There's sunny rain and here am I

What we want is to be immersed in newness. Holes boring through hearts, cornfield blue skies gaping through.

Who are you, though? I love you much and I love you often. You told me all about a plastic bottle with my name in it, but not what else you wrote. What you wanted proclaimed to rocks but not to me. Was that love? You share and you keep. What share, what keep?

There are worlds created that are more full than the one cre-ote. I’ve told you this often I think but maybe it was unclear: these are where I remain, always. Your grip, lost. Grip?

I write now because I miss noodle-nimbling things. My Hudson-upon-Thames, brown river and oak-y banks. Come back. Come back.

I sigh often, often while walking up metro stairs, a sigh that disrupts the invisible borders we’ve built between. It blasphemes, this sigh that lifts.

Remember that time? It was my favorite. There was a flood, my house was different, very, I had to save someone, fields of snowy trees. Maybe also a kiss in a bush? Most definitely there was a haunted home. In fact, it all was. I never wanted to wake.

Everything, all the time, as someone once sang to me. I have forgotten my words as I so often do. I begin things because I want to capture sun beams before they fade. Where finish? Where fade.

You can’t finish the things you begin, that’s for true.

This is the poem

I wonder if this is the poem I'm meant to write--

are these the words?

A life so full that it explodes in each remembered moment,

each moment its own unending.

Swept up by music, blood pumps to my heart,

pumps that "I-must-write."

But are these the words?

This world will always be for me

one that cannot be loved until after,

an after the park bench pretzel,

after the sun's burn on muddy beaches kind of love.

I have a slow grip (have I.)

Slow but steady; strong--but slow.

(except for you; my grip was instant, for you.)

So. Here I sit, searching for words to explain

my grip that searches only after and makes

all that much more powerful,

a golden blood rush--

heart exploding.

After Szechwan

The mama cradled her baby,

humming on her porch,

wood-shingled and rain-worn.

Ho la di de, ho la di da.

Sometimes there is a boy in your mind

and you fall into him,

your body sprinkling apart in joyous blue--now your blue--

a color you jump into,

canyon of sky.

I shout! I kick!

I run run run

How could I ever explain to you all,

you masses,

how deeply I want to hold you?

Donegal Breeze

I haven't written in ages and ages but I have plenty to say. It's been floating around for a while but I just now have finally let go of caring about the fact that I'm not sure where this piece will take me. Instead, I've decided to just write it. This is mostly attributable to the good mood I'm in, that familiar ocean swell in my heart, when the world has become my one good thing; I see that everything is as much mine as I claim it to be, that I'm free as I let myself be. World, world, world...of blooms and light, of laughing with my father, of lying in bed talking, of all that has not yet come.

But this moment is scary, too, for it's not truly mine (is it?) I keep myself detached from it even as I start feeling lighthearted. I've never been that person who could see the world around her and engage in it simultaneously. So, here I am, seeing the possibilities, and completely afraid of submerging myself. I am full. But I am also stranded.

There's so much more to say, and I've lost it now. It's like every time I'm with you. My mind beats ever onward away, away from what my heart was hoping. Neither seems enough: mind, heart. Neither quite does it for me. Where is the moment that's mine alone, that's always enough and always what it should have been?

And it's funny because I didn't foresee this becoming what it has when I commenced; I thought it would stay with the sea swells and sunbeams. I've become frustrated, though. It's not enough. This feeling of elation is not enough. I need confidence in the elation, I need to know it can change my life. I need to let it change my life and I need to move on.

I'm the neediest creature of all: I expect life to give me the things I expect from it, and am completely bewildered when that's exactly what it does.

I named this piece "Donegal Breeze" after a song by Mary Black. The chorus goes like this:
With your dark hair in the Donegal breeze,
Bringing me softly and sweetly to the ground,
But, there's madness in the sycamore trees,
And there's no salvation to be found.

It reminds me of my own life, and I suspect a bit of yours, too. Overwhelmed by the gentle moments, just as in awe of the uncontrollable ones, ultimately left with neither. So response-less in the face of such wonder.

We do not know the way and maybe never will.

The Local Language

"bouquet de fleurs" marc chagall

the Dark Away

This kiss as deep as any ocean,

down far and wide upon forgotten rocks

down far among fish who bubbly murmur

about their business of being beautiful and unknown.

This you the sun's beams whose reach

to inkiest water feeds strangest creature.

and you're just across the lobby

my father is in your face

i see your young softness

it scares me, you stranger

i want to run to you and cup your cheeks.

hold those eyes always

on the horizon, hope for later

hurt you never.

oh, dadoo.

9.28.2010

To Jacob Miller:

where are you now?

where were you then.

there is a cold space where you were and

emptiness where there wasn't

excepting yours--heart so lonely.

jacob. there is a world left without you. and none know what to make of it.

