in the shallow of “halfway” – an untitled poem by Khalil Gibran


“Or do you need more?”


Do not love half lovers
Do not entertain half friends
Do not indulge in works of the half talented
Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death


If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
Do not silence yourself to say something
And do not speak to be silent


If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance


Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes


Half a drink will not quench your thirst
Half a meal will not satiate your hunger
Half the way will get you nowhere
Half an idea will bear you no results


Your other half is not the one you love
It is you in another time, yet in the same space
It is you when you are not


Half a life is a life you didn’t live,
A word you have not said
A smile you postponed
A love you have not had
A friendship you did not know
To reach and not arrive
Work and not work
Attend only to be absent
What makes you a stranger to them closest to you,
and they strangers to you


The half is a mere moment of inability,
but you are able for you are not half a being.
You are a whole that exists to live a life,
not half a life.

– Khalil Gibran

memo to a particular poet

i am going to bed, now
at 7:08
to lessen the ache
of being awake

this is a poem
this is the business
of us artists
this is “business correspondence”

inform a collaborator
a coworker – if you will
of your passwords and processes
before taking those pills

my corazón has nearly bled-out
migrating across my torso, my limbs,
and my crown
settling into my cornflower eyes
bloodshot with or without drops and disguise

the weight of this goddamned red muscle
i’m so fucking heavy-hearted
this cursed organ’s still goin’
my sweetest, singular escape, now aborted

the only thing i can do right, right now
is to sleep
the only thing i can do wrong, right now
is to think

(who should i send this memo to?
– no one, if not, to you)

someone

i feel like someone
you last loved on a wednesday,
earlier this week

i feel like someone who was once your intense singular joy/ now again, an invisible naturalist, poet, neologist and crone

i feel like someone you forgot to mention the Hilma Af Klint show to

i feel like someone losing our intimacy
exponentially, by the second, against a shot clock in an un-United Center

i feel like someone whose forehead you won’t kiss; whose hollows you’ll never touch with hands or tip; like someone who’ll never climax again

i feel like someone who upset you with
Dreaming and that’s where it ended; who never listened to your diatribe about Waco, or heard of your plane rituals and four-part fruition

i feel like someone whose mystery you’ll let be; whose content is consumed without gnosis; like cold leftovers

i don’t feel like someone who you will walk across a frozen Lake or dry Lake bed to get to anymore in the apocalypse, station eleven style

i feel like someone who was found because of fresh words about rosy-golden light and then who was lost because of stale words about time

i feel like someone whose Diego died before she did and who missed meeting her Henry Miller, humbly

i feel like someone who swallowed all the art she’ll never create with you and she’s choking on it

i feel like someone who’s just about to close up the library – MH

i feel like someone who you owe nothing to because that’s exactly how you told me to feel

i feel like someone waking from a months-long dream, but it was actually a coma from a head-on collision, exposition

crash into me again, please

this time, let me die knowing i’m your sweet,
i’m your love


ps i feel like someone who just wrote the last poem you’ll ever read about you
but i don’t feel like someone who just wrote her last poem about you

Cardinal

ones

who stick

that stick

directions

virtues

numbers

sins

rules

& the hypocrites

whose pretentious cloaks

inspired the red birds’ name

cardinals are the ones

who won’t waiver

the birds who

stay

and stay

and stay

and show you

red in the green trees

red in the white snow

red in the gray rain

red in the yellow light

when

the rest

in the Great Lakes,

the Middle West

have moved on

after using/plundering

land, hearts, bodies, souls

for their

migration

they stay on

humbly

undemanding

count the red birds

count on them

they stay

She was not a Grandmother

She was nearing 70 years, she said

She grew up poor, elsewhere, she said

And moved to a city

near the Great Lakes

She had small talk

to match her limited, incurious mind

She had a wide, open mouth with sharp teeth

her ears closed

except to gossip

her eyes closed

except to covet

her venomous and biting speech

poisons hearts

by choice, deaf to injustice

[except what injures her]

