Sweet Air

Sky bruised
purple-gray,
awaiting release
of all its pain --
cleansing rain. 
Wind rustling
treetops green,
leaves belly-up with 
silvery sheen;
air thinning,
fragrance keen,
"Sturm und Drang" serene.

Divested

He once spent much time on perfection

to fulfill everyone's predilection. 

With much praise they toyed;

yet his heart they'd avoid,

his life shorn of love's protection.

Just This

There are millions who'll say it
better than I
Discouraged, I wonder
why I try
Unique is prized --
fiction, preferred
So where can a simple heart
go to be heard?

Picking Up Time

Patchwork of styles
across time's miles
assembled together
make variable weather
combined at once
in stormy sun
and sun-ripened frost,
summer overrun
by winter and fall --
now it's spring's call
with buds in bloom
from 1980 June
only 32 years late
but now is the date
after an unfathomable
wait.

Sunday Reflection

Beside the enormity of evil
words pale,
dwarfed
by that which leers
and laughs
at them,
assuring their authors
that no one,
no one,
will ever
believe them. 
In this way,
evil often becomes
fiction.  

Prayers,
prayers . . . 
in such cases, perhaps only
prayers
will do.

Love, Elemental

Streams of thought
oceans of meaning
flowing forth
waves cresting
reverie breaking
words escaping
riding the tide
skimming the sand
grains sifting
lines shifting
metaphors mixing
emotions drifting
sinking
softening
melding sand to toe
warmth's overflow . . .
and the conch shells know
love's wind will blow
earth's heat
salty sweet
raw whispers
in their ears.

Keeping My Chin Up (the MCS files)*

And so I went to get the verdict.  On the ailing shoulder.  I didn't want to go.  This reluctance made no sense to me, because I really did like the doctor.  

I got lost twice on the way then entered the wrong building, whose hallways smelled like an overdose of disinfectant.  A counselor in one of its offices told me that the doctor had probably moved laterally to the next building over, but now I felt like staying right where I was . . . the counselor was so nice, so forgiving -- we can never have too much forgiveness . . . . .

I wanted to go home, but I didn't go.  I tried the next building.  It didn't smell, but the elevator squealed and heaved and the stairwell was dark and desolate, with ominous splotches on the cement.  With the elevator out of the question and the stairwell looking menacing, that was it.  What if the entry and exit doors locked me in?  I was going home.

I started to go.

Nearly to the front door, I pondered the shame of it all.  A 49-year-old woman afraid of a stairwell.  I imagined myself hunched over, some 10 years later, with an immobilized shoulder; a gnarled, useless hand;  back bent, neck twisted from all the compensating contortions I would have had to assume, having chosen to avoid the stairwell that could have led to my deliverance.

I turned back, acted purposeful (there was now a lady in the hallway), and jammed myself into the stairwell, racing up the stairs with my eyes nearly shut.  The doors did not lock me in at top or bottom.  This was fortunate.  Having reached my destination, I met the lady from the downstairs hallway now exiting the elevator.  It apparently had not trapped her or sucked all the air out of her lungs.  Things were looking up.

Colognes wafted through the waiting room . . . but even this was better than the dank, stained stairwell, so I sat and inhaled.  Ushered finally into the doctor's office, a sense of relief came over me.  Now I felt like crying.  In my mind's eye, I pictured my tears drenching the room, dripping off the examining table, pouring over the countertops, causing the chair to float.  Salt water pooled in my eyes.  I wiped it away.  What on earth.  This was an orthopedist.

The shoulder was fine, fine -- just rotator-cuff tendonitis, solved easily with the equivalent of a buffalo-sized dose of anti-inflammatories twice per day for two weeks.  I already knew this wasn't going to happen -- I can't take most prescription medications -- but I stayed agreeable because, as doctors go, this one was a patient's dream.  Prompt, calm, cheerful, uncomplicated.  (He told me I could keep the paper gown -- said it looked good on me.  This brought forth a giggle.) 

Now I just have to hunt down the natural ("alternative") equivalent of 16 (yes, sixteen!) 200-mg ibuprofen tablets per day.  This shouldn't be hard . . . . . 

