Self-Potrait
Each thing I do
Gets done in me
What I make up
It marks me up
Each choice I make
Is colored paint
My palette is my day
Skillfuly blended
Chosen colors
Artfully painted
Or just mixed up
I make me
Anyway
Category: Poema
The Painted Door
Green nice
Let me see
Oh,
Orange!
Show me
Please
Come in
Through
The color of
Fresh squeezed
Fruit
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This Something
It fills you full of wonderful
Even when it hurts
Sometimes it doesn’t
Then sometimes it works
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Each Story
The long road
To acceptance
The symptoms
On the way
It’s what
A life is
Made of
The stuff
Of every day
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Self Organizing Systems
You watch murmuration of starlings
Turn dusk into a kaleidoscope
Who watches the murmuration of humans
Organize and dance to a word you spoke
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Inner Sweet
Crystalline honey bees
Swarm in me
Buzzing vivid desires
Fierce yellow flies away
In green bright light
To parlay with yellow flowers
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Ask the Invisible You
Animal quicken
Aware of being
The more complex
The more fun to
The invisible you
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Big Change
Tremble in the chill
For a kiss
At a birth or
Overcome with fear
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Hand Crafted Moment
Hands recognize
Eyes forbid
Feelings consent
Crafting your sighs
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That Thing
Is the thing
That thing
That manages
The paths of stars
Every baby being made
The weather currents
Each flower blooming
Ever overworked?
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Life’s Aesthetic
Seeing beauty
Feeling beauty
May be a skill
To any and all
Circumstances
Assign beauty
At will
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Relationship
Exquisite moment
Tender deceit
Open hearted
Trust
Surrender
Not defeat
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Never Boring
Uneven emotions
Crookedly cut
Uneven days
My life has whipped up
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Small Things
Quiet
Treat
Sweet
Retreat
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Way of Life
Every moment tender
Every breath
A bounty
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The Life that is my life
I protest this life
I asked for
In my longing dreams
Life knows more
About my life
Than me
It seems
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Inner Workings
Or what?
The body asks
The soul
What then?
A story
Gets told
We believe it
To go on
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Living Things
Friendly vegetal Life
Gives life
In the language
Of health
Wispers peace
Flavor and beauty
Feeding the
Soul
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Virtual or Reality
Artificial hollow
Life-giving
Mechanical heart
Online roll-play
Gaming
Part death
Part life
Part art
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Playing Here
Did I volunteer
To be this frail
And full of fear
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An Instant
Flickering
Fragile
Warm
Magical
My being
Her
Burning
Candle
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To Realize
Oh
Oh!
Where it’s
Invisible
Grows
My very
Soul
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Breakthrough
If I were me
If I were you
I am both
Who are you?
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Personhood
The value
Of me?
Wait
Let me see
Is it steady
Or based
On
Meritocracy?
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Love to Disagree
Mix it up
Us who
Disagree
To care dilutes
The care
About
Beliefs
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Game Dilemma
Between
A quest
A grind
Or afk
What to gain
This decade?
What enjoy today?
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Feeling Ways
Slow panic
may congeal
Warm trust
Fires up
To become
What’s fluid real
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A Feeling Place
Grinning face
Passionate
Writing
Coffee and Grace
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The Meaning
Together
Feeling good
Feeling better
Together
Than you
Otherwise
Would
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Acceptance
Plop
I forgot
Sometimes
My feelings
Drop
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Cheating Life
Cheat life
Cheat it
Choose
Suck up to death
Point my attention
Outwit
Lose
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Knowlege of Good
Reach up into
A story tree
Pluck and bite
A story
See
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Being Held
Life of my life
Flows unstoppable
I flow gently with it
Relaxing allowing
Sweet new beginnings
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Storyline?
Punishment
Turbulent
“When you are betrayed You go to hell”
A feeling place where
What I accuse can breed
So I may live what I judge
Next life
This way
To then succeed
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Blindfolded or Bored
Surprise
Cooks in hot
Huge Vats of
Unpredictable
Surprise!
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Then What?
Deprive my soul thingy
Of stories to collect
Of desperate choices
Dangerous encounters
Clashing wills
Dark nights
Triumph of wills
Irreplaceable loss
Implacable spirit
Brocken open hearts
Catalysts story arcs
Unexpected twists
*
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Snuggle the Struggle
“I don’t understand hate”
Hate the euphemism for
All the crap
I didn’t get before
My sugary apathy
Hates back
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World of Personcraft
An epitome
Individual curiosity
Lotteried kill sets
Oaths fall-downs
warped twisted intact
Personality chosen
Sides
Level ups death
Playing me
Like you
Into some being
New
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Communion
Feast on dreams and verbs
Round glows festivus
Burn your dreams for firewood
Plucked by minds to smell
A dream to bite and chew
Washed the etherial dirt off
shucked
Peeled
Cut into bite size chunks
Chopped
sauteed
The flesh of juicy dreams
Invite your friends to eat
Harvest more from your fertile souls
Surrender bits
For composting
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Writing on the Beach
Open window trailing words
Blue chemistry falling views
Gleaming explosions gusts of worlds
Wisps of stillness
Enchantment twirls
Life blows in
Inspirations waves
Smashes hurricane
To the page
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Writing Into Dust Devils
“I feel ungrounded. No poems to read. No pictures to ruminate over.” One of my good reader friends complained on May 2 after National Poetry Writing Month NaPoWriMo was over. When I stopped posting.
Hay, NaPoWriMo is over. No more poems for you.
But then, his unease started sinking in and reflecting how I was feeling. I realized. I feel ungrounded too. No picture to create, no poem to wonder into being. My life is off.
Only half of why I write is enough to keep me writing for the rest of my life. To stop writing wondering painting the reasons the wonders is to die. The other half of the reason I write is unrest or energy swirling, mind dust devils curiosity and ravenous hunger to ride to learn to grow to tell stories to inhabit stories.
Postaday on WordPress is still here though NaPoWriMo is over. So even though I can’t get the Postaday badge to stick on here and it seems a little contrived, I need the stucture to write and hope now. A game to ride the beautiful bucking swirling dust devils into ink seahorses to frolic on the page for you. Because I need to.
Weekly Photo Challenge and Weekly Discover Challenge also keep me wondering and going there admiring the world. Admiring the world keeps me close to the wind and tight woven with the magic of gratitude so they enchant this mysterious rodeo.
I hope you have as much fun reading as I do writing. I love the ride. I love you guys.
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It Just Does
He makes you
Belive the sun
It shines for you
All night
The crossroads is
It’s true
It is
Just not here from him
To you
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Place
Dissapointment compost
Dirt after it rains
The smells it grows
Feeds you from pains
Life Cycle
Somehow knows
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Dinnertime
To consume the beauty of the moon
Like cheese of light
On bread of quiet
Every night
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First Drawer
Suitcase
It has an ugly cow on it in yucky orange
But all my stuff fits in it
The bottom is hard
But I can carry it
Big words on it are not my name
Like I thought
But All my shirts and pants fit in
The yucky cow is dumb
But it has handles on it
I want a pretty cow
But the zipper zips
And all my stuff fits
I can carry it
It’s all mine
Zip zip zip
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Green Superstition
42 Diversity Challenges
Best way to “fix” a human with zero regard for humanity?
