Posts for June 11, 2024 (page 7)

Having a Type A personality meant reaching for the stars and 
believing that nothing, not one single thing, could get in the way.
Lillian always got straight A’s, even though college courses got
difficult. She knew that perfection was forever a possibility.
Having a Type A personality meant being put into a box that
one could never get out of: You have to achieve everything.
Emma always thought that losing would mean she would
lose her title. She had to overwork herself to become the best.
Having a Type A personality meant the stress of the world on
one’s shoulders. Prone to stress and the diseases that came along.
Claire always wanted to compete, even if it wasn’t a competition.
She needed to save her health and her personality didn’t help.
Having a Type A personality meant relating to internet jokes
about oneself and the concept of having a certain personality.
Ellie always used to believe in the labels that made everyone
understand her better, but she couldn’t stay trapped in a box.

I latch the beagle to her blue tie-out under the windmill, then slide into the canvas lawn chair. Leaning back into the padding, legs spraddled out, my body remembers  the cool Atlantic breezes of Mers-les-bains.  The brightly painted seafront houses of Le Treport where we could just walk up to the wharf for moules or croissants. Somewhere near the top of the windmill, metal clinks softly as the wind chinks the blades forward. I slink even farther down in the chair as I feel large muscles release, remember how we raised glasses of Stella and wine to toast those slow afternoons. How the air sang through our hair on that waterfront patio. I hear the slur of waves murmuring as my beagle chews on a pine cone, here on this clay dam, at lake’s edge on our high hill above the Licking River.

I keep dreaming that I fall from the sky
faster than Icarus
but slower than the rain

The repetition rattles me
more than death brushing my shoulder in a crowded room
but less than the thud that jolts me awake when I know I’ve hit the ground

Floating above clouds 
just below the stratosphere
far from my favorite tree’s reach

I call to anyone who can hear me
until my voice breaks 
and my screams get lost somewhere in the troposphere

For a child to follow
as she stares out the airplane window
en route to a destination unknown

You hollow white bird,

(in Southern Indiana 
with Robert Bly,  circa 1974.
I a graduate guest of Brescia College)

action squeezed
between subject and object
with less less less space
to move any argument
much less one’s heart,
he kicks butts
of people places things
trees are horses
stomping through the night
he throws languages around
like a mullah’s rug
rubs wood for heat
seizes the throne
of common sentence
becomes
an indigenous Norwegian 
clansman with antlers 
and the whole business
of bells and other rackets,
what he means is heartily prone
to the fuzz of swirl & twirl
& the squealing spin
of his iron Ferris wheel
built out of thin 
air
      with whole paragraphs
attached to the rim
whose grand gondolas
and loud rollers defy
gravity,
and then begins
his obscene view of looking
up skirts of long legged clouds

he sends boys to the woods
to slap mosquitoes and wrestle
with skinny words,
the girls (even nuns) he keeps
in the garden
his sense makes no sense
and when aliens land
all the world’s a mess
less less less obvious
as the gentle knight dissolves
and his protestant substance
gives this catholic school 
its lesson

The unknown rests in front of me
shrouded in smoke and fog
and I wonder
aloud if there’s anyone
beside me. No one answers
except the hollow echoing
of a too high voice. 
If I reach out my hand,
will I find a wall, or
will I find vastness,
endless possibilities of ways
the air may travel, molecules
zigzagging about, bumping
into each other, into solids, 
into themselves? I do not know
if I should keep going
or remain still until the fog
dissipates. And when will
that be? When eternity stretches
before me and there is no behind?
When the ground is so saturated
that the bones float to the surface
and the sky has run out
of rain? I cannot say. I cannot see.
So I will feel my way through
the mist and the fog and the
oppressiveness of air. And when
hope raises its head in my chest,
I will stand at the precipice
of squashing it and allowing it
to breathe and fester, and then,
and only then will I know
the difference.  

Thief of despair.
Giver of grins.
Protector of promises.
Keeper of secrets.

________________________________________________

Jumper of ships.
Deliverer of disdain.
Scepter of sadness.
Breaker of vows.

________________________________________________

What horrors come
with the pretty masks you wear?

after Jay McCoy

a couple of sparrows
they were

bright and beady
of eye

sharp and chippy and blunt
of beak

pick a little, talk a little
cheap, cheap, cheap

never let it go

A youth enthusiastically sets out on his journey.
He is the seeker
the soul
the hero with a thousand faces
the spirit in search of experience.  

Over his shoulder, a staff—
a wand to protect and guide along the way
and a bag—
the things we carry
that do not belong to us.  

He wears a bright tunic—
the garment of the soul
made of earthly experience
On his head, a laurel wreath—
a symbol of the victory
of a pure spirit
over the adversity of the world.  

Above him, the sun is white
the pure point
from which all energy emanates
Behind him, the sharp peaks
of the mountain of initiation
And by his side, a little white dog
leaping joyously—
his companion, his faith.  

Like the Fool
who has not yet experienced the world
and learned his life’s lessons
we are all
always and already free
and our spirits
are always and already pure.