categorically. in the making of taking

Self-denial... i practiced it for years. I realize I get set back like anyone, all the time, and it's painful trying to fall up into the goodness of affirmational living, but it's worth the effort once you get there, self-crystallizing and shining again amidst your purpose on this hot spinning earth... I think it's funny over scrambled eggs and patty sausage in a booth at my favorite lucky American diner to be across from a new friend whom I really love, listening attentive as you try to read my cards back to me... but it gets harder when you tell me who I am and what I need.  I have been depressed since the day you met me, as though it were news. I remind you ima fucking depressive, okay, you just cannot take some things off like clothes, but are you so sure it's a crime in the making of taking my life from me with my permission, as samsara goes -- are you really gonna go there? yes you are -- and you know, I got those butterflies in my stomach immediately, like we do, seeing the truth there and deciding to come to terms with my anger around it. Oh! to absorb how someone honestly sees you. Full well knowing it's brilliant for anyone to take a risk and share how they feel, and celebrating this rather than pushing it away like you wanna. Especially a new friend whose got that courage, thank you. I thank you... and I categorically reject your attempts to tell me who I am and what I need. And it's okay that you would wanna tell me, because I do know that you only wanna help anyone and yourself and why not me, sure, of course, and you are more than a decade my senior and quite a professional from what I understand, a state worker, a really nice lady who loves women, not unlike me who loves women and men even if I don't trust most of them, and a high energy consciousness here in this booth electrified with boisterous argument. This is good. This is beat. This is more of what I want in the world, I think. Challenge my ass, sweetheart. This is my impression of you. And you are impulsive and perhaps insensitive with others whom you hope to understand. And that's okay, too, please, be that way with me! Make those mistakes for me to absorb and reflect and correct. It helps me to see the deep rootedness which causes my categorical defiance of anyone and your guesswork on me. I am no stranger to myself today. But I only know it cause I was lost for so long. I had to get lost to find myself and my heart and my spirit and my passion and my obsessiveness. And here it is, again, staring me in the face and demanding I walk it down twenty-first street and pink-colored dogs behind plate glass windows and a belly full of coffee and write it down!  link to my book

DECEMBER 25

Wax pools
on windowsills

roasted chestnut
pine burning
turkey roasting
and dripping
away

coffee and cream
awoken from dream
to dream

sight of snow
or wreath and
bow. and lights
like stars

sound of bells
ringing. nat king cole
singing through the point
of a needle on vinyl
to you

children
laughing and jumping
for joy


smiling christians
at the dawn
of day

the kids take the stairs
three or four at a time
to the tree
and gifts
below

grandparents moved
and moving real
slow

may saint nick
ride his sleigh on

eight or more
magical flying reindeer
deep

to all the homes of all
the bad children
too

to see the no good ones
to forgive them

may saint nick
ride the magic on
to the east

to the islamic children
the buddhist children
the hindu children
the hebrew children

so all
of all faiths
feel loved

big and little children alike
on christmas day

good and the bad
naughty and nice
ones who eat meat
ones who eat rice

ones who never seen
the sparkle of ice

and may we learn a thing
from our imagination
this Xmas

and learn to love
more easily
now

zen hen

Before they found her...

They were looking for a pleaser like me, or like you. Carefully. Like a mental health evaluator, after monthly quota of eligibles has been met and just exceeded. In the fullness of our lives, on the dark end of a half-moon feather cut of a night. On the cornish line. They were looking for the special chosen one. The ten out of ten eggs are good, hen. Initial results were disappointing. That was before they found her.

Now the inspectors flashed their zirconian smiles. Delighted. Soon the cheap rock would be scraped off and replaced. A different tune would play. Thanks to our totally realistic, alert post its inertia, cluck or duck, fix-whats-broken, walk-on-eggshells, notorious to be, substitute teacher, future-minded zen hen... there she is! In the wheat corner, the favorite, the oddsmaker, the two to one super-standard! Our saving grace! There she is. Rearing a thousand chicks...

Future numbers girls? Only time will tell.