She has no pedigree
She comes from the street
No matter to me
She makes my life complete
Ode to Miracle
living life out loud
Maya’s Lament
She walks daily amongst the elders of the forest
She is called to tend their wounds
She is one of them, but human, too
She listens, she sees, she hears
And reports back what she knows
But no one really listens to her
No one really believes the truths she shares
She sheds tears for the mighty and the fallen
For the ignorance that will be the end of us all
And dreams of a someday world where trees once again rule
Where we humans believe in their worth
The Best Medicine
I’m not usually a fan of pictures of me, and even less so of posting them, but I love this one.
During a recent shoot, the sublime photographer Joseph Moran made a comment that got me laughing as we tried (to almost no avail) to get some outside headshots on a very windy balcony.
He captured a spontaneous and free part of my personality: one that gets much less life-space than I’d like in my very adult days.
In laughter, I connect to a very important part of me – an uncensored, unedited, unsocialized part. I become childlike again.
It truly is “the best medicine.”
Panic
Breath
Shallow
Rapid
Shot of fear
Racing through
Hot flash
Electric tingles
Terror settles
Cold sweat
Paralyzed
Have to wait
Count to ten
Slowly
Clammy peace
Tentative
Safety
Returns
Keep on Truckin’
I’ve got a few tricks left up my sleeve
Not going to waste my time in a fret
Midlife is nothing more than a signpost
This life thing ain’t over yet
Lush Life
The darkness descended
The blight that you brought to my lands
Soul-grooves
Worn into my heart
Rivulets of salt-tears
Eroded the once-pristine landscape inside
But I’ve started a conservancy
To build my self up again
Renew, rebuild, regrowth
One day, no traces of you will remain on my terrain
And the wind will carry the seeds of my heartlands
To populate fertile fields so that love will spread
And color the world a thousand shades of beautiful
Soul Tattoo
Allow me to assure you
You are intricately woven into my psyche
I’ve taken elaborate measures to leave you behind
To erase the traces of your affect on my personality –
On my life – to little or no avail
It seems that I carry you, etched into my soulskin
You are colored into the lines of a million needle sticks
Just as a pickle can never become a cucumber again
I am forever altered, forever changed
And yet, that is not the end of the story
I have decided to turn the design you’ve created
Into a whole new pattern of my own creation
Just try to recognize yourself in it
Allow me to reassure you
You won’t
Cancellation Policy
Allow me to return
All that you bestowed upon me
Including, but not limited to
A cautious nature
Fear of people
Embarrassment at being seen in my enthusiasm
The tendency to be cynical
Body self-consciousness
Shame
Self-doubt
Feel free to do what you will with these
I no longer wish to live from them
They were never mine to begin with
Urban Decay
I felt a flutter
A tiny heart part
A glimmer of the seed of confidence
Growing up through the cracks
Of the broken sidewalk of my soul
I tried to nurture it
Tried to help it grow
Shone sunlight on it’s tendrils
Watered it with tears of relief
But it expired in time
Like a child’s first goldfish
Neglected after excitement’s worn away
And now there’s just grey cracked cement
And hard-packed doubt underneath
Where a sprig of hope used to grow
Phantom Passions
Thoughts tangle.
I trip inside.
An abrupt disrupt,
Attempted temptations
Collide with Puritanical
Whispers in my marrow
From ancient stern-lipped marms.
Harnessed and restrained,
My instincts choke,
Wane and die.
Only their ghosts remain,
Ricocheting within.
Beyond the Skinny Branches 