Committed

In a space.

Not a bad space.

Just - uncomfortable.

I can match you - I can feel you where you are -
the trick is to feel myself while doing so.

Either feeling you,
or feeling me.

But I can't feel me while feeling you.

Yes, I said that.

But you're not listening.

Oh, you are.

I just feel like -

Oh.

That was just it, wasn't it?

I felt me, was trying to express me,
and didn't feel you feeling me.

I don't know how to ask you to meet me.
But I think that's what I need.

Can you be right here with me, please?

Just here.
Now.

If I run, run with me.

If I hide, hide with me.

If I laugh, if I cry,
fly at the fire speed that I fly at -
only to have you with me,
to witness me,
and I don't want to be alone.
Not without you.

I admit -
that in self-practice,
I don't know how to ground myself.

In truth,
I spiral and spin and sky dive.
I need you to wash me over
like the ocean
holding me in all places
and slowing me down
at a speed
that isn't the earth rushing to meet me in free-fall.

I am shapeless -
without form.

I wake up feeling a sort
that becomes a Me sort.

That because I feel like shit,
I am shit;
and I can be artful in the ways
that I can be refined shit,
like a queen of England shit,
and that attachment can last
long after I no longer
feel like shit.

Clarity.

I've been using you
as a mirror.
That mirror
shows me clarity.

Clarity of me -
that is,
if I receive you
without the filter
of my emotional
attachments.

That attachment to shame -
that any reflection
that isn't purely positive and bright
is immediately taken negatively;
really though, the beauty there
is that all truthful reflection
is reflection of worth,
and a goodness,
free of blemish or shame.

I want to speak more truth.
That my vulnerability is not a weapon
or a tool to make others feel a certain way;
with intentions - claws out -
to make you be closer to me.

It doesn't.
I feel more alone
in my "vulnerability."
The one that I express
that is no longer true
the moment I express it.

Yes,
I've always been committed to living boldly -
but I've been living boldly for the sake
of impacting others with my boldness.

There has been no real truth in that.

I want to be truly shapeless.

No attachment to impacting others a certain way.
Making them feel sorry for me
or wanting them to take care of me,
because of my Pain,
the magician Pain.

This magician allows me to be something,
something bigger, more extravagant,
elegant and beautiful and tragic.
And I am in love with him.
At the expense of not being able to connect,
at the expense of being lonely,
unreal, unbalanced, always searching,
never happy with where I am,
the real pain underneath that love of Pain,
and I think I'm sad.

Yes.

I think I'm sad.

Not tragically so.

I'm just sad.

That sadness sits with me
not in the way that Darkness or Pain
sits with me,
obnoxiously so,
making me twist and writhe.

No.

It's a sadness that sits deeper in me,
and it's gentle,
like a lady
or a little girl,
trying to remind me
that I have choice
to reach for joy, real joy,
as well as fear and real hurt,
and yes, sadness.

That I have choice.

And that all of it is truth.

And they can come and go in any given moment.

And I can let it go.

And that even though I arrive at a different emotional door,
I am still welcomed there,
and I am still Me.

Me being Love.

Me being Accepting of myself and others.

Me receiving others and their truth.

Me being in search of truth.

Me wanting to be loved
to be seen
to be heard
and to share all of that
with someone wanting to share with me.

Including that someone who is myself.

To live closer to my art
and to approach it with truth.

And to know
that there's nothing wrong with me.

Just simple beauty
feeling
figuring it out
appreciating, caring, and loving more than she knows,
and that I am loved.
And I shall love myself as much as you love me,
if
not
more.

Remember I can Write better than I can Speak

Bristling at your very words.

When you said that you didn't trust me
to contain my emotions,
I believed you.

I'm hurt that you said that -

Since it seems
that the only person who should acknowledge that I'm hurt
is me.

I suppose
I had never expected anyone
to take the brunt force
of my feeling.

Only that
secretly
or not so secretly
I want someone to take care of me.

To hold me -
to tell me that they understand -
to tell me that I'm not alone -
and to tell me that they are here for me.

There have been moments
pure solid moments
in my life when I have received this.

The volatility melts away.
I am cleansed in the purity of everything that I feel.

And nothing - not one word,
one breath, a single heart beat
is a lie.

When you said you couldn't trust me,
I felt like you accused me of lying.

I know that this is a filter that is my shame
that created this accusing tone.

Processing this
I understand
how I sorely want to be heard,
seen, felt.

In order to do so,
I cry harder.

I can see how that's difficult for you to accept.

You hide even though you sorely want
to be heard
to be seen
to be felt.

I hide too, but under the guise of a monsoon -
aggravating against the earth to let it know
that I EXIST.

Perhaps this is the mirror that we see in the both of us -
the want to be fully ourselves,
our truthful selves -
except we use different trickery and egos

and that's what makes us "different."

But I whispered in the dark,
"we are both trying."

And you agreed.

But your turning me away

hurts

a lot.

I want to accept this
without
shame.

Black Cat

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Writing for My Life... Reclaiming the Lost Pieces of Me

I was starving to death
before hunger finally saved my life
waking me to desire

- Nancy Levin

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver

tonight I am

self-absorbed
n
1. preoccupation with oneself to the exclusion of others or the outside world
2. (Physics / General Physics) Physics the process in which some of the radiation emitted by a material is absorbed by the material itself

Proving Lies

I want to feel wanted.

I want someone to want me.

Like really want me.









Then all of this radio static in my head can finally become lies.

Something About the Weather

There has been something about the weather.

In the office, they talk about the exhaustion they've been having.
That it was hard to get up in the morning.
Some say under their breaths that they almost called out of work.
Others openly talk about how they were going to skip yoga class.

They all blamed it on the cold.

There have been talks about colds and fevers and illness.
The months of winter came harsh, but late.
WInter came in February.
He had chills and a fever for a day.
She ran, sniffling, nose red, blurry eyes.
Cassie called out a day - feverish and fatigued from the day prior.

We blamed it on these weather patterns.

Yesterday she told me that her period came to her twice this last month.
Even though she's on The Pill.
We both wince at that horrendous occurrence,
and wondered what would cause such an experience.

Last night,
I came back from a date.
My lower back had been acting up.
I think I bruised it.
I sat down on the toilet, warmed from my red wine.
And there I saw it -
spotting.

But...
I'm on the pill.
Twice in one month?

The cold.

This weather.

I don't know what it is.

I feel that eerie post apocalyptic madness that you feel in zombie movies.

Global warming, or San Francisco spontaneity.

I don't know.

There's something about this weather.