Mercurial Ramblings

in safeway sometimes the music kills the mood

2010-11-14T11:44:00.001-08:00

when i leave my house i am someone else

arms wider, chest open, waiting

captivated by assholes on bikes

breathing the stench of men who don't have to fight to be

choking on words in safeway forgetting

forgetting always forgetting to turn down the music in my ears

people stare

can of coke in my pocket, lungs full of streetnoise

duck down when police roll by

i live here

forget that i live

forget where i am

in safeway sometimes the music kills the mood

i wind down in the fierce cold fucking place where i live

i wonder what is in my throat, talk to my insides

fuck it i say, come up if you have to

i dont know these people

the man in the corner stares at me

i put my hood up

open my eyes a little wider

exhale

A Beautiful Gift

2010-11-14T11:43:00.000-08:00

He is staring at me. The nicotine stains on my fingers.. my hair, which he finds amusing. I look back at him and wonder how he can wear a wool sweater in this kind of heat. His eyes are gummy, and I ask him if he has been to see a doctor lately.

He coughs long and hard, painfully, clutches his chest and tells me that he hasn't, because he feels like faith healing is the only thing that can help him at this point. He asks me for a cigarette and I pass one to him.

"You've never been hurt," he says, still studying me, and I wait for him to continue but he doesn't. I ask him what he means, and he repeats himself. In my mind I see myself in my bedroom as a child, and even now, rocking back and forth. The eternal me, hurting. I see all of the ways, all of the times that I have been humiliated, abused.

And I smile. "I've been hurt," I say, and want to tell him how but when I see his shaking hands I can't. I lean against the fence.

"... But I'm happy to be alive." He smiles at me and I take a deep breath, because I mean what I said. I let that happiness swell in my chest and feel it for a minute or so while we smoke in silence.

What a beautiful gift.

My own Eyes

2010-11-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

"How are you, son?"

The voice was that of an older relative, a man

and I sparkled like a star for a moment

My dad looked at me and shrugged

"This is one of my girls," he answered.

Inside I felt a meteor hit my heart

I was eight years old

My chest still flat, my body long and lanky

my hair licking at my ears in waves that wanted to be.

Later I lay on my back in the grass and looked down at my body

There was a bump there, I saw it for myself

I let the moonlight hit my eyes and carry me away

Still later...

"This is what it feels like to kiss a boy," I told her, and the others stared

when I kissed her on the lips, my eyes closed but twinkling

so soft

When I opened them again the girls looked away and I did too

scuffed my feet against the floor and bit my lip till it bled

I walked home as if in a trance

On the way

A voice came from under my shoe

"But you're not a boy."

My polka-dot blouse giggled nervously

But later on I took them off

threw them in a heap in the corner of my room

I kept my underpants on

grabbed a sock from my drawer and opened up the blinds

My own venetian eyes drank in the stars outside my window

Beautiful Child

2010-11-14T11:40:00.000-08:00

Beautiful child,

I tied your umbilical cord with a piece of red yarn

a tiny scarlet bow that was soft,

so soft on your sweet velvet skin

You looked up at me with liquid eyes and I knew that you knew

that my own cord was severed long ago

before I taught myself to breathe.

Beautiful child,

I handed you to your mother as soon as her eyes were open

eyes like yours, only wiser

She played with your toes, watched them turn pink

a technicolour message of hope

I knelt at your feet,

dressed in my finest rags.

I opened my mouth to speak

but you reached out your tiny hand to silence me

I didn't have to tell you

about the moment the world turned dark.

night

2010-06-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

This house wraps around me like a moth-eaten scarf. Turning inside out, it has a pulse of it's own. From where I sit I see the chicken leg, the fence of skulls, the woods just beyond this window.

"My Bright Dawn, my Red Sun, and my Dark Midnight."

I see this

Cleverly disguised as the end of a path, the cessation of loneliness that only truly lonely people can see right through. That ancient promise, the one that has us envisioning a life with no pain until you wake up and realize that it's an illusion. Relief from loneliness can happen only where there is surrender.

Take me, I say, and the water I am being swept into is black as night. My eyes are closed and I pray for fearlessness until I sink down into this mattress, further down past the ground and the basement, into the center of the earth, and then into the void.

This seemingly empty space sparkles for me. One second of illumination and I gasp for breath. It is so beautiful, so beautiful, because in this space is held everything without a name, every child, every creature that has never seen light, and thus, never been fearful. Because it is in light that fear is born, not in the darkness; true darkness is beautiful as the Yaga's mysterious home is beautiful.
As we are all beautiful.

