Disappointing Eyes

Last night I had nightmares all night long about my sister and my brother...the last 2 vestiges of faith in me. They were so angry at me. They are so angry with me. Because they are completely exhausted by me...exhausted and exasperated by me.

I dreamt of my brother's imposing figure towering over me as his razor sharp eyes stabbed me over and over while his biting tongue lashed me mercilessly telling me how disgusting I am and what a waste of a person I am. His eyes speak of utter complete disdain, disgust and disappointment toward me.

THen there was my sister whose disappointment in itself is enough to send me to my grave...a watery grave of tears. Her weapon is much more subtler than my brother's. Her weapon is to tell me how selffish and self centered I am and how I suck the life out of everyone and how she would do anything for me and that I take everything and anyone for granted...that she tries so hard to help me and understand me but she just can't understand why I act or react the ways I do. Her eyes are filled with confusion and torment about me...and disappointment.

Then of course there is Dan whose eyes are so filled with betrayal and hurt and responsibility. How can I ever look into those eyes again without feeling so horribly disappointed with myself?

I haven't seen my mother or father since everything unraveled...I haven't seen any of my friends...or those that used to claim to be my friends...and I am afraid to see what lurks in their eyes...probably some combination of sympathy and disappointment for my pathetic state of insanity.

I used to be someone that people saw beauty and perfection in...the creatively caring mother, the exuberant loving wife, the fabulous, fun-time girlfriend who also had an empathetic ear...

Now I am just a totally pathetic, hurtful disappointment.

The Tree in the Smoking Courtyard

I found this today in the notebook that I kept at the hospital.

The tree in the smoking courtyard is a very large tree with a very large and very thick trunk.

It stands - the lone tree - in the center of the yard.

The tree is stuck in hard, dry, dusty dirt where it clings desperatly to the barren foundation. It is clearly lacking substantive nutrition as it appears sickley and weak. It has barely any bark and stands nearly skinless. It is protected from the elements by only a scaley, pale, greenish-grey moss that covers it from trunk to limb like a psoriasis of the most terrible kind. Beneath all that crustiness it is a pale unhealthy shade of yellow.

The tree has many thick, loopey, U-shaped branches that rise up toward the sky. Most of them are broken...snapped off...midflight...ironicaly similar to the people that sit around it. Dozens of these U-shaped branches shoot out from the top of the tree's trunk. They conjure up images of corpses dangling calmly from knooses. It is a peaceful thought, albeit morbid, to think of being released from pain and anguish with a leap of faith and a quick snap. It is liberating to sit in this "prison" courtyard and imagine swaying with the breeze in this tantric dance with the breeze. It is a twisted lullaby mocking those in view with silent lyrical tauntings. It is a quiet game played with the smoke filled air.

The tree stands rigid in it's spot despite the gusting wind and pounding rain...despite the lack of sunlight and oppressive shade. This tree, seemingly at the end of the line keeps growing... struggling...to sprout new branches. It fights to stretch up past the shadows and into the clarity of the open sky above. It works toward the day when someone might view it's U-shaped loopey branches in a more optimistic way...perhaps as a fun place to climb or a nice place to a swing from seat.

The tree in the smoking courtyard continues to struggle silently toward the sunshine...immobilized by form but not defeated.

Don't Try...Please

Don't try to change me...please just accept me.
Don't try to understand me...please just be with me.
Don't try to guide me....please just stay beside me.
Don't try to own me...please just hold me.
Don't try to control me...please just let me be.
Don't try to make me happy...please just be happy.
Don't try to give me what I want...please just give me your love... unconditionally, whole-ly, freely.

Don't expect anything from me...cuz I'll only let you down.

Ignorance as Bliss

I am perched at the pinnacle of change. But there's a big big drop on every side and the valley is too wide to see what's at the top of the next steep climb.


I wish I was a bird so I could fly fly away. I would soar above the peaks and see exactly where all the pathways lead. Hindsight and foresight would be 20/20...or whatever number a birds-eye vision is. If I were a bird I could choose where I wanted to land knowing what was behind me and also what lay ahead.


I wish I was a barnacle stuck to the side of a seaside rock. I could predict the rhythm of every day with as much accuracy as the changing of the moon...I could be exactly as I am and if anyone stepped on me they woud just get cut by their own fault.


I wish I was a mirror so when people looked at me they would catch a glimpse of themselves with all the faults of their own humanity. And if they couldn't stand it and broke me to pieces then they would cut themselves on themselves.


