15 Minutes of Fame

A moment opens to eternity

Fastidious & attached to passing moments
I live in Warhol days
An open heart mends wounds
Are you for or against them?
What’s your political game?
Everyone's got his15-minutes of fame
Are you on their side or mine?
Is it them or is it us
Is there an us anymore
Who is us anymore anyway
Anywhere I’m supposed to know?
Did you know …
My headache keeps me awake to cover the worldwide news
An open wound
Nightly sound of the evening news
A bleeding ulcer seeking to be healed
Closer to home news too,
All news is bad news
Except the rescued puppy thrown in to control you
A news-forecast makes everything worse –
Ignore the news a week or two
Say your regards to Pluto
Ignore my bleak forecast of doom
All of us are doomed
As we all are doomed anyway
The more you do - the more gets done
When you stop doing there’s no more to get done
Another open wound
Always the dream remains of
Another go-round
Take care
Hope …
To see you there
If & when there is another go-round

GLIMMERS OF RAIN

A rainy evening, darkness dropping
like a black and heavy velvet curtain
on a theatre stage. Scents of mildew
fill the air. Seated safely behind
a glass pane window sipping coffee

Evening settling, rain changing
from a thick wet sheet
to a soft and fragrant mist
Green, lush rolling hills
wet and soft, magical

Bright and dark all at once
Leaves soaked and matted, rotting on
the red earthen floor, dead limbs mixed
with living. A mirror image of reality
Woods, wet and musty with life

From still reflected sun shining
through the incandescent veneer of rain
Diamonds glimmering
making brown earth red
and dead leaves gold

Dead and living, combined reflections of reality
Compare life to sitting watching woods
its smell so sweet, unsurpassed
Followed by a taste of bitter
Having both to share

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

I need to be needed. The more you need me the more I need you. It’s how we got to be from the start.
Let me help you she said, it’s so hard on you. I can relieve you from your pain. I need you to need me.
Why I can’t say.
I can’t help being me.
Is it because on some deeper lever you are the more attentive father I longed for and for you I represent the good mom you desire with parts of the bad & crazy mom you had. This time Mom meets your needs.
It’s not so simply absurd as that our subconscious feeds layer upon layer worse than the onion that makes your eyes smart.
Your need for me makes me see, makes me need you more the more you need me. Your need fills up my space my energy. Your need feeds my need.
You explain it to me then, I know you know as much as I know.
Your need for me provides solace and grace in a place I never saw before with glimpses of insanity mixed with lust say trust me I want to hear
Your need for me provides a human express train ride to & from sanity & hell I can be manipulated to grow, I need you to watch with me while flowers grow
I need you to affirm my sanity
I need you because stars set and rise above your head
Not like a god but because you need me I need you
It’s not a space or a place it’s a space inside myself where
If I only let myself when you need me loneliness abates

Go ahead – now say it!
Put that confessional shit to rest and get on with the list of to do’s
so many things to do I can’t rest
gotta keep doing till the doing gets done

I wont shan’t cant let you get away that fast – true there’s hospitals or a prison forms within me when you’re there I’m there when you need me

I’ll rest a minute then save the rest of the world, maybe the universe – I’m a hero

A child’s glory restored in the wilderness ahead about reminiscence never had

mind body medicine

Two years ago this coming January, I participated in a conference for mind body medicine training in New Orleans to help with the healing & rebuilding of New Orleans. All monies earned from the conference went to help with rebuilding. The leader of our group of 10 women called me "co-facilitator" because of my skills in helping the group progress. This poem was the result of my urging and was one of the rituals we used in ending our group besides a very big party where all the groups came together to celebrate the night before we left.

