Poetic Bits from a Lesbian Soul
I have no aspirations of normalcy. That ship never sailed into my life, and so had never to sail out. (: I shall instead revel in who I am–rare, loved and designed by God, and apparently necessary, because She designed me for Her purposes and does not dabble in the superfluous. Convinced of this, I will embrace Her handiwork and seek to make My difference make A difference.
ee (not cummings)
In the secret garden of my heart I am growing. . . light. I intend to distribute it wherever I may, so that others may cultivate their own gardens of luminosity, and the light in us will scatter the darkness wherever we go. . . joyfully we shall rage against the night. . . and we shall prevail!! I am a warrior of light! I was born to rise and to shine light into the darkness. And I will feed the mouths I was born to feed.
Light glows under sod. . .
My flowers gleam like the stars
Luminous garden. [This poem was published in Three Line Poetry, Issue #50]
According to Garrison Keillor bad things never happen to writers. Everything is material. Man I have some good stuff stored up. Ever re-learning, joy does not come from the state of your circumstances, but the state of your mind.
I am still learning this and it is exciting: Paradise is inside me, not outside me. I can walk in paradise now if I establish that paradise inside me, in my mind and in the spiritual realm, not in my circumstances. But if I don’t cultivate a paradise inside me, it doesn’t matter how rich or how beautiful my circumstances are around me—I can still manage to be miserable, in my paradise on earth by thinking my happiness is something that ‘happens’ to me—something caused by the world outside me. I am the only person in the universe who can decide what I focus on! Even God doesn’t force me to focus on something I don’t want to!! I AM THE CAUSE. My LIFE IS THE EFFECT.
When I choose to focus on the light and not on the darkness, I’ve made my life a kind of paradise from the inside out. There is ALWAYS something beautiful around me, even in the darkest and most agonizing situations. Even when I was watching my sweet Diane die, there was always something beautiful inside of us and even around us. And we focused on it. My eyes are the vehicle of light for my whole internal world. . . as Christ said, if my eyes are full of light, my whole body will be full of light! Before I can walk in the light, I have to Find it and Focus on it. She who has eyes to see. . . let her see.
I am full of light, full of love, full of joy and full of God! The light in me scatters the darkness wherever I go.
In my quest for being the joyful master of my own mind, I am thinking about the metaphor of taking every thought captive, but instead of a violent image of war, I am envisioning taking a child who is wildly upset into a loving and firm, restraining embrace and holding her until her inner state is transformed. . . it is the mysterious paradoxical nature of love that its captives are set free. So shall I love my thoughts like unruly children until they are transformed and free to live in joy and hope and exultation.
. . . my mother filled a tiny
coffin with picture frames
I spent the year drinking
from test tubes weeping
wherever I went somehow
it happened wellness crept
into me like a roach nibbling
through an eardrum. . .
There are some strong perfumes that cannot be contained.
Which seep through any glass of bottle or of vial.
For instance, taking up an Oriental chest,
Whose stubborn lock will creak and groan on opening,Or poking through a house, in closets shut for years,
Full of the smell of time – acrid, musty, dank.
One comes, perhaps, upon a flask of memories
In whose escaping scent a soul returns to life.A thousand thoughts have slept cocooned within this flask,
But sweetly trembling there, packed closely in the dark;
Now they release their wings and take their gaudy flight,
Tinged with an azure blue, rose-glazed, spangled in gold.Fluttering to the brain through the unsettled air,
Rapturous memory pervades the atmosphere;
The eyes are forced to close, Vertigo grasps the soul,
And thrusts her with his hands into the mist of mind.He forces her to lie next to an ancient tomb,
From which with cloying scent–Lazarus splitting his shroud–
A gaunt cadaver moves to its awakening:
Ghosts of a spoiled love, enchanting though impure.So when I am entombed to mortal memory,
When I am closeted in some deserted house,
When I’ve been thrown away, an old forgotten flask,
Decrepit, dusty, cracked, rejected, filthy, rank,I will be tomb for you, beloved pestilence,
The witness of your force and of its virulence
Dear poison made by angels, drink that eats my soul,
Oh you who are the life and ruin of my heart!Translated by James McGowan
Three stomach-turning pieces (The Drive-In, The Set Up, And Still I Loved Him), can be found here. You’ve been warned. But seriously. I need to communicate at least a mild trigger warning.
Our fear of making mistakes, our belief that we have no talent, and our comparisons with others all keep us from engaging any creative activity, and they do so without our realizing that the terms of engagement are ours to impose. We need not passively wait for something to propel our motivation to engage…
On Becoming an Artist, p. 210
Here I am, walking along your eyelid again
toward your tear duct. Here are your eyelashes
like elephant grass and one tear
blocking the way like a boulder.
It probably takes me a long time
to figure it out, chatting with neighbors,
trying penicillin, steam baths, meditation
on the Shekinah and sonnet cycles
and then six more months blasting
with my jackhammer before I get in there
and can wander through your face, meeting you
on the sly, kissing you from this side.
I am your own personal verb now. Here I come,
“dancing,” “loving,” “making poems.”
I find a telescope
and an old astronomer
to study my own face with,
and then, well, I am dreaming behind your cheekbone
about Bolivia and tangerines and the country
and here I come again, along your eyelid, walking.
Just an excerpt from a deliciously bitter poem. . .
I taste defiance on my tongue and hear the rustle
of a sweater that carries the stench of conceit.
I attack the lines of a blank page. . .Her imprint leaves a stain on the taste buds of my day.
Susan Richardson in Toasted Cheese
Gasping for Light 