10/14/15 6:42p a prayer of protection

Dear Lord
Keep me and my neighbours safe
from my foolishness
from the things I forgot to do in my haste
or left in negligence
Lord let no one suffer because of me
(even, especially, selfish me)

Lord, there are so many things to pray for
just in leaving my place and going to yours
and though you call me daughter and friend
I'm also a servant
gladly beholden to your will
obligated to you and what you decide
to do or not to do
and ever so grateful
that you willingly decide to obligate yourself to me
a little know-nothing
who walks like she knows everything

How much and how carefully you hold me in your hands, Father
I don't often pray against my own stupidity
yet daily you protect me from that too
as well as from wicked men, disasters and inconvenience
Trials and tribulation come
but destruction stays far from my dwelling place
surely awaiting the day when you will let me go
forgetting that even in the pit
you have called me Daughter Friend Servant
that nothing has ever been lost
nothing of yours can ever be stolen
None of yours are ever forgotten

How carefully you hedge me about, Lord
like something precious
prone to scattering

Who do you say that you are?

Just out of curiosity, which of the following do you think describes you?

The descriptions are from a book series where everyone in society self-identifies with these character traits. Sometimes the traits run in families, sometimes the don't.

If you strongly identify with one set but there's a close runner-up, you can also choose a secondary set, but it wasn't strange for a character in the series to be described as completely one thing. Like I said, it was self-identification :-)

1) Joy, hope, kindness, beauty, vision, grace, honor, spirituality

2) Courage, strength, steadfastness, loyalty, certainty, resolve, determination, power

3) Innovation, love, imagination, clarity, intelligence, charm, talent, creativity

4) Change, travel, flexibility, swiftness, resilience, luck, persistence, surprise

5) Serenity, honesty, health, fertility, contentment, patience, endurance, wealth

And, if you want, I'll tell you the group names.

I did this with a couple of co-workers and in my Facebook page, and the responses have been fun and fascinating. I'd like to see what more people have to say about themselves ;-)

8/20/15 been trying to put this into words for a while

[a love letter]

I see supermen all over the place
On the train
On the streets
Tourists
Locals
Bored men wearing their children's hand me downs
But none of them are you

Some day that will make me smile
Some day that will be a fierce testament to the man you were
(It already is)

But today
And for many days
It's a reminder that there's no more you
And there never will be again

Looking back I see...

(somehow this didn't get posted with the other May poems.  sorry about that)

...that May was rough, and it shows. Which is why I wrote "someday", I suppose.

--------------

a remembered friendship

Remember that song we both liked
from that movie we both saw
I was playing it the first time I met your husband
That's the moment I always picture now
me behind my desk
you standing
and your husband standing behind
all of us
wrapped in the simple pleasure
of a song

--------------

[untitled]

i wish we were better friends
i'd slip my arm around yours
and curl myself against your side
you'd lay your head on mine
and say something sour
until i pinched you in the end
it would be sweet
and comforting
and comfortable
without meaning more in that moment
than we mean to each other in ever other momment
then the meal would be over
and i would stand
and you would stand
we'd smile
until you said something inane
and i had to pinch you again
comforting
comfortable
nothing more and nothing less
than basking in the presence of good friends

7/27/15 2:05pm, this is the picture I keep of you

Dear Friend
my favorite picture of you
is one that you hate
plain
fresh faced
curls unruly

You were trying to make a point
if I'm not mistaken
trying to show me one thing
and I saw another

I want to replace all your made up faces
with this one
Dear Friend
the light behind you
no guile
no walls
exhausted
and honest
putting on for no one
comparing yourself to no one
you and you alone

I wish you saw in yourself
what I've always seen in that picture
the way you glow when you forget to try

5/21/15, 10:25 pm, after my dodgeball high had worn off

Dear Friend
I hold the secrets you speak in my ear

Dear Friend
I hold the secrets you speak in my hearing
never intending to reveal them to me

And it hurts to know that you've found yourself
in a place of discontent and indecision

And it hurts to know you think I wouldn't go
down to that place with you

5/12/15, how do you put this into words that ppl will believe

Dear Husband
Because I love you
I'll admit this about myself now
Instead of making you fall
Into a trap my issues design

I'm a needy thing
And jealous too
Insecure, am I
Proprietary, too
And hard to convince

Sometimes
(All the times)
I cling
Needing the reassurance
Of you against me

Like a child I will always want you near
Even when I laugh and let you go
My skin yearns for yours
My eyes yearn for visions of you
Committing the heat of you

The feel of you
The shape of you
The scent of you
To my memory over and over again
Learning every variation

On your theme
Is my failsafe against my feverish conviction
That someday you'll realize
It's better to walk away
Not that you've ever said

