Noodles in Mumbai

I heard you fluttering around the universe last night. I knew you weren't going for a drink of water. You are such a bad liar. If you looked closely, you would have seen me smirking as I fell back asleep.

Let me guess: You slipped off to lead drunken Tony home to his cardboard box again. Then you fluttered outside the window of the county jail and finally made one of those psychotic inmates smile for the first time in forever.

After 5,000 years, you still have the same nocturnal habits: flirting with good-hearted, troubled men. You make them feel special, because they are. The master plays the role of servant so convincingly.

Speaking of which, I know the star god still has a major crush on you. I also know you make his day by sitting patiently in his drab office chatting up the properties of stardust and the importance of helium vapors. Yawnsville, sister.

You are a flirt, a bad liar and you are way too nice. Unlike me.

Today, you and I will chase comets, ding-dong ditch the royal family, lead that stray dog on 3rd Street to a home, and eat noodles in Mumbai.

That's later. Right now, I'm feeling a little psychotic myself. No, you are not allowed to leave this bed for an actual drink of water until I am through with you. Then I'm going to drift off to sleep again with a different sort of smirk on my face.

Beautiful Serpent

Show me your serpent. It's okay. I have one too. Serpents are scary at first. But our serpent sides have a purpose. Mostly, they just want to protect us.

They come armed with fangs and silence and deal in death. They wield a sword and cut off contact and allow us a retreat.

Our dark sides sometimes kill relationships when we fail to communicate our feelings well. Sometimes we're too self-unaware to even know how. We do our best, and then after a while, or maybe all too soon, our serpents emerge.

Our serpents are often the most loyal sides of ourselves, interested in protecting our most vulnerable parts. Unfortunately, our dark sides sometimes wield too much power in our lives and end up keeping us from the things we're after.

Show me your serpent, sweetheart. Bring her out. Let's do the introductions now, all four of us. I want to meet this beautiful side of you that has done her very best to protect your heart over the years. I want to kiss her hand and show her there's truly nothing to fear here.

Pestering Moon

Something is wrong with the ocean. The waves are crashing a little more unruly than what the moon suggests.

Now the ocean has always been a little hard headed. No one commands the ocean, no one tells it what to do. But the moon has found a way over the centuries to speak to the ocean, and so what's going on lately makes me think.

And what I'm thinking is you ought to put on that beaded necklace of yours and do up your hair in braids again, and we ought to go for another stroll along the shore and let the ocean stretch out its salt carpet for your feet. And we probably should wade out a foot or so into the icy water just like we did over the weekend.

I mean, the moon won't stop knocking on our window until we agree. So for the sake of getting some sleep, let's promise to go down to the beach tomorrow and let the ocean have another taste of your legs. 

The Gift

We start with a 30-unit apartment building. We make it totally green, in whatever way so appropriate. We put solar panels on the roof. We have a fleet of automobiles that run on vegetable oil.

It is the first building of our artist colony.

But it won't just be an artist colony. Whoever lives here will perform volunteer work in the community, whatever sort of work they want. Our art will reflect our work, inevitably. Everyone will receive a couple hundred dollar stipend every week, maybe more.

A few apartments will be used to house families temporarily homeless. Another for visitors. Another for the chronically homeless. Wherever this colony is located, it will conform to the needs of the local community, so that an apartment also will house victims of domestic abuse, which is prevalent in every community.

We'll have a gardener to tend the grounds of all the buildings in our sprawling artist and service colony. We'll have a chef to prepare buffets a couple times a week, probably to coincide with guests invited to speak with everybody on various interesting subjects. People will visit from around the world.

It will all be so much fun, and work, and especially fun.

I mean, it's not like we're going to change the world or anything.

(I mean, yes, we are:)

The Gift of The Great Prophetess

While in the womb I negotiated with the great prophetess. We came to terms after months of back-and-forth.

No such thing as overpaying for the rarest of treasures. Once again, I made out like a bandit. For you, I would have given double, triple.

Many lifetimes ago I bought you at a slave auction and was laughed off the stage at the ridiculous price I offered. But I did the laughing later when I saw the hundreds of familiar secret worlds in your eyes.

