that's mrs. mediocrity to you

Prepared to run, poised for flight, yet standing my ground. The sky grows dark with words that flit by with the silence of bats, words used, expelled, offered in place of all I cannot give. The earth rumbles with those I’ve yet to speak.

I want to remember tomorrow before it happens and dream of yesterday’s chance. I want to be the bird that lands last. I want to sing with the abandon of loss.

Instead, I reach my arms high and offer sanctuary, spreading branches like wings and roots like scrabbling claw feet. I am sharp-edged and hollow-toed. I am filled with echoes.

I dreamt of you again last night, fooled myself into seeing you again, but even my dream felt the need to remind me that you are gone. And even in sleep I wondered if this is the way it will always be, and I spent the rest of the night wandering lost from room to room in a house built from memories of places I’ve never been.

We were there, together, just for a moment. Before I remembered.

Mostly, I’ve come to understand that the questions will never be answered. Mostly, I’ve come to embrace the lack of knowing. I am content to wander through this field of grass and bird and flailing branch. The wind is a challenge to stay upright, my map has sailed high into clouds of disdain.

.

And we laughed again
at free falling bottles and
broken stars. We laughed.

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Joining in today over at dVersePoets with a Haibun, using Kahlil Gibran’s quote: “Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.” as inspiration.

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And happy to be there, settling in finally, after all these years.

You have to know your limitations and work them
into the fabric of your life.

Pick them apart and darn them back together.

You have to go in circles to get to the center.

All of life is only ever held together by a thread anyway,
no matter how much you want to think otherwise.

It’s a trap you construct to keep yourself alive,
even if you must begin anew each day.

You do it because survival is a never-ending puzzle,
a labyrinth, a fibonacci dream,
and you are always listening
for the sound beneath the sea.

You do it because everything beautiful
is woven of dark’s lightest threads and
every negative space holds eternity.

You do it because you’re thirsty,
and even dew on the edge of a crooked-silver web
will sustain you.

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and it’s always accidental, the discovery of light and hope and love in the midst of deep shadow. we want to be cooler than that, less trite, or at the very least, sharp-edged and angled, dressed in hard shells that cover our scars. we think that’s how to stay safe, how to survive, how to win. we think there’s an answer, when all the food is in the questions, hanging low and heavy with overripe nectar. if we’re lucky, one of them will drop just as we walk by, leaving splatters of wisdom on our long black cave of coat, and for a moment we’ll remember what it’s like to be alive (or at least we’ll forget what it’s like to be less than). the bloom is the destination and the growing is the map. have you ever seen what a tangle of thorn the rose tumbles from?

eventually it all falls down, rotten with seed and ancient mirror.

you must look
for the glimmer
of valor

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because even the light can trap you if morning
comes too soon and each tiny thread
is a miracle of meaning
drawn tight through the fabric
of pattern’s dedication
with all the patience of temporary

everything we build is false and
ruins prove nothing but existence
which is why the sky
is always the only witness
held captive in stuffy hotel rooms
and protected by a new name
every season

but i tell you
the earth keeps turning and we are all
just figments of gravity’s imagination
built of stone and empty vessel
carved raw in the likeness of star and spider
held together by shiny bits of belief

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fourteen years later
that’s what we call it

not nine eleven oh one
not September 11, 2001
just
nine eleven

two words

three digits

two towers

four planes

thousands

of

mothers
fathers
daughters
sons
sisters
brothers
wives
husbands
aunts
uncles
girlfriends
boyfriends

not statistics

falling

from

the

sky

not dates
or where were you’s

just whole hearts
in odd numbers

each one

the only necessary

evidence

of love

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I wrote this for the 10-year anniversary
of this tragic, horrid event.

I am re-posting it again today, in honor of all those hearts.

Never forget.

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the silent places you seek in the darkness
just before the sun comes up

on a summer night

spent

in the company of story

and all the words you wrote
were the echo of your sanity

falling from a perch on orion’s

back

onto pages thin as petal

and the whispers you carried
were your gravity

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And pausing to listen.

Because it is a small world, after all,
and the internet keeps making it smaller.
Social media becomes a too-crowded room
where everybody’s in everybody’s business,
and three square meals of outrage
are served every day.

For dessert we have your choice:
a call to arms, a call for slander,
a call to harm.

The world is full of terrible things,
foul injustice,
heartbreaking stories of inhumanity.

Mankind is flawed and we want perfection,
or at least the appearance of it on our screen.

We want everything our way,
the only way, the best way,
and tout this using words
from the list we’re allowed to say.

Celebrity rules and we feed it with our frenzy.

The throng and the masses have all the answers
and nothing ever changes.

 In the minds of the mob,
silent observation becomes the same as cowardice.

Working behind the scenes
is seen as indifference.

Not speaking out, even if you agree,
makes you less than those who do.

Yet if you speak out and say the wrong thing,
you will be thrashed or hunted or publicly shamed
with a virtual scarlet letter.

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Hush now.

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Learn.
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Live.

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Listen.

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The answers always lie

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between the lines.

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and then some

over-analyzing becomes paralyzing

and i just want to dance

in the breeze of simplicity

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Or struggle vs. acceptance, and how to know which one to adopt.

These days I lean towards simple, where less always feels like more,
and grace, where struggle always dresses in silence.

And I’m not sure it’s wisdom.
I fought life so hard when I was young,
these days I prefer to acquiesce to the nature of opposites.

The good with the bad, the light with the dark,
the tears with the laughter.

It’s not giving up, it’s honing in.

It’s not compliance so much as forgiveness.

It’s arms wide open to whatever comes.

Life rains down upon us and washes us clean.
Again and again and again.

We live in the dust and we live in the dirty.

And then comes the downpour and we live some more.

Soaked and sodden, a bit downtrodden.

Bending in the wind that did not break us,
the breeze that dries our hair,

the sun that warms the shadows on our skin.

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A week of too much that left me longing for balance. The scales are always tipping, on way or another, and we do this dance, don’t we, to keep ourselves in the game.

Too much work, too much rain, and a tiny tornado touch-down one road over… and yet, here I am, still standing, still hoping, still growing.

Resiliency is a beautiful thing. All the ups and downs are connected, somewhere.

The birds are still singing.

And here we are, in a brand new, fresh-washed now.

I look out my window and think: lush.

Too much is just abundance looked at crosswise. Or vice versa.

There.

I wrote my way to a smile.

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