Expose ’em to others just like ’em.
I would say: “That’ll learn em!” if I wasn’t talking about myself.
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42 Favorite Things
Been away
Delivering
To top secret site
Losing tracers
So they don’t
Crash paradise
Godiva chocolate shake
Fresh roast coffee
Omaha steak
To Dagny Taggert
Henry Rearden
John Galt
They don’t belive
In iPhone
Plumbers
Pizza delivery
Eny of it
They love it
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Mystery 42
If to be physical is to be gaming
An objective, rules, setting, bounderies
Timed
Not to be gaming is to be god
Play
Life
Through the glass darkly
Delicious wondering
Mystery known
Goes lame
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To Be Creepy-Unexpected
urgency flashes
a storm of wonder
tripped angling twirls asunder
drank two into three
gives away four
has five more than just before
of six impossible things
unexpected
un-suspecting me
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Where You Are Your Face – Mind the Gap
Just our faces
It is only what it is
A chance
To lose
To gain in all-encompassing
Game on a disk inserted
Into a system,
Games end
Discarded in a pile
Scrap-booked old board game
Even Multiplayer Online Adventures
Being strengthens and fades
Connection delighted breach unfriended
Wins defeat perfect moments memories
Communion play lost found
Tulips beauty
Not everything
Touched
Not nothing
Facegifts-flowers
***
Weekly Writing Challenge: Mind the Gap
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Being Present and Away
Present Away
Silence invests in me
Doing nothing
Sets Inward free
Is a liberal education
Investing me into it
Or it in me
Invest in me|
I become original
Add to being
Rather than fitting
A brick in a wall
A dollar in a wallet
Liberal educated
For a library fee
When college classes aren’t
Anymore
Making me more me
***
“How do you grow?”
“By investing in yourself.”
Shuronda Robinson of MakingThingsClear.com
From Panel discussion at Woman’s Entrepreneurial Luncheon 2013 Austin Texas
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Stepping In Spell
Realms touch
Powers mingle
Magic born
Of fairies
In people
Impossible charmed
Wind alive
Unimagined desire
Dot a dot
Life on fire
Dream physics
Demand require
Honey-dipped moon
Mother heart
Solid revere
Human art
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Reality. Really?
Security richness joy
Already installed
Reboot
Power switch
Re-create experience
By feeling what is not
Neither is heart
Nor want
Not that
Not art
In this life model app
Desire attracts support
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The Garden
Come to me trolls!
Line up
Line up for kisses
A world needs some more
Lots more handsome princes
Wonder up
Sweet over something
Trip and break one mind
Frolic through answers
Feasting inside
Twist into existence
Leave this window ajar
Re-introduce
Magical spicies into our wild
Daily Post Prompt: Your Inner Dickinson
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Does Life Give You A Choice?
Hardness or Harness -A Poem
My passion she –
She chose her Way
My now
My choice
How to
Not
Or feel
Today
***
Hardness or Harness-A story
My baby might not live she whispers; hollow calm lands on my stunned disbelief.
I’m staring at nothing, holding my breath mind goes blank. It’s about the phone. How did I get a call here?
This is a clinic. I’m at a clinic for my pre-natal. No one is that interested in my baby or my check up. It’s just us now. Who would call here for me or care how my check up went? When I walked out of the exam room, The nurse blankly informs me I have a phone call. Before I can protest, some confusion, she qualifies.
You are Jessica LeBaron right?
I nod.
She leads me to the front desk. Confused shock has me when the receptionist staring at the file cabinet hands me the phone.
I’m bewildered.
I didn’t give anyone this number.
Shock didn’t know which to choose, Eva’s unexpected voice and those words. What do they mean? How did I get any call at a midwives’ office.
Eva knows I would be at a clinic on Ben White. That’s it. She is seeing her doctor today too. We were going to talk about our maternity checkups when we got home. Our random appointments ended up being on the same day. This serendipity delights us. Not as much as finding our we are due within the same two weeks though. We thought of riding together to our appointments, but it hadn’t worked out. Our appointments were at almost the same time like our babies, at opposite ends of town.
We were room mates after I got separated, till she got married. We are best friends. We are having babies together. We are excited. We both laugh a lot-till now.
I lose control of my jaw.
Did you hear what I said: My baby isn’t going to live.
She is quiet till I grasp and gasp.
Oh, Eva! I whisper into the receiver.
My baby is not going to live, she repeats with stunned emotion.
Oh. All I can do is sigh.
I’m calling you first because I know you would understand. Would you come over?
Yes, I’ll be right over. I’ll be right there.
Okay, then.
We hang up.
I turn around and rush back to the midwife.
Please help me! My throat clenches tears in my eyes. My friend. She just found out her baby may not live. What do I do? How do I help her?
I don’t feel like I can do her any good.
They tell me how to just be there, to listen and allow her to grieve. I can help then, I figure.
We were going to meet at my apartment. But I go to hers, now. She is on the couch wrapped up in her arms staring into space. She turns and stares at me. Just stares. We stare at each other. The emotional territory was to expansive and explosive to enter. Everything is numb and blank and hurt.
I’m going to a specialist for another sonogram. The doctor is sure of what he sees, or doesn’t see, but he sent me to a specialist. I can’t believe he knows what he is talking about.
I need to calm down. I need to call mom and dad. I still have to tell Jon. How do I tell Jon? I can’t tell Jon!
Jon is out-of-town for another few weeks on in-between job training for the new one. Eva’s parents live in Arizona. She asked me to come. We go to the second appointment together. It’s scheduled around my classes. It was the quickest appointment she could get. Either way I was going.
Five happy moms smile contented almost cooing rubbing their bellies or reading baby magazines in the comfortable deep cushions of the waiting room. I try to do none of those things. We only glance at each other, hoping not to convey despair to the blessed. We don’t talk or leaf through baby magazines or act blessed however. We fidget till we are called back into the brightly lit sonogram room.
The sonogram technician had a softness about her gentle way. Eva lies on the table. I sit in the chair next to her. After she introduces herself and settles Eva she squeezes warmed gel into Eva’s hand then waits for her to rub it around her belly with hopeful stokes. Eva wanted to apply it herself. She places the ultra sound device on Eva’s belly. We all turn to the screen.
First we hear it. A familiar heartbeat. Everything good and normal so far! Eva sighs, fights back tears, stays calm.
We follow the image watching intently as the tech labels and describes the sonogram in a matter of fact way.
The amniotic fluid is very low. There is almost none.
This is the heart here. It’s located on the right side.
Here are the lungs. They under-developed.
Kidneys should be here. Pause.
All of this could be good or at least okay or remedial, we are hoping. We look at each other with another flashing spark of hope. Get some synthetic amniotic fluid inject it, no problem, or something like that.
So what is the problem then? So everything is really okay?!
Well, kidneys are not visible.
What does that mean?
I assume she will just keep on looking till she finds them.
I am not finding kidneys.
What does that mean?
Kidneys manufacture and filter the amniotic fluid. The amniotic fluid gets breathed into the lungs. It is how lungs develop. There is not enough amniotic fluid to develop the lungs. Kidneys are not producing it. There is only one and it is small.