This is no young love anymore. We drink the blast juice of a deeper color between us. Back when we were young, Abraham chased and threatened us with reed sticks for stealing his grapes. (Sucka!)

I have my doubts, as usual. I acknowledge these doubts not to contaminate, but rather to release them, to clean our energy, to continue the collapsing of space between us, to slope the land further.

To fall deeper into those secret worlds of yours.

So many of my friends today live as refugees from the journey of looking for the great unspoken horizon that is love. They resort to the safety of emotionless sex, in its various trendy presentations, woven to hide the handiwork of the dark tailor himself: Fear. Emotionless sex was one of the things I had to give up in this lifetime. You see, the great prophetess doesn't take from us anything that's truly valuable. She only demands everything that cloaks our true selves.

After a long journey, you'll always find a little wear and tear on the carriage. But nothing is wasted. Everything is necessary-- once you arrive.

I have my doubts, as usual. But we've already made our deals with the great prophetess, and we continue to make out like bandits. So what's the point of doubting?

No point.

To get you back, I would give up more than the misers of this fallen world could fancifully imagine. (Suckas!)

Ours is an ancient crush.

Smoldering

I bled for you but you would not have me. I bled the color red all over your palette of paints. I wanted your artist heart in my deepest ash pit. I wanted to mean as much to you as that tree you sketched on your crowded canvass. But you would not have me.

My passion flamed for you like a redwood on fire. A beacon for the planets is what I wanted to be for you. With my two feet planted in the earth, I wanted to stand tall in my heat and consume you.

I wanted to split you. I wanted to expose the pink timber of your insides and watch as your wood raged. I wanted you to see the yellow flickering in my mad eyes. But I was not firmly planted in the ground. I was flaring and hurting and misfiring.

I have never told anyone, but I have practiced black magic. I sprinkled the stars on the table in my favor. You can turn the universe whichever way you fancy but that also means twisting your fate like a screw backwards into the blind side of your life. I stopped when my hands and face became charred. One must learn this lesson, I suppose.

Another lesson I learned is that I never burn out, that I cannot be consumed. I may smolder blue for a while, but I will always return to torch. I will always bleed red hot for you.

Everyone Wants To Be Near You

When the planets decided who got which positions, Mercury would not be denied. Occupying the first position in line came with a steep price: A few envious brothers and sisters.

Bake me, Mercury said.

And Mercury has been baking since, without ever turning around to grin. Good thing, because Jupiter is still sore, and we might end up with a brawl in the solar system.

If everyone wants to be near you, one might begin feeling badly for Pluto. Don't. Pluto is the shiest of the bunch, and prefers hanging in the back of the classroom.

Behold the range of personalities within our planetary family, and within each of us, as children of the stars.

Take me, for example.

Normally, I'm shy and talk with my hands in my pockets at the end of the line. And sometimes I have to let go of a grudge because someone beat me to you by cutting in line.

And once in a while I go right after what I want and will not be denied, like this weekend when I baked next to your celestial body.

On Saturday, children, the sun goddess smeared me.

So Many Thanks and Praises

Everything has a beginning and end, even our earth and sun.

No such thing as life without death, least not in this world.

I'm not saying we're going to revisit How-It-Is-101 here.

What I'm saying is that for whatever time we're together, no matter how long or short, I blaze like the sun when we hold hands. I spin like the earth when you touch me under my shirt. I am the Wolf King running through the dark forest to see you. I am the ocean calming when you breathe on my ear.

Together, we throw blue stars into the sky when we speak with our eyes.

Everything has a beginning and end, yeah. Thanks and praises that we are just beginning together.

The Wind

I must introduce you to my old friend. He insists. My old friend has traveled the earth since the beginning of time, brushed every tree root, rubbed up against the outermost shell of the sky dome. My old friend has been around, every which way, up and down, backward and forward.

Five hundred years ago on this very land, my friend was worshiped as the god he is. Only wise spiritual leaders, shamans and medicine men understood the language he spoke.

And now my friend wants to speak with you.

Yes, you.

See, the world continues to change for the better in the smallest, most important places, the places that can't quite be seen so well from the mountain tops of power, and that's inside us.

Many of us carry sparks inside us these days. We're less interested in more money than living sustainable lifestyles. We're less interested in status than showing our children the value of non-violence.

