The Vintage Series.

You guys, I'm back.  YES, the Impulse Itself is vibing high and vital!  Screaming surging pulsing pressing to get out and witnessed, or at least not to just stay bubbling under the surface any longer.
Can a blog that started only six years ago be called vintage?  No haha and I am alright by that bc I dowhatiwant and also,  yes of course it can--bc in this high-wire frame of techno overdrive time blogging is as yesterday as MySpace so holllaaaa and whatev.  Who's gonna stick with what feels good anyway?

Ya.  Def this girl.

So for two years I worked out my esoteric witchy wisdom stuff over on Wild Women Wisdom.  I'm really hella proud of that project and how it informed me as a tool through which I could be self-taught.  That whole time, (and still) I was getting fed from the bottom on up by my education in depth-influenced counseling psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute.  For the past several months I have been behind the scenes, relying on the old persona of KadadaB to work it out for me as I begin to coalese the old with the new in order to focus actively on what will yet be!  So STOKED!

Wild Women Wisdom is slowly changing into the hub of my women's coaching practice.  I am focusing on self-empowerment, whole-bodied practical day to day meeting of yourself where you're at and learning to love and live your self, through whatever responsibilities and roles are alive and real in your life as a woman.  I am happy to work with men too!  I will also specialize in The Women's Work, or the Menstrual Mysteries, which is helping women to embody their personal tides until they are no longer mysteries!  A life's work, for sure…I offer Skype sessions right now, can see clients in an office space in San Juan Capistrano, and (especially for more ritual or sacred-based work) in my home.

Ultimately--and here's the exciting stuff to me!  The seeds of what yet will be!  Woot woot--I will be incorporating--ever so slowly, my goal of doing the Social aspect of Permaculture work.  SoCIal Perm. I'll be using Wild Women Wisdom to mostly work that out but you know there's no separating soul--so stay tuned on here to learn--WITH ME!!--more about what I mean by that.  We'll learn together, since that's always how I do this jam.

The Impulse Vintage Series will be alive-- again!  Horay.  Bc sure as I am living I need a place to express all the minute expressions of the holy mundane coming through me and that I'm out there relating to each day.  In this way, I re-Christen this blog, at the season of Samhain, holy celebratory tide of reverence for the dead.  From which comes all new life.

To Poetry, as a way of being, living, seeing.  Getting it all down~  holy act of self-creation.  Amen Amen Amen.

I love you guys!  Play on~

Enjoy. Settle in.

All these marvels jigsawing across the floating screens in my head.  It is two weeks since I've blogged but that doesn't stop me from composing in my mind.  From wanting to tell you, funny computer page, about the yellow fall light it's different not for its bright but its shadows, how a dark edge can make the radiance so much more succinct   Understand, if you can, the way the brown earth rises from the sea at Crystal Cove, how the crowns of land remind me of low tide on the Choptank River where I used to jump from tump to tump, where the fragmite grows.  I want to tell you that my friend is on the road in canyon country and that talking to him made me see the Anasazi riches and how the gnosis of that energy once lived me deep and whole on that same land.  Made me smell the high-nosed sugar of the black-green pines, made me exalt Coconino coconino...ahh Kaibab.  O to truly live off the land.  Enchanted.  Poet wanderer on the road, any person on the road.  And me, for the first time, the first ever when talking to such a person, did not yearn to move, felt no ache no pressing that said go get out go be and allow, no hard thin line in me with no words but an urge that says must go be simply in the flow.  Do you get it white page?  What that feels like, the outbreath?  The exhalation of these roots, straight down are meant to grow?

I spent last fall in the mountains under the tall trees.  I watched magic manifest. I am here now, fall again, a different setting, just as blessed.  I am plugged in to this, am plugging in now, to my real life.  To what I want to build, to grow, powering on and in to the best parts of who I am.  Or can be, or become.  As recently as (my most recent) trip east I was near that quitten point, with the drain-strain of exhaustion nipping at my heels and running tapes in my head. The only thing worse than regret is doubt and I believe the two shadow box from an arm with two fake fists.  Thankfully the lesson of retract curved me in its hand, I remembered the heir of patience which is acceptance, blends to compassion, softens in to loving tenderness with my self.  Is the gentle loving hush that sings Slowww down.  Sink down.

Enjoy...
Settle in.