I see it right now, in my mind, and I ask that darkness to come to me like a ghost at my bedside. Blindfold me and leave me alone so that I can find my way in the night.

out for a smoke

2010-06-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

A man squats in the dead grass in front of his rooming house, digging in the earth and if everything around him falls away I am somewhere warm, in the country that he left to come here. I take a drag of my cigarette and wonder what he thought would be here for him. I wonder if he found it, if his body has forgotten what it is to be hungry, or if he still experiences hunger.

Five minutes later a few old (and seemingly drunk) people ride by on bicycles, laughing. Their matted grey hair trails far behind like a flag of wild poverty, a wolfish gesture aimed at the air around them. Their beards and bosoms sway and pretty soon I am laughing too, listening to them holler at eachother not to get killed, or drop the beer.

Finally there is a man in a wheelchair, moving down the sidewalk as if in a luxury vehicle. His strong brown arms move effortlessly, and there is so much grace that I have to look away, thinking of my own fumblings. His daughter moves in the background like an afterthought, humming a tiny song.

And my connection with fire is satisfied until I am compelled again to sit outside, astounded and bewildered by what it means to be alive in this world.

Alone

2010-06-19T08:53:00.001-07:00

He is laying in bed and she is laying in bed and we are all laying in bed, alone.
Sometimes I want to close my eyes against all this loneliness
Separate beds and separate cries and separate lives
I watch his eyes on the wall and wait for him to blink but he doesn't
because there are no shadows, everything is a shadow
and when everything is in shadow our souls begin to die
I watch his soul die from the living room sofa and mine dies at the same time
and so does hers
and love hides under the bed, and we are alone
Sometimes I want to close my eyes against all this loneliness
but behind my eyelids I see shadow
more shadow and I am alone

2010-06-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

I hold my daughter's hand while she walks, watching as she navigates litter and parts of the sidewalk that are still slippery with ice. She is very careful not to step on cracks, and I ask her why. She slows her pace and looks at me with eyes that hold many layers of darkness.

"Because you're not supposed to," she says, and lets go of my hand. Suddenly I am walking alone, watching her run ahead. I pass a black shoe that someone has discarded or lost, and I look around briefly for the other one, because they are nice. There's only one, so I keep walking.

She is far ahead now, but instead of asking her to slow down, I speed up to meet her pace. I light a cigarette and watch her skipping, listening to her sing songs in a tiny voice. The wind carries her voice to me, and her eyes, inherited from someone I hardly know, glow like fireflies in the shade. Because you're not supposed to, I think, and smile a bit. There is so much magic in a child's world.

I want to paint her in this moment, shining with all the intensity of someone who has been chosen by the sun himself. I could never capture light like hers

Lightening Eyes

2010-06-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

A man is in front of me, and he is spinning in circles. It seems he has no control over his body, and before I catch up he crashes into a fence.

I give him my hand and his is warm like his smile. We walk a few blocks and get him some beer. He holds it to his chest in the same way that I held my babies, and his eyes are happy.

I walk back home with my nine dollars worth of groceries and there is another neighbor. He tells me stories about how his ex-lover beat him for many years. He too has a hard time walking because his leg is badly broken, and there is alcohol on his breath. I get up to give him a seat on my front stoop so that he can rest his leg, and he shakes my hand many times and makes jokes about my hair. His eyes are tired.

Later on there are others and when I go to sleep I dream that I have a see-through fence around my yard and on the grass there are many sleeping bodies, like children at a slumber party. Their yellow fingers clutch the grimy limbs of teddy bears and blankets, and I look out my window, so as not to disturb anyone.

No one can touch these people through my magical fence - they are safe until they can walk and their bodies are able, and when police cars crawl by all the cops can do is stare. I stare back with lightening in my eyes.

2010-06-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

A Gemini nightmare, careening through the clouds toward a door in the West, where I met my ancestors and offered them a rubber bone. It was all I brought with me from where I was, sitting in someone's backyard for seven years. I had stolen a pebble a day from the neighbors, had made something that almost resembled a mountain until I smashed it.

They didn't want my bone, but pointed to the East and shook their heads, walking away. I opened the door and understood but went in, throwing my bone on the ground so I could have both hands free. But there wasn't anything there anyway, just darkness and shale. Over time my eyes became unaccustomed to light, and I lost them. Saint Anthony, I prayed, Come and find me. But he didn't, and I stayed there, pilfering shale from no one until I had another mountain. A Gemini daydream, translucent and becoming, lost in the chaos of reproduction. Some of us were never meant to find our way.

the sun

2010-06-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

We face the sun together, all of us who have the mis/fortune of waking, we face the sun together

Me and the guy who picks up the garbage. I watch his muscles ripple under his shirt and I want him to look my way. The people bustling down the street, holding their breath when they pass by the graveyard; I watch their smiles fade under the burst of bright light and I think of Hiroshima.