I wish I was a whisper of a gentle breeze floating across the Caribbean landscape in an exotic resort. Then I could lull lovers closer together and whoosh the real world further away.


I wish I was ignorant to all my flaws and to all the people around me. Then I could just be peaceful with ignorance as bliss.

I had a dream about Rich last night. I found myself outside a quaint country church. It was white with some red brick and a lovelyt white steeple. It was on a hilltop with a green grassy lawn leading up to it and there was a tree set slightly to the side of the lawn, to the right if you are facing the church. I think it was like an oak tree orsomething but somehow it seemed more willowy. I think in the dream you were getting married to Irene. I saw her in the dream...or some representation of her, a blond woman, older with a thick Russian accent. I remember feeling an urgency to stop this wedding...and I entered the church despite the fact that someone...I don't know who...it actually felt like more than one person...was tryig to convince me not to go inside. The church was dark with dim lighting...candles? small lights? idk. So anyways...I sat down in a seat...but the seats were not pews like in a church they were more like those in an auditorium like at a large university. And the aisles were tight so I climbed over the back of the last row of the front section to sit in the second to the last row of that front section...it was probably like 10 rows from the front which was like a stage in an auditorium with a podium. I watched quietly, helplessly as you got married and then I discovered, after the ceremony, upon talking to your bride, that you and Irene had a child together, a small toddler boy and another one on the way...and I saw you watching me talking to her...and I could see the pain and explaination in your eyes of why you married her, even though you didn't really want to. Obligation and responsibilty. So this little boy...so cute, in a tiny tuxedo with dark brown hair neatly combed to the side, framing his cherublike face, was going to where the kids go during mass...downstairs to the basement area...and so I followed him. And there I saw my own little boys busily happily painting some sort of ceramic project. I wanted to paint to...because it's something I love to do...mix colors, feel the smotth creamy texture of the paint gliding across material...and the satisfaction of the end result. So I lined up with th kids...and there were all these trays to put paint in...and dozens of bottles of colorful paints - acrylic in squirt bottles...but the trays were all shaped like objects, like houses and stuff...except my tray was plain, it had 4 little compartments to put paint in...and I was gonna squirt some in a tray for myself but the teacher wanted to do it for me so I let her but she was chossing such aweful color combinations...and messily combining them so the colors got muddled. I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I took the tray but I just couldn't stand to work with those so I tossed the palette and snuck over to make myself a palletable pallette. I could see now that everyone else was finishing up and I had not even begun yet so I hurried to get my paints and kept squirting too much out of the bottle and couldn't find the colors I wanted. And the teacher was trying to get everyone and everything cleaned up and all the kids kept coming up to me to show me what they did and some of the things were terrible and some were ok but none were great because after all they were just little kids but nonetheless I oohed and awed and found something wonderful to tell all the kids...but still I didn't have a chance to get to my own thing. I don't know what happened after this...maybe I woke up or switched to another dream.
Then I had this other dream about horses...I was driving home...to my parents home in Tewksbury...and I saw a horse...a beautiful horse with properly trimmed main, reddish gold colored. Somehow I knew she was a mare. I drove home quickly and grabbed a halter and lead to go catch her before she got hurt in traffic. THe onyl halter and lead I could find were very heavy but I didn't have time to waste looking for a better set. SO I ran up the street lugging it along and spotted the mare across the busy street. She was scared and not thinking well. She saw me and was trying to come to me. BUt the was puttin gherself in danger in the process so I started to try to cross the busy street to get to her. Somehow she managed to get to my side of the street. But she was so freaked out she couldn't stay still long enough for me to slip the halter on...and she took off again, on flight, fleeing from some perceived danger...but she regained her head momentarily and came back to me and I managed this time to get the halter on and lead her back to the barn...but not calmly...she was very nervous and skittish but I remained calm and I knew she trusted me. When I got back to the barn I tucked her safely in a stall at the back of the barn. When I came out of the barn and looked around I saw all these mamed horses...they were all wearing their winter blankets, dingy, brown, dirty and tattered. They were tied to the outside of the fence of a pastuer. IT was growing dark and it was very windy and damp and cold....and the horses were all unhappy and pacing or resisting the tie. There was one horse in particular that had no back legs. All the horses had something terribly wrong with them. But this one I rememeber most vividly. He was trying to break free. And I was astonished that he could somehow stand/walk/move on just 2 front legs...very awkwardly but nonetheless functioning in some capacity. I felt so sad for this beautiful marelous creature and thought how cruel...why do they make him live like that? Why didn't they put the poor guy down?