Kissing the Sun

I always come here for the same reason: I need a little bit of therapy. I'm so burnt out and haven't had time for much of anything but obsessing over schedules (which, it seems like, how can I possibly be scheduling this much and not really actually getting anything done? Whatever.) So, the point is, life's losing its vitality, there's just been a lot of keeping my nose to the grindstone, but I have had a few moments of respite. Here are some things that have flit through my mind, just in case you're interested:

the way i felt on wintry nights in texas when we'd go out. the cold air went on forever and stark'd the stars and that's what i remember best. and it hit me today that what i had time for in high school were feelings and i miss that.

it's exhausting to be conventional and the moments i'm freest are when i'm thinking about things that don't even make sense. happiness hits you when you describe the things that you want.

crying in the shower is right in a way a lot of things could never be. it's intimate and it's warm and it's release.

does life really make sense all of sudden when the nurse places the newborn in your embrace?

all new yorkers are ancestors of fishermen and sailors. their ghosts surround us. i only wish scaffolding and taxis didn't make it so hard to see them, it seems like they have a lot to say.

oh hey! dreams and wishes and desire. yum yum.

musk is the fragrance of creation. i never knew that but that makes me want it in bushelfuls.

"he loved her with his heart."

a professor that smells like flowers stained by light is an impressive thing, indeed.

you've opened me up so please, i don't want to shut back down.

man walking down street looked like my idea of a man.

So it goes.

No More Rain

Outside the window people walked, but they all looked like angels.

The sun shone around them, something I'd never seen before.

It was like the sun wrapped them in wreaths of her light. They were all so beautiful, that was what was beautiful about it at all.

I felt relief knowing there was no more rain.

In My Bathroom

I thought of you the other day when my knee was bleeding

and my back leg was bleeding and my womanhood was bleeding.

All three bleeding all at once and I thought

wow this is a lot of blood to be coming

from one person all at once

but im still kind of relieved because it seems

that all these molecules

turning from blue to crimson

say what i mean even though

i dont know how.

They're dribbling: scary and a lot. Scary, and a lot.

This Much I Know is True

Well, well, well. What a whirl, what a whirl. I moved back to New York a few days ago and I'm really quite frustrated with the number of emotions I've experienced. Initially, I dreaded leaving home and getting back in the grind. While we were in the air, I started to get excited, remembering that distinctly newyorky rush I get when I'm walking around the city. Then, I spent just a little bit too much time on how happy I was, and started to get nervous. I started remembering that being in New York really meant that I wasn't going to be at home with my mommy and sisters and friends and the hard-leafed trees and soft, wide sunsets. Aggh!

When we were in the taxi and driving up through Brooklyn into Manhattan, panic truly set in. I felt nothing but remove and could not remember why I used to love this place, which now felt as if it had come back into my life much sooner than I wanted it to. It seemed so greedy. I had only been able to leave it for two months and now I had to come back, and in order to be there, I had to recondition myself to toughness and patience.

Then, of course, spending the day in and around the Hudson and all of those neat little stores you found scattered all about, my rush of New York love swelled within me and I felt so happy to be back, knew I could live here forever. That lasted until the next morning and then dread set in and then happiness and then remorse that I had to leave my mama again again again and then, upon moving-in, elation at how perfect my apartment turned out to be. And then dreading the next day, when she would have to go back. Home.

I could (can) never really settle on one emotion. Do I hate New York? Or do I love it? Do I want this independence? Or do I just want to stay at home, living life the way I love to lead it? Why do they both feel right at times and so wrong at others? Frustration. Frustration that will continue on into the next few weeks until I finally find my inevitable groove. This is who I am, and how I work. I dislike it, but it's how I process.

The most beautiful and frightening thing: I realized that the greatest gift my mother ever gave me was allowing me this much fear. I don't know what to do with it, but I have it. That's my beginning.

Freud Didn't Tell Us Anything We Didn't Already Know

If you can't write what you think, then what's the point in writing? If you can't say what you mean, then what's the point in speaking? These questions, which I just a moment ago realized how to say, make life difficult. Where is the point if it's not where you want it? No direction home kind of thing.

Of course there's a reason and it lies in the fact that those things I can't describe keep me going. They give me something to live for. I wouldn't want my life if it came mystery-free, sans aches. Those questions point to insurmountable challenges. And as long as a challenge is insurmountable, there's always something to hope for.

There's my superego and my id when I think, when I write, when I live. There's the way I could say things that are clear and incisive and people-friendly. There's also the way that I could approach life that is distinctly my own. It'd often be meaningless to passer-by, incomprehensible. Hell, I wouldn't even know what I meant. I would just know that it's what I wanted to say. I think ids are far too easily beaten down by superegos. Who's to care if we speak garble or say things the way they come to us? We're given information from our brains in a raw, beautiful form, I think. We repackage it soon afterward so that it can be presented to others. Maybe what we need is a little bit more intellectual selfishness; people can figure out things as you say them or not.