Mine was clean

Drove to Laguna this morning.  Found my dream.  Spent the afternoon at Sawdust Art Festival--here is a free idea, someone figure out how to get Instagram pics to upload to Blogger--  Because the trees growing through the art booths built in to the canyon walls??  Come on.  You need to see it to believe.  Laguna I'm yours. Take my idea someone I'm sure it will make you a nice little egg.

Put some applications in today, finished my portion of grad school apps yesterday.  Started reading this bitchen essay on poetry while at the outdoor mall in the sun.  How academia in the second half of the century  made it a specialized art form. That devalued its primal social function of speaking for the people.  YEP yep and yep.  Making it so the only people who care about poetry are the "poets"--now defined as the ones who paid the money to go to school programs to gain access to who's who.  Reminds me of Gary Snyder's short piece on a man and woman who went up to spend a season together in a fire lookout.  When a co-ranger got up there to check on them he said but all that was left was two assholes jumping through each other.

Google it Dana Gioia Can Poetry Matter.

Picked up Greyson and chilled with him last night so Derryne could tattoo.  He was at Annie's, she fed me dinner with her fam then made calls to Newport friends to play whose who and who knows who and scoop out info and embarrass me.  Orange County is so full of all these insular small towns, and rivalries.  It's funny and odd.  Greyson is 10.  We took a walk downtown at sunset along the beach and I realized, as I always do, how easy it is to hang out with dudes between the ages of 10 to 20.  Like we just laugh and make fun of each other and I swear to god no other time in life is it easier for me to be myself.  The lady getting the tattoo, when we got back to 12th street, was like oh sure that's because it's all fun...no worries no stress.  You just get to be.

There was sun inland all day but the coast is still socked in.  Derryne cancelled on me for Duende Flamenco and dancing.  I have no plans and will probably take a nice bike ride then read.


Yes, that's just it, isn't it?  I just get to be.  Maybe the main difference goes: When Grey and I got back to 12th last night his face was covered in chocolate, covered, from sweet treats.  And I had enough self-consciousness to make sure mine was clean.  

In my swim suit with my wild ocean hair

On the 5 today I looked at the coastal mountains around Toro Canyon.  I call it Route 5 and pronounce it "root" like I'm from back east.  Which I am.  Derryn makes fun of me because that's how she says it too, like she's a British African.  Which she is.  I love my life there is nothing else to say and driving and seeing all the green and high white light and blue that's exactly what I said.  Man I love my life.  I must've said it ten times this weekend.  Moving here is one of the best decisions I ever made. I say this in to my headphone piece.  Driving on root 5 on the phone.  I know me too Muller says back to me.  Me too.

He is going back to Ocean City where we are from.  He goes next week.  He tells me all these guys from back then say hi Kel and I am like that's so crazy.  Because that's what I sit and do write about the beach and entertain their ghosts while I do.   I can not see the end of from here how will I ever finish this book who knows but damn am I enjoying the road.  I got three rejections letters this month.  BLAUAUAGHH I continue and will continue to go.  I am in Starbucks now after spending the weekend at Derryn's timeshare in Oceanside.  Assing up with her puberty-aged sons.  Laughing at Youtube videos they recommend.  Seeing how viley immature I am and my sense of humor.  Muller knows this part of me too.  I am sundrenched and peaceful from being sea-witness again and again.  I am full from sharing with a true wild woman friend.  I am full and satiated in that salty way of sand stretch skin.  I am happy especially to be beside my coffee shop window two blocks from my house in Huntington.  I haven't been home yet am still in my swim suit with my wild ocean hair.  I love my life the sun the blue skies the words the yoga bike rides the water good food and laughing friends.  It doesn't end.  

I am enjoying looking out the window you know?  Nodding my head at this life and this ride.  I've made a decision about some things ruminating in me which have to do with how to commit and how to begin.  I am 35 which is old to some but to me brand brand new, or anyway quite young.  I have the whole world in me and also around me and I see it and say yes to it and that is an amazingly fruitful way to be.  One I've had to learn and learn and relearn again.  I like to learn and am a teacher which means learning's my job.  So I will look out and say yes this is it where I am and also how cool, the view stretching so far in all directions, the view and all the where's and how's I still will go.

Maybe we should just get married

Dear Huntington Beach,

If I haven't told you yet, I think you're so cool.  I get a little silly-hearted over you and I'm thinking, maybe we should just get married...?  Since I always want to be near you and already need your breath to breathe....