Can that be fixed? Can one be added or something? I could give one.
Even if we could fix that. This shows that the heart is on the right side instead of the left.
Lungs this small won’t catch up in time to breathe at birth, or ever.
Eva whimpers and hides her face.
This small kidney here. Too small to filter enough blood. No kidney visible here…
Stop stop! Stop it! Please stop telling me wrong things about my baby! Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me anymore. She breaks down sobbing shaking, just contained urgent wailing trapped in her not catching her breath.
Tech leans forward pats her and lets her cry.
I understand how hard this is for you. I am sorry.
When she recovers her voice after a while, the tech asked if we were ready to see what the doctor had to say. She Tech led us to the waiting doctor.
His gentleness let her fall apart, again.
She wept then cried out: Why? Why did this happen?
There is no reason. No cause that we know of.
So this just happened to my baby for no reason? She demands.
I’m sorry there is nothing I can do to make this easier, but yes. It’s sad that someone like you who really wants a baby doesn’t get one when I’ve seen babies survive a whole bottle of Drain-O, just fine.
We look at each other horrified.. How could someone not want a baby?
We know the stories, yet we are incredulous. Unfairness is deep.
When you are ready, we can talk about what you want to do next. Come back as soon as you are ready to consider what course of action you want to take.
This is a great loss for you. You and your husband must have been very excited about the arrival of your first child. Take a day. Come back in a day or two. After you talk to your husband, to discuss what you want to do. Be back within two days, I’ll see you whenever you come. He soft smiled warm reassurance then he got up and left.
Like what? What we can do, didn’t hit us till we got home.
Next appointment is about risks and options.
Should I go full term or terminate and start the healing process?
The child can’t breath. It will never breath. It won’t ever function or live. It will suffocate as soon as it’s born, if it doesn’t die during the stress of birth or even before then. It could die at any time.
You could decide to carry to term. If you decide to go full term you need to be seen every week in case the fetus expires and labor doesn’t start. That could lead to blood poisoning, a risk. Otherwise, you can go into labor at any time. There is no way to predict an outcome.
Then in the middle of bewildered not, letting go while not wanting to hold on, or prolong anguish, and wondering, he drops another bomb:
If you are going to choose to end it, he pauses with a sigh of frustration, you have three days to decide. In three days third trimester, anti-abortion laws come into effect. If you don’t choose to terminate in the next three days, after the three days, we can no longer assist you in termination. You must either go into labor, or your life be in danger for the pregnancy to be terminated.
I have to decide now?
You must decide, if you want to take action, yes, within three days. After that there is nothing we can do. Our hands are tied. The law is clear. No exceptions. No third trimester procedures. Third trimester starts in three days.
We sit on her couch staring into space and crying. Her crying makes me cry. I feel the loss of my son all over, plus her loss. By heart about bursts. It has been five years, but when I found out in the middle of getting divorced that I was pregnant, I considered not going through with it, just to be responsible to myself.
I’m in the middle of school with two kids to keep and figure out how to support without a partner. I’m still not able to describe what is going on, but the idea of losing a baby on accident or on purpose both add up the same in my feelings. The idea of adopting my baby out to someone else is unthinkable. We may have no stable future, but in the world I exist in now, I have no other choice. In about a week I love the baby as I knew I would. It would be stupid for me to put my heart up for adoption, or to end the relationship. Even if it’s not responsible to have a child without support, I surrender to being a single mother and feeling happy with Eva.
Now this.
Her parents arrive. I go back to school grieving indignant, and remembering.
While I volunteered for Campus Crusade for Christ and attended the meetings that rallied Christians and got Bush elected in the early nineties I was into the anti-abortion campaign, especially no third trimester abortions. Now something is happening. It’s not black and white anymore.
I can’t just not be pregnant anymore just like that Eva steady wails! The kids at school…the other teachers..the girls they pat my tummy lined up on the way out of class.
If someone asks me if it’s a boy or a girl when I get back I don’t know what I’ll do. Everyone will ask.
Have you got a name yet Miss?
How are you Miss?
How is that baby?
I couldn’t keep explaining there is no baby, her voice cracks, for another three months…but it will be right here…
For three more months. I couldn’t work this way. I couldn’t explain it either. I will just bust out crying, for the next three months. I couldn’t work this way. I’d just be knowing the baby is not going to live or already dead. I don’t know what to do!
I could stay home and be with the baby. It’s to soon to make this choice. I wish Jon could come back and be here. He can’t take off till the end of the week. We have till tomorrow to decide.
Now, I’m in this government class writing a paper about laws. I have allot to say about how stupid this anti-abortion law is. It’s taking Eva to a whole new level of misery, like insult on injury.
My government teacher read only my outrage essays to the class while I skipped it. I went to the hospital with Eva to celebrate the sacred death and birth of her son. Jon couldn’t get back in time. The law couldn’t wait.
We were into our babies.
If she had not been into her baby there would be noting to cry about.
Abortion is like a break up with the baby when this relationship just isn’t working both ways, before you marry…When I’m just not into you.
A shaman woman I know, went into a sacred meditation to talk to the child when she discovered their relationship. She talked to it and listened. She acknowledged their relationship.
I’m thankful you like me she told him. It was a boy. You chose me to be your mother. So I am. Yet, it’s not a good time for me to be in this relationship. Would you try again later?
She got a “sure”.
Next day she started bleeding and thanked her child for honoring her choice.
Wonderful woman I know made their choices to not be mothers when they were not ready. That choice did not include being an oven to bake a child for nine months then give it to someone else.
The adoption choice works good for some people, which is cool.
Pregnancy in the 26th week. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Me? No way is my body gonna be forced to make a lonely baby whom I’m not attached to. No way would I choose to be sick for months, throw up constantly, gain forty lbs, go through labor delivery blood spouting major surgery that takes weeks to recover from, while everyone is wondering, family asking as I’m to wiped out to take care of myself, with no support just to give some one a baby for free.
Pretty dumb all around, if you ask me.
There is nothing wrong with adopting out. I’m personally not into it-at all.
It’s defiantly not the only valid response to birth-control malfunctions. There are as innumerable appropriate valid responses to unplanned pregnancy. As many as there are woman and situations.
The relationship between mother and child is what it is to me. I am in or I’m not. Just like any other relationship.
I can break up. A possible child need not force me.
Babies don’t force me to become their mother. Nor does a baby need to endure a horrible non-wanted toxic environment. It’s a crappy co-dependent relationship that way.
I choose if I want to invite a spirit into a body with my body, into my life. I choose if I want to help someone else by baking a baby for them. I am a free woman. I have lots of choices! Perhaps unborn spirits have choices we don’t know about.
Wouldn’t put it past them. I bet, babies would choose to be happy and mom be happy, too.
Or maybe babies are the selfish assholes?
Baby (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Share this:
Imperfection-A Poem
Human Perfection
Imperfection’s part of love
Wabi sabi‘s story of
Frayed edges of insane
Being ecstasy and bane
Cracked heart chipped cup
Shattered then not giving up
Hero and villan of our tale
We’re all the same
Be real
cherished
Evolving imperfection
Daly Post
Daily Prompt:
Imperfection:
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Most Prized Possession-My Own Attention
Lost
My Attention
Riot of peace
Currency to pay
My best companion
Fountain of joy
The Observer
Gone away
Kidnapped
Wafted off like smell
Forgotten-what are you?