Nor actions you ever took
But I'm a needy thing
An insecure thing
And hard to convince, too
Let me help you

Help me

05/07/15 I think I wrote this one a lot but not lately

whether you show up today
or whether you show up not at all
you are mine
as i am yours, Husband
and for now
in this moment
that's enough

5/5/15 6:48 pm trying to go grocery shopping

Dear random guy
Standing a little too close
(all things considered)
Your back to me
On the #nycsubway platform
I'm going to imagine you're my bodyguard
And I'm a very important person
Until our train comes

05/05/15 someday

someday
someone will look back at my catalogue
and wonder at the anger
the bitterness
weeping open wounds
that slash at pages
they'll read and be
exhausted by the repetitive
complaints
abuses
and hurts piled on my head
and shared on the heads of others

the loneliness will make them numb
they'll close the books
to wonder how pain
can feed a life so long
how to square the woman on the page
with the one who smiles in pictures
glowing in the words of others

they won't know
the way i hope you know
how i've poured out my love
on the ones i love
in silent support
unending curiosity
giggles and in-jokes
corny
cheesy
moments to live for
and die denying
fiercely protective
of faults and failings
but never accepting
there is nothing more to be found

my joy
my admiration
my devoted regard
and purest love
are written in arms that hold
in ears that listen
eyes that stay
focused on your face
feet that follow when others walk away
a mouth sealed against your secret
and a heart burdened with your hurts

someone
someday
will marvel how much pettiness
wretchedness
self-involvement
a page can hold

it was either give it to the page
or spend the time loving
choking

When the songs stop

NaPoWriMo is long over, but, as often happens, I was very prolific into the month of May. I compose pretty ask the time, but NaPoWriMo helps me to get back into the swing of writing it consistently.

Anywho, here is the first in a series of May poems.

---------------------

05/04/15 Dear Friend

Dear Friend
Sometimes you complain that I assume the worst
That you are not for me
That I stand alone
That I believe alone
That I am the idiosyncratic

Dear Friend
Speak for me
Stand with me
Be vulnerable with me
Unafraid to stand stand and walk alone (with me)
And I'll take your fault finding to heart

On Monday...

On Monday, yesterday, I learned that a H.S. friend of mine died of cancer, late Friday/early Saturday.  He and I weren't close, but if you knew him you would know that almost didn't matter.  He was such a good guy...a fun guy...a quirky guy...personable...cool.  You didn't need to know him deeply to love and connect with him.  He was that kind of charming.  (The people who really got to know him well, how much more lucky and blessed are they over the mere high school-turned-facebook friend who counts herself pretty blessed with just that.)

His death, however, was a surprise to lots of us.  I immediately thought "Hey, I should write a poem about this because I'm a poet."   It's what I do, poetry

Mostly I tried not to cry.  I was at work, after all.  If I had anything poetic in me, I figured it wouldn't work itself out of me until much later when the grief wasn't as strong.  But maybe not.  Maybe there was nothing in there.

It was mid-afternoon and I'd lost the battle with tears a few times (my cube-mate was in another office for pretty much all of that, thank God in all of his loving graciousness), which meant tear-stained glasses and a tear-stained phone.  Why a tear-stained phone you ask?  Because I couldn't stop myself from looking up the details I'd missed over the weekend on my phone.  (I docked myself the time...I really was useless there for a while.)

My glasses I cleaned in the bathroom.  My phone I kept trying to wipe clean on my shirt.  My shirt was cotton.  This should have worked.  Nada.  I couldn't get the tear-stain -- you know, that crusted edge of salt left behind on your face when you cry? -- to come off my phone screen.  I worked it off eventually, though I couldn't tell you how now, but I kept rubbing at it and rubbing at it until I did, like some reverse Lady Macbeth.

And somewhere, mid-rub, this was born.

I wasn't entirely wrong about needing to get over the worst of the grief, though.  Usually poems kind of dump themselves in my brain, and only minor tweaks are need.  I only finished this a little while ago.

I miss you, Ed.

---

6/29/15 a Dear Friend poem

Tears don't clean
as easy as it seems they do
They leave behind salty scars
They stain they mar they pull at every surface they touch
Ghosts whispering out loud
secrets crowding and shouting in your heart
Until your eyes bleed red
and your heart beats in time with your head

Tears like this don't come clean
No matter what it may seem to be
they leave behind scars
Salt marks on raw hearts
are not cured with easy words
Its a sword that pierced me
This kind is a running wound
that I'd run from if I could
But tears cried can't be undone
nor shoved under some brighter happier version of who I was
before I heard the news that he was gone

Oh Father can you hear this
Father can you see this
These tears that won't come clean
though I wipe and dry and polish and hide
they keep coming
They keep creeping
They keep seeping through my fingertips and my fears
through my laughter and my lightness
A denial to my every day self
that everything is all right
Lord
I don't want them to sympathise
I don't want to cry!
I don't want blue skies and sun
I don't want the world to turn on when he's gone
I just want--

I just want to be where You are
To hide my face in Your side
away from lying blue skies
my mask of pleasant smiles
and be grieved
of a good man

NaPoWriMo Days 23-30 Digest

So I completed NaPoWriMo at 12:30 am on May 1st, but since I hadn't yet gone to sleep I counted it as a win. Or, y'know, I totally cheated :-)  Either way, I did in fact write for most of the days of NaPoWriMo although I was, at the time, too exhausted to post.

