7.21.20

JANUS

_{“In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of doors, gates, and transitions. Janus represented the middle ground between both concrete and abstract dualities such as life/death, beginning/end, youth/adulthood, rural/urban, war/peace, and barbarism/civilization.“}

There were foretellings of your coming you know. You’re pre-written in my pages. I didn’t know you then, but I saw you in the image boxes. In the half-opened-half-closed doors.
in the way the weights of past and future forced me present. Fitting then, for your coming to signal the end of the war.

_{“Janus was known as the initiator of human life, transformations between stages of life, and shifts from one historical era to another. He is usually a two-faced god since he looks to the future and the past. Janus was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, and of one universe to another. According to some, he was the custodian of the universe but, to all Romans, he was the god of the beginnings and the ends, presiding over every entrance and departure}

My garden’s suffered as a casualty of my recent chaos. Her branches are brittle, there’s a carpet of grass coloring the places life thrives. Thrive, being the keyword here.
I’ve tended these roots ceremoniously, lovingly. Sometimes compulsively. It was cathartic back then – back when the entire world was becoming entirely too familiar with the inside of their home.
Things are different today. I can tell by the way my car millage jumped higher this month than the past two years put combined.
I patch the stucco and paint the walls. I fix cabinets, lights, and doorhandles. This time the work happens from the inside.
My garden? She’s here, dormant through the heat, dropping passion-fruits of labor at my doorstep. Tangy and sweet – popping hydration soothing the raw, coating the swollen, calming the nervous system to arouse the body.

A dedication made evident in each handful of soil.

“_{He protected the start of all activities. He inaugurated the seasons. The images of Janus are strange and evocative; they seem to combine time and place with an uncomfortable intimacy. We tend to think of the present moment as the most real experience: the past and the future are unknowable or distant.}“

Strange and evocative. Strange as in peaceful, strange like tender, like humble, human, kind. Strange not to crave the chaotic.
And yes, evocative. Uncomfortable intimacy paints your face rose, shakes your legs timid. Not your arms though. Not the way they wrap around my waist. not the way the guide my hips, move me like deeper than those hail circles in lake water….

“_{Yet, if we think about the hinges of our own actions in the moment, we do move in a constant cause and effect motion—past experiences influencing the present, then a future outcome. The more aware we can link the opposites, the more we can find our way with conscious results.}“

It’s the human in us that desperately seeks to justify our suffering. The part of us that still believes we must pay penance for our past pain. The gridlock voice inside your head that says you somehow deserved what they did to you. For the record; we’re not entitled to any particular event. Emotional injustices included. All we truly own, are our feelings, for as long as they’re here.

So what if our wounds aren’t fully healed? Janus, Pentacle King, Keeper of Doors, Master of Transitions – if the past is truly over, and the future isn’t here yet…. right here, in this moment I could care less.

8.18.21

FOOL.S.GOLD
you and I aren’t stubborn enough for the past
she makes your index finger look foolish
with how edged she’s got you

me? well, I play muse with the future…
over there, with the strawberry kneecaps and aloe shoulders.

GARFIELD

12.12.20
so what did you learn?
trusting the raw before clipping the hedges
turning umbrellas inside out doesn’t summon monsoons
and everyone, including you
can make typhoons out of voice boxes

it’s easy to pity muted gratitude
one could argue,
as easy to justify anger.

accountability goes both ways
if you’re to learn from this
humble yourself

MIRROR
11.12.20

MILLER: Evolution is impartial. It doesn’t care what adaptation you employ, be it song or slime, speed or stillness that helps you endure. As for the hydra, the best guess scientists have these days as to how it cheats death, as Rob Steele explains, isn’t just its crazy stem cell production but its highly unusual ability to let go.

STEELE: Whereas we aren’t so good at getting rid of cells. You know, our brain cells are pretty much with us for life, so if we get a brain tumor, we can’t get lucky and have it sort of ooze out our ear and disappear. It’s there, and eventually, the brain’s going to have to deal with the consequences.

MILLER: So maybe Daniel, for all his professed disinterest in the hydra’s immortality, is the one who had known, who had been practicing its secret all along. Time and time again, when I would ask him about hard memories – exes or break-ups or deaths – he would say…

“I don’t remember the details.”

I assumed that he was dodging. But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe, like the hydra, he, too, is constantly shedding the things that could hurt him in the name of staying youthful and free from pain.
He is 61 years old, and I cannot keep up with him on the mountain.

IThe Reluctant Immortalist – Invisibilia

So, what does that mean for you, little fox?