Wooed away
Trapped
Stuck
Wrapped up by emotions
Squeezed out my mind
Daily Post
Daily Prompt:
Most Prized Possession:
National Poetry Writing Month
NaPoWriMo:
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Transporter
The Road for Transport-A Poem
My Most Precious
Willowy sapling Attention
Blown away
Oft transplanted
Run over
Mowed
Uprooted
You may be
A Presence of redwood ent
More than shade fruit or would
Transport-A story
It wasn’t the crush, or a temptation. Her shape and bright color captivated me. But more than that, and deeper. The choice is already made. Discovered this the first time I lay eyes on my iMac.
What is this?
The sales guy gave me the info to back up my preference. The colors enchanted me and fueled mysterious passion. It was so hard to pick one. The Steve Jobs story of exile and come-back woke my asleep. The sudden reinvigorating of the market and turn of share. When I stood close that wind of change, stands my hair on end. I feel it blow. Right there in Best Buy, in the isle, next to the iMac display it blows.
Should have known by then, that choices click into place without explanation. Logic is not banished. It just lives in the other world. I invite her blindly back, slow, by comparing prices and waiting three days to bring my love home with me.
I wanted blueberry. Strawberry was the only refurbished model at Best Buy. That was back, way back before the Apple Store or the Apple Story. In the days of three-point-something-percent market share Apple. When Apple still allowed Best Buy to carry her precious babies. More than the sum of its parts, love at first sight, experienced not described. Love got me. A love story told me.
To compromise with my wallet, I bought a refurbished strawberry iMac rev C. It was three hundred dollars higher than a way-more-options PC, even so.
After I brought Strawberry ShortMac home, two sample chapters of a Steve Job’s story found me. Couldn’t afford the book. That was all I needed.
I received a blueberry printer cover in the mail after ordering a strawberry one from Epson. My taste for blueberry, satisfied. Having two printer covers is luxury endowed. What else can I upgrade with?
I download anything Mac compatible that did anything I might want, and didn’t have. install, try, it. The thing was a lemon. It had issues. I fixed it or called tech support, or both every week. Finally the tech support dude, asked me what I was doing to my computer. Strider wasn’t always there, but I always asked for him, cuz he led you through a Lord of the Rings quest as Malady till your iMac worked again. The guys back at support finally asked why I installed all those patches when the machine was working fine. They were mystified. I wasn’t satisfied.
The software it came with was all good but, I was swept away with upgrading. I wanted it to do things. To do something I didn’t know what, but it was irresistible, to try to find out. That and surfing the net. My computer is the bomb. I love it. I play Nanosaur and Bugdom. My kid and I bought Bugdom before it came with all rev D iMacs. Then, we upgraded Nanosaur.
Chat rooms I discovered are dangerous. After three days achat, I vow to never return.
I love iMac so much, sometimes I just stare at her.
When I sat and just look, at this pink form, noticing it, pink love and wavy feelings bubble up then spout like pink gold, Texas tea. I noticed this and sometimes just sat on the bed staring at my iMac for the joy of the delicious feelings that came up. She was my first computer. I’d been hurt-bored by the sea of old sandstone hardware. She though, is gleeful to behold.
Sometimes I’d look at other beautiful things. The angles of my rustic pinewood chair, just so in the light were I’d set it to sweep the dining nook. It’s beauty makes everything soft, the world shimmer. Swept air tastes me, time stands still, the feeling delivers me to the glory my iMac feels of. The floor is clean, a vast place to sit and be eternally swept away. So there I sit and let it. My iMac is happy. I’m happy, and there will there be upgrades for her, that really do stuff. The thought feels like a first encounter. Yes!
Again, pointless love at first sight thought. Feeling rushes crashes on me like the surf. New cool upgrades! I wonder what they will be. I sit in that meditation while a love for something that I want, that feels human, maps a place in me that has always been there. Steve Jobs and Apple are making something I can’t live without. When I checked out the newest stuff though, it was not there… There was noting I couldn’t live without. I was pretty happy with my Mac and printer, anyway.
This kept happening.
Meditation gets intense: iMac, Steve Jobs, Apple, making something for me surges up like candy ocean. When I stay there in the feeling intensity billows like clouds of light making it with lightning. They turn into a river of gratitude for this thing I want that Apple is making for me. It about bursts my chest, till I let it strike me, while I focus on Steve Jobs making this, and flow it to him. Then just like that chaos storm turns river. Washed through intense emotions of rushing light serene flowing, a delicious river in an artery of gratitude to the guy, who is making something for me.
Almost every time I meditate it happens. The feeling, this delight about the new something. It tumbles my feelings into explosive gratitude firing up water turbines, shooting a six-foot cable of light at me. I focus it on Steve Jobs and Apple. Like focusing on the feeling of being in love, with delicious electric current flowing fast as light yet still. A pre-emptive strike of ferocious gratitude. I sit with it till the fireworks turn off.
Multi-colored iMacs thrill me. I kept the folded pictures in my school bag. I can look at it when I want. Not because I need a new computer. The picture induces idolatrous transports like porn.
For a months this happened a few times a week. Then less. After a while I could look at my iMac and focus and nothing would happen.
Other things came up and turned into tornadoes and reflected different places. None felt like a heavenly river of light though. And every year even after the years of the experience dwindled, I’d check out what the hell I was expecting and still don’t find anything earthshaking at Apple.
Bought my second iMac. Nothing special Apple is making for me happened. She is my friend. And I figure she chose to come home with me. She and I bond and enjoy each others company. My new mac is my friend, too.
Then, last year, I got an android smart phone. Blasphemy. I wanted an iPhone. This phone fell into my lap just when I needed it bad and had no other way.
A few weeks later, I’m out with my phone in hand walking in a fascinating wood feeling connected to the world in a friendly intimate way by my phone. A whisper from the Earth’s every voice resonates low in me. Wonder strikes my inner, deeper echo place. Not lightning struck, voice of the world deep rock struck.
Oh, so this is it.
Hmmh no wonder!
It makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense!
Ha! This is what all that advance gratitude was about!
Oh, I love my android, and the World it holds in the webbed palm of my hand.
I love my friend, my phone. I smile when I think of Steve Jobs.
I never met, never saw him. Never wrote and mailed, or talked to him.
One day though, my heart broke in an instant as I raked last years leaves in midsummer Texas heat. Grief torrents and whips me like a blizzard without provocation. Sinking to a log on the ground I weep like a child. My parter thinks I’m crazy for suddenly putting down the rake in subdued grief. Sitting, there, I cry bitter tears for half an hour. Something about my iMac and a dear friend has died. I can’t explain it.
Next day I find out.