Thanks for the banner week...Spring came, all the prophecy and vision with the Equinox and how it turns.  My heart is moving my muscles in all new ways with my yoga practice...I turned 35, on a new moon.  It started a whole new wisdom cycle for me, too, according to the wise woman ways.  Cycle 5.  I can't even believe it and hope such beneficent fortune is here to stay...

To celebrate your delirious flowers and countries of sand and palm tree wind...and the timing of it all...
I published my first e-book of poems.

5 Poems, available here   


It's dedicated to Erika, but was inspired by you.  I like being available on Amazon, and most of all I like this momentum, its slow steady build.

Thanks, Huntington, for this, for the poems and mornings in bed, the street fairs and yogi bliss, your library and the beach in my hair.

I love you forever,
kel

The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. California, poetry & tidbits.

~Sebastopol, 9/18/11

In California everyone knows what an Americano is, the light still slants the same dark yellow in the fall, and asada always comes with cilantro and lime.

~

I told you help me remember this the body has a body all its own
The poems are back again, little do you know this is truth about us
already written
how timelessness aches to find someone
willing to come to life
the song

~
I love spontaneous shuffled-ipod moments that sum it up.  that cant be planned.

12 song round-up, driving out Ukiah down the 101.

1. Home.  Edward Sharp...
2. Sweetest Thing.  The Waifs
3. Tree.  Blitzen Trapper
4. Below the Hurricane.  Blizten Trapper
5. Lie Detector Test.  Sage Francis
6. No Dough.  The Mamas and Papas
7. Wasted.  Brandi Carlile
8. Dreams.  Brandi Carlile
9. Oh Dear.  Brandi Carlile
10. Speed Law. Mos Def
11. That Hump.  Erykah Badu 
12. Tiny Cities Made of Ashes.  Modest Mouse

ahhh, poems~
masquerading as mere sound

~
Nobody wants you when you're old and gray, they'll be some changes made
~

Bodega Hwy, The Russian River...
so what i dont have money.  i also dont give a damn.
~

"In San Francisco, everything is more bohemian, and a good deal like Paris." --Alfred Hertz, 1910

~

9/20/11

You met me, I want to tell him, when I had my at-home body.  Might as well of been my winter-weight.  Comforting, taking of food and tv.  Low light of evening, settling sounds of night in the comfort of mom's home.  It falls so easy in to flopping. In to not taking care of myself.  I ran yesterday for 45 minutes, the whole time next to the sea.  I walked around town twice, once before that to the market and once later, in the afternoon, to the beach.  California is the active high-bodied vitality.  Of how to live.

~ 

It's not cryptic!  Some things I just keep private on here

~

the girl w the pendant of her grandmother's also has genuine, kind eyes. 

~

maybe she is a student?  probably.  i want to tell her.  hold tight to this freshness.  the vitality will try to disappear.  the maintenance of which will be all that matters in your times to come.

this is not california.  just, soul.  that which can not be taught.  but practiced.  well-practiced in to a disciplined gold.

~

i love coffee shops.

it's hot in Central California,

& who cares the boys club

I may never get in?

~

Sebastopol, finally~these are my ppl.

groovy as they come.

O Elvis, when to you I said the Prayer. Chester River Runoff @ Seacrets and other Myths and Dreams.

Mandy and I were in Memphis at Elvis'.  It was 2007 and we were on a 48-hour mission to get to an army base in Texas, I can't remember if Graceland happened before or after we stayed straight where we should've merged and next thing you know wound up in Alabama, or Arkansas, one of the A states not sure which but one otherwise not on our route.  We drove that route-not-really-our-route til the sun went down and purple twilight was everywhere and the road became a single lane, cutting through cotton fields with white puff-drifts breezing along the edges and high and thick in the side of the ditch.  Finally soon after that we were out of the car laughing, laughing so much at the middle of nowhere deep south cotton field that our road laid down before us, laughing and picture-taking and story-telling, a non-stop MandyKelly fury of redbull and flavored mini-cigars.

Mandy and me, before Red Bull existed.  Different Spontaneous Trip.  Domenical, Costa Rica.  Dec 1996.