I am aghast. What the fuck is rising above me? The sun, the one we all turn our heads toward at the very same time.

Multi-coloured children like flowers growing in the grass around me, I wonder which ones have mothers and I mouth prayers with sunburned lips for those that don't. God help us

We face the sun together, even those that have never seen light

The guy at the bus stop yesterday, telling me of his temptation to hurt those he loves. His eyes were confessing a truth that I understand well. He does what he says and they in turn hurt others and so do I and we all face the sun together. God help us

because we hurt

But there is this fucked up kinda hope that comes in the form of a golden sphere, a crystal ball, rising, always, shining on the garbage man and the guy at the bus stop, the children in the grass
and me
and you

God help us
I mean this from the bottom of my heart

2010-03-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

2010-03-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

children who have been here forever

2010-02-22T06:52:00.002-08:00

I sat on sacred land yesterday and then realized that

I am always on sacred land

Shopping carts and garbage litter the homes around me
Children laugh, and I smile at their teeth
Shining like stars against a Sepia backdrop of flesh

Sometimes in the glint of those very teeth
I see the ghost of what this neighborhood used to be

This graveyard of closed-down banks and broken windows
Seems like the only thing still shining is the children, so I follow them
Creep into shadows, see they’re still shining
This Sepia rivaled only by an Indigo sky

I want to paint them but I can’t capture such light
What I want to show is the flash
A captive firefly in the eyes of children who have been here forever

There are no words
There are no colours
I can only watch

Car Ride

2010-02-22T06:48:00.000-08:00

His hair, or what is left of it, is blowing in the wind rushing in from the darkness outside. He is talking almost incessantly, and I listen with both ears, because I know what is coming.

A dog licks my hand and I am alone in the back seat, swimming in beige leather, listening to the sound of hearts breaking all around me. I myself am remembering things that I would rather not remember. I see my mother’s hands, empty , as she holds them out to me. I don’t know what I am supposed to do with these hands, only that they held me at one time, long ago, smelling of Red Door and detergent and sickness.

His voice startles me awake.

“I never wanted to cause that kind of pain to anyone,” he is saying, and keeps talking. I look out the window at the people flapping around like leaves on the street. I watch a drunken man lead a child across the street. The little boy`s hair shines like an otter pelt in the sun, and I direct my eyes away from him. Too bright, I think, and my head throbs.

He turns in his seat to look at me. His eyes are dark.

"I remember that," he says, and I hear my voice from somewhere far away asking him what he remembers.
`
"I remember suffering", and the world swirls around me, passing in and out of tinted windows. I remember suffering too, I think, but I cannot say this to him, because in front of me there are tunnels. Ones that you shield your eyes against because, like the little boy, they are too bright.

And the other kind.. the kind that you feel like you can't get out of, the ones filled with ghosts and men who drive in cars, whispering secrets to anyone who will listen.

A Walk to School

2010-02-22T06:47:00.002-08:00

My daughter sits in a classroom with her arm in the air, waving an invisible flag of herself.

If I were to be watching her from the hallway, obstructing the bustle of teachers in tight black pants and thin painted mouths, it would be painful, so I wait until the last possible minute to enter the building. I can see it anyway, in the window of my imagination.

The children around her are shiny, like this year's pennies, and I wonder how they got that way. I grew up feeling like I entered the world through a second-hand store, like I had never been new.

I take my time getting to the school. In the beginning I never saw mothers, and now that school has started they emerge like butterflies whose wings have been removed.

Their younger children toddle far behind, noses running, and I want to pat their heads, but I know that I shouldn't, so I don't. I can't catch up with these mothers, so I walk slowly, taking my part in a parade of duty. My head down, I too feel like I want to be flying.

A boy steps off a school bus and disappears into the shambles of his home, like a cloud swallowed up by the sun. A man passing me shouts at his grandson in a language that I don't understand and I turn and watch them fall away.

Sasha is beside me now, and the wind is whistling in my ears so that I can barely hear her speak. She is telling me about who the helper of the day was. What I want to tell her is that it's all bullshit, but I listen, looking at the vacant lot beside us.

"That fence couldn't keep us out," she says, and I am stunned because I am thinking the same thing. I tell her this and she is pleased. She licks the ice cream that I bought her at the corner store, and skips ahead.