And now it's June. Sigh.

Anywho, here they are in date order.

Day 23

Day 24

Day 25

Day 27 x2

Day 28 x2

Day 29

Day 30

NaPoWriMo Day 30/30

5/1/15, technically, but I'm still up (12:26am)

Dear Husband
I admit
That when I think about us
It's not kissing
Or laughing
Or loving
Or sharing our life with friends family or children

It's just you
And me
Alone together
Reading or
Thinking or
Holding or
Walking quiet lanes of Central Park p

When you know me
You'll know it's not because I live for silence
I love laughter
And bright conversation
And the raucous joy of living out loud in a city afraid of sleep
But it's easy to hide in noise
To make it a mask of whatever they want to see

Yet it's in the companionable silence
That I imagine I trust you most
With my thoughts
My opinions
The faces I make as I read
Sometimes out loud to you
My secret self all on display

It's an easy intimacy
I think about
When I think of us
Far enough to stretch our legs
But not so far to speak
And not be heard

NaPoWriMo Day 29/30

4/29/15 6:35pm, looking for Elijah

I keep trying to make this pretty and poetic
But the truth is
The world is madness
A frothing madness that feeds itself
On the spin and the loss of control
Wondering all the while why you don't enjoy it too

And the truth is
Part of me wishes to sit back and watch
All the illogical conclusion
Come to their logical ends
Studying the descent
Almost as much as I want to pull everyone
And everything
From the cleverly hidden abyss sweetly singing to us all

But the truth is
There are still 7000 who have not bent the knee
Which may be a joke when faced with a world at war
But it's legion to the army of 1

So I'm gonna sing

NaPoWriMo Day 28 x2/30

I think the 1st one is unfinished, thus the 2nd one happened. You'd be surprised how easily that happens, not knowing whether a poem is or isn't complete, given enough time.

4/28/15
I'm preparing myself for a summer without you
Winter having come and gone without a word

---------

4/28/15
The third eye they all prize
Sometimes won't let you sleep

I wonder what they'd say
If they knew the price you pay
For the privilege of seeing more

NaPoWriMo Day 27 x2/30

I missed the 26th, apparently, so I made up for it on the 27th. I think it had been a busy Sunday.

4/27/15
I'm sending songs out into the ether
Because it's easier than reading
The disdain you try to hide from
Someone who knows you
Well

-------

4/27/15 9:23 pm

Dear Husband
Lately I've taken to wearing my crown
On my ring finger
I'd always assumed it was mine
But maybe that wasn't right

Tell me
Dear King
Does a royal sceptor hang from your neck?
Is a feathered quill circling the fingers of your left?

I wonder
My King
What you now think is your
Will turn out to have been mine all along

NaPoWriMo Day 25/30

4/25/15 10am, still working this thing out (before we forget who we are)

Before we forget who we are
I'm the one who walks after you
When you walk away
I'm your secret keeper
Your defender
I'm the one neglected for unproven lovers
Who gets left behind
Forgotten

Now it's your turn
Tell me who you are

NaPoWriMo Day 24/30

4/24/15 a mourning rumination

Things we're never going to do but have done with others
Ride in the back of a cab while the city rushes by
part of each other and lost in our own thoughts
Wander the streets whispering secrets
at the volume of a shout
Flee an oncoming wave
of water
of people
of emo--

No, we used to do that all the time
We're doing it now
dragged along in the undertow

Bar hop
looking for the perfect burger
perfect coffee tea beer
the perfect dessert
Watch the sun rise over the city streets
holding hands
too tired to speak
unselfconsciously in awe of the beauty of a drowsing city
Get drunk on the high of a concert or show
until we can't walk in straight lines
or stop laughing
or stop reminding each other how awesome it all was

Let the city sidewalks bear witness to hard truths
home truths
about me or you or us
We never had the knack
of being that honest with each other

NaPoWriMo Day 23/30

4/23/15 12:46am dear friend

I thought I was fine
With everything dying
But I should have known that I was lying to myself

I don't commit easily
Or trust with equanimity
I test everything for faults before they break under my feet

But here at the end
I wonder if I should defend
If a decade of living with me can be destroyed in a conversation