Later, or before, or at any rate whenever it was that we made it to Elvis', I made an exaggerated deal about Graceland being my wedding gift to her.  It seemed right, it seemed epic, it seemed of the epochs, it seemed mythic as Mandy and I were then and always are to me.  To go visit the house of Elvis, the King, is what I mean.  Neither of us were Elvis fans, necessarily, but both of us found ourselves so moved by his timelessness, by the legacy of him, the specific honey-magic he generated that we were weepy again and again.

Last night Chester River Runoff played here in OC.  They opened for a band called The Electric Company's CD release and the whole thing started with the boys live on Ocean 98 playing the Live Lixx show. 

CRR, On the Big Screen.  Ocean City, April 2011.

In November, at the same big club, in the same corner up near the same stage where we always go Jotto and I were dancing like mad to a typical OC cover band.  I rooted my high-heeled feet down through the hydro-bouncing stage, I loosened my stance in Mountain Pose so my spirit hung gentle and witnessed easy and soft as a wild rose. O heart of moon and ocean, let me reign in with your song,  O mama spirit mama la mar mama la luna, mama the wise earth, o all she holds which is all that is here.  O, Life.  I raised my arms in dance, a dance prayer all dance is prayer and I rolled my eyes and beseeched holy Life, said help me dance this mediocrity away.  I twirled and twirled and twirled and whirled and frenzy danced so much like I love to do with Jen.  Later that night, at Mambo's, while Jott was busy in a textbubble that I was judging her for in a funny laughy way, Nate from the Electric Company walked in I didn't even know original bands existed here then and had never heard of his.  It was enough, that one night talk over the seat booth with him who knew and was friends with Sam, of witty, flirty talk.  Enough to keep me rooted in the deeper life myth, the Call.

Elvis is Here.  Graceland, Dec 2010.

O Elvis.  O ELvis, I said and would have grabbed Mandy's hand had she been standing near, O Elvis, we were there at his gravesight Mandy and me, out back of could be GlnBrnieBrklynPrk Memphis, Tennesee. O Elvis now got me Graceland touched, forever Graceland-bound. I wrapped me, wrapped the self the me that touches the timeless heart the heart of all things, touched in the heart of the emotions we felt, Mandy and me.  O Elvis and the sun shined and there he lay, and it was still and beautiful, O wrap my friends in the same big spirit myth the one you've evoked here today in me.  O Elvis and Angels who looked so happy on him bless them, bless them please. I brought them there, I summoned Walsh then, the boys from Chester River, I summoned The Took and Josh and his Parade, too. 

Rocking Chair.  Ben's Farm, February 2009.

Last night CRR played Molly's song. About too many sunny days and I went up near them close as I could to them, my old tribe of mad genius men, my old friends.  To have with them a moment for her where it was peace.  My friend of the precious wanderer tribe, poet-spirit sister of things too big for this world to see.  They wrote that song before death took her and I was in Oregon when that happened last June and couldn't be part of the ritual Ben and Sam arranged that said goodbye.  They played her song and I closed my eyes and kept them closed for long and let the song be a prayer of thankfulness for it all: and in that time there in Morley Hall with the songs and dance-prayers to follow me the wild grl me came back on me and in my happy bluegrass dancing in my wedge spring high heels I actually was the myth of then, the myth of us the myth of how it all came to be.  Country as hell, country wild as I used to be, I had barefeet and there a great bonfire in the mad brickpit with flames as high as six feet and there tall pine trees and there a stage in front of a late harvest corn field and there middle of the night christmas lights on the tree branches and on the grape arbor hung just so, and there all the music, all my friends, all the fresh grown food the pot luck kitchens the river the naked swimming, there the ever-witnessing big white full moon.  That one solstice at Ben's farms on our backs in her the Chester the river silk and moon milk on our summer tanned river skin. Running in the wild dark and leaping in.  Dancing and hamming and jamming and there two in the morning shadows on the backlit sky,  wooping the wild spirit wild as it used to be, fresh rockfish fresh corn fresh herbs bike rides coffee shops genius madness, poetry, wild as it still is because it Was and all that is is from, always, what used to be.

Goose Blind.  Chester River @ Ben's.  Febraury, 2009.

I thought of Elvis then, and my prayer to him back then for these my sacred friends.  I remembered November, same dance hall different dance--of desperation--the night that I first met Nate when I forgot but he was sent by Life as Reminder all that comes passes, to come back in different ways again.

