Category: Blog

I Dreamed This Dream of Wooded Wilds

I dreamed this dream of wooded wilds, dripping moisture in the grey air. The Earth’s many scents release when the rain drops onto pine needles and oak leaves. The pat-pat sound of the rain on the palmetto fronds is familiar in my mind.

I rise from my bed, surrounded by quiet and the familiar hum of the ceiling fan. It is early morning, the hour of in between twilight just before dawn, and I hear a voice. A man’s voice outside. From deep inside the dark cool trees, his voice travels out to me. I know that voice.

I wander out of the house, at odd morning hours. My bare feet padding down the lawn leading to the edge of the woods. I hear a crow, the rain, and his voice calling to me.

So I enter that wild realm of insects, birds, spirits. The wild god who waits for me.

He calls to me again, his voice warm and dark as fertile soil. My pulse thickens inside my skin. Shivers tremble up and down my spine, but still I long to find him.

I wander with soft steps on sacred ground. The smells inundate me, decay and life and rain. I weave through the thick trunks of ancient trees, winding thickets of brush and bole, over roots jutting out on my path.

And then I find him. He waits for me by a stream. The sounds of pipe and drum hit me then, though he holds no instrument in his hands.

His face is unmistakable, though I only ever see it in dreams. He whispers my name, and I approach his perch above the swirling water.

“Look,” he tells me. “Your strength is in this shadow, buried beneath the birch tree.” He smiles a cryptic smile, as a teacher might to his student who is working out the solution to something in her own mind. There are no birch trees here.

He reaches his hands out to me, and I take them in mine. His hands are warm and rough, mine cold and unsure.

He pulls me to his body, his warmth, his earthly knowledge. He smells of oak and pine and soil, and the decay of leaves.

His mouth covers my own, and I suck him in, all the scents and senses, the knowledge and heat.

Then I wake, shaken in sleep. Deriving meaning from dreams in the deep.

Pandora’s Birth

I remember waking in the stale air of a cave – a womb inside a desolate earth, but not my earth.
This place was foreign and savage, filled with hate and pain and vast seas of red blooded rage.

There were molten moons rising all around, skeletal greys, pale greens and sickly ambers.
They rose over the horizon of this ethereal alien world to taunt my darkened senses.

I wasn’t relenting, and I refused to grow into those long grooves and veins that encapsulated the faces of Saturn’s lovers. Those straining epitaphs of exploding red suns beating as a broken heart deep down at the bottom of his bottomless ocean.

My skin rebelled against the atmosphere of that crater, crawling with nebulous tides of encroaching ice floes. Thirsty, poisonous smog growing thicker with my breathing.

I was stranded.

My limbs sank into a giving ghost land, striving to understand this meaningless motion.

Saturn floating under my belly, I tried to take my eyes from the burning red orbs calling forth great tidal waves of an unnameable ocean.

Monstrous moons warped time, warping size, crossing a boundary that was totally contrived.

I gave in and observed the monstrous growth of the giant suns, the breathing pulse of their fires, the eternal explosion of life.

Now death.

But Life again.

The waves of this changing tide burned red in reflections, calling me out to seek the blue.

The green, the Earth in between.

I gave in and
I made you.

+Lj

Love Was an Old Brick Road

Once we carried wishes in our mouths, our bleeding hearts choked up on poetry and whiskey, the nostalgia of childhood dreams.

When romance was the ocean calling us down to the shore, we ran in rhythm to the pulse of the waves, and stripped down beyond our naked vulnerability, plunged ourselves deep into the indigo of what we thought we’d have.

When love was an old brick road, we danced in rhythm to the beat of the setting sun, kissed his feet goodnight and worshipped the moon as she rose.

Love was an old brick road, but somewhere along that path our travel plans unraveled, and I ended up walking alone.

+LJ

High Tide

My spirit called out from inside, told me the meaning of life, demanded geometry. So I slid into the waters of those rising tides and let the currents of myth carry me out into the deep.

I let myself sink into the blue, hoped to find answers to every unsung question making melodies in my brain. I landed among the thorns, crustacean symphonies waking the eternity within human bones. I wanted to carve out a place for my heart, a coral edifice teeming with life and eggs and memories, I wanted to find that place of solitude hiding within sea caves and crashing waves, but I couldn’t find my breath. I drowned then, inhaled the salt and spray of mineral absolution, and I left my body on the beach for the seabirds to mull over.

I remained my Self though, a wild creature of sand and seaweed, a creature of Life as it sits, no real dogma, no real time. I remained myself, and I learned to live.

+Lj

Control

There are moments so deep and so real and so full of light i cant imagine ever being sad or hurt. Moments when i can see the trivial nature of fleeting emotion.

There are moments when all i want is to show you that i can still remain strong and logical and in control of myself.

Control.

It is a sickeningly sweet lie that covers me in its false comfort. Tells me that i did. I finally found someone who could love me. Who can look at me and say with certainty,

“You are not too much for me. You are not a burden. You are everything.”

Someone who can listen to understand and learn all the things about me that i have thus far failed to learn myself.

Someone who can be gentle, someone with the ability to hold me even in the darkness when i cant see the brightness of the stars in his eyes but who reassures me they are there.

Control is a lie i tell myself, that i will not fall too deep into you, that i will not lose myself, that i wont place all the gunpowder of my fragile heart inside your outstretched hands.

Hands that made me feel so secure and safe. Hands that the other halves of my broken mind visualize as hands that can hurt me.

Control is the lie i tell myself to hide the projections i place on others. On you. To hide the way i want to hurt because i am hurting.

Its a lie i tell myself that i will be bigger than my sensitivity. Sensitivity that i feel like just gives a bad rap to my superhuman ability to feel everything.

And everything i feel in you is a reflection of me, and if i feel me is ugly, then many of the facets of those reflections will show me rage and degradation and carelessness.

Control is a lie i tell myself to build a dream i can believe in. A way out, a way to survive and thrive and teach my daughter i am more than what i can give in these shifting moments.

Control is a beautiful and wistful longing that i have to develop into a sentient being inside my aching bones. Aching from the despair of wanting to be heard and understood but most likely from a vitamin deficiency because i cant really ever eat that much.

And nothing ever tastes good, it feels too heavy inside my hollow belly, and i cannot control that. I cannot control the way callous words wound me so deeply and i cannot control that when i found love in you, all i wanted to do was carve out a safe haven for myself and my dying soul inside your rib cage and sleep there curled up in the warmth of your laughter and the unparalleled rhythm of your breathing. The smell of you is a reminder to me that i will never have control.

Control is the lie i gift myself when i feel like my world is shattering apart and i have nothing left to give. Its the lie i feed my mind to overcompensate for the feeling of not being good enough for anyone, and sometimes of saying too much.

Its the lie i tell those around me, feigning stability when it feels like quicksand beneath my feet and i just want to surrender to the sinking gravity of my despair.

Control is what i wish i had when i first met you. That ability to control the flow of information. The ability to control the effects of the burning static i always feel at the sound of your voice. And the way you make me feel alive.

Control is the lie ive taught myself to believe in to give you the room to decide if you really want me as your burden.

+Lj