Forgo The Ego

If this hollow earth doesn’t swallow me whole, may the pagan Sun burn away all that is near and dear to me.

Ego can be let go. Leggo my ego. I'm in there somewhere. It can often be so hard to see the forest for the “me’s”.

Make me as integral and organic as the photosynthesized water droplet. May my being once again be simple and sustainable.

Let the insanity cease to hold me. The shock is wearing off, although my ears are still ringing.

I wasn’t born a prisoner, I won’t live like one for the rest of my waking days.

May my eyes remain wide, in awe of the nutrients and spirits that collaborate to sustain this body of wonder.

To hear, to touch, to see, to love and to appreciate. To quietly know deep within what does not need confirming from anything without.

You sit beneath this tree and listen, beneath this sky and hear.

You are “home” as much as you’ll ever be; this field is where you belong.

The Long Decline

I am not
but a dot.

My being some cosmic
accident.
A fell wind that blew left
when it should have blown
right.

These days I am given
are no more than a sigh.

I am here
to simply
catch glimpses
in the glances
that stray from
beneath your guarded
eyes.

Night In Boston

Two suns came shining in through the window, one burning as bright as the next.
Two suns to light the way but still the shadows remained.

I need toast cooked in the oven, marmalade spread thin across its half burnt face.
A harmonica will be my salvation, my savior, my kingdom come.

a[poem]priate

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope.

~"where we are" by Gerald Locklin

Two Quotes

We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas”, with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

~Joan Didion “The White Album”

I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven…I admire the authority of being on one’s knees in front of the event.

~Harold Brodkey “Manipulations”

2010

A hand pulls the frayed white curtain back to reveal a sky of grey, black birds three propelling dark forms across the vast sea of early morning uniformity.

Retinas register what the mind already perceives.

It’s winter in Seattle, pensive and heavy.

I wake at 3:00 to a house that is quiet inside and out. My mind brings me dark thoughts on a silver platter. After some minutes of nibbling I commit wholly to a few. The minutes pass as I reflect back on years of personal cowardice.

Seconds and minutes accumulate on the black ribbon of time, the hand falls to the next hour as my wakeful eyes gaze out at an uncertain future.

Exhaustion eventually wins out and I slip from this world into the next.

I feel small in the night and uncertain in the day.