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Poem
Eye response
Acceptance smile
Image moved
Pleased hunger
Receives again
Delicious Words
Feelings explode
Ideas gleam
Touch me more
To be enjoyed
The greatest gift
Enjoy you-
Communion
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The Social Network-City of Light
A City of Light
Star light rapids
Pillar of day
Water rafters
Sweep hearts clean
Hearts swept away
Ravished blood night
Unimagined communion
Daily Post Daily Prompt: City of Light:
National Poetry Writing Month:
NaPoWriMo: http://wp.me/pf2B5-48H
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Idyllic – Creating New Worlds
One thin slice of Idyllic
Whole when each shares hers
This is impossible
Possible, what I experience
Experience, what I want
***
Response to:
WordPress Daily Post
Daily Prompt:
Idyllic
Try it here:
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/daily-prompt-idyllic/
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Menagerie-Daily Prompt
She pets me
She is my pet
Sometimes we go to sea
I through her
She lives in me
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Abstraction-Weekly Writing Challenge
As I read this, I hear the voice inside my head reading this.
Hello Voice.
As I read, I hear you reading.
When I notice.
Why are you an abstraction?
Oh!
Hello Abstract Me.
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Pup- A Poem
Between fiction, and existence
Components of real from elusive unimaginable
Crafting reality vocation
Shaped with tools
Reshape it
With a wolf
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X
Dumb Ways to Die
A Viral Video
Dumb Reason to Die
A Viral System
Die for
Freedom
Country
Love
– Dying for People
People matter so
The sacrifice matters
Makes a hero
Die for dust in the light
Die for no one’s stuffed toy
Die for nothing
Die for sins
Dumb Reasons to die
Three die
Why?
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My Hobo
My Hobo
I didn’t know that when the curbs started looking cracked again I was falling out of love.
Books got more interesting.
Fault lined streets jutting tectonic plates after a quake, are old and droll again. Plunging in, jutting up, crags of street twirling streaks of tar don’t dance to me like before. Weeds growing out the unruly wild sidewalk seams, depression, not mighty, mini jungles to me.
A few weeks ago they where a sign of life of loves stories, an oasis’ in the desert concrete. When I looked at them I knew: Life, worth it beautiful, no matter what. It all says nothing to me now. A week of street perfection ago, I had smiled a wave walking through these same sidewalk jungle weeds. Imagining my hand waving as I passed felt like an actual friendly salute to this magnificent life. For the sake of possible onlookers, or myself, or for both, my inner life does it, just like I do to human people but on the inside. Waving, and nodding as I passed these green people felt natural.
From the bus window, today, they are all strange, out-of-place, depression sprung up and taking over all the way from East to Downtown.
I vaguely miss something. Like missing a friend. Empty, an echo of a vague longing, about something familiar. Something. What?
The wait for the connecting bus at Sixth and Brazos is stupid. My connection bus goes by two minutes before this bus gets there. A daily near miss. It’s on the schedule that way. This is not well planned. Sometimes I catch the connection if it is a minute or two late, or mine is just that early. A few times the bus driver flashed those special lights to flag it down. A square moving continent stops just for me to get on.
The driver smiles waving me on enthusiastically. Go on!
I skip a smiling gait all the way across the street to the hissing door re-opening for me.
Some people are nice. That stranger in a bus driver uniform saved me that dreaded forty minute wait.
Sometimes though, I just know not to bother the driver’s day any more than it already is. I try for myself to catch it. Sometimes, the hope and the possible, and the being overlooked and passed up, is too much, and too much effort, so I’d just not think about it.
I feel like some of the drivers, like not bothering with my day by trapping that bus. If it it’s there, I’ll go for it, if not, I’ll date my books. That and homework time is the bus stop. I’m slow at assignments. Completing them takes up all my time. Trying to figure out math and how to cram my thinking into small tight structures that when I squash it in one side it pops out the other is brain damaging. I’m back in grade school which I never attended anyway, feeling pretty stupid doing math, structured assignments. I work it till I get it done, mostly. It takes up all my time, at school and at tutoring though. I need this bus stop time to read, and take notes-the easy parts.
The bus stop and Sixth and Brazos, is not inviting. The bench is empty. The trash can next to it is full. This stop is one of the ones that needs a pressure wash really bad. It’s been dirty since I’ve taken these classes.
I always sit on the bench without casting around a disgusted look first. I walk up to it like it’s as safe and clean as my living room couch and plop daintily down getting comfortable, hoisting my back pack to my lap, I pull out the text-book without a second thought to the hobos standing around, right behind me.
I acknowledge them as a group, like a friend entering their parlor when I walk up. After that all homework. I’m an intense student. Usually, I talk to people wherever I am unless it’s finals or I’m lost in thought. Here, though, well, I’m gonna have to spend a lot of time. If I get friendly I won’t be free to choose what I want to do, after that. I’ll always have to say hi, then manners then small talk, not just nod and acknowledge, the way I do every day so far. They are chatty. They were carrying on the first time I walked up. I know, I need this time to study, or for myself, so I just don’t want to get into the swing with anyone. Therefore, not one word.
Summer school is almost over now. I’ve sat on this bench a few times a week this whole semester. The same people are here every day, like I’m here when I can’t catch that elusive non-connection.
People are passing, people come and go from the bus stop. Sometimes an old infirm woman or man will sit next to me. Mostly though, everyone stands away from the dirty smelly place-as far away as possible. Yeah, the place stinks like pee. Or the people do , I don’t know. It always just smells, beer and dirty and body odor.
They are all always over there, so who knows. If I sit on something nasty and smelly, that would be better than treating the people who I’m gonna have my back to, like they stink or are dirty or the bench they sleep on at night has cuties. I got to be able to relax to study. I figure they will have my back if I respect them. No faces about the smell. No scowling at the trash, or checking if the bench is clean enough for my royal butt to sit on. More than anyone, these people, I sense, need their dignity. I guess, I know how they feel.
I look up, at them, then sit down. The bus had been in sight and I ran for it. One of the bums had stepped up and hailed it for me. Drivers seem used to ignoring whatever drama is going on at my lively bus stop. Why would anyone driving a bus or otherwise think twice if a hobo runs after them shouting waving them to stop? He is insane, drunk, high, joking or dangerous, and stinks.
I felt sorry that he had exposed himself to that loss of dignity. He didn’t seem to notice. I looked a thank-you at him. He ignored me. They were always doing random things. Sometimes a hubbub, bantering, sudden laughter. A shriek of dainty mini-tag and arm bumping. Compared to the passers-by, all on their way to somewhere they have to be, their minds there already, their, bodies trying to catch up, these homeless folk with few teeth and ragged clothes held up with dirty rope, these people have a life. They feel alive, more real than the shadows floating by circling at an uncontaminated distance. A man on a phone rushes by but not to fast to watch his back on this side. People cross the street before they come to this corner if this is not their stop. Mostly, across the street phantoms are floating by, somewhere else.
The life is so different on this corner. At first I hadn’t noticed. This was like the corners in small towns and cities in Mexico, where people stop to talk and hang around. Oh, that’s called loitering. Oops. I remember the way I’d pass through the usual loitering men, on my way home from work, in the dim street lights late in the evening. I lift my body to my tallest-regal body language, look straight ahead, fearless, sweeping a gaze that catches everyone who looks for a second. Small nod. Mona Lisa smile. What cat calls?
I missed the life on the street. People just looking, noticing, talking, watching the slow crowds move conscious of each other. I had an unspoken missing of the cat calls, too, though I won’t admit that to, myself.
