower of bass notes pilons and guitar riff bricks
into a new tonal refuge
In my digital game of  spiritual Lego’s.

CC

Italian town of excess
of taste and touch and smell and song
I’ve only been there in books
or dreams
or genetic memories
but live its promise to the fullest, I believe,
each Spring
Culmination then with May day revel
I move into my contemplative stay
My Ashram
Only to bounce again to revel with the Samhain dawn
I am learning patience
to let go my powerful need to control outcomes and just show up for the process.

so many times in practice to Rome and India
this year perhaps I’ll get to Indonesia…..

I am learning forgiveness for my own weakness.
Forgiving yours no longer necessary
As I find the taste of baking soda nauseaous but brownies, bread and cookies
Are not the same without them.

So many times in teaching others I lined the ingredients up
First lesson for my second years
“Now you have established who you are and who you want to be, its time to let go of the things that hold you back,
to dispense with the angers
the righteous judgements
the things that rob you of your magic,”
I would say,
I would lead them to the classroom, a kitchen
The ingredients lined on the counter
flour, sugar, cocoa, milk, eggs, vanilla, baking soda
“taste this,”
I would sayas teaspoonful after teaspoonful raw ingredients would be placed upon their tongue,
Some would try and refuse
Some would retch
and others would taste, puzzling ahead
one, maybe two would
just taste.

“Now, taste this, ” I would say
and place a warm bite of brownie in their mouth.
“More like it,”
“Yum,”
or smiling silence.

“How is this about magic,
about anger
about acceptance” I would say,
“Each of these ingredients are your past,
the bitter hurts,
the sweet loves,
the nauseating struggles….this brownie is you.
Which ingredients would you leave out?”

CC

Composting Grief

Hidden anguish slimes and molds
Putrifying,
Bitter sulfur assaulting, overwhelming the senses
Lethal carcinoma of the spirit
Exterminates hope.

Grief shared
Encounters
Aerobic decomposition.
Losses layered with laughter become strengths
Watered with tears, recombined by conversation
Innoculated dream decay
grows love.
CC

Home

Home has forever been defined for me by  lines from a Robert Frost poem
and the clicking of two ruby shoes.

The poem is Death of a Hired Man
the words are found close to the end of the poem
I cried the hardest I think I ever had the first time I read it
Not for the hired man
I wasn’t yet eight
and the edges of my world were just beginning to curve;
the gravity of my situation spinning less around me
and more around others
as my galaxy gave forth to wider humane scape.
I did not cry for the hired man, I cried for me.
Knowing for sure
that in this world, I had no home

“Warren,’ she said, ‘he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.’

‘Home,’ he mocked gently.

‘Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
then was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’

‘I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’

For everything in my world was earned
deserved
(or so I was told and chose to believe)
from the ample bruises to the sparse hugs
and when life was moonlit only and clouds hid even that,
I knew no arms would
or should

take me in..

So in answer to that knowledge I have taken in all hounds,
harbored the homeless
loved the strangers
pillowed the head of all the hired men my home,
my arms and fires could warm.

but never found
never allowed
my own home.

Then there were the two ruby shoes
and there “No Place Like Home” magic,
so far as I could see
the red shoes brought Dorothy back to the same grey places
the same tired faces
from first viewing at four to somewaht past ten
I knew I would not use those shoes at all.
I sang and dreamed of that place Over the  Rainbow
so much like my father’s heaven,
yet different, more like Frost’s home, unearned.
Dorothy was no witch at all, just a simple little girl
And knew if I had those shoes
I would not come back to my grey life again.

Perhaps it was the song by America,   but probably not

I think the lyrics by rote came first, the wisdom came years later
all I know is somewhere as I grew
Oz began to mean a place where I learned what I already knew
appreciated what I already had
my smallness by a journey made greater.

CC

When Helen Came to Troy

Cassandra how did you greet the agent of happiness’ destruction,
The match to light the kindling layed by greed and pride?
Knowing as you saw her enter in your cities wall
That all you loved and valued would exit with her tide,
Did you offer drink and comfort; with proper manner welcome in
Tortured by your gifted prescience, knowing too, they thought you lied,
Why did you never learn to hold your tongue or when to close your eyes.