Pinball

Lurking in the shadows
glowing mysteriously
blinking
beckoning
flashing
flirting
calling out my name



The pinball machine kaching


comforts me
shape has seen no change
rules remain the same
and I know how to play this game


kaching kaching
in go my quarters
out comes the ball


silver and small
hard and round
built for distance and speed


pull the trigger
let it pop
adrenaline
anticipation
greed


blink
flash
ping 
ding


the ball flies into the field
I flip the flippers and whack the ball
trying to control it's destiny
every time I whack that ball it bounces into something else
and bounces into something else
only to bounce into something else
or speed curiously around a metal curve
or down a glistening rail


where is it going
what is it doing
the chaos is driving me


flapping and flipping
and banging and bucking
the sinister sneaky thing


I've lost control
the ball got away
it's rolling
exhausted
frenzied
dismayed
down the main drag
toward the exit


hoping
praying
desperately praying
to not get hit again
to end he cruelty
and not be forced to play again

Eventually the ball gets swallowed whole into a gaping hole.



So, do you ever really win this game? 


Never. 


Noone ever wins this game and you are all fools for playing.

Mystery Dan

Last night I was lying on top of my sister's bed...staring up at the ceiling...feeling very small and lonely...I found myself missing Dan...very much. I found myself wishing I had his warm body to snuggle up against and his strong arms around me to let me know I wasn't alone and I was safe. I didn't think about his beer belly...or his loud snore. I missed his smell, warmth and comforting presence...and I missed his voice, masculine and boyish in the same breath. It suddenly occurred to me that I have this feelig of "missing Dan" all the time...and I have been trying desperatly to escape it because it hurts so much that he can be so close to me and yet so far away...and then somehow I remembered that before he was a cool, hardened perfect husband and father, he was a mystery that I wanted to uncover. He was this big, beefy, happy, friendly guy that was trying to hide his fragility...and it was his fragility and the mystery of that delicate soul that intrigued me.

I do love him...and I want to know him but I think after 20 years of trying to uncover him I have grown weary and decided that perhaps there is nothing to discover...but I think I am wrong. I think he is still a mystery to me...and to himself.

Rapunzel

WHO AM I?

In no particular order:

mother
daughter
sister
wife

lover
artist
musician
poet

scholar
puzzle solver

appreciator of beautiful things

lover of animals
rider of horses
keeper of two gorgeous dogs

culinary master
fabulous entertainer
writer of insight to pain

naive optimist
romantice pessimist
jogger to run from the strain

life of the party
daily napper
trying to hold off insane

very fast driver
very meak eater
doesn't eat breakfast or lunch

lightening fast fingers play dizzying runs and
pound chords with a powerful punch

long legs, athletic and lean
luscious lips, Colgate smile
but stomach could use a tuck

tight butt
cute little eyes
long thick and silky mane

Head turner
Eye catcher
Charming and quirkily keen

Coordinated mover
Awesome dancer
Clumsy and hates to clean

Always looks great
Always knows what to say
Everyone wants to be near her

Often feels sad
Helpless and bad
Just wants someone to get her

Ultimate romantic
Really a skeptic
of truly eternal love

Constantly seeking
hoping and keeping
a vigile for substance and depth

Believes in mind over matter
destiny and fate
Where there's a powerful will there's a way

But stuck in a tower
protected from harm
She doesn't know how to get down

Lived in denial
Now seeing the trial
that lies up the road just ahead

Terrified
Petrified
Immobilized by comfort and name

I am Rapunzel
I let down my hair
But I know that not even a prince
can climb up this mane
and take me from here
and a little bit closer to there

So Rapunzel Rapunzel
Take up that hair
Stop crying and making a fuss
your smart and resourceful
good and kind
you can get yourself down from here

Symphonic Soliloquey

The orchestra plays with synergy
instruments fused in sound
zig zagging through space
following some mysterious time

entangling each body
and confusing every mind
a complex rhapsody is played
of the mixed up crazy kind

But if pay you attention
and listen very close
you might feel the isolated ring
of hammer hitting string

block out all the other sounds
a b c d e
major
minor
a dissonant one liner
my lonely piano pleas

don't listen to the harmony
or skip to the refrain
just feel me in this melody
of cadence chord and key

I'm playing all these endless notes
in proper rythmic time
Masking my confusion
all is not sublime

ebony and ivory voice words I cannot sing
It's the shouting of profanities
a constant throbbing sting

regrettfulness and pain
run desperatly through the scales
and anger hurt resentment
pound out a viscious tale

I'm playing out a simple tune
of single piano notes
It's a sad sad secret melody
it's my symphonic soliloquey

Response to Debbie's Text

My sister sent me a text today.