Don’t guys think I’m pretty anymore? I know, it’s this culture. The stupid disrespectful huddles of cat callers I so hated felt like thugs back then. But goddamn, even dolled-up the casual onlooker usually lets no response escape around here. Everyone just ignores you, or barely acknowledges you. Often they turn away on purpose. No one shows any open admiration even in the smallest glancing. When they do a double take, they re-write it like they didn’t. Sometimes it looked like it was almost just there, but not. Such relief riding the bus feels like now since when you smile, people smile back. They look again just enjoying. Not on the street though.
The hobos, there were about eight men and woman in all, they are aware and engaged with everything, in their little world, noticing the flow of everything around them. We don’t talk. But we are aware of each other and engaged. Cheerful snippets of conversation sometimes uproarious laughter ripples through the smell. Mini arguments, intense complaining, anecdotes. I noticed they tone it down when I show up and take a book out. After a while it made me smile. People. Life on this corner.
I’d show up, nod, looking up, sit down on the side of the bench closest to them, and the trash can, take out a book or a pen and notebook. I enjoy this.
One day when I showed up four police officers were giving orders to my hobos, in their own hobo spot. It’s like the cops are in my neighbor’s house, conducting an illegal search or something. Some hobos were hanging their heads and not responding. One was in a quiet firm stand up with them. He kept that defending more pleading less defying stance in front of the cops when everyone else backed off, sorta behind him. He is standing up to them. They aren’t having it. Like a giant blue python, every time he breathes out his words they wrap tighter. I see the authority winning bit by bit from across the street.
I’m seeing this from where I get off the bus walking over to our community. I see the SS rounding up the scum taking them to concentration camps to clean up the streets. Those asshole officers harassing my people, putting cuffs on the one with spirit. I stop imagining my usual routine stopping at the bench, noticing my peeps. Not making sure the cardboard on the bench isn’t dirty, turning and sitting down on it, nearest to the life on the sidewalk. My mind marches straight up to the badged assholes.
Scenarios test themselves.
Couldn’t find anyone your own size to pick on today, officer?
So, you found a great place for him to live, then? Well, then, why doesn’t he want to go?
What the fuck is going on here? This is a free country isn’t it? Oh, wait. I’m wrong. It’s not a free country.
Absently comments: Wow, look at this. Cops harassing the poorest citizens. Hmmmhh Observes, intense and obtrusive, scribbles notes. Watches, scribbles notes.
Putting my late night loitering danger gear on, I remember: What cat calls?
That’s it.
Poor bastard cops. They don’t know any better. They are no better off than the street guys. So, I don’t hear what they are saying or acting like, anymore.
I walk up. My usual deference to the occupants as I’m entering their space as a guest.
Oh, I see you have other guests as well, today.
Other guests, hello. I stand there among them. A guest at a cocktail party, Mona Lisa-ing to other guests, being present on the inside , observing on the outside. I feel like a hobo, and a cop. I might have run the hobos off, or been run off by the cops, or just been right there.
Then, everyone without further anything, just headed off in different directions. The hobo went away in handcuffs, but it didn’t seem to feel serious to anyone anymore. I had a book that needed reading, in the empty silent space. Didn’t see anything going on, after that. But a feeling of loss lingered. No more hobos for me.
I’m not looking at the words I read.
This phantom street lifeless again, had a dull inevitable thud to it.
When I get off the bus on this lifeless street the next week, I scoured for my bus praying it would be there this time. Be there, so I can just keep on going. It wasn’t. Walking dazed, following my feet with my eyes, following the feet of the person in front of me heading in my direction, I don’t have to look up for myself. Looking down at the street just feels more comfortable right now. The differences, I’ve no interest in seeing what it has now become. Just thinking it will never be the same again or something. It’s changed, it’s not safe anymore. It’s uninhabited. So, I’m going to check if there is any gum on that bench before I sit, way the hell away from that trash can.
Then, I walk into a dream. All of my hobos are here, brighter than ever. I look up at them gazing longer than usual. I smile. They carry on. I don’t look for gum, or green spit wads. I cozy up on the far side of the bench so I can turn and face more in their direction, I’m not letting the cops sneak up on’em again, while I’m here.
Sat for a while wondering, got out a book to stay in character. I usually just space out thinking between bursts of reading, anyway. This time, no reading. Why are these people here anyway?
If I looked the part, someone would be shooing me off this bench, too.
Why them, not me?
Why am I here?
Why are they there?
Why not them here, and me there?
Shock hadn’t worn off. A daze prevailed over my mind. Why are there homeless people at all? Why not just not?
Why are we so stupid that we have homeless people? I imagine a world without homeless, just people.
It gave me the creeps.
No! no! We need homeless people, this overriding protest counteracted the creeps.
What the hell? Not having homeless gives me this horrid creeppies? I’m not understanding my own mind. Not that I usually do, but it’s still uncomfortable and still takes me by surprise every time, weird illogical shit starts saying itself, or more, feeling itself. I remember a feeling in an incomprehensible short story by Ursula K LeGuin, from last semester. It had given me these creeps too.
I’d written an essay on it that I didn’t understand myself, trying to understand why I was saying “Walking Away From Amelius” was just as creepy as staying in Amelius, were they tortured one person so everyone else could have a great life. Both are freaken creepy. For once, in an English class, the story meaning had eluded me. Suddenly, it’s relevant. Why still escapes me.
The homeless situation before me is not okay. There just never being homeless, that is not okay either. Not okay and not okay…So, my mind descended into madness. In this thick breathable liquid homeless are essential. There could be nothing, as we know it, without this position filled. Like baseball without a pitcher. No homeless, no game. And I love this world. Oh, holy crap. They love this world. They love it. Way more than I do. No one forced them to be homeless. It needed to be done. Someone had to do it. No one wanted to, really. So, he volunteered.
Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll go. Send me.
That one who had stood up to the cops. He was right there in my mind’s eye, reasoning with himself.
Okay someone has to clean out the sewers. I guess I could do it, since someone has got to. You guys will have a great sewer system. Enjoy your lives. I got your back.
Hey that is familiar. Oh shit. Okay, he hadn’t died for me. But this is even worse. Way, way worse, he is being a hobo for me. This guy is way more Christ than even Jesus.
No miracles, no followers, no hope, no lucky early heroic death, while knowingly obeying His Father with a purpose, while he is still handsome and has all his teeth.
This guy, hand volunteered for indefinite hopeless scorn without purpose. Just to keep the balance of things unbalanced. He did it so everyone could live. So I could live here, now, and sit on this bench wearing these heels, smiling in my makeup, snug in these fantastic fitting jeans, on my way to school, in just this world. This perfect world. This perfect Hobo world.
Oh my God. Holy shit. Magnificence strikes me. Tears whelmed up on the inside white rushing forcing through an irresistible desire, a need to bound toward him like an ecstatic puppy and bow down at his feet. To kiss his feet would be even better!
Lucky for me, I run scenarios:
I rush forward, overcome with worship, falling at his feet. Smelly dirty shoes not a part of anything I see or feel. The relief is instantaneous. Like a lover’s arms. I just need to be right here in this moment, worshiping my Hobo.