I run my fingers over the chainlink fence separating me from the concrete and weeds, thinking about how crawling over it with my daughter, who has the dark dark eyes of a priestess. We would kick the garbage to one side, and take our rightful places on the ground, on the earth, which belongs to all of us.

Bus Ride

2010-02-22T06:47:00.001-08:00

Last night on the bus
I watched a baby fall asleep, drinking from a propped bottle. He was lying on his back and he was startled by the night/bus sounds off and on. His mom was looking out the window, but I never took my eyes off of him. His own eyes drifted open and closed as he drank his milk. I tried to talk to him in my mind.
"It's okay" I told him.
"The world is scary sometimes, but at least you have the sky, and that will be your blanket. The water will wash you. Sshhhh.... you are loved"
His eyes closed and stayed closed.

A man got on the bus shortly after that. He had cuts all over his arms and a big backpack and blanket. I tried to speak to him with my mind,
"Look at me," I said over and over again, and he would turn in my direction but wouldn't make eye contact.
"Shhh...." I said to him, and I knew he heard me. I rested my head against the window and wished I was home.

Another Bus

2010-02-22T06:46:00.000-08:00

today was full of ghosts.

the bus driver's smile was thin and transparent, and there was a hint of rot in his breath as he said hello. i looked around the bus as i walked to the back, and there was no one there. there were no sounds; the bodies were skeletal.

the bus floated down main street, pausing to pick up people who wait on the sidewalk, sheltering themselves from the cold. a few feet away are others, ones who wait forever while an endless stream of cars and buses roar past them. they are invisible, frozen in the absence of the sun.

last night i walked to the river with friends in the middle of the night. we built a fire and my shoes were full of snow. there was no one around... the city was empty.

ghosts. some are more obvious than others. they leak tears endlessly, flooding doorways and alleyways while we look in the other direction, waiting for a bus.

Jesus Died Shoeless

2010-02-22T06:45:00.002-08:00

Jesus died shoeless
I myself have no shoes
so I read "The Hungry Time" with my family
put them outside so the wind makes no mistake
they are alive

Jesus died shoeless
My children have no shoes
when I close my eyes I see them
like Him, strung up like Christmas lights
bare feet winking at me from above
and I cry

In this place of darkness we sell bulbs of hope
to light the way for people like me

For M.E

2010-02-22T06:45:00.001-08:00

I saw you as a newborn baby, looking around for the man who wasn't there
No sharp eyes open, watching for intruders...
a baby boy protecting his mama
crying, saying hey.. I'm worth something, with a heavy heart
not believing it

I saw you as a child walking alone, dark eyes on the ground, looking for a glint of silver on the sidewalk
something to bring home to his mama
Eyes always open, waiting for something
saying what the fuck
I deserve something else
not believing it

I see you as a man, watching like you were never watched
scooping children up with your eyes
because they're not yours
saying fuck i can do this
not believing it

Because in this world some are meant to suffer
and I love you in your suffering
want to bring you back to the beginning where
there was someone missing
fill in the blank
so you didn't have to fight so hard
so you could believe yourself

as a baby when you said
when the little boy said
when you hear yourself saying
I should be here

Beginning

2010-02-22T06:43:00.001-08:00

On a Saturday night I stumbled out of my mothers womb
drunk with expectation
gathered myself up in newborn majesty
and told the room my story

I told about the kings and the whitewater
the morning I first heard the poplar trees whisper
that my heart was too big for this world
they looked at my tiny feet and then at eachother
and shook their heads

I swam away

Whose Children are These?

2010-02-12T06:50:00.000-08:00

Whose children are these
blocking the sun like a forest wall
They run to greet me, tongue tucked away solid
like the night

Whose children are these
Children whose words die
on lips like candied ginger
Sweet, unwavering against a backdrop of burnt sienna
the desert up their sleeves

Whose children are these
bare feet like waves, lapping against the concrete
Who are you?
They lift their faces to the sky

Black rainbow eyes, an almond explanation of darkness

Cemetery

2010-02-11T06:52:00.000-08:00

There is a cemetery at the end of my street.

Day after day I walk by this cemetery and almost always there is someone else there. Usually they are men, and they are always alone. Watching, waiting, resting their arms on the stone wall, I stare at these men. They don't go inside, they just stand there.

What are they watching for? In my mind I see hundreds of skeletons rumbling in their stomachs, invading their veins. They look beyond the grass, into the dirt, past the concrete vaults and the easy wooden boxes and into the endless eyes of the dead.

Sometimes I wait for these men to look my way, but they never do, so I keep walking.

Sometimes I bring my daughter inside and watch her play in the grass beside the gravestones. There is a candle at the very back of the cemetery that we placed there months ago, resting thoughtfully at the feet of a statue of Jesus. Cast in bronze, forever suffering, a never-ending, undying death. Flowers are everywhere.