OUR POEM

I am a woman of heart, of mind
A woman with desire
Unafraid of secrets

I am a woman of inner wisdom and knowing
I see the light in pain

I am a woman full of love
A woman of color and vitality

I am a woman who will be this woman
As long as I am a woman

I am a woman who does
not let fear hold me back

I am a woman brimming with possibility
Greater than I know

I am a woman of wholeness and joy

I am a woman to be honored

I am you

I am the earth, the moon, the stars
Gaia, Stella and Luna

By Toni, Joy, Tracee, Amy, Shawna,
Denise, Marin, Susan, Carolyn, Rita & Sandra

Changes

A year ago I wouldn't have believed it if someone told me what I'd be doing now. Time keeps passing whether you stay where you are or keep moving. I had a general 5 year plan that I'd been faithfully following and for some part that stayed in place. The part that stayed in place included keeping up my retirement annuity and leaving my job. I didn't plan on the following things:
loving DubbleX & finding out he's crazy & staying with him
leaving my husband in spite of loving him
plus having other reasons to leave my husband & preferring not to be with him
adopting out Mocha, a rescued Siamese I'd had 5 years
Keeping 2 of Starr's babies
Losing 40 pounds without trying to & joining a gym
Spending $40,000 of my retirement money on various things and spending more money to pay off old debts
Living on my pension
Losing half of our combined savings from our marriage because of the economy & being more poor than I've been in years
being this active on facebook
keeping up blogs for 2

Wow!


P.S. Dubble-wow reading this again a year later and I'm glad to seem time and myself moving on - still trying to be and do the best that I can!!!!

A MARRIAGE OF SORTS

He lives with his x wife and he hasn’t got a life
He’s lonely, he’s hurt, on the edge of despair
waiting for love on the brink of nowhere
his x wife sleeps in the room next to his
she’s a survivor, a mother, his x lover, his cover

They lived apart for over ten years
Symbiosis renewed through dependency and fear
He’s scared she’ll die from the
breast cancer she survived
So he suffers her abuse, pays all the bills,

And claims he’s very fond of her
She eats his guilt like a gourmet queen
And she don’t think she’s being mean
He’s promised he’ll never leave her
between a stone and a hard rock

They are their parents reborn,
drowning in self defeating,
narcissistic attitudes
Their daughter left home a long time ago
gave up waiting for the promised abode

when mom moved in to dad’s home
claiming she wasn’t staying too long
It’s a marriage of sorts, you would agree
In spite of their self imposed celibacy
existing in the wastelands of mediocrity

Nourished by chronic dissatisfaction and
occasional knock down, drag out fights
where they they put each other down
But he still craves companionship,
a friend to share things with

Someone to reciprocate
Poor man’s worried it’s just too late
He tells me he’s lonely, he’s blue
he doesn’t know what he should do
He’s the man without a life who lives

With the woman who’s now his x wife
And his life collects nothing but strife
Disaster breathes down his neck
like spastic storm creating wreck
He’s imprisoned by guilt tying him
to obligations of household drudgery

Imprisoned by fear about being alone
he wants someone to hold, to put his arms around
Someone to see a movie and eat dinner with ...
And that’s not all, ... he told me to ask you
Are there any takers here for my friend
the man who hasn’t got a life?
Or better yet, just take his x-wife!

ALIEN PLANET OF LESBIAN LOVERS

SHE lived under the delusion that SHE was the Queened Princess of an Alien Planet of Lesbian Lovers. All the rules SHE lived by and all her behavioral responses provided evidence of this. Much of my life centered on helping her live out this fantasy, painful as it was to me. Besides, my Catholic guilt forced me to accept the proposition that sacrifice nourishes and purifies our soul.

Still, I was not so locked into my servitude that all other devotions were excluded. I met Sue May as I was attempting to crawl from the claws of the newly crowned Queen from the Planet of Lesbian Lovers. But I kept losing energy in my battle to escape. When I came upon a new route, the Queen would crack her whip, blocking me. I could not break through.

I was lost in the spheres locked between fear, time, and oblivion when I met Sue May on the F train. I was carrying my sports jacket, an attaché case and a shopping bag while balancing a coke in one hand and my shades in the other. I sat down next to Sue May, also known as, The Speaker From The House of Discreet Charm, and proceeded to reorganize myself. My jacket slipped from my hands and I gripped it tightly to prevent its fall. As I grabbed it to crush it closer, I heard a highly toned, cultured voice, "exx, exxcuse me."

I turned and looked her in the eye, "God," I exclaimed, catching sight of my hand clutching her knee in my peripheral vision. "Sorry, I thought that was my jacket." SHE smiled the way Speakers from that House do, completely disarming me, compelling me to do her will. So I offered her an early dinner, as SHE was wont to do.

Sue Mai thought SHE was Speaker of the House of Representatives from a small mid-western state where manners meant everything. The Speakers from this house pretended to live in a time when discreet words and charm, and all behavioral nuances were aimed at serving the vast quantities of man's needs.

