Mash-up: Beach thoughts; and Yachats poems from the book where magical thinking goes

Living with my parents again. Who are living with each other, again. We communicate now.

We talk about it. "Communication."

When did that happen?

It's all so natural living here, I thought it would be so hard with Tim and Mary and my cousins gone, with this being our house, me mom and dad ours for the first time really since I was 12. But it's smooth, easy, and this has a lot to do with how much time I spent here last year, Thursday night through Monday morning every week through the summer and in to the fall, so long as there was sun. It's weird, why now, with my brother moving away?

---
yachats, oregon.
6.12.10.


there is only
the illusion of control
or surrender to the knowledge
of fear:
We have none
& are it, that is
we become what we resist
by thinking we are its master.
fear is the wild card inside
Great Reckoning:
coming to terms with this

---
The weather was so great today. I sat forever on the beach, floated forever on top of the sea. The water was blue-green, close as crystal for the Mid-Atlantic. There was a strong wind, it made the waves roll in peaks to the right, the peaks lifted and carried me. We played games, the water and me, hide and seek and peekaboo. Make-believe. I was smiley the wind was like its own kind of wave and the air and the sea lifted and tilted and rocked and carressed me.

Mom came she brought wraps from Southside Deli the shrimp salad there's the best around. The lifeguards are young and hot and more than once they checked me out. I'm too old for you I want to tell them but from that far away why bother, if they cant tell. Besides I'm lying anyway it feels great to also feel sexy and hot.

---

I sat on rocks in the bright sun
blue sky & sea, Yachats, Oregon, off coast 101.
The 804. Old highway leads to the rocky beach.
Mike gone last time I was here, I went close
to the gaping wide mouth of the sea, where she eats
rocks. There are birds bigger than three of my fists.
They are dark, are crows, are ready to eat
they caw at me & always are in three.
I forgot they were here.

---
The older we get
The older we get the more important imagination. The more we need imagination! The more we must shake loose convention! The more we must not shrink to seeming societal or other imaginary (get it--it goes both ways!) restriction. Imagination! The only place where the still small voice lives!

I dont tell him this, my dad, when he walks in from work tonight and sits down at his laptop and continues his already 60 hour work week at the kitchen table and simultaneously wants to have a talk. You never, ever know when this knew phenomena might arise and tonight I am trying to drink tea and write poems.

So Kel, what's the game plan? Are you going to get published now? I think he only asks because he's recently been around his brothers who like to oneup in the name of family pleasantness and looking out for each other, and I point out as much, my own coy defense, but still the truth far as I can see. Which means it's my opinion but still important, all the same.

I dont know dad? Hanging out til the fall. Then I'll see what's in my heart then. Travelling? I dont tell him I dont know dad I am writing poems. I am worshiping Nature and the cycles of life. I am listening to and connecting every day to the lightness in my spirit. All else will easily take care of itself....I have a calling to the Earth and to write a book about it but dad how am I supposed to know what that will look like?

Why dont I be your personal assistant pop? Put me on your payroll? This is followed by jokes from mom about being dad's lifecoach. It is a pretty funny thought. Deep warm fuzzies and motivational talks featuring dad and Kel.

He laughs and this trails him off. I feel the old residue of guilt for a minute but shake my head at it then watch it turn to dust. I blow it away.

---
These rocks are bed.
These rocks are a bed
made from the sea, left
over salt particles crystalize
underground turbine force solid oncemotion
of what once has been. Sea rocks big as chambers
in the jawlock grip of the sky. Sea rocks with sky eyes
hold jewels waterlocked inside. I sat on the rocks
my eyes made of shells.

Turbinado. Turbinado's a name for sugar.
Sugarmelt softener softens like clover petals
sweet but last bite stung on the tongue.
Sweet to melt, melt sparse words
of what is yet to come. What matters, a lot
when you look at it like that. When you look at it
like sand, melts on the tongue.

---
Now I do feel bad. What should I have said? I dont know dad, what do you want me to do with my life?

This by no measure can possibly even come close to the the level of bad I felt last summer. I used to just sit in the family room and cry. Cry to Tim and Mary, cry to Erin, cry to mom, cry to dad. So much letting it out. Meantime going deeper and deeper, back and back, further and further in the real work. Owning my old beliefs. Owning and naming the true real sources reasons behind my stuckness, behind my discontentedness, behind the always striving but-for-what? unseen ideas that were propelling me. The clawfanged perfectionism, the critic of me breathing down my own neck and for what? All those old beliefs, old world, old school. Old memories swirling beneath my mindscreen eager to fall out of my head. And sucking my true power, dis-abling me from being me.

From just being able to "be".

So much grief came with getting beyond all that.

In order to get to the place where I can just be. I barely know any one able to do that.

What fucking gives?

---
A couple sits, looks out at the waves.
The waves sound like waves, like handsaults
sommering on the sea. Summer-saults
instantaneous washboard the churning hellos
the tumble over ocean throws of 'you're looking at me
surprise, I can see' the sea. I am you, he thinks.
She laughs, the mirror-force look that is sweet.
His stomach pulses, hers. Her purse falls
at their feet. Lipstick offering to the sea
sea eats lips licks its lips on lipstick offering
made so crisp. She shakes a chain lock
he grimaces. They freeze.

I am alive. I am alive! You cry but do not
know you're looking at me. I sommersault
I gulp drink with lippy lips lipped jawwide
from the cup
of love
in the sea
sky. I love you friend. I will, til the end.

---
After the beach today I came home and sat on the back porch and read. I love the back porch of Ocean Pines, it's one of my very favorite places since I was a small little kid. The sun was shaking its light in little back and forth trails on the wall because of how it came through the trees. It made the wall look like a blurred screen.

The air was the softest, breathiest breeze.

I sat out there until it got too dark to see. My mom is hooked and always has been on So You Think You Can Dance and the truth is I like to watch, too, but wont unless someone else puts in on. We watched that when I came in and I did laundry, which just means my work uniforms, because I have three doubles in a row this weekend, happy holiday all you weekenders to the beach be sure you tip me well.

I love working there now. It's funny for me to have mind-scenes of memories: marsh grass before the condos went in and all the places we used to go and sneak beers that smelled like salt and wet wood. I love getting to work and look out at and feel the Bay and the sky all at the same time.

---
The only thing to gain is the reckoning~
give over fine illusion of the soul's control.
At the sea, by the large powerbreaker rock
big as a jet or the pumpkin turned carriage ride.
I walked to see. It was blue sky, blue sea.
The force of it frightened me.
I could try to wrangle it, or submit
& just let it be