Upon exiting the building, the source of my mad apprehension was realized in full.  The surrounding air and lawn, which had previously smelled like air and lawn, were now overtaken by something I would have to call at least the equivalent of dry-cleaning fluid.  It was just everywhere.  To myself, I called it, "Perflourocholoromanganate," because that's exactly what it smelled like.   

To my horror, small children were outside next door playing under the watch of their day-care teachers -- with the air smelling as though the little town had just been the victim of chemical warfare.  

The headache is coming now, and I'm getting ready to meet it.

                                                                     *MCS = Multiple Chemical Sensitivity 

Dance of the Keys

Universe of black and white

gleaming with unspoken 

melodies . . . 

exactitude certain

if fingers are true. 

Key by key, 

poetry rises and falls, 

heart's metronome

beating,

body swaying,

mind versed in rhythm's command,

chords and cadences

ushering in

mystery, wonder --

notes trilling, thrilling, 

sweeping

through the soul

with sound

delicious. 

Heart's String

My heart drags behind me

like an old tin can

attached to a string

that I hold in my hand.  

My string and I

(I'm not ashamed to say)

hold fast to each other

when love goes away. 

Slave, or Free?

There will never be
the time
for the time that you must
make. 
There will never be
the day
unless the day you simply
take. 

From the Heart

A young person has made a very special request that I write about the devastating effects of being bullied.  I cannot imagine anything more eloquent -- or healing -- than the true story I just stumbled upon a few minutes ago.  If only this would happen for everyone who has ever been bullied!  Please, if you have a moment, kindly forward this account to others while it still remains an active link:

"Some healing for woman bullied as teen" - by Pueng Vongs, The Lookout

Sincerely,

Turquoise

Late-Night Newsflash

Having just bashed the top of my skull into the lurking arm of an unrepaired towel rack (the equivalent of a faucet spout hanging out of the wall), I am incensed.

This indignity calls for Dvorak's New World Symphony -- the Finale.

Feel free to listen in:  New World Symphony - Movement 4 (10 min.)

Really gets the blood moving.  :)

Nowhere

Truth stammered

at great cost,

sweat and sorrow mingling,

yet so often

lost

to that place where words

are meaningless --

where hearts have turned

to frost. 

The Subtle Saga of Susan

Part One

Conversation, for Susan, revolved around "the real."  If a friend, in a fickle mood, happened to depart from "the real," conversation was neither desirable nor possible for Susan.  She saw no point in remaining physically available for discourse, as only pretense would result.  Pretense repelled her at the most fundamental level of her being.

What, exactly, was "the real?"  "The real" was the true essence of the person.  Susan knew "the real" of a person by the way the person's features relaxed deeply into his face, making way for the soul to come forth; by the fluidity and pace of his speech; by the absence of darting eyes and nervous or pointless gestures; by the way the person "sat" habitually in his own body.

A person, after all, could visibly remove "the real," temporarily wishing it away and adopting a new persona for purposes of social melding.  This practice was routine, Susan could not help but notice, to social butterflies, manipulators, and the more insecure types.  The minute the telltale signs of "persona change" emerged in group scenarios, Susan no longer bothered feeling dismayed.  She accepted the loss instantly, moving on to someone more genuine or -- ignorance being bliss -- to someone she did not yet know. This worked well for pain control.

(Reprinted from "Turquoise" post dated 7-17-11)

Part Two

Pain.  What kinds of things caused Susan pain?

The onset of another's socially tailored "approach" to herself, for example, caused Susan the pain of silent outrage.  The "tailored approach" was a person's contrived "gearing up" of face and voice to pose a "sensitive" question ("sensitive," most likely, to the other person) to Susan about herself as though she were an alien creature.  This was always the "Here comes the face" moment, when the other's face would lean in toward Susan with exaggerated intent . . . betraying the poorest acting abilities imaginable, along with rattled nerves.

Susan thought of this as the "kid gloves" approach, the utterly transparent social method of "handling" a presumably "fragile" person.  More often than not, such an approach was actually "the velvet glove that hides the fist," and the "kid gloves" would have been better applied to the emotionally unstable questioner.  Such questioners usually believed they were successfully masking some degree of their own unvented spleen, personal axes to grind lurking beneath the surface.

Picture, for a moment, the camera honing in on an aging female psychotherapist with numerous small facial tics and twitches due to unacknowledged, unmitigated resentment.  Imagine the camera moving closer and closer as the therapist's face grows larger and larger, the lens exposing each twitch of the ever-tightening lips which, themselves, compress the existence of sheer rage, lips which open only against the most extreme inner tension to form the words, "Tell me, dear, why duplicitous people upset you."

This is how the approach of "handling people" appeared to Susan.

Invariably, in such cases, the "ax" floating beneath the surface was not Susan's "ax," but rather the dissatisfaction and bitterness of another who would have done better to mind his own business with discretion and dignity. 

(Reprinted from "Turquoise" post dated 7-19-11)

Part Three (new)

Games and angles -- how they put "white noise" into the air, wasting time, wasting space, leading people hither and thither when a single genuine word would have summarized things nicely!  Perhaps the people who choreographed these stilted interactions were bored.  A poor excuse, however, to play with other people's minds and time.

How such individuals hurt and distanced others -- how they fomented discord and mistrust!  And to what purpose?  Truth was always faster, simpler, cleaner.  Were such game players holding themselves "above" truth?  Did they feel too superior to stoop to its simplicity?  Perhaps unvarnished truth did not appear intellectual enough or complex enough to bolster their own pride.  Perhaps. 

But enough.  Enough time had already been handed over to game players in this crooked world.  Susan would hand over no more.

(To be continued . . . . . )

Without Reserve

The sun,
artless giver,
takes us as we are,
highlighting color and form
from an infinite number of angles,
never demanding that we face only one way
for it to shine upon us. 

The Tulip

"Can you spare

a kind word?" 

asked the tulip,

but silence

was the reply. 

The tulip

folded its petals,

for now it felt like

night.

Sweetheart's Wish

When you come bounding
over mountain and vale,
please bring some dewdrops in a pail, 

and don't forget Spring's sun and moon,
twilight's "pas de deux"
for an eternal June.  

Candor's Price

Silhouettes of things

I'd wished to say

float above the page

and drift away; 

twilight weeps, wind shivers,

and the damp will stay

while eye grasps for the last

splash of bright left by day . . .

as I await that strange burn

in the depths when pride pays

for author's confessions

of blues, blacks, and grays.   

Undone

A disappointment I have been,

I feel it in my bones --

a gap within the shoulder joint

taunts "Failure!" while soul groans. 

So much undone both left and right,

so much to overcome,

one side of body forced to rest, 

one side straining toward the sun.  

The Open Canvas

In the end,
 

it's still just you

and the sweet blank page,

as it always was --

forever young. 

Slant of Sun

Humor and melancholy intertwine

like lacy tendrils on a vine

expressing themselves, each in his way,

obscured, at times, by shadows at play. 

Lightning

After a lovely viewing of 

Sense and Sensibility,

I sank into a cozy slumber,

awakened shortly

by ominous words

in a dream. 

Benumbed with alarm,

body shaking within,

I rose and crept through the house,

checking this, checking that, checking all,

light bursting into my eyes

as I turned toward a window. 

I blinked and questioned nothing. 

Only later did I realize

that the halo of rays

had been lightning --

lightning outside

mirroring the lightning within,

exploding again and again

into the depths of night,

shocking me

anew.  

Real or Allegory?

The evil

overflowed

and tainted

everything

in its path,

stinking grey slime

spreading

into sunny yards

and golden-brown forests,

uprooting flowers

and green grass

and innocence,

silencing the birds,

sickening the

pets,

and squeezing the mind

that sought to escape it

into spasms of disbelieving

horror. 

After the Storm

Most of us
went to sleep
in the cabins below upper consciousness,
while a few thin shadows of us
went topside
to participate in
life events
that we could not feel; 
and this was to be the new
"normal."