CC

I actually have gotten rid of most of the poetry from that time, more therapy than art. I kept this one also because of its tie to someone i love, my little Lhasa Noiene.

Meditation with licking dog

Today
I found myself obsessed with the need of a new hat
A leather brown with brim and feathers
to match my boots
and be much more stylish
green velvet was my discontent
green velvet with its history
and unsimilar design.
Out of place, this hat.

“Ommm, ”

I breathed, in and out

and  tried again

“In my pictures
I look so old and fat,” I thought
(same pictures
last week that made me laugh and smile with the memories of joy and love and friendship
dancing on tables)
I hate the way I look
I hate my body, cut and scarred betrayer of my future
I hate…..
I hate…my hat!
It’s that stupid hat, how can I go another day carrying this stupid hat upon my head..

“Ommmmm” I breathe
in and then out and try again

The sign beside my altar says “Remember”
to blurry to read
My eyes are blind with tears
as I dream of hats and rum and lovers
that will keep this fear away
hold the Monday truths of medicine at bay
craving a thousand acquisitions
the hole grows deep and cold
I teeter at its brink…
A hat,
A new leather hat will save me…

“Ooommmmmmm”,
I breathe and try again
This time wet eyes closed
Love presses against my mudra hands
her worried cold and furry nose
Familiar
Grounding
A canine letter from my real Home.

Now I Remember.

Ommmmm
I breathe
No try,
I am

I am breath
I am here
I am peace
I am alive
I am now.
Light and whole and loved.
I breathe
and rise to pack my favorite velevet hat
for another day of Faire.

Remembering Now.

For an explanation this poem was written years ago when I was on a medical leave from my work in hospice. Things turned out much better with me than anyone thought they would but I keep this poem because it reminds me of a woman I knew as colleague, co-survivor group member and then finally patient. She is one of the proofs that we don’t get what we deserve, we just get what we get. She was braver, better, stronger than I and had a lifetime of better habits;  I am merely very blessed and  still obviously breathing. 

3:00 AM

If I was still working there now,
I would be opening my last unopened chart
the one whose evening was noted in a dozen
red ink
one liners on the outlined nights report
and my eyes would struggle with the strong desire to close.
as I record the symptoms
and the remedies
Medicines results not real until a pen has set them onto paper.

But the work I do tonight is another kind of labour and so my eyes
fill wet and spill out the over flow of erupting magma darkness
my mind instead of cotton
fills with syrup sad and anger sweet
and fears
and tears are the
red lines that will vomit into other black charting

map of this uncharted place
a record on cyber journal page so I can digest
expose and maybe post
the darkest part of dawn
I sit and taste the almost moonless night
so once again life can turn into the light.

I am home here now at 3 AM,
my other home,
not the one you find centered on the pile of unpaid bills
but the couch where I have weathered a decade of my tears and fears
while the friend who stood beside me through it all
the marriages and lovers and not quite one night stands
and those others who I wisely did or did not give my heart;

upstairs with husband sleeps.

I wander her halls
up to the bathroom,
back into bed
one drink of water
and then two
fighting the inevitable fall into my heart
from the safety of my head.
another drink of water
an email check
as inevitable as toddlers sleep
the feelings come
and I curl in the safety of someone else’s couch
and weep;
clutching yet another toy
the child inside will bring alive
deep beneath my smile and laugh I dive.
but first just one more drink….
another bathroom trip.

In this place thats more than place

in this time thats more than time

Fear is first to walk along the path with me
She brings her sisters Loss and Greed
And hand in hand with little Ego they all stroll
All rhymy, mythlike skipping rythm droll
past the mirror

the mirror in the bathroom downs the knight bringing truth to bear on fancies flight

I am not six

My face wrinkled sagging grey stares back at me
no magic,
no nightlight hero staring back.
I look inside my mouth again at the thickened strawberry mark on my left cheek
will it burst out and show?

What other secrets will my next scan unmask?
Is it really just my fears and hates and selfishness
my unspent anger finding flesh,
the physics of the faithless broken child’s soul
coalescing
family legacy manifest?

It is questions, I think
That haunt me most in this post witching hour.
The Great Unknown.
Questions and a nagging ache that has no words.