YES! But behind that sweetly beckoning smiling face, and in perfect rhythm, was the firm grasp of her delicate hand. It was hard to see that Sue Mai possessed the same determined sharp focus of energy as the Queened Princess. And I realize now, that both were bent on making the world, and especially me, think of nothing else, but meeting their needs. At the time I never realized this. I don't mean that the thought never entered my mind that I was allowing them to control me.

But of course now in retrospect, I realize that I have realized this many times. But then, I was just so much Under the Influence. I have always lived Under the Influence. It's that way because I have always loved women, holding them in the highest regard. And I kept searching for the one for me. Not just the one for me, you understand, but the one who would save me from the Queened Princess and serve my needs.

Now I had the Newly Crowned, Queen Princess from the Alien Planet of Lesbian lovers in conflict with Sweet Sue May, Speaker from the House on Discreet Charms befitting maidens from places like Kentucky and Tennessee. Sad to say, they couldn't get along at all. There was just too much conflict of interest. Both were invested in controlling my subconscious.

For the Lesbian Queen, I preformed sacrifice upon sacrifice, submitting to her will, making her wish my command. I lived under her delusion that this would provide peace to her Alien Planet of Lesbian Lovers and to me.

Meanwhile my sweet and tame Sue May exerted her control by doling out her loving commands, their sole purpose to provide her pleasure. I devotedly applied myself to make her every wish my command.

All for naught. Between the two, there was no respite. The Queen and The Speaker hated each other. But the truth was, that didn't matter. What did matter was, that ultimately, between the two, I was left with no energy to serve myself.

so much to do

I've been thinking, there's tons of writing on my computer, some for years that I've never shared. I'd like to post some of that stuff too and will begin tonight with one piece.

MORE ON JESUS ND BEING JEWISH

Am I proud to be jewish -
I am and I’m not,
I don’t know I guess

I’m proud of being jewish
because being jewish means
to be educated & literary
in certain circles,
you know what I mean
I know they had tough jews
my father sat on the cusp of that realm
on the outskirts of the jewish mafia

nd ... I suppose...I’m as liberated -
nd as free as one would want to be
or can imagine to be in this society
or any other, again, I suppose
But you asked me
Am I proud to be a jew

I am but when people make disparaging remarks
such as jews are cheap
or you killed jesus
jesus please forgive me;
I wasn’t born yet to suffer for ur sins

so I ask you; if jesus died for ur sins
then forgive me please
and if he died for mine
forgive me again please
but remember jesus is my forefather
and I do follow his path
being an upstart and all
runs in my family
saying what I mean, and doing what I say -
follows jesus also and is why he died for our sins
Isn’t it?

Jesus was an upstart and so am I
our big and honest mouths get us in trouble
So much time wasted arguing & fussing
when we’re all visitors here of our own demise.

is the world going crazy or is it me

If you don’t stop asking so many questions
I could begin to think you’re a cop
I can’t think up the answers that fast,
Are you the prosecution or what
Do you want answers to your questions
Stop looking into my eyes so deep
What are you trying to see
I’m trying to see the I in you
It may be the same as the I in I
Can’t you see I’m trying to bring something to fruition
And it only takes some more preparation
I’m searching for direction
It’s making a huge impression on me
How many decisions did you say I have to make
No, I’m a grown woman I don’t need permission
I don’t care about your trepidation
I’m searching for liberation
Haven’t found it anywhere
It’s not as clear as it used to be
I thought I was so aware
It isn’t always fair either
Too many discussions
Deliberations on the same old themes
Wars & losses, poverty and gasoline prices
Dresses & designers, writers & artists
Vacations & lives, returning home again
Our time and space is limited,
We’re here on this earth to enjoy life do
What we can, our minds so full of clutter
the glimmer the shimmer outside
draws in to the glow
mostly it’s all show
sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of us
I couldn’t see that book that’s clearly right
There on the bookshelf where you left it before
after we looked and looked;
neither of us could see that book right there on the shelf
right there on the shelf
looked once then twice we saw nothing
Looking through the glass pane window
Should I should go in or wait out here
Alone in the rain of my life
The drops glistening on my skin
Should I join the crowd inside
Watching diamonds in the rough
Watching is never enough
I’ma go rearrange the universe
give me a moment or two