"Sometimes people think cemeteries are sad," I say to Sasha as we are leaving through the iron gates. "But I don't." I'm not thinking about what I am saying.

She looks at me. "They are if you or someone you know is in them." And I laugh. She's right.

Children trip through a maze of truth, the graveyards of their own minds full of things they thought they knew.. things they really did know, but were lied to and they disappeared. I'm grateful to be in this space of truth, try not to fill up her graveyard with too many fake flowers. I want her to grieve every moment, everything that is lost, because I never did. There were too many things and I stopped even knowing where truth ended and lies began.

We walked home mostly in silence, Sasha's pants dripping wet from falling in a puddle. My daughter, I think when I look at her and I feel like laughing and crying at the same time. I cannot believe this gift.

Policemen Don't Wave at Children Anymore

2010-02-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

This place, where policemen don’t wave at children anymore
Whiz by in cars like grenades, blinds pulled against the light
Eyes that are not used to the sun

While little ones climb concrete structures,
Hair pulled toward the clouds
Cream soda and windburn give the illusion of
Tiny painted warriors, lined up against the sun

While mamas turn their backs and text boyfriends or enemies
Small brown fingers flap in the wind like flags

I have to turn away from their hope

Because policemen don’t wave at children anymore
Not these children anyway.

realities

2009-12-01T09:13:00.000-08:00

There are so many worlds that we do not know about, though they are right in front of us. Behind the mirror, the window, in the grass under our feet. A network of beings to whom we are something that could never be understood.

These other worlds are everywhere. I read somewhere that the vast majority of ocean life has never been witnessed or discovered. Somewhere in our yards, in our houses, down the street, animals speak to each other and we are in a reality that does not allow us to recognize their language, like so many other languages that we do not hear.

Like one tiny vein in a living body, ours is only one in an infinitely complex swirl of connections.

I think about these other veins, the ones that run along side you and I, and I wonder if they look at me as much as I look at them. I am certain that they do not, and this depresses me and makes me want to hide.

There are lost souls everywhere, not in the same tube as the rest of the beings on this earth. Children who know their friends' phone numbers but not their own, and which play grounds are inhabited by their own kind. They know when dark is coming, and what that means, even when we do not.

They know when pain is imminent, and can run but mostly choose to stay. Sometimes they have new shoes, and some of them have never worn shoes, ever. Their hair is streaked with sunshine, because in their reality this big ball of fire is integral, important in a way that we will never understand.

These children have dark, liquidy eyes that no one will claim. These eyes almost never see water, and when they do, it leaves streaks on cheeks that are thirsty and dusty and beautiful.

I walk along side these children, watch them in the playgrounds. They run beside me, and I struggle to keep up, silently praying that they won't leave me behind, sitting on my shitty wooden stoop, where I watch for people in my own rusty red vein.

Sometimes someone rushes by, but they see me and clutch their purses tightly against their chests. Others walk slowly, never breaking eye contact, and I hold my breath. When they are finally out of sight, I wonder where they went, and exhale. Mostly I am alone.

But along side this tiny vein, a bigger one pulsates and it is the knowledge of this that keeps me here. I can see it, even from my stoop.

New Paintings

2009-10-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

No one Should Ever be Forgotten

2009-10-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

I am sitting on my front stoop, smoking a cigarette, and Gary is staring at me from the other side of the fence. His eyes are dark and pulsing with dullness, like
those of a tiger in a cage. I pick at my fingernails. It's hot. He is fidgeting.

Gary lives in a group home next door. We hear yelling from his front yard and both turn to look. Someone else is pacing, talking to himself about the inevitable
invasion of Canada by the Chinese. Gary sighs, and pulls his shirt down over his belly. He clears his throat.

I want to go inside but sense there is something that he wants to talk about. I wait for another minute, deadheading the flowerpots on my front stoop, and I am wrong.
We have nothing to say to eachother. I have done nothing but paint all day, and my mind is cloudy and I am not grounded and I have no earth and Gary is cloudy and he has
no earth and I say goodbye and go inside.

Through my window I see that Gary stays at the fence for a few minutes. I don't want him to see me with my family, because I don't know if he has a family, and he is so
painfully lonely that I walk away from the window, so I can't see him waiting for me.

The next morning, when I go outside for my morning cigarette, Gary is walking home from the corner store. He stops at the fence and today his eyes are different.
They are bright, shining like hematite in the sunshine. He talks as I light my second smoke.