She said, "I LOVE YOU! Be strong. Find happiness from within not from outside. Figure out what would provide MEANING to you personally (besides your kids). It will not come from attention and approval of others. But rather will require deep soul searching."

Yes. She is wise. But...isn't that the big question everyone is trying to answer? What will make me happy? A big career? Big house house? A big car?...to be perfectly honest, I think what would make me happy is to find that special someone who fulfills me. I think she was trying to tell me to not need someone else to make me happy...but I think the truth of the matter is everyone needs someone to complete them because noone can be everything in themselves.

I seem to have everything. I have a sincere, loyal husband, 3 amazing children and 2 beautiful dogs. I have a nice house in a nice town in a nice neighborhood. I have a nice car and a cool job that I don't need and I can quit any time. I have tons of hobbies and interests with which I pursue with vigor, I have a house full of beautiful things and a closet full of stylishness, I have tons of amazing friends, several with whom I can really confide...I have siblings with whom I am practically connected at the hips and parents who live nearby...what I don't have is a special person in my life that interests, stimulates, challenges and motivates me. I don't have someone who makes me feel alive and for whom I do the same. I don't have someone who makes me feel complete. I feel hollow. I feel lonely and bored...almost all the time. I feel so empty.

I love my huband. He is a wonderful man...But is he the guy for me??

I don't know.







I thought love didnt matter. I thought there is no such thing as a person with whom one can connect with for the rest of their lives. I basically thought marriage was a living arrangement. I still dont know if that special lifelong connection with someone exists. But, now, what I have discovered that it is neccessary and important to be with someone that gives their lives emotional, intellectual and physical satisfaction...someone with whom there is a profound connection on many levels and with whom there is room for change and growth...as life is maleable and so is love.





It seems that without love, life, no matter how perfect it may appear on paper, is tasteless. I feel a lack of motivation, strength, patience...





I suppose in the end, noone can really tell how things will turn out...but I think if you start with the finest ingrediants the end result is more likely to be paletable...and something you'll want to ingest over and over and over again.

Fog

Like water,
she is obvious in every way
and the sustenance of every life.
She nourishes, heals and rejuvenates
(but she can also destroy)
She goes with the flow, moving effectively
to find a new path as obstacles arise.
She is difficult to control and always in a rush
to get where she doesn't know she's going.

He, on the other hand,
is invisible to the eye
yet obvious to the senses
as nothing can be without he.
There is nothing to hold
but you need his touch.
He is real and always present.
He is the simplest necessity for life.
He is like the air.

Every once in a while,
Water mixes with Air.
In these moments
Air becomes visible -
a mysterious fog moving about
define by the moisture
who snuck into his house...

There is comfort in this coolness,
as for the briefest of moments we hovor in this tranquil state - 
this peaceful, gloomy state - 
the density of our entanglement

Fog

But the fog is transitory.
It's a temporary veil
behind which reality is hazy
and the sun waits insistently on the other side,  
where the the horizon disappears 
and the present feels innocuously sticky
yet unbearably offensive...

The Salmon

A salmon swims upstream
struggling to make her way
past the rapid currents
that threaten to sweep her away

Her mind would reason loudly
with urgency and pain
Don't go there
just stay here
with familiarity and comfort near

Yet she could not mute that voice inside

insisting she take the plight

begging her to travel the extra mile

Despite the rationale of thinking
and the un-logicalness of feeling
she heads up the river backwards
forward into her life

So toward the river's basin
she fights a valient war
in a desperate attempt at happiness
she struggled very far

In the end her mind was right
her demise was at the end
but the very interesting thing is
her heart, it turns out was also right
she died in her own true skin

Drifing

I am drifting in a vast and seamless sea
lost and alone with just my thoughts and me

There is no wind
and barely a wave
but I am moving toward something -
something out there

Where the current is taking me
I dont know
and that's the disquieting part
You see,
If I could get me over there
I would...for sure, I would

But there is no wind in these hollow sails
to take me further from here
and closer to there

Loco

Yesterday evening I went down to the cellar to get a gallon of milk. I happened to spy something strange out of the corner of my eye. It was something floating around in the jug of water I keep down there to fill up the dogs' water dish. Through my peripheral vision it looked sorta like the nose of one of those moles with the weird looking noses that looks kinda like a flower. I tried to ignore it because we had company upstairs...but it was so strange I had to invstigate. Hmmm....are those feet?...fur...kinda puffy looking...what could it be??? is it a toy? what kinda toy?...those feet look so familiar...I stood there quizically...confused...studying this thing floating in the water...trying to decide what toy it was...and then it hit me like a ton of bricks...