and, also to justice

by choice, blind to truth,

and also to untruths

by choice, she had no grace

no humility

no gratitude

she spoke of how to terminate life

before sharing how life comes to be

hardened to the point of petrification

in less than seven decades, a fossil,

she was not a saintly relic-in-situ

she was not a Grandmother

although her daughters may’ve had daughters

and her unborn sons may’ve fathered sons

she spoiled the sand on a silver beach with her rusted barbs

she defiled the clear lake with her incontinence

the discontent of the chronically thirsty emanated from her rank breath

she despoiled humanity merely by her continued existence

she was not a Grandmother, nor a Crone

but,

She will die

she will, she will, she will

and she will become a gull

devouring and scavenging on barren beach

in the next life



With a tail as big as a kite. With a tail as big as a kite.

She strained her eyes
what is that dark lump
in the road
traveling into my throat




Out she went
sighting the black beauty
from fifty paces
nearer, the bright blood
pooling beneath ki’s face

Did he even try to brake
or swerve?
“no”, the tracks and trees say

Maybe the driver didn’t see
the pitch black, moving body
against the snowy white, otherwise red dirt road?

Maybe ki darted out,
in front of the royal blue truck
a truck fit for a rural king
[doubt of the beneficent on Christmas]

machines
everywhere
machines

carssawsgunsplowsshipsplanesmillstractorsthrowersdozerstruckscombines
boatsturbinesrigsdredgerstrainsbargesroadsrailharborspipeshousesbridges
wellshighwayssewersstructuresquarriesreactorspowerlinesstreetslotsculde
sacsfencessatelliteslockscelltowerssignsculvertswallsdockslandfillsdams

she gently pincers the end of ki’s gorgeous black tail
gingerly pulling kin off the road
redundantly committing ki’s spirit
to the universe, aloud
with apologies for humankind, silently

purposefully committing kin’s body
to a safer spot
for mourning
and carrion feast

Ki’s body was unexpectedly heavy
full of walnuts and seeds
fat and strong for a long winter ahead
so alive just minutes ago, I saw out the window

I’m sorry
I’m sorry
for me
for my kind
for our machines
for our structures
for our carelessness
for our selfishness
for all this,
engineered, manufactured, destroyed

the falling snow christens quick

she wanted to go inside
and sob
selfishly,
because the possibility
of an aberrantly painless holyday
ceased with the dead black squirrel

she wanted to go inside
to tell someone
but the only one
was a woman, one profoundly unwise
and living individually in the moment
dis-understanding
in the least way
every single day

she wanted to go inside
and forget
but death was also present there
old, not fresh, also unnatural
the not-a-Grandmother at the stove

the stench of a potful of bones, flesh and fat
boiling on the stove
a pig or two’s rib cage
in her favorite cauldron
the one she’d kept for vegetables only

she stays silent
swallows her heart and disappears

caw, caw,
caw-caw

the crows have shown up
for a still-warm, Christmas Eve dinner

20171224_132455

Crown

my hair holds memory,
i know this because

i cut my own hair today




20151002_1838021772227513.jpg
her, at ten.




as i held the ends

in my hands

i said

 

did you touch the Merced with me and my boy?

i said,

do you remember my father?

and my other precious loss?

i said,

do you remember the first dog?

i said,

were you here when

i still loved

and was loved?

i said,

you were there when my mother was so near death’s door

i said,

and when i found and lost,

and lost and found, my Self again?

smiles
sighs
cries
laughs
rage
wail
and
song

i still have possessions from all those times

and places

but no skin,

my skin long shed, my bone resorbed

and renewed over and over

but my long hair is still me from many years ago

that is why hair is so precious,

i thought,

this is the genesis

of what i have always

mistook as phobia

but no,

i know today

that

physical memory is held particularly, and only, in my hair

more than Samsonian

or vanity

or femininity

my long hair

is

my body
my health
my energy
my sensation
my emotion
my years
my identity
my essence

thank you

for growing

for remembering

for showing

for staying

for flowing

for tangling

for blowing

for graying

for glowing

for floating

for knowing

with me

all these years

 