But of all the little sparks floating around in the world today, my friend wants to meet you first. Because when my friend gets hold of a spark, that spark becomes an unstoppable flame.

And your spark, my darling, glows prettier than everyone else's, and hotter.

That's what drew me to you, the heat of your flame, and its color.

And that's why my friend wants to meet you so badly.

You are special inside.

You are beautiful inside.

A Reminder

I spend the majority of my life in the eternal quest of devising ways to manipulate your clothes off. This morning, I am turning the tide. I am dressing you.

Those French panties with the tiny red bow are pretty, but not as comfortable as your cotton whites. I snap on your bra, reaching around from the front, so we're face-to-face. Your fresh shower smell washes over me, and I do my best to concentrate. You watch me fiddle, frustration growing in my eyes. You offer to snap the bra on yourself. I refuse the offer, then accept just as I manage to clasp the thing-a-ma-chig and claim I had it all along.

I go for the gray slacks. You approve. You lean on my shoulders as you step into them. I go for the navy blouse. You send me back to the closet for the powder blue blouse with the ruffles. I button your buttons.

You won't even allow me to make a another suggestion for shoes after I suggest those crazy boots and then the Jessica Simpson wedges. I fetch the flats you point out, slip them on your feet like Cinderella. I notice a panty line on your ass and take corrective measures. I try unsuccessfully to convince you the imperfection was real and my actions were in fact necessary.

We walk out the door together. I make a reminder: Tonight I get to take those clothes off.

Building

You hide from me, like you do, behind emails, messages, comments, silence, bullshit excuses and that velvet curtain of fear you retreat behind. 

Show yourself in the spotlight of my late afternoon sun. When I make you laugh, you will drop that veil and never live backstage again. Oh, you might get pissed at me. No, you definitely will get pissed at me. But I won't ever use the knowledge of your weak spot against you. This trust will generate your interior glow. After our first few fights, you will remember having good old fashioned disputes without nastiness. You'll remember making nice before going to bed, and points of friction not rubbing you and yours raw.

No need to hide anymore.

Emerging before the popping flash bulbs of our commitment to each other has risks, sure. But you won't be the only one risking something significant. Men are fragile. You'd set the construction of my temple back a couple thousand years poking your finger into the secret space between my dragon scales.

Your last partnered performance didn't turn out the way you hoped, I know. Well, it's just hard getting life right the first time.

I cannot finish building this temple by myself. The ancient blueprints say so. The plans call for a ladder, someone to steady it, and no backstage. This temple is going up as surely as the sun loves the planets. And this book I'm writing here is the story of its construction, of my everlasting love for you, and your stepping into the spotlight of my life.

Morning Sun

Winter break freed up your schedule. I was the beneficiary. For eight days, we shared that run-down motel room on the beach.

You thought I was sleeping at night, but I was really spiraling away to lick at the powdered candy stars, pocket the moon and give it to your medicine woman spirit as a midnight gift. We turned it loose every morning like a firefly into the peach sunrise.

You were the first to ever call me a great boyfriend. When you said those words, you set off my thunderbird rockets. I visited my old friend, the one with the beautiful rings. I sat on them like a rung of bleachers at a high school basketball game and ran my fingers through the hair of this magic planet.

That wasn't cheating. Saturn was madly in love with you, too. Imagine your mood if I touched your face at 3 a.m. every night, so I touched the closest thing to your beauty.

I realized how deeply I love you in the space between afternoon sex and dinner. I was banging away on this keyboard and you were watching Dave Chappelle in bed. My Tuscan bones informed me how much I enjoyed sharing a shelter with you. You made the mundane moments of this life twinkle when you asked me to make popcorn next writing break I took.

Dreams

I dream about you. So what? I dream of us in Rome, when the sun sinks low and turns the city gold and we've been there long enough so the kids begging for money with quick hands under newspapers don't even bother us anymore. I dream of us in Paris, sitting and wasting yet another afternoon along the canal. I dream of us back in Chicago, where we first met, at Clark and Belmont, leaning into each other on the corner and never even bothering to join the crowd flowing across the street.

