Tag Archives: yearning

waiting

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I wait in the silence
that echoes her leaving
the thread on the cushion
the light on the wall

I fade from the moment
and sharpen the corners
and tread on the threshold
and clumsily falter

Those places avoided
left gaping and dusky
now sit on the hour
like stones on a moth

But love idly murmurs
some word that has meaning
finds patience in waiting
while I wait for you.

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cashing my reality check

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Some days it hardly seems worthwhile, recording my thoughts.  But I feel bereft of good sense lately; my ego voice is loud and strong and my spirit whimpers under the lash.

So I slept with the Devil.  And he is all that was foretold:  seductive, winning, glorious, COMFORTABLE.  And with little hesitation, he moved on.

But somehow I feel different.  I feel that a loop was closed, a knot was tied.  And now I set about the long, long, long sojourn into my deepest self, to manufacture means of hushing the screams of outrage against the unfairness of what was once a beautiful dance.

I have substituted physical pain for psychic pain, a computer for a life.  I am pathetic.  But I am acquiring discipline in the only way I know, one day at a time.  I’ve not issued a booty call in over a week.  I am trying to ignore the taunting judgment, “He’s just not that into you.”

Perhaps the next step is to gorge on reality.  But reality is boring.  It stares me down at the end of a straight line, a box with rigid sides.  I march toward reality along the gangplank of dying dreams, to step off into an oblivion of wasted time.

Fantasy provides me a chaotic space in which to nurture my obsessions, to strive again and again toward the past, a reckless moment of abandon, a tarantella of lost reason.

Somewhere between the two extremes must lie grace.  It is always there, the quiet sweet spot, the underlayer of promise that waits and knows no limit.  I depend on grace, for I am too confused to find my horizon.

I will say this:  I do live my life.  I don’t hold back.  I know that somewhere a sunny beach with warm sand is waiting for my body.  Mother Ocean pipes her sweet lullabye and the stars will gather to listen.

So I will try to use my time as best I can, do my job, pay my bills, nurture my soul and allow God to show me The Path.

shadow

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today I would dismiss the loopholes
the drifting gaze
the dodgy non-sequiturs

today I would accept the dalliance
the research
the confession

today I would creep past your keeper
stare down your hesitation
welcome your compromise

today I would pray for a beginning or an end
to this dead air
to this interruption
to this.

scandalous aging

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Tuesday and Wednesday I crash-watched two seasons of “Scandal” and I am lit up like a horny teenager. I was awake until 6 am — unheard of in the last three years.

There are all sorts of lights coming on and bells sounding and I’m not entirely happy about it. Life is so much easier when you have no sex drive.

Yesterday was full of hell and I went out on my own last night, drove to Collierville to the Mellow Mushroom and had pizza all by myself. Got exactly what I wanted and ate as much as I wanted and stayed until I was ready to go home.

Wondered where sober seniors go to hit on people. Figured at that time of night they were all in their recliners in front of the TV.

God, getting old really SUCKS.

Hopscotch (excerpt) ~ Julio Cortázar

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My hands want to hide in your hair, stroke the depth of your hair while we kiss with mouths full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance.

And if we bite each other, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a short and terrible surge of breath, that instant death is beauty.

And there is a single saliva and a single flavor of ripe fruit, and I feel you shiver against me like a moon on the water.

~ Julio Cortázar

Wild Geese ~ Mary Oliver

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You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
…You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver