Practice Joy!
I’m in over my head, she said, slumping down in her chair, stern
faced, tired, heavy, lonely, lost All this too familiar,
tired of being tired
Wake up! Life is joyful.... and sad.....and full of life
Be free
Yawn and sing at the same time
Howl in your living room and sing in the street
Look at your life and all that you have- find peace
in what you have rather than despair in what you don’t
Change your mind
Go sit atop a mountain with a little boy whom you love and be with him there
Admire the sky, your neighbors’ kindness, the marigold in the garden, the fresh leaves of purple green kale, the lilac bush you and your mother planted together, the shelves you and your father made together, all this space!
....all your freedom to decide your path...
Free as the wind
Remember your magic, and the way the stuffed animals come alive at night when you’re not awake, the life in everything!
Two beautiful little girls that yell your name and HI! from across the street
Be kind, love, to yourself
Enjoy your body
Move
Take a chance
Notice.... the end of the world already happened.....
Be free to practice joy
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
the visitors, written June 20th, 2011
Hey there folks, I'm trying my hand at fiction, having been inspired by a bunch of books I found that I'd written as a kid. I wasn't a bad writer back then, and pretty imaginative. I'm taking clues from young Chelsea, the writer, that's all I'm saying.
A quote that I was thinking of before I wrote this short story start:
Here's the beginning of a story:
13 past 1300 hours 13 years to the date after what folks around here now refer to as “the incident.” Each year at this time I always request the day off work, in order to go back to the site where it happened those years ago and I really look forward to it, whether that makes sense to anybody else or not. Call me nostalgic, but I just can’t seem to get it out of my head- the luminescent beams of a tidal wave, is one way of desciribing it. Most people think I’ve got a few screws loose, so I don’t do too much socializin round here. I don’t really mind, I’ve always got my memory of that fateful day, and I guess it’s what keeps me going. I don’t really know how to tell you this, but I’m the living breathing example of what you might call a saint. I’m not trying to toot my own horn or anything, facts are facts. After that day 13 years ago, in any case, I would never be the same. None of us here in podunk-USA would be. But the others, the others are different- they want to pretend like it never happened. They’d prefer it hadn’t that’s for sure. Sometimes it makes me sad to think about that. I wish somebody else could remember the way I remember, it does get lonely for an ‘ol feller out here sometimes. Like I said, I try not to mind too much because what good would it do? Folks I guess have to believe in something, and so what if I believe that I became a saint with the blessings of our visitors, who am I to say that they are wrong to believe that it wasn’t just a big old storm, the likes of which this town had never seen, nor would ever see again. I’m just saying that it’s funny how people can fix theirselves on a lie, and base their entire lives on it, build the whole dang things out of this thing, that’s really nothing. I don’t really know. I’m just Justice the Saint, but everybody round here just calls me Just.
Sometimes I wish I’d never seen the lights that night, that I hadn’t felt that stirring in my chest, that pushing, that urge, to go out to the field. I coulda just stayed in my bed, and read some comic books, and pushed it out of my mind, but I was just the most curious kid back then. Always my nose into something, that’s right, like a cat. My mom and dad back then were always giving me some spankings to beat the fire out of the devil back then, cause I was always in trouble. Whether it was falling headfirst into the mud pit the rain had caused in my sunday school clothes cause I wanted to was after one of those purply black frogs, i forget the scientific name of them now, or it was stealing looks at old Ariana, the neighbor girl through her bedroom window at night. So, that’s how it goes I guess. Funny the visitors should choose me, now that I think about it. I wasn’t exactly the greatest kid ever.
A quote that I was thinking of before I wrote this short story start:
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”- Henry David Thoreau
Here's the beginning of a story:
13 past 1300 hours 13 years to the date after what folks around here now refer to as “the incident.” Each year at this time I always request the day off work, in order to go back to the site where it happened those years ago and I really look forward to it, whether that makes sense to anybody else or not. Call me nostalgic, but I just can’t seem to get it out of my head- the luminescent beams of a tidal wave, is one way of desciribing it. Most people think I’ve got a few screws loose, so I don’t do too much socializin round here. I don’t really mind, I’ve always got my memory of that fateful day, and I guess it’s what keeps me going. I don’t really know how to tell you this, but I’m the living breathing example of what you might call a saint. I’m not trying to toot my own horn or anything, facts are facts. After that day 13 years ago, in any case, I would never be the same. None of us here in podunk-USA would be. But the others, the others are different- they want to pretend like it never happened. They’d prefer it hadn’t that’s for sure. Sometimes it makes me sad to think about that. I wish somebody else could remember the way I remember, it does get lonely for an ‘ol feller out here sometimes. Like I said, I try not to mind too much because what good would it do? Folks I guess have to believe in something, and so what if I believe that I became a saint with the blessings of our visitors, who am I to say that they are wrong to believe that it wasn’t just a big old storm, the likes of which this town had never seen, nor would ever see again. I’m just saying that it’s funny how people can fix theirselves on a lie, and base their entire lives on it, build the whole dang things out of this thing, that’s really nothing. I don’t really know. I’m just Justice the Saint, but everybody round here just calls me Just.
Sometimes I wish I’d never seen the lights that night, that I hadn’t felt that stirring in my chest, that pushing, that urge, to go out to the field. I coulda just stayed in my bed, and read some comic books, and pushed it out of my mind, but I was just the most curious kid back then. Always my nose into something, that’s right, like a cat. My mom and dad back then were always giving me some spankings to beat the fire out of the devil back then, cause I was always in trouble. Whether it was falling headfirst into the mud pit the rain had caused in my sunday school clothes cause I wanted to was after one of those purply black frogs, i forget the scientific name of them now, or it was stealing looks at old Ariana, the neighbor girl through her bedroom window at night. So, that’s how it goes I guess. Funny the visitors should choose me, now that I think about it. I wasn’t exactly the greatest kid ever.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
"San Francisco almost," written in 2005
San Francisco almost
I lived through the autumn maze
even as the river threatened utter inner peace
I stepped back into my body
to remind this mind about how stupidly human I am-
the feeling in my belly did not
correlate with the swirling river waters
with leaves constantly comingling
stirring soup of green and brown algaes
rotted river bodies and old boat parts
It’s not the swirling that I feel
so much as the plunking of that
fish that just thunked down deeper
that reminds me of my interior
and the things that go thud into the
old large intestine
Beautiful green blue day
army greened water-
no sense of war here though
war is on the other side of this
lonely reason and I suppose that the
soupy green sea hides
its dark side too-
churning inside after an intrusion
the fish plunges in and starts to fight
over a morsel- Frolicking and feeding isn’t the
only fish plan-
so is fighting and
fiending and hoarding and needing
to the point of disaster when all turns
to chaos- down there underneath
Below surface of each thing lies another
Multi-dimensional, peal away one
surface below there is another surfaced
layer-
Asi esta construido el mundo
lo exterior mezcla con lo interior
constantemente estamos intercambiando
me toca el rio aunque no lo toco.
I lived through the autumn maze
even as the river threatened utter inner peace
I stepped back into my body
to remind this mind about how stupidly human I am-
the feeling in my belly did not
correlate with the swirling river waters
with leaves constantly comingling
stirring soup of green and brown algaes
rotted river bodies and old boat parts
It’s not the swirling that I feel
so much as the plunking of that
fish that just thunked down deeper
that reminds me of my interior
and the things that go thud into the
old large intestine
Beautiful green blue day
army greened water-
no sense of war here though
war is on the other side of this
lonely reason and I suppose that the
soupy green sea hides
its dark side too-
churning inside after an intrusion
the fish plunges in and starts to fight
over a morsel- Frolicking and feeding isn’t the
only fish plan-
so is fighting and
fiending and hoarding and needing
to the point of disaster when all turns
to chaos- down there underneath
Below surface of each thing lies another
Multi-dimensional, peal away one
surface below there is another surfaced
layer-
Asi esta construido el mundo
lo exterior mezcla con lo interior
constantemente estamos intercambiando
me toca el rio aunque no lo toco.
Monday, June 13, 2011
"Beetle" written Oct. 25th, 2004
The weary ones walk backward
into themselves
Not evil, in itself but when combined
with a mind
d.e.a.d set on bringing down the whole
fucking
circus
When it’s just a little too
When you’ve taken one look too many the eyes
the eyes can almost
see
All of fortune
All your antiquity has assumed
perched itself at the window of your castle, your tower
of isolation........ .......... and fear
And histories come, too, to prove that nothing
shifts but
nothing but
maybe the weather.
Circles going
everything comes round again.
Mostly, it depends on which side you spoon your soup from
how the pickup
sticks
will
tumble and
cross
each------other
I only wish I were so brave as you
You, beetle you, escarabajo
into themselves
Not evil, in itself but when combined
with a mind
d.e.a.d set on bringing down the whole
fucking
circus
When it’s just a little too
When you’ve taken one look too many the eyes
the eyes can almost
see
All of fortune
All your antiquity has assumed
perched itself at the window of your castle, your tower
of isolation........ .......... and fear
And histories come, too, to prove that nothing
shifts but
nothing but
maybe the weather.
Circles going
everything comes round again.
Mostly, it depends on which side you spoon your soup from
how the pickup
sticks
will
tumble and
cross
each------other
I only wish I were so brave as you
You, beetle you, escarabajo
I love haiku
1
Breads dance, and cakes
from the bakery cry out
take me, eat me, please
2
Am I a writer?
Writing everyday helps
Get strong though practice
3
Earthly Angry Barks
Make my heart sigh in despair
All beings need love
Breads dance, and cakes
from the bakery cry out
take me, eat me, please
2
Am I a writer?
Writing everyday helps
Get strong though practice
3
Earthly Angry Barks
Make my heart sigh in despair
All beings need love
writing exercise using the words Purpose, Space, Surface and Enlarge
I love this writing exercise, where you randomly choose four or five words from a book, and then write a poem including them! Fun, give it a try some time.
troubled surface
feathers from the cock's tail in her hair
Rustling of purpose softly through the copper
bell and the diamond cottonwood
leaves shading her place here, Wind
enlarges space,
moves the mass about, changes
energies, incorporates and disperses
begs flexibility and speaks
permutation, she
reckons the fence pickets
crave a nail or two
troubled surface
feathers from the cock's tail in her hair
Rustling of purpose softly through the copper
bell and the diamond cottonwood
leaves shading her place here, Wind
enlarges space,
moves the mass about, changes
energies, incorporates and disperses
begs flexibility and speaks
permutation, she
reckons the fence pickets
crave a nail or two
a little rhyme inspired by a dream
Counselor Bippidy, that's what she told me to call her. I'd tried Jolene and Markie, but she demanded Counselor Bippidy. What am I supposed to say to that? There's very little else I remember about that dream except for Counselor Bippidy and her being very clear that that was what to call her.
Who is Counselor Bippidy, then?
Counselor Bippidy, forever in our hearts
She always carried a ladder around, always cleaning ceiling parts
One day, though, she flew and found that laughter
was the clue.
Surprising to me, but Ms. Bippidy,
Sorry, Counselor Bippidy,
Had never seen Mary Poppins
If she had, she wouldn't have needed to carry that ladder
which sure did make her back madder.
now I'm off to try what Bippidy knew
and Poppins, too
With laughter all ceilings are moot.
Who is Counselor Bippidy, then?
Counselor Bippidy, forever in our hearts
She always carried a ladder around, always cleaning ceiling parts
One day, though, she flew and found that laughter
was the clue.
Surprising to me, but Ms. Bippidy,
Sorry, Counselor Bippidy,
Had never seen Mary Poppins
If she had, she wouldn't have needed to carry that ladder
which sure did make her back madder.
now I'm off to try what Bippidy knew
and Poppins, too
With laughter all ceilings are moot.
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