I dream of dropping a wad of hundred dollar bills into your pocket so you discover it while you're at your crummy job and you're free to quit at any time. I dream of actually succeeding in perfectly preparing that Italian dish I've always claimed to know how to make so well, and having the dish ready when you get home from work. I dream of pinning you into the corner for days so the only way out is through the drywall or through my chest.

Yeah, I dream of you.

The Eyes and The Voice

We all have a gift. Mine are my eyes, dust from the rings of Saturn, crystallized under the pressure of my home star, calibrated to perfection by the sky god himself.

Your gift is your voice, the soft melody of the Nile running freely at night blended with the roar of the sun.

You work hard in this world in order to survive. You give your life energy to the weak, to the marginalized in this diseased culture. You use your enchanting voice to speak for them.

You have a dream. You dream of a better way, a better day for everyone. If you could grab the microphone of planet earth for an afternoon, what might you say in your most magically-pitched tone?

You might just hypnotically change the minds of every power-hungry pawn in this place.

In other lifetimes you were a famously successful peace negotiator, making warlords wilt. 

In other lifetimes I was a ranger, tracking fast-moving shadows over rocks, across mountains, through galaxies.

We continue this journey of lifetimes, minutes in the day, a progression. We all signed up for this ride 18 billion years ago. All of us.

And what a gift it is to be here. We got cold beer in this world, Led Zeppelin, and sports on high-definition television (my team stinks, though).

But understand the spirit life is probably boring. No rocking keg parties on the far side of the moon. Not much to do but wait to take form again.

Life is the gift.

And you remain the brightest star in my sky.

Dark Love

You are a fool. You don't know what's going on here. You snagged on my trip wire and think somehow you might be able to reset that. Sorry, babycakes. The ancient door just clicked shut behind you and it is now locked forever. Yes, it smells like a tomb in here for a reason.

Welcome. After the pain, you will feel nothing but sheer bliss, if you feel anything at all.

You were the one who touched me first. You said you loved my work, this beautiful web I have been constructing my entire life. It took me days to recover from the swoon. I hid under a rock while I sobered up. And now my six feet are under my control again, and gripping this sticky string for what must be done.

You are going nowhere. You are cocooning in my words. You are weightless on the web. My power goes bright, and dark. Tonight, I glow dark. My stinger feels cool in the rank air. Only one remedy for that.

End of Rivalry

We know animals are alive. And we know plants are alive. Some know the ocean is alive, its waves like respirations. Some have progressed to understand the world is alive.

But I say even the ages are alive, so that right now in the amphitheatre of the universe the Age of the Birth of Life is rolling her eyes at suggestions she might not be all that. I can see the snooty Age of Michelangelo painting on wet plaster disrespecting the Age of Exploration, while the Age of Evolution struggles to hold anyone's attention as the Ice Age rambles on and on about inane information concerning frost and regeneration. I can hear the arguing and bickering and general commotion among the ages, and I can see Zeus glancing at his watch in the hopes of leaving early because that's a debate that won't ever be settled.

Until our age concludes, that is.

It's not that we're going to achieve peace on earth and remove the mad men who are threatening extinction of our planet. It's not that we're going to stop these mad men from selling out our children and grandchildren. It's not that we're going to end slave wages and stop the contamination of our planet.

Our age is going to lord over the other ages because our age will showcase as its emblem those gorgeous legs of yours. Maybe possibly wearing those big black shoes. And a short skirt. That blue camouflage skirt.

What the fuck is the Age of Michelangelo going to say to that?

Alchemy

It is a matter of alchemy. And now our energies have indeed mingled. It was just a teaspoon, but did you see the fallout? That sort of reaction hasn't been seen in this world before.

Scientists discovered a new element a couple years ago. Imagine the headlines when we produce a new color the first time we kiss.

Imagine the new crayon box of white and red light coating the sky the first time we have sex.

The path over the great mountains is overrun with shrubs and barely visible. The path around the great mountains is well used.

We're going over the mountains.

Die for you? I wouldn't just die for you.

I'd be burned alive for you.

I'd be boiled alive for you.

Here

It has been a long sleep. I feel the arthritis in my hands. My eyes are blurry from centuries of hibernation. There is much work to be done today. But you are here, next to me. You fit so nicely into the crook of my shoulder. I cannot imagine my mornings without your smell, without the length of your flush body.

