done

out of patience
out of time
out of courage
out of rhyme

worst to come?
best has gone?
laying here
on someone's lawn

watch the stars
not to blame
where to look
lost my name

don't know where
to go from here
path is shrouded
by the fear

look inside
don't see a thing
that tells me true
that makes me sing

if i could
i'd stop my heart
die to this
end this part

wake up again
begin anew
this time better
overdue.

finally

this is an old piece i've worked, chewed on, spit out, reworked, discarded, resurrected, and worked again.
i'm officially done with it.
(except for the the 14 versions still running through my brain.)
i'm throwing it, out there, up, and away.
anybody got music for this?

drawn to you
like water downhill,
drawn to you
like buzzards to a kill,
drawn to you
like a traveler home,
you grow on me
like flesh on a bone

no need to explain
how this came about,
a flooding of the heart
after the drought.
i do know,
the heart tells it true.
are you drawn to me
like i'm drawn to you?


drawn to you
like butter to toast,
drawn to you
like gravy to a roast,
drawn to you
like a child to play,
nothing more left to say.

and for your dining and dancing pleasure:

ten things that make me happy and that i love

having been tagged, here's my list. this doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the multiplicities of what i love. some are the mundane things of daily life. the sacred lies in the ordinary.
some i left out, like books, family, nature. for me, they are a given.

you see, i couldn't quite keep it to ten, because of the last one.

1. photography-mine and others
2. the manifestation of the divine that we are - yoga
3. breathing in, breathing out-the cycles of life
4. the inevitability of change
5. the process of writing poetry (not necessarily the result)
6. sleeping past 6:00am
7. kissing
8. music and dancing, together or separately
9. making soup
10. all the possibilities i haven't explored yet
11. that the more i love, the more i love, and am loved

it would be interesting to do this once a week for a bit, and see what else arises. always room for more happiness, i say.

every little thing

days that race
+
days that rattle
+
days that crash
+
days that plod
+
days that wrinkle
+
days that jump
+
days that stumble
+
days that skip
+
days that end.

please

no more words,
strung together,
cheap beads on a choke chain of desperation.

no more words,
clanging in an empty dumpster brain,
ricocheting refuse.

no more words,
forest fire plumes of
smoking obfuscation.

no more words.

please.

silence.

...and i am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder...

the title is from the ferlinghetti poem in my last post.

this is what we lose, i think.
we lose the ability to wonder,
to be present anew,
to see with fresh eyes,
to lose the cynicism,
to shake the numbness,
to drop the armor,
to open the heart.

how do we shed the fear?
how do we soften?

how do we receive?

we laugh, and we love.

here's the laugh:

lyle lovett-penguins
(embedding disabled, you HAVE to see this)

here's the love:

still waiting

I Am Waiting
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
for someone to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep through the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped’ onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to ‘be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty’s clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am waiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

i like to laugh

in keeping with my commitment to saving the world through general silliness, i bring you this.

what next?

sometimes, i just see red.
or yellow, or orange, or blue.
i'm teased by light.
there is no end.

walking the line

in life, we balance.
or we fall.
and then we rebalance.
all balance comes from the core.
physical, emotional, mental, spiritual.
we move, think, breathe from the
center, out.
or we fall.
and then we rebalance.

for today

Fear less, hope more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Hate less, love more;
And all good things are yours.

Swedish Proverb

close encounters

i marked the beginning of 2010 while camping in death valley. a better way to begin the new year i could not have asked for. the weather was good, even though we had one chilly, overcast day. didn't matter. much in the way of atv noises, both from a neighboring dune system (where they're allowed), and closer to us (where they're illegal.) didn't matter. i returned feeling drained of any and all tension, with a clarity of purpose and vision befitting starting a new year.
and we had a visitor.

(not my photo-found on the web.)

this one showed up at midnight on new year's eve. guess she was looking for a party to crash. she found one in my food box. there is evidence to support a theft of fudge by friend fox. a rather brazen one, it took the throwing of a rock to finally convince her that the party she was looking for was elsewhere. good fox medicine for the next year.
and for the first time in years, i was awake when the new year rolled in!

then there were these folks.

fortunately, these weren't too near our campsite. we did spot some about a mile away, big ones. not a cat you want to keep in the house-or tent.

and we saw several groups of these..

i am in total accordance with the urge to go barefoot in the sand. but geez, look, ROCKS here-and a lot of them! (there's a rock post coming, by the way.) if we hadn't seen more than one set, i would have thought it a prank.

there were also bird and snake prints galore. i couldn't get a decent shot of either of those. the light was not forgiving of a rookie photographer.

there's more to be said about this trip (rock post!). there are more photos to put up, more thoughts to be shared. for now-
happy new year, all.
set your intentions, and act accordingly!