I have seen eyes like this before,

“I’m not really angry,”
she said,
“Not even really sad.”
She thinks a minute
I wisely wait not filling up the space
but allowing the vacuum of the silence to suck from her things she cannot face.
“Its not like pain, your medicine took care of that.”
I notice I still hold the now empty 1 cc syringe in paper in my fingers
to soon from her first dose for chemical relief but I don’t tell her that.
The paper crinkles tighter in the other hand, the one not holding hers.
“And I’m not afraid,” she kind of chuckles and snorts and cries all in the same expellation of breath,
we both pause all function while she wipes the pieces of bodily reality from betraying flesh.
“OK, I AM afraid,” she almost yells
as if some inquisitor tore secrets from her absent breast,
“but not of dying,
of making a fool of myself,
of peeing my bed,”
her voice now just a whisper
“of all this, this ugliness.”
The room quiet except for the machine extracting oxygen from air to feed in concentrated form to her tired lungs,
the tears start a silent river flood down that pragmatic nurses face,

“of seeing my husband so, so, so sad.”
sobs turn to something stronger,
” I’m not ready to die,”
she clutches my hand even tighter
body jerking with the movement of her mind
and I think of the four tiny fingers that two hours ago clutched tight to mine as I fed them their last bottle.

“That’s OK,”
I say, moving no closer,
not moving at all
a hug the surest way to scare away that wild burst of rankled grief
that unlanced will trouble every dying breath,
“Nobody is.”
A tiny part of me wants to meet her eyes and let her see
“I know!” it screams in mousy squeeks,
“Look at me, ” it wants to say in outside voice
“I know!”
but that’s a voice for therapy
Support group meetings
dogs and bears at 3 AM.
not patients,
for underneath
blue hot in the center of her life’s flickering flame
she is a nurse as well
and would find escape in comforting me.
This is her Rubicon,
not mine
and this woman that I midwife out of this mortal life

like me has held a hundred hands
and this moment is not
can not
be
about
me.
“Nobody is ready.” I murmer back.

Are these the right words
I never know
Right or wrong
what I say really doesn’t seem to matter.
Its not about me and
Its the telling that the woman needs the most
the saying,
so what I do is sit and listen.
“I feel so bad,”
she says as the boil on her feelings burst
“I hate that its all about me all the time
I grow uglier to myself daily
and he tells me I’m beautiful,
I’m not beautiful,”

The damn inside broken she reaches out to me
and I sit on the edge of the bed
and hold her rocking back and forth
as she shakes and weeps.
“I can’t tell them,” she says,
“I can’t tell him,
but… I’m….. so……… tired” she gasps and tries to fight again,
“I love him, but I’m so tired ” confessional thorn torn from her
She doesn’t win, but storms spend themselves in time.
“It’s OK,” I murmur, “He knows you love him.
and we all get tired sometimes”
I rock her till she falls asleep
and lay her back on morphine’s pillowed lap.
The irony of phrasing is not lost on me,
I smile small as
I tuck a sheet here
adjust the light there
switch on the gentle lap of waves and native flute
and leave.

The years of weathered marriage reflecting another conversation
Her husbands sat rigid amidst the soft cushions
like he was esconced in a hardback confessional chair
It was the first night of my week
the night of his wife’s admittance.
We did not hug,
he and me,

that may or may not come later
depending on how long it takes for nature to work its final task
but I though then  “in time we will.”
That night he only looked at his hands,
“I can’t tell her,”
his voice broke as he fought for control and won, at least,
in this.
“I can’t tell her.”
He looked at me for forgiveness that he didn’t need.
“I love her so much, but I’m so tired.”
“Its Ok,” I said and touched ever so slightly his hands,
“Its OK to be tired, I can tell you love her.
We’re all tired sometimes”
He shook himself then
the emotions flying away like water off a retriever’s back
as he left his list of numbers and instructions and all business like and strong headed off to handle life’s overwhelming tasks.
I walk him to the door
both so silent,
he reaches
almost a hug;
the leaning in the most he yet could risk,
“I know you’ll take good care of her,
she’s everything to me.”

His voice a challenge, an order,
not plea,
not yet a trusting request.
He tucked a shirt tail here
Smoothed greying hair there
and left.

She cried as described

day two of that four day week

and died on my days off
that doorway the closest he and I would get
My charting said first night
“Support and education provided to spouse.”
and I checked the box “Grieving appropriate”
or however that paper I’ve filled out a hundred hundred’s time
diminishes the hurricane to pencil marks and numbers.
The second night same phrase of sorts,
“Education and support provided to patient,”
followed by my ten favorite words,
“Patient sleeping. No S/S of pain, nausea or respiratory distress”

Three AM darkness
has faded into 5 AM dawn. I will not return to work again, except perhaps myself as patient.
I take my teddy bear and hide away again the things I cannot face or say in a fetal curl.

If I was at work
I would be coming back awake with the rush of deskless shift end tasks.

But I am home
here at my friends
and dawn has come
and I know

I soon will sleep.

CC

(written when my son was serving overseas)

The sun has set again
and the pale small half-moon of late July
is almost down as well

The days grow imperceptably shorter even as we melt in three digit heat
Asparagus is thick and wooden and shipped in from the North
For rhubarb time has come and gone,
The last Arizona peach shrivels unpicked on the tree.

Childhood over, above my head the babies dodge about
No longer distinguishable from the parent
Sweat beads on my forehead as I perch still foci in my swarm of gnats
Watching the bats fly.

Inside the house, laundry quietly awaits its attentive turn
And tonite’s dishes soak away reheated debris,
So many important things to do
places to go
people to be.

But time itself must wait as I hear your electronic voice
and let the miracle of
telephone connect us
for both our hearts to hear

“I Love You.”.

CC

One of the luxuries of accumulated age for me
is how little I have come to care
what others think of me
of what I own
wear
do
or not do.

Not to be confused with not caring what others think.

I care a lot about what others think.
Truth like a stool needs at least three disparate points
to balance.
I read the words of those like me,
but more importantly I seek the truths of those very different from me.
I read books from all the sections of the library
and I read from title page to index to acknowledgements;
I read all sections of the newspapers
Excepts the sports, only reading that in baseball season.
I read graffiti in the bathroom and CD liner notes.

I compulsively care what others think
and how they say it.

I listen to conversations I am part of,
I listen conversations I am not part of, just proximal.
I listen to NPR news, All Things Considered and sometimes
I listen to Howard Stern.

I love to know what you think,
what you believe,
what your eyes see when they look at this world,
what you smell,
taste,
touch,
feel.

But I don’t care if you think my listening to the Carpenters is cheesy,
or my dancing to Fergie is not acting my age.
And I will tattoo “Nomad” on my arm.
I will read Emerson mark my place with a dog-eared “Adventures of Green Arrow.”
I will eschew the brilliance of “Into the Wild ”
and make you watch a marathon of PowerPuff Girls.

I will laugh too loud sometimes
And eat strange spicy foriegn foods
And drink too much rum
And then flirt with men
So young they will humor me
and flirt back and talk about me when I leave.

And I will care about what they say when I am there
And maybe read the books they mentioned
Or maybe buy a brand new CD
because I care very much what everyone thinks
Just not what they think about me.

CC.

More

Shiny magazine covers and
building size billboards all scream out their prophecies
American consumer religion sanctifies
the message
We all need more
we need more directions, more faith, more prayers
higher cheekbones, bigger houses, smaller asses
All of the things money can buy
and we can buy it all
Faith in a book, health in a drink, a bottle of Love
body by Bobby
things, things that money can buy
are the things we are made of
the essence of you or I.
More, more, more…

And a lifetime I’ve spent in priding myself
on being above
this greedy accumulating philosophy
content, enough, happily poor.

But I want to finish my Gratitude Journal
and have another glass or two of rum with friends
Hold my as yet unconceived grandchild in wrinkled arms
Run a marathon, sail my ship to Worlds’ End
Visit Antartica and learn to speak Chinese

How humbling to learn as I face this part of me
That I am not so different from any western “You”
The trappings of the greed, these things I may eschew
But the philosophy has encultured every pore
Like every edacious American as I face this end

inevitable mortality

I find all I want is more….