There is so much work to be done. I am late. But this is a nice place, a very nice place, the space between the dream world and this slave world, tasting both, the good of the dreams, the good of this world, you.

I am not moving. I am closing my eyes. We are floating. I am staying here, for as long as I can. I am done sleeping. I am coming awake. But I will awaken slowly, keeping at bay the anxieties that will make me rush through my bathroom routine and skip breakfast. As long as I can, I will stay here.

Return of the King and Queen

I have been sculpted to fit into your divine features perfectly. The heartbreak, the loss, the grief, I have been broken down, smoothed over with salt water and rebuilt.

Long lost loves arrive late, usually just ahead of the storm.

The wind is playing the role of foil in 2010, saying it's all been done before, it's all been sung before, we're all walking in footsteps.

That's how ages turn, you know. Announcements of peace are followed by war. Announcements of perpetual war are followed by peace. We've been on this earth for 200,000 years, the last 5,000 civilized, no matter which definition of "civilized" you use.

The great hawk is watching over you every day now. It is all very close, sweets.

The blueprints of our meeting were drafted a million years ago. Herod's armies did not find Jesus, and they most assuredly will not touch you. You are more important than you could possibly know.


Soon the wind within will sound of funnel clouds touching down and giant waves rising. Look for me when your sky goes darkest.

I will return to you then, at the turn of our tide.

The Lights Are Dim

The gracious and talented thinkingtoohard is guest-posting here today, as part of the 2010 wordcount blogathon's 'swap day,' or something like that. She's running a lovely series of posts called blessings, in which she finds the good in life during a time of personal turmoil. I'm at thinkingtoohard's website today, but you won't find a better written or more moving piece anywhere on the internet than what's below.

By Thinkingtoohard

"You want light? the purest of joys? A universal healing? Get a dog."
--thinkingtoohard


She is my gray ghost, a shell of the strength and fearlessness she was once renown for here. Her face is heavily salted, except for the jet black eyes that stare off to places I cannot see.

We play fetch with an over-sized stick on a rare warm autumn day. She suddenly abandons the game in favor of a long-neglected marrow bone, covered in damp earth.

She can keep it.

Whatever harmful unseens may be growing inside that bone can do no more damage than the nameless illness her body has taken on.

Her once rich black and red coat, long ago faded, is now stretched over what little remains of her fiber and muscle. Her teeth, nubs in aged black gums, gnaw the bone with intensity. She smells of death.

Today, she is young, lying in the warmth of the sun's rays on a sparse carpet of maple leaves.

We are a pair. She with her bone and gray face, dainty paws firmly holding her find. Me, in my familiar sweatpants, hair unkempt, with red and swollen eyes.

The camera catches her among the foliage on what remains of the green lawn. She will not look at me.

I sit in awe, absorbing every feature of this 50-pound creature who taught me so much about life. But I cannot bear her lessons on death-- not yet.

Each day begins with her insistence that the time is near. She cannot eat without a stoic endurance that fails me. Her rear footing is tenuous. There is nothing that can be done, except to wait.

And she is patient.

Often now, I think about the past. When she taught herself how to open the refrigerator while I was at work. The day she helped eat my very expensive couch. That incredible obedience trial victory. I sobbed with pride on that sunny morning so long ago.

And too soon, those tears will run fresh. That vacant look I catch in her eye will be in mine. I will rock in my chair and look out the window at the legacy of paws and muzzles she left behind.

Washington Irving has a famous quote that appeals to me today:

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and unspeakable love."

Some things you know about yourself without question: A fitting tribute such as this will fail me in the next few days, when my beautiful girl finally forces me to say goodbye. I share them with you now, while she sleeps nearby, content with her new found bone and my presence.

Author's note: My girl died on a cold December afternoon, two months after this missive was written. It was just her time. I held her tight while the vet helped her along. This was not a dog. She was protector, teacher, counselor, co-pilot, mentor, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, girlfriend and -- without question -- the best friend I will ever have. She stole my heart at age 24, helped me raise two boys, and left me much, much too soon.


Her ashes are on my desk. A piece of her soul is stitched inside my chest.