"I have a life outside of this place," he says, and I nod, shielding my eyes from his brightness and from the sun.

"I have a lot waiting for me when I turn fifty," he continues. "I have a boat, and a car, and a mansion. I just have to wait three more years for my freedom."
He pauses and emphasises "Freedom is the most important thing."

I look over into the group home yard. It is littered with garbage and at the present time there are three men outside, sitting in chairs, staring at nothing. There is
one man pacing, the same man as yesterday. My heart is full of love for them, and for Gary. How beautiful that he has found hope in nothing, even if it is something that
he created for himself to keep living in his ghost-house, where forgotten people drink coca-cola and wait to die.

I will never walk by without acknowledging that behind every front door there are beating hearts, and people who used to be someone's baby. No one should ever be forgotten.

What God Created

2009-05-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Life fades and then comes back to me.

Watching from the passenger seat of a car, this window is my only one, and I see him on the outside.

Hart, walking with his head down, a grown man inside his mama, head flexed, knees pulled up to his chest as he rests on a nearby bench. Hart is floating, belly bloated with fluid, eyes drowning as they spot me.

The car is parked. We stare at eachother. Suddenly his mouth begins to move and, garbling, it comes together in language that I understand. Hart speaks to me like a fish. I pull my ear closer, lean my head out the window.

"I'm here," he says. then
"Look", and I do.

Around him there are others, fetuses with eyes that stare straight ahead. Hands clutched to their chests, golden chains attached to smooth, hairless bodies. Chains that reach to the sky, where some nameless being feeds them, allows them to move through this water.

I nod through the window and his eyes open wider. Hart is afraid of the dark.

I see you, I tell him and don't know what else to say.

Suddenly the car pulls away and I am in a time machine, seeing what I know is past but have never witnessed before. There are beings here too, children who have never seen light, and men who have never been children.

They float through tunnels, looking for their own golden chain, afraid to blink because they might disappear.

Hart, even with one phantom hand across your face, you are exquisite
God knows where you are hiding.

Prayer

2009-04-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

I am here
Last night I looked at a dead baby
passed from the womb of a friend-sister
someone I love
An honour to sit in this place
hold life in a bowl, in my arms
I talk to the Universe, to God
saying

God, Universe, Creator
Make me worthy of this place at your table
Rebuild me from the place where I began
A terrified child
Release me from my fear of darkness,
My fear of Everything that you created
that makes me stronger, more capable
of witnessing your Divinity
In Death
In Life
In Suffering and Joy

Help me to create for myself
a state of Grace
Lift me from the chaos in my heart
so that I may serve others in the knowledge
That I was created to witness
That I am strong enough to suffer
and to be with others through their own suffering
I am here with my eyes wide open

2009-03-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Diamonds of snow glitter on the cheeks of my daughter and when she smiles I wonder if she could shine any brighter

Wind whistles in my ears and I hear voices from far away in that wind. Telling me that it is good, that this is my home

Inside she is mixing herbs with her tiny fingers. Licorice root, dandelion, angelica.... She is excited because the ginger, she says, smells like lemonade. This is going to make you better, Mom, she says with roses in her cheeks and I smile. This will make you better because I made it.

Wind whistles in my ears and I hear voices from far away in the wind. Telling me that this is good, that this is my home.

Yoni Art

2009-03-25T13:54:00.001-07:00

Images of Conception

2009-03-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

Birth Art

2009-03-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

Collages

2009-03-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

born

2009-03-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

Wind wafts through the window and onto my son's bare skin. He has kicked the covers off, and I breathe in his sillhouette in the light from the streetlight on the other side of the wall. His chest rises and falls steadily for awhile and then catches and I see that he is crying.

I have been singing him a song. "This is the first song that I ever sang to you," I whisper, and he nods.

And then, "When you were born, you were tiny and perfect," I start, and tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and onto the pillow that we are sharing. "You were clean and bright. You looked at me right away."

I know in this moment that he remembers, even if he doesn't know it yet. He was there, present like we all were the moment that we saw light, all on our own individual days. Some of us were born under moonlight, some in the sunshine or in almost complete darkness. Some of us were born under fleurescent lights.

But we were all born. And all of us carry those memories, and maybe if our own mammas were in bed telling us the stories of our own perfect fingers and toes we would weep as well. Knowing that we are never loved more than we were at that moment.

The moment before we were afraid to be loved.

There is so much love, here in this place.

neighbors on Mcgregor

2009-01-22T21:07:00.000-08:00

There are children everywhere, but the ones I pay the most attention to live in a house behind mine. They appear like ghosts over the fence, shouting words that I struggle to understand. Their eyes are small black pebbles, shining like fire in the sunshine.