OMG! Loco is DEAD!

Loco was our hampster. He was our second hampster to be specific. He was a little crazy (hence the name). He was a white and tan Russian long-haired hampster. We have had him for almost 2 years and in those 2 years he escaped from his cage at least a dozen times (our first hampster, Hammy, only escaped once).

In the past we always found Loco...usually in some strange place. For example, once on a freezing cold, winter day, I opened the exterior door to the playroom and there he was sitting outside the door. So I scooped him up, wrapped him in a face cloth and tucked him in his cage with some fresh food and warm water. Another time when I came home from work, I opened the refridgerator to get a snack (it was about 1am). I looked down and there he was...sitting by the bottom of the fridge. So I scooped him up and put him back in his cage with some fresh food and water. There have been a number of times when friends have spied him amidst the chaos of one of our friendly gatherings where children ranging in age from 2-10 are running amuck in our home and adults are socializing and getting drunk. There were the occassions when one of the boys would feel something wobbling across their bodies in the night and wake to find Loco snuggling up to them in the dark.

Well...Looks like curiosity finally got the hampster. Sorry it had to end that way Loco...But it seems like a rather appropriate ending to an adventerous life.

We love you Loco...see you on the flip side dude.

e

I thought it would make it better
and it does...
for a little while,
but in the end it only makes everything worse

I should quit it now
forget it somehow
and learn to live without

but the craving is so intense
I cant bare to face that
alone
a lone
al one
one
on e
e

just me

e

The Sea

I must escape to the sea again
The vast and wonder filled sea
where all I need is the open air
and a star to guide me to thee


Briney sea spray on my face
Salty wind, a cool embrace
Rocking, swaying, current playing
Yielding sweet release


Please
Stop this painful yearning
constant agitated burning
Meet me in the sea
I plee
where all we need is a tall ship and star to let us be

Lessons Learned

Pleasure turns to pain but a lesson's learned from the strain of the questions burned in my brain about whether love is humane in its touch .

These thoughts are like whirlpools created by the tears of deceit and my mind is possessed by the demons that have been the overseers of my enslavement to these lies. The seas of these lies rack me so. So deeply that they've cracked the very foundation of what we once shared.

You see, I had sealed the truth of us long ago and now it is threatening to gush out like a river from a broken damn with an improvised seal. The strength of its current is ripping the image of our future together from my thoughts as violently and as brutally as that of a child being taken from his mother's arms.
I am struggling to preserve what we created with the intensity of the heat of our intertwined bodies while struggling to pluck Eros' arrow from the vessel of my devotion.

But seperation is not as simple as the distance that has come between us.

I am left surrounded in darkness.

My loneliness is like the night air -
Invisible to the eye
Obvious to the touch.
It is cold uncomfortableness.

Yet, if I could do it all over again
Would I do it just the same,
despite the pain,
in this same skin I'm in.

I don't know.

But what now?

Do I lay down and let love lie?
Just stay down and let love die?

No
no
no not I...
I am gonna let love fly.
For even though I've seen it in it's darkest form
nothing else...no nothing else
can feel as warm or taste as sweet.

Lonely Pants Pocket Slumber

I am like a forgotten balloon neglected in the pocket of your pants.

I am sitting here out of sight...out of mind...lost, lonely and sad.
I am waiting...hoping...willing you to discover me.

The only thing that keeps me from utter despair is my silly optimism that at some unpredictable moment, the touch of your hand will reconstitute me and your mouth will blow life into me as your breath inflates my spirit.

Then, I will become the prized possession of one special boy.
I will be full and round and happy...
floating on the air you exhaled.

Alas.

I know.

Something will come along and persuade your attention away from me.
You will not tie that knot to keep me full and round.

So,deflated, flattend, and lifeless,
I will go back into the pocket of your pants.

As I am now...

waiting...

for your hand to reawaken me...
for your mouth to revive me...
and your breath to rejuvenate me
from this lonely pants pocket slumber.

Just us

If I was just me
and you were just you
might we be just us together?

Sweet Escape

A sweet escape from every day
a few stolen hours
I wish I could stay
released from security
relinquished from sanity
normal
unextraordinary
disappears
emerging now is this new place
a profusion of tantalizing things
Inhale - breath deep
this is serenity
Exhale - blow hard
that is vitality
see
touch
taste
hear
but don't think
no think