no more cuts
without ceremony

and
i promise
i will never agree to lose you

mason

the art

I’m conjuring

creating

constructing

may

hurt

you
but

it is

not[hing]

for

about

[to] [do] with

you

 
where I am
you cannot be

where I stand
there is no room

where I go
you cannot come

what I know
you cannot know

the space in me you long ago preempted
to over-fill with you

and later

cut,
carved
and
hollowed out

I’ve begun filling and patching with

my Self

by myself

and my mortar is nearly set

Open

I walk bare

out in the open

on borrowed land|stolen

to be returned to the people, to all be-ings, to them

with my bones or ash interred, one day

the Sun, Moon, Rain, Wind, Clouds, Sky and Stars
kiss me at all hours

did you see me open up
this Autumn?

after a Summer spent crying,
wet, yet fruitless

spent Spring wading into lies instead of soft blossoms and new grass
Winter approaches, maybe the frost will kill this disease,
for good

For now, I bathe

nearly naked in sunshine, cold rainstorms, wetland pools and moonlight

unapologetically

|out in the open|

unabashedly

baptising
my face,
hair,
and eyes,
my breasts
vulva
and legs,
my lips,
throat,
spine,
and my wild heart

ceremonially, first
with wine, like Magdalene, anointing and anointed,
in the name of the mother, Sun and holy ghosts
|cabernet henna|
then, with rainwater from the willow’s edge, like Ophelia,
lying in the woodland and meadow, flooded
to cleanse or drown [to be, or not to be]
in the name of the Moon

|I ponder the stone cistern laden with glacial deposits and ruminant bones|

the woodland is abundant with new mushroom, new overnight growth

[puhpowee]

the hint of ancient circles supplants my judgment with instinct
and overrides decorum with new delights
| and old delights, revisited |

an aged grapevine is rooted deep, climbing, trailing, snaking
hidden in plain sight, everywhere
and I’ve intuited It as Ol’ Scratch,
I take a hatchet to quell Its influence, here

You,
Your windows are not true eyes
Your lamps are not enlightenment

So, bless the dark

of the night

of the country night sky

And the Moonset

of my moon

it’s been decades,
but
this place wants to birth or impregnate me,

and I want that too
i want it to

|I come here and open up|

 

 

Violets: a true loss story

The violets that remind you of your dear
great grandmother’s dining room
on Oakdale Avenue
African violets in purple, lilac, lavender, and pink on a plant stand near a dark window by the olive green telephone on the wall

The Violets that remind you of your first, truest love’s breath
Lavender-perfumed chalky candy squares
Choward’s Mints in dark purple foil sleeves
from the corner store

/

But you were not one of their truest loves

//

the once-loving matriarch forgot you when the child stolen from El Salvador arrived/
a baby smuggled across nations
yet, this was not a rescue mission for an orphan, no, this boy had a living mami / instead, it was a long distance shopping trip for a wom[b][an] whose insides were spoiled by lust and greed
For one who coveted, but then drowned in the role of motherhood
yet she still swam deep in men,
floated in luxurious possessions; everything, everyone, an acquisition to her

The woman unbecame your Grammaw and became the boy’s “Mimi” – solely and wholly his / She once accused you of lifting $20 from her purse when you ran away from home and snuck into her house to rest and pee / She accused you of this – of theft
even after her own daughter poached a child from a sovereign state, kited checks, pawned stolen jewelry and defrauded the housing authority / Mimi was silent, or complicit, in all those crimes

I never stole a coin or a child – or a permanent part of anyone’s heart

in 1999,
you still went to her home, anointed her hands and face with oil and tenderness,
preparing her living body for the
grave,
while telling her you loved her so much, truthfully.
You went because you knew
Instinctively
that she was dying – alone – in her own house with the boy and his imitation of a mother, her imitation of a daughter

Her violets were wilting fast – no one had to tell you they were thirsty and unpruned from the neglect of her intentionally chosen beloveds and heirs who owned her home and her heart / she foresaw her own ghostly humiliation before the mortician’s eyes

She died the very next day

///

The Violets that remind you of Him,
your first love,
of his breath and kisses in a dark gangway or anywhere hidden
that sweet ingredient imbued in the deep amalgam of his scent
a pheromonic candy –

yet those same Violets remind Him only
of his first, unrequited, true love
he, pining for a brown-eyed, olive-skinned , spaniard, brunette girl
who virginally metamorphised into a pregnant, 16 year-old sacred cow
She only loved boys with slicked-back, jet black hair, the ones who wore silky shirts and baggies
Her heart [and legs] open
only for boys with names like Erasmo, Jorgey, Hector

She made Him godfather to the baby boy instead of the father or stepfather
He wanted to be,
despite his bended knee, promises,
and all the begging, lusting, cuckolding, and undying loving/

silly rabbit.

Even now, He still scours gas stations and neighborhood liquor stores for the rare Violets to send to Her by mail, innocently asking the ‘substitute her’ for postage, a box, and “oh, some packing tape?”

The first Her is slick, broke(n) and old / but She is still the most beautiful of face, skin, voice and heart – to Him / He keeps ancient yarn ribbons from Her hair in a little boy’s treasure box in their now-broken-trust home / He, a pseudo-Nicholas Sparks romantic for Her / but He forgot the poem you wrote for Him just last year, on his birthday: Agape

She sends Him photos of Her vanity days and yesteryear Glamour Shots™️, gun poses and grandkids / While He sends Her photos of our adventures and of the one, truly Golden Boy – my boy – by text message all instantly viewed on the Gulf Coast/

All of this betrayal to garner Her sunnied emoji smiles and shallow sentiments xoxoxo 🙂 ❤️❤️❤️

While the ‘substitute her’ bared her real teeth and wore conflicted emotions on her face in the photos – and in the very moment they were living in/

Now, she just looks and laughs
at the the pathetic, silly rabbit – holding his smartphone – googling cures for baldness, grey beards and stamina before Her June visit

////

To the one dead and to the one living :
Violets remind me of you

/////

(Pray that ash takes its place, soon
Or that I relocate in space, soon)

le claire [street]

13494763_1388298674519307_2718166600849131189_n

 

A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night

Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
An old-timer’s disease

A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life

a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe, no one

A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree

A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called

On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t get loose in the dark, don’t get skunked in the dark

Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth

The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep

Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn

She and that dog
Always urban foragers and gleaners in June
All month long, her fingertips, heels and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, didn’t think to check his paws

A clear, melancholy recollection
This day, that day was also her son’s birthday
The first birthday he spent away from home, Nebraska, or Alaska, I think
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy

Something Gold Can Stay, Mr. Frost. (Respectfully)

image

Something Gold Can Stay

True, nothing gold can stay,

If nature has her way.

Yes, Eden sank to grief,

And Ego is our thief.

Pure gold’s not beheld or crowned 

‘Tis within true aurum’s found.

By Gnostics’ purest measure

Self knowledge, our sole treasure.

October 2013 

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

“Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leafs a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.”

 – Robert Frost 

The Yale Review (October 1923)

Ideas Worth Censoring: TED’s War on Consciousness | Best-selling author Graham Hancock’s TEDx presentation censored by TED

image credit: consciouslifenews.com

This may be your last chance to “legitimately” view Graham Hancock’s brilliant and compelling TEDx Talk – “The War on Consciousness” – since TED has now removed the talk from its TEDx YouTube channel and will likely very soon remove it altogether from the TED website. Ironically, TED’s censorship and eventual removal of the video supports Hancock’s assertion that there is a war on consciousness – being waged on many fronts, but currently being waged by material-reductionist scientists, who may sit on TED’s anonymous science board along with Richard Dawkins’s atheist intellegentsia crew, who repeatedly assert that consciousness (or essence, or spirit) is non-existent outside of the neurons synapsing in our brains nestled in our craniums housed in our homeostatic bodies. The biology of “consciousness” is now being explored at the quantum level so that it can be once and for all, explained away — nevermind that the quantum world is even more phantom, elusive and foreign to most of us than consciousness is, because at least, we all directly experience our own sovereign consciousness — whereas we are expected to put our “faith” in the scientists who inform us that the Higgs Boson (aka the “God Particle”) exists because it’s been “detected” in their data.

TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, noted that they’ve removed less than a dozen of more than 20,000+ TEDx Talks – so why this one?

:::

Anything that can’t be observed by neuro-imaging, dissected in autopsy, analyzed in a lab, or reduced from the data in particle acceleration and collision experiments has no value whatsoever to applied scientists — and theoretical scientists don’t have a great breadth of scope or differentiation in their respective disciplines. Scientists label any pursuit of understanding or exploring consciousness outside of their institutions as “pseudoscience” to diminish it — even though it’s not being claimed as science, but rather beyond science (aha!).  And don’t even think about mentioning psilocybin mushrooms or other ethnobotanicals like  Ayahuasca as possible cosmic or metaphysical gateways — or dare speak of out-of-body or near-death experience (OBE, NDE) as alternate reality unrelated to chemical or biological malfunction.

Those stuck in the scientific box would do well to hoist themselves onto each other’s shoulders at least once — until one is finally boosted up high enough to peer over the edge of the box and take that first look outside of it. Science and academia can exhibit extreme dogmatism when presented with alternative theories outside of their biological, chemical, physical and quantum packaging. Perhaps one will eventually climb outside, wander around the box or even stray away from it — then, maybe the others will become so curious as to form a continuous human chain until the last one stuck inside the box is willingly pulled out of it — again there’s some irony, because this is precisely what science thinks it’s doing for the religious creationist, intelligent design or non-evolutionist thinker – “rescuing” them out of the dark box of ignorance by extending their own dogmatic rosary made of data links.

image credit: ideacouture.com

You know, those scientists, they can always crawl back into their box if they don’t like it out here in open, unlimited space; their box will still be there – as geometrically limited as when they left it — and most likely bearing the name of a wealthy donor.

 

http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hancocks-talk/

and, so you can find the presentation once TED removes it:

 

Antiquophile

Antiquophile: An ancient bacterial organism which thrives in extreme physical or geochemical conditions (from Latin antiquus meaning “ancient” and Greek philiā meaning “love”); alternatively, archaiophile (from the Greek αρχαίος (archaíos), meaning ancient, and Greek: φίλια (philia), love).

Usage:  Russian scientists have discovered an unidentified antiquophile while sampling waters via ice core drilling in a previously unexplored, ancient sub-glacial lake – Lake Vostok – in Antarctica.

image

Alternative usage:  On the first weekend of the month, I am chomping at the bit to go antiquing at the Kane County Flea Market – I’m a total antiquophile!  (see what I did there – photo below)

image

 

Further reading:

Row, row, row your boat everly down life’s stream;

Wearily, warily, wearily, warily in the demon’s dream.

 A brief summary of Gnosticism

“This world is just a dream of a Demon

Inscription from one of [the] Bogomil tombstones.


dahliafyodorovna
:

“Ovaj svjet je samo san Demona”

Natpis sa jednog od bogumilskih stećaka.

“This world is just a dream of a Demon

Inscription from one of Bogomil tombstones.

 

Christopher J. McCandless (February 12, 1968  –  August 1992)

“Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. So now, after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. No longer to be poisoned by civilization, he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. Alexander Supertramp. May 1992.”

“For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment, and to call each thing by its right name ….”

– Boris Pasternak 

American Amnesialism: When Americans, and especially Democrats, forget the enduring collateral damage caused by the policies of their 42nd president, William Jefferson Clinton, because he’s so darn charming and “folksy” when he speaks.

The Accidental Seeker & Intentional Opiner

beach obe

I open my eyes and ochre water’s all around

I’m underneath, but I’m not scared, I still see golden sunlight too

I see your legs; you’ve let me go

and I think I’m down here all alone

I hear voices, but I can’t breathe

So I leave, I’m off to explore

But wait! there’s me – that’s my face?

Can’t you see, that somehow now, there’s two of me?

then

you finally see the first me

you slowly raise her up

She coughs and breathes;

and the other me just goes and floats away

But, which one am I; now, I’m not sure

Am I real, or was it she?