My daughter hears their voices and runs outside but by that time they are gone... vanishing like raindrops disappear into the earth.

Nothing until nighttime, when I sit out on the back stoop, reading a book; my fingers cold enough that I can barely turn the pages. On nights like this I hear doors slamming and their mother yelling and I try not to listen.

Oftentimes in the morning a White man visits and pushes the children on a tire swing in their backyard. They laugh and then the White man vanishes as quickly as everything else does.

Then, again the children wander like ghosts and I turn my head toward them, sometimes walking to the fence to peek over it, witnessing their little world. This muddy playground strewn, like mine, with pieces of plywood and broken toys.

This is it, I speak to them. But not all of it. Not forever.

A Baby Named Bear

2009-01-06T09:03:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago a baby was born into my hands, and a mamma was born in her husband's eyes and I was born again, like I am born every day.

Except this was a special day and in this baby's dark dark eyes I saw my own reflection. And in the dark dark water I saw my own reflection. And I was speaking and hearing my words.

"I love you," my eyes were saying when they looked into his, and in speaking these words to him, I opened my mouth to myself. And in my mind I named him, so I kissed him and gave him to his daddy while his mamma came back into her body.

I want to open my heart so that he can see inside.

God,
Keep a space for this child

stoop thoughts

2008-08-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

Thinking about men who scour my yard for cigarette butts. I walk outside sometimes and these men are there. They look at me self consciously and I want to talk to them. They quickly stash the butts in their pockets and pick up whatever they are carrying and walk away, disappearing into the night.

"Wait."

I speak to them in my mind, and my head feels like it is going to explode. I talk to them like I am praying, like I am writing a letter.

Father, Brother, Lover, Warrior... whoever You are,

I sit here humbly, in front of a house that I do not own. My front stoop is covered by a carpet that is almost worn through, stapled to wood. The windows in this house do not open and sometimes I feel like I am in a prison. Carpets are filled with coffee stains and there is almost no light. At night time I sit out here to remind myself that life still keeps moving.

I watch you because you are a reflection of me, and I am not afraid of you. I wonder if you have ever known love, and want to tell you that I have not ever known real love. Most of the love in my life has been painful and now I sit here with butts on my lawn, wondering if it was worth it. If it is still worth it.

Take whatever you want. Sometimes I can't feed my cats or myself and I want to go far away from here, somewhere where I don't have to fill anyone's belly or heart with something that I don't have. Here, on this same stoop, I look at flyers and feel like I exist in a separate universe from these things. I live in search of feeling, experiencing, because I don't know what else there is. Everything else seems out of reach.

I wander sometimes too, but never far from here because something always feels unfinished. I wander and trip over toys and books and chairs, and my world is like a maze...an obstacle course. I almost never find my way; instead I sit down wherever I am and search my mind for what to feel. Sometimes I cry, but sometimes I can't, so I think about the eyes of a little boy whom I have never met, and tears run down my face. Sometimes I clear a space on the carpet and look at the ceiling.

I want to tell you that I am a woman who hangs by a thread sometimes. That I am disconnected, lost.

I want to invite you in, show you who I am, that I am nothing more than you are. My pockets are full of butts and flowers from other people's yards, and I love you.

Guatemala -Then and Again

2007-10-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Walking down into the valley, the streets are littered with people's lives, garbage.

Another day is done.

A man struggles to mount his bike, upon which many pounds of material are strapped, protected by a black trash bag, protected from the rain that pours on all the people who are trying to find their way home.

Behind him a small boy walks, shoeless and dirty. His dusty cheeks smile as he kicks an aluminum can, and his mother watches him with tired eyes. She balances a basket on her head and he reaches for her hand. The baby on her back looks on, past the garbage and the rain and his eyes are not fighting anything. He plays with his mother's hair.

An old woman sits crouched in the corner, beckoning for me to come to her. Small withered hands reach into a woven basket and pull out a lifetime of colour, so much colour that I wonder why we are ever needing anything else... this is all there is but it is beautiful and generous and I smile.

Behind her another old woman carries a pile of wood, held by a sash that pulls against her forehead. She is crying, and it is heavy, and her hands are also full.

I look down at my own empty hands and feel the sun on my hair, which is free to wander, pulled toward the sky. The sky is cloudy and it's eyes are angry, reaching with infinite hands, down to an earth that has been built and rebuilt.

Always shifting, the land hums and sighs, never quite settled.

Lovers sit in concrete bowls, tangled like the roots of ancient trees and I hear laughter beside me. Their eyes look past me to eachother; there is no one else around.