You put down names and faces back to the dirt they came from. Pluck them from your memory with all its nutrient dense emotion and history so they may grow deep outside your body , and grow they will.

You who prides themselves on effort and ease, push and pull, catch and release. What are you holding on to?

Ideas formed in years of momentum, childish thought patterns that bear no children. Compromise was never an option for someone determined to live radically.

How do you compromise that?

DREAMS

10.14.20
Always with the perfect response, eh? You know, your face speaks as loudly as your words.

BLUE’S T HOUSE

10.1.20
T
Can I float aimlessly in your seas? 
Like the glaciers you see
Gentle, their giant presence a reminder to the ocean that it is not alone 
I want to be that same comfort for you
Let me traverse the deep, your ocean floor
Show me more, and I will keep your secrets safe in war-torn hands
Because I see your skimmed knees, see them when I look at myself

When I see myself, a reflection once too harsh to linger on, I see growth
Something is blooming 
A reflection; a desert; barren, arid, now bespeckled with blossoms of reds and yellows

BLUE’S T HOUSE

9.30.20
M-
there’s something Atlas about you,
but I think you’re learning how to gravity.
not the type that scrapes your knees
you’ve been down there too long, no, not anymore

the kind that makes sunlight kiss your scars in the morning,
nursing coffee steam soothing hearts “awake”
That gravity that pushes and pulls serendipity and magic
she speaks the language of instinct and knowing urges,

and speaking of tongues,
you know this is just the tip of the iceberg, right?
don’t confuse glaciers for frozen poles.
only one of those can cool down our recent burns.  

HISTORY

9.27.20
Tia
That single word reminding me this Mythos I inhabit has the right idea. Our affirming craving is right to pity the Midwesterner who measures their success on thrifty discounts. We, on the other hand, know forward is defined exclusively by how round the world is. That quiet, knowing wisdom dying to scream “Lover! Keep counting your straight-and-narrow steps in bargains, you’ll end up right where you began.”

That’s to say– strays know there are no inherit bridges. Bridges are built by those who wonder. Nobody’s coming to save you. No one’s going to break you out, or cut the thorns from your feeling-brambles. No one’s going to storm the castle walls, kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, white steed away your unaccounted-for accountabilities. No one will feed that malnourished yearning.

Face it.
You will have to do,
do it yourself.

We know this– us immigrants, I mean. In a culture where everything is foreign we learn the dialect of body. A new mother tongue. Our hands learning to say Hello in the language of empathy and white flags, all while America preaches the body an ignorant animal. But who can blame them… Intelligence dwells exclusively in the head, right?

If your heart shudders “no”, you’re at least partly bilingual.

The body is smart. It doesn’t discern between external stimuli and subconscious invitations. It reacts equally and viscerally to the tactile and the imaginary.

So here’s the question; How the fuck do you explain this to the American “objective.” The sad upper Western who made ‘objects’ of things and people by distancing itself from them. An act of deliberate desperation so anguished in its need to individualize, it succeeded to make a home bricked by inhumanity, roofed in pride, windowed by disparity, and cemented in otherness.

We scare you. You build borders around our melanin. Those borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A dividing line or narrow strip along a steep, steep edge (what’s down there?) A borderland vague and undetermined created by the emotional residue of unnatural boundaries, yes, si, your boundaries. A constant state of transition. Inhabited by what you perceive perverse, grotesque, foreign, prohibited and forbidden.

Now, here I am. Alien in your land of Milk and Honey. Defining myself as an act of kneading, of uniting and joining. A creature not only of darkness and light, but a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark. Here to give meaning to the in between. Does this make me mad? Sure, but I choose this madness above your sanity. May my words be the splinter on your smooth palm, the eye to the needle of your thread. May I always pick the sour cherry from the bowl and glorify it naturally perfect. May my feelings be vast, my thoughts humble, my words precise, my tongue wild for wild tongues can’t be tamed, only cut out.

THIS is why I write. Because the world I create in writing compensates for what this world lacks. Because life does not appease my appetites, my loves, my grievances, my anger… I write to become intimate with myself, and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispel the myths that I am a mad woman or a suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say isn’t disposable… Finally, I write because I’m scared of writing, but I’m more terrified of not writing.

BOOT.S.TRAPS

9.26.20
and let my vow to softness
also be a nuptial to self-respect

at the end of the night
Ill do his dishes, and make his bed
leave only the “better than when you found it” things…

these things that remind me
I am more than just an indiscretion

and so fucking above luke warm bullshit

UNTITLED
9.8.20

this post is the direct product of procrastination. A round of applause for the young lady.