All the time, I’m staring ahead into space, semi seeing him standing there with his fellows, just being. I smile all over thanking Life for sending Him to serve me, and him for doing it willingly without asking anything in return. No guilt needed. Swaying a deep swerve into love with my life, all of it just as it is, a gracious gift from my hobo. My hobo is standing where he always stands. There on the sidewalk, the victim down cast look, defensive, roving eyes, he is shooting the shit in rags with his forlorn friends, the bottles in little brown paper sacks stashed more effectively today.
Then, my Hobo, without a word or a thought or change in his usual, walks to the curb. Without looking back, he steps onto a bus.
Books got more interesting.
Fault lined streets jutting tectonic plates after a quake, are old and droll again. Plunging in, jutting up, craggs of street twirling streaks of tar don’t dance to me like before. Weeds growing out the unruly wild sidewalk seams, depression, not mighty, mini jungles to me.
A few weeks ago they where a sign of life of loves stories, an oasis’ in the desert concrete. When I looked at them I knew: Life, worth it beautiful, no matter what. It all says nothing to me now. A week of street perfection ago, I had smiled a wave walking through these same sidewalk jungle weeds. Imagining my hand waving as I passed felt like an actual friendly salute to this magnificent life. For the sake of possible onlookers, or myself, or for both, my inner life does it, just like I do to human people but on the inside. Waving, and nodding as I passed these green people felt natural.
From the bus window, today, they are all strange, out-of-place, depression sprung up and taking over all the way from East to Downtown.
I vaguely miss something. Like missing a friend. Empty, an echo of a vague longing, about something familiar. Something. What?
The wait for the connecting bus at Sixth and Brazos is stupid. My connection bus goes by two minutes before this bus gets there. A daily near miss. It’s on the schedule that way. This is not well planned. Sometimes I catch the connection if it is a minute or two late, or mine is just that early. A few times the bus driver flashed those special lights to flag it down. A square moving continent stops just for me to get on.
The driver smiles waving me on enthusiastically. Go on!
I skip a smiling gait all the way across the street to the hissing door re-opening for me.
Some people are nice. That stranger in a bus driver uniform saved me that dreaded forty minute wait.
Sometimes though, I just know not to bother the driver’s day any more than it already is. I try for myself to catch it. Sometimes, the hope and the possible, and the being overlooked and passed up, is too much, and to much effort, so I’d just not think about it.
I feel like some of the drivers, like not bothering with my day by trapping that bus. If it it’s there, I’ll go for it, if not, I’ll date my books. That and homework time is the bus stop. I’m slow at assignments. Completing them takes up all my time. Trying to figure out math and how to cram my thinking into small tight structures that when I squash it in one side it pops out the other is brain damaging. I’m back in grade school which I never attended anyway, feeling pretty stupid doing math, structured assignments. I work it till I get it done, mostly. It takes up all my time, at school and at tutoring though. I need this bus stop time to read, and take notes-the easy parts.
The bus stop and Sixth and Brazos, is not inviting. The bench is empty. The trash can next to it is full. This stop is one of the ones that needs a pressure wash really bad. It’s been dirty since I’ve been taking these classes.
I always sit on the bench without casting around a disgusted look first. I walk up to it like it’s as safe and clean as my living room couch and plop daintily down getting comfortable, hoisting my back pack to my lap, I pull out the text-book without a second thought to the hobos standing around, right behind me.
I acknowledge them as a group, like a friend entering their parlor when I walk up. After that all homework. I’m an intense student. Usually, I talk to people wherever I am unless it’s finals or I’m lost in thought. Here, though, well, I’m gonna have to spend a lot of time. If I get friendly I won’t be free to choose what I want to do, after that. I’ll always have to say hi, then manners then small talk, not just nod and acknowledge, the way I do every day so far. They are chatty. They were carrying on the first time I walked up. I know, I need this time to study, or for myself, so I just don’t want to get into the swing with anyone. Therefore, not one word.
Summer school is almost over now. I’ve sat on this bench a few times a week this whole semester. The same people are here every day, like I’m here when I can’t catch that elusive non-connection.
People are passing, people come and go from the bus stop. Sometimes an old infirm woman or man will sit next to me. Mostly though, everyone stands away from the dirty smelly place-as far away as possible. Yeah, the place stinks like pee. Or the people do , I don’t know. It always just smells, beer and dirty and body odor.
They are all always right over there, so who knows. If I sit on something nasty and smelly, that would be better than treating the people who I’m gonna have my back to, like they stink or are dirty or the bench they sleep on at night has cuties. I must be able to relax to study. I figure they will have my back if I respect them. No faces about the smell. No scowling at the trash, or checking if the bench is clean enough for my royal butt to sit on. More than anyone, these people, I sense, need their dignity. I guess, I know how they feel.
I look up, at them, then sit down. The bus had been in sight and I ran for it. One of the bums had stepped up and hailed it for me. Drivers must be used to ignoring whatever drama is going on at my lively bus stop. Why would anyone driving a bus or otherwise think twice if a hobo runs after them shouting waving them to stop? He is insane, drunk, high, joking or dangerous, and stinks.
I felt sorry that he had exposed himself to that loss of dignity. He didn’t seem to notice. I looked a thank-you at him. He ignored me. They were always doing random things. Sometimes a hubbub, bantering, sudden laughter. A shriek of dainty mini-tag and arm bumping. Compared to the passers-by, all on their way to somewhere they have to be, their minds there already, their, bodies trying to catch up, these homeless folk with few teeth and ragged clothes held up with dirty rope, these people have a life. They feel alive, more real than the shadows floating by circling at an uncontaminated distance. A man on a phone rushes by but not to fast to watch his back on this side. People cross the street before they come to this corner if this is not their stop. Mostly, across the street phantoms are floating by, somewhere else.
The life is so different on this corner. At first I hadn’t noticed. This was like the corners in small towns and cities in Mexico, where people stop to talk and hang around. Oh, that’s called loitering. Oops. I remember the way I’d pass through the usual loitering men, on my way home from work, in the dim street lights late in the evening. I lift my body to my tallest-regal body language, look straight ahead, fearless, sweeping a gaze that catches everyone who looks for a second. Small nod. Mona Lisa smile. What cat calls?
I missed the life on the street. People just looking, noticing, talking, watching the slow crowds move conscious of each other. I had an unspoken missing of the cat calls, too, though I won’t admit that to, myself.
Don’t guys think I’m pretty anymore? I know, it’s this culture. The stupid disrespectful huddles of cat callers I so hated felt like thugs back then. But goddamn, even dolled-up the casual onlooker usually lets no response escape around here. Everyone just ignores you, or barely acknowledges you. Often they turn away on purpose. No one shows any open admiration even in the smallest glancing. When they do a double take, they re-write it like they didn’t. Sometimes it looked like it was almost just there, but not. Such relief riding the bus feels like now since when you smile, people smile back. They look again just enjoying. Not on the street though.
The hobos, there were about eight men and woman in all, they are aware and engaged with everything, in their little world, noticing the flow of everything around them. We don’t talk. But we are aware of each other and engaged. Cheerful snippets of conversation sometimes uproarious laughter ripples through the smell. Mini arguments, intense complaining, anecdotes. I noticed they tone it down when I show up and take a book out. After a while it made me smile. People. Life on this corner.