Even this piece has yet to be examined by me, the writer. I'm sure tomorrow I'll see that it's full of logical flaws and morally reprehensible. For tonight, though, I'm saying these words as they come to me. Freud would probably say these paragraphs indicate that there's something blocking my own consciousness and that senseless paragraphs are a means of escape. That's a thought.

And the funny thing is I don't even much subscribe to Freud. I think he didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

/Fragments/

A loose leaf in the wind's whoosh

floats above streets where mommies

push strollers and daddies rake leaves.

After sighing upon birthday cake with breath much fraught,

we nearly burned the table to death.

Did then we see pieces of eternity? We'd know now, as eternal as

we're likely to see.

Rapunzel hung upon her hair a sign that commanded "no tress passing";

it didn't stop her from finding happily ever after.

sometimes leaning against the kitchen sink it feels like someone loving to hold me and i forget about my face's red

Bad Day Remedy

http://www.yogatothepeople.com/stories.shtml

Happy Things

shall we dance?

Ellis' Island

Ellis could skate across forever,

sometimes scraping.

Ellis felt it with his hand,

rosied by a spangle of sterling stars,

overflowing with tinkling.

Ellis thought that if he could manage things just so,

he could remain in tandem with forever for always.

Ellis was a smart man and saw the world around him.

People were chests of gifts,

velveteen'd love.

(The sky was the continuation of that,

as was the sea and the soil.)

Ellis was warned: they were not stars, but nettles.

there was not velveteen, but burlap.

the sky was only water

the sea was only sky

the soil was only people.

Ellis thought they'd proven his point.

Because I Was in the Mood

We're in Houston and not sure what that means.

We're on earth and not sure if we want any of it.

***********************************

Last night, I slept in a seven-dwarf-like bed with a tiny four year old girl, at her request. She tucked me in, she tucked me in again, she briefly picked up my hand and stroked it and then gently returned it to my chest. I scrunched there next to her and I could feel her baby skin against my arm and it was then that it struck me that this was a precious moment in my life.

I just finished a tupperware of really, really good mac n cheese and desperately-desperado want some more. The way the noodle gives out under my teeth, you know.

I think it's a miracle there's a world beyond my own self. Thank God. (Now, if only we'd been given the tools to experience some of it without our selves present.)

A lot of the food that I like, my sisters don't. A lot of the food they like, I don't. Kind of like a genetic clique or something. It's strange how I literally feel left out when they enjoy their steak and roast potatoes.

In one of my classic "now I feel super smart/what a great insight I have for life" moments (which means that these moments make me cringe later on down the line), I realized that the reason I want so badly to be in love is because I have an unconscious idea that love of the soul-pouring variety blankets all the hurt, like it never existed, like I don't need to think about it anymore just because I'm in love.

True?

***********************************

Here, I get absolutely exhausted by the thickness of heat. Because it means sweat no matter what I'm doing. That translates to a lot of showers, whose steam make me sweat more, til I'm frosted in it, if that makes any sense.

But sometimes, there are days, such as this one, where all it does is rain. The heat lifts off the ground and I'm finally comfortable. I feel like my name could be Rupert and that I'm just barely avoiding wetting my British Indian Army uniform, the eaves of my canvas tent caving in with all the water. I'm cupping a travelogue to my wife, Betsy, so that the ink doesn't run down into the mud. Signing it, "Yours, R. W. Sanford." So formal, Rupert.

The one good thing that I have to say about PCs: they, at least, have that handy 'delete' button, where you can erase forward, as well as backward. Metaphor not intended, although I appreciate the poetry of it.

***********************************

If Freud was in the room with us today, he'd tell us that there are things we want that we don't even know we want. I'd buy that, plus it makes me feel more exotic.

Things I do know I want: eventually, a sweet little baby who I can just hold and hold and rub his/her little nose, and look at those barely fingers forever and kiss the soft little daffodil head. To sing at a coffeehouse, although this is slightly abstract as I don't know how to play the guitar or anything--I can only sing. But it's something that I know I'd love. Also, "ageless, timeless, lace-and-fineness, every young boy's dream."

Things I conceivably could want but don't know it yet (does this make this paragraph senseless?...): Somebody in my life who is something that I could have never known to wish for beforehand. A poem written on a scroll 15 yards long, signed by me, written in crushed petals. To be a fondant baker. To run away and live like a bear. Brambles and trout all around. To be Jewish. Or Buddhist, or Muslim, or anything other than Catholic (not sure about this one...how do you leave what you know? and love.) Also, a screenwriter or a stay-at-home mom. Maybe just a stay-at-home person.

***********************************

Like Johnny Cash always said:

"And you could have it all,

My empire of dirt."

Lighter

You're gathering.

Collections of pressure

Holding back, just so above my head.

Randomness groups itself

in pigeons, through clouds, about bacteria.

All holding back, just so below my head.

I implore you: explode onto me

I need the rain-- clean, soggy peace

I need infectious deluge.

I need movement

even if it is bereft of purpose.