The men stumble home, following the shadows of lanterns and candlelight, and little boys are close behind, noses running as quickly as their tiny feet.

I hear these sounds and smile, knowing that to some this land is as familiar as anything could ever be.

bus love

2007-07-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

People sitting on stoops in front of houses where all the windows are broken

Some people sit inside of houses with no broken windows and I realize that

Freedom comes in all kinds of clever disguises

I keep my eyes open every second of the day

A man walks in the middle of the street, unaware that the bus follows him like a rabid dog

Another man gets onto the bus, talking loudly to everyone. The people stare at him like he is an alien

Some of them shake their heads. I turn down my Ipod so that I can hear what he is saying

I try to make eye contact but he will not look at me

His hair blows in the wind from the open window

Sometimes when I take the bus I close my eyes because I don't want to see anything.

Sometimes I look down at a book that I can't concentrate on, or focus on the music I am listening to.

But most of the time the bus is my muse.

A lot of my questions about life are answered on the bus, and when I have no questions sometimes I sit by a window, open it, and feel the wind on my face, pretending that I am somewhere else.

Sometimes I pretend that I am traveling through time.

I love the bus.

laundry day

2007-06-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

"It is incumbent upon us to understand everything in the universe."

Understanding

Connection

I am sitting in the laundromat, listening to the same song over and over on my head phones.

Thinking about poverty, about how we all experience poverty in different ways. There is a man sleeping in the corner, I can see him in my peripheral vision; I have been watching him. The air around him is viscous, thick with the smell of alcohol and sniff. It is leaking from his pores, travelling with his blood, fuelling him for another day... another kind of sunset, a different kind of dawn.

When people walk by he opens his eyes and pretends that he is not sleeping. I watch him struggle to be comfortable in his chair, in his skin.

A woman walks in, alone, with ten or so garbage bags overflowing with laundry, huge sunglasses covering her face. She is anonymous, she keeps her head down. She reaches into her bags and pulls out her life, mechanical and grey, and I have to look away.

And my clothes spin and spiral beside a child whose mother is talking quietly on a cell phone. The child rests languidly on a chair, hypnotised by the humming lullaby of a world of machines.

Outside a man kicks a peice of garbage down the sidewalk, something that I remember doing when I was a child. His face is hidden by a hood, his own defense against the assault of a bitter winter wind. He too is alone.

There is a werewolf, a shapeshifter, at the pinball machine. His face is scarlet with frustration as he shouts at the glass in front of him.

Fuckin thing, he says, over and over again. In his mind someone is taking the one thing that he has left.

Poverty.

I think about a friend of mine who sits in her big house near the river, wishing that she was somewhere else, anywhere else. I think about her children, tucked snug into their beds by a mother and a father, surrounded, like this child beside me, by machines. I think about my own children.

The machines hum and help us sleep; without them there is the noise of love, we can hear our own hearts beat. Too much blood, we think, and feel faint. Flesh and tissue, liquid and energy. This is too real.

Poverty. We are all impoverished. Right now I am deprived of touch that I am craving, and the man in the corner is waiting for sleep. The woman in the sunglasses seeks invisibility and my friend, in the middle of all the noise, is praying for silence.

I dig into my pockets for another quarter.

rivers

2007-06-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

my house is in a shambles, and past the sunlight outside there is a river of darkness, just down the street from my house. yesterday i walked alongside that river, following it to the playground. i had no children with me, so i sat on a swing and looked around at all the women who had the courage to be mothers.

i sat on the swing and looked at the children, playing beside a river that held every answer to every mystery in this world.

it stretches alongside this sad, sleepy city, like a dark blue ribbon tied around a bouquet of dying flowers.

the snow drifts

embankment, a word that i know means fortress or mainstay, this snow protects me from the earth. snowbank.

the sunlight and then moonlight turn the snow to a dazzling, glittering river of a different kind. the kind that i could bury myself in, rubbing it on my cheeks until the dark-river smell left my skin. sometimes i forget that it is cold.

and once, at that very same park, beside that very same river, the water lapped at the dead grass as the snow melted, and the children played anyway. pieces disappeared and were never replaced, and in the morning, when the world woke up, so did the men who slept in the dirt. and on this day i sat on a bench and waited for the sun to come out

and there was a woman on the other bench, who was there with many children, and as the dark fingers of the river lapped at the swingsets and at the shitty slide, i watched as she was swallowed up by the water. she fell asleep under the clouds, her head supported by one of her hands, and her children played around her, speaking their own language, trying to wake her up a couple of times but they couldn't.

i watched and then walked home, between the cemetary and the river, careful not to get too close to either world.