I’d show up, nod, looking up, sit down on the side of the bench closest to them, and the trash can, take out a book or a pen and notebook. I enjoy this.
One day when I showed up four police officers were giving orders to my hobos, in their own hobo spot. It’s like the cops are in my neighbor’s house, conducting an illegal search or something. Some hobos were hanging their heads and not responding. One was in a quiet firm stand up with them. He kept that defending more pleading less defying stance in front of the cops when everyone else backed off, sorta behind him. He is standing up to them. They aren’t having it. Like a giant blue python, every time he breathes out his words they wrap tighter. I see the authority winning bit by bit from across the street.
I’m seeing this from where I get off the bus walking over to our community. I see the SS rounding up the scum taking them to concentration camps to clean up the streets. Those asshole officers harassing my people, putting cuffs on the one with spirit. I stop imagining my usual routine stopping at the bench, noticing my peeps. Not making sure the cardboard on the bench isn’t dirty, turning and sitting down on it, nearest to the life on the sidewalk. My mind marches straight up to the badged assholes.
Scenarios test themselves.
Couldn’t find anyone your own size to pick on today, officer?
So, you found a great place for him to live, then? Well, then, why doesn’t he want to go?
What the fuck is going on here? This is a free country isn’t it? Oh, wait. I’m wrong. It’s not a free country.
Absently comments: Wow, look at this. Cops harassing the poorest citizens. Hmmmhh Observes, intense and obtrusive, scribbles notes. Watches, scribbles notes.
Putting my late night loitering danger gear on, I remember: What cat calls?
That’s it.
Poor bastard cops. They don’t know any better. They are no better off than the street guys. So, I don’t hear what they are saying or acting like, anymore.
I walk up. My usual deference to the occupants as I’m entering their space as a guest.
Oh, I see you have other guests as well, today.
Other guests, hello. I stand there among them. A guest at a cocktail party, Mona Lisa-ing to other guests, being present on the inside , observing on the outside. I feel like a hobo, and a cop. I might have run the hobos off, or been run off by the cops, or just been right there.
Then, everyone without further anything, just headed off in different directions. The hobo went away in handcuffs, but it didn’t seem to feel serious to anyone anymore. I had a book that needed reading, in the empty silent space. Didn’t see anything going on, after that. But a feeling of loss lingered. No more hobos for me.
I’m not looking at the words I read.
This phantom street lifeless again, had a dull inevitable thud to it.
When I get off the bus on this lifeless street the next week, I scoured for my bus praying it would be there this time. Be there, so I can just keep on going. It wasn’t. Walking dazed, following my feet with my eyes, following the feet of the person in front of me heading in my direction, I don’t have to look up for myself. Looking down at the street just feels more comfortable right now. The differences, I’ve no interest in seeing what it has now become. Just thinking it will never be the same again or something. It’s changed, it’s not safe anymore. It’s uninhabited. So, I’m going to check if there is any gum on that bench before I sit, way the hell away from that trash can.
Then, I walk into a dream. All of my hobos are here, brighter than ever. I look up at them gazing longer than usual. I smile. They carry on. I don’t look for gum, or green spit wads. I cozy up on the far side of the bench so I can turn and face more in their direction, I’m not letting the cops sneak up on’em again, while I’m here.
Sat for a while wondering, got out a book to stay in character. I usually just space out thinking between bursts of reading, anyway. This time, no reading. Why are these people here anyway?
If I looked the part, someone would be shooing me off this bench, too.
Why them, not me?
Why am I here?
Why are they there?
Why not them here, and me there?
Shock hadn’t worn off. A daze prevailed over my mind. Why are there homeless people at all? Why not just not?
Why are we so stupid that we have homeless people? I imagine a world without homeless, just people.
It gave me the creeps.
No! no! We need homeless people, this overriding protest counteracted the creeps.
What the hell? Not having homeless gives me this horrid creeppies? I’m not understanding my own mind. Not that I usually do, but it’s still uncomfortable and still takes me by surprise every time, weird illogical shit starts saying itself, or more, feeling itself. I remember a feeling in an incomprehensible short story by Ursula K LeGuin, from last semester. It had given me these creeps too.
I’d written an essay on it that I didn’t understand myself, trying to understand why I was saying “Walking Away From Amelius” was just as creepy as staying in Amelius, were they tortured one person so everyone else could have a great life. Both are freaken creepy. For once, in an English class, the story meaning had eluded me. Suddenly, it’s relevant. Why still escapes me.
The homeless situation before me is not okay. There just never being homeless, that is not okay either. Not okay and not okay…So, my mind descended into madness. In this thick breathable liquid homeless are essential. There could be nothing, as we know it, without this position filled. Like baseball without a pitcher. No homeless, no game. And I love this world. Oh, holy crap. They love this world. They love it. Way more than I do. No one forced them to be homeless. It needed to be done. Someone had to do it. No one wanted to, really. So, he volunteered.
Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll go. Send me.
That one who had stood up to the cops. He was right there in my mind’s eye, reasoning with himself.
Okay someone has to clean out the sewers. I guess I could do it, since someone has got to. You guys will have a great sewer system. Enjoy your lives. I got your back.
Hey that is familiar. Oh shit. Okay, he hadn’t died for me. But this is even worse. Way, way worse, he is being a hobo for me. This guy is way more Christ than even Jesus.
No miracles, no followers, no hope, no lucky early heroic death, while knowingly obeying His Father with a purpose, while he is still handsome and has all his teeth.
This guy, hand volunteered for indefinite hopeless scorn without purpose. Just to keep the balance of things unbalanced. He did it so everyone could live. So I could live here, now, and sit on this bench wearing these heels, smiling in my makeup, snug in these fantastic fitting jeans, on my way to school, in just this world. This perfect world. This perfect Hobo world.
Oh my God. Holy shit. Magnificence strikes me. Tears whelmed up on the inside white rushing forcing through an irresistible desire, a need to bound toward him like an ecstatic puppy and bow down at his feet. To kiss his feet would be even better!
Lucky for me, I run scenarios:
I rush forward, overcome with worship, falling at his feet. Smelly dirty shoes not a part of anything I see or feel. The relief is instantaneous. Like a lover’s arms. I just need to be right here in this moment, worshiping my Hobo.
All the time, I’m staring ahead into space, semi seeing him standing there with his fellows, just being. I smile all over thanking Life for sending Him to serve me, and him for doing it willingly without asking anything in return. No guilt needed. Swaying a deep swerve into love with my life, all of it just as it is, a gracious gift from my hobo. My hobo is standing where he always stands. There on the sidewalk, the victim down cast look, defensive, roving eyes, he is shooting the shit in rags with his forlorn friends, the bottles in little brown paper sacks stashed more effectively today.
Then, my Hobo, without a word or a thought or change in his usual, walks to the curb. Without looking back, he steps onto a bus.
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Killer Looks
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Kill
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To free
The Christ beneath
Another way
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That doesn’t work
I think
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Quest Guide
The Christ is inside me
Why look around-
Were then, would
The Anti-Christ be?
Who returns first,
Again?
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waywardspirit 