push and pull

o goodness!
gladness!
oye, voy-
it seems that i don't
know my place anymore
i am seeing more clearly
those true colors showing
like the hints of color
through peeling paint
on walls
there is something
unraveling
here for me
and it seems like maybe my journey
is asking
that i make my move
once again
cause i feel like i'm
carving out causes
rallying resources
and drumming
and drumming
and bumming
and slipping
back into the lulling
rhythm
of a rhythm-less life
but
i can't sit still anymore,
my body won't let me
there's a buzzing in my belly that
makes me squirm
with impatience
an ever urging insistence,
more than, more than, more than
mere existence,
and if my hands lie
too long useless
they scream their resistance to lifelessness
in aches and pains like
fire needles in joints
they cry use us, use us,
don't miss the point!

you are divinity,
you are the skin it's housed in,
Life is sacred and profane and you
can swing from extremity to extremity
or find a middle way,
your own rhythm,
to walk to.

Steaming

i am simmering
boiling
roiling in my own juices
this morning
i wake
sleepily, sweetly, sadly
letting go slowly
doesn't hurt any less, you know
it may in fact be
the more painful
choice
but on my lonely way
back-
but i am finding pieces
of my heart along
the path,
acknowledging what must be mended
places that bleed still,
fleeting glimpses
of the kind of compassion
that might transform us both,
once again,
into something resembling
friends.

remember?
please remember,
how i've adored you-
caresses carrying love's buoyant weight,
nights of laughter and mornings steeped
in passion's wake-
don't forget.
don't forget, amor mio.

and even back
before that still
delighting in you
without possession or pause,
you did not belong to me then-
and neither do you now,
so why and when and how
is it
that this
separating
tears me into pieces,
and can be a bittersweet relief in
one breath,
and a chest-crushing weight
in the next?

we are shooting arrows across caverns
sending up flares that can't be seen-
we have lost our common ground now,
and there are oceans
in between

i'm sorry, love,
i'm sorry-
i don't have any fight left in me
and
i can't bridge these distances
alone.

(i never could.)

"Don't be so hard on yourself."

janelle turtle and zoe keating
today
as i try
to make right
and re-set patterns,
place them gently aright
like little children
learning to walk
who topple over
again and again
gently,
patiently
make quiet that voice that screams,
never! not good enough! not right!
soothing,
gently,
who would scream
at a little child,
anyway?