I blessed Myth then, thought of Mandy and all my precious wild women-grls, I danced some more and loved my friends and loved even more the perfect timelessness in the heart, the Heart of the heart, the heart that lives inside us all and that I am thankful cuz I live it for sure, its gift of livingness inside me.

Meditation, on Time. Revolutionary Letter # 74.

by Diane diPrima

June 12, 1982
for Fulcanelli & John Lennon

There is always            the fire.         Downward it
blows our eyebrows off, blows holes
in our dusty skin.         In the crucible
it melts our faces in to knots & puddles
It melts our hearts.  And they become rock or
something more feeling than flesh.    There is
no way around it, it is         there is
always
             the fire.   Is this alchemy?   Must
the process pass thru
                                 10, 000 suns?   There
has never been a way
around
          the crucible.       Can the heat
of our love excel
                          tangible flame? Only then
can this crucible
                          replace
                                      the old.  There are
even in alchemy 'two ways' and this
our way can supplant
habits of war.        It is
                                   'the dry way'
                                                        (no blood,
no tears)     only
                          substantial presence,
my hand in yours.
                            And you are a stranger.
                                                                There are no
strangers.      Now.
                           This transformation
by the Inward Fire
                           (our heat  /  our love)
                                                            no
charred limbs, blistered eyeballs, brain
turned to steam
                        only
                               the Inward Fire,   slow
combustion  /  quick change  /  tomorrow
is already here.

On the Road, 2004

from the brown, leather-bound journal
where the poems are


18 july
2004

Watching
a lightening storm
San Juan River at
Navajo Dam, hurried
to put up the tent
and tarp
after trekking all day
around Mesa Verde
     sage brush
     mountain mahogany
     morman tea
     pinon

to learn of a
new plant, I
glowed & he,
he who is loyal,
is protector
shined at my delight

~

I started part two of my book today, which came from the same day in 2004, out of the other journal the one that held my downloads, and most private thoughts of all.

Of two worlds, my brother Sean and I

Today I am reading Maloutas.  The Whole Marie.  She slips me effortless as a stream in to the poetry, the poetic dream.  The inside-imagination place stunning as it is sacred, the place where it all is: what could be.

It is an ordinary day, like all others that mean something to me:  I exhibited choice. Choice not just in my approach to the day but also, for Wednesday is my Sunday, my last day of my weekend, in what I would do.  Not just how and who but what.

Today I will be poet, I get to be one hundred percent me-poet-me. Engaged in the act of the dream, engulfed.  The poet dream, the miraculous consciousness.  In bed.  Today, I will not get out of bed.  The books the blank page the candles and oils burning the cozies the blankies the coffee, o the coffee, and me.

I've been out of bed five times.  The poet's life is tough, this is the silver grain, this is the seed that falls from the grail.  I love to be engulfed!!  I only ever want to be engulfed!  Even if it hurts to pull myself out again.  Even if Narnia and the traces of her magic wands linger in the fingerprints left on my work apron, my work clothes, my work tucked behind my ear up in bobbypins hair.  The fingerprints how they pain me.  This is the gentle, furtive discipline.  Knowing when to say when--knowing when to say it is time to give to the seeds, to palm them in repetitive warming, to crack them from the hull, to till their bed-ground, to lay open.  In 2008 at this time I thought the dream Craziness, illusory, not real. Thought myself half-mad and on my way to proving insanity wasn't worth it by fighting it every step of the way.  YIKES.  No one tells you the dream is what you give to it, the madness what you take away, or refuse.  You have to define that landscape for yourself.

The half and half.  I've been out of bed five times today, up for three hours and yet to write, til now.  When I first woke the waking was whole and real. With the inside peace, that all-knowing perspective place of knowledge, that round calm room easy to see as a door, opened.  The understanding, congruent feeling there sometimes is upon waking, the creation of which we have no control.  In the middle of the night I dreamt of my brother, it was raining out and what woke me in the center of the dream was the most delicious, monstrous thunder and flashes of lightening outside white as a beam.  Our first spring thunder storm. This part was real, not a dream.  Then when I woke from the thunder-sleep the rain in my dream had washed out the side of the house, and Sean and I were falling down the side of the rain-wave, floating, waving to the other, laughing at the oncoming crash.  Why haven't you talked to me? I was asking him.  Then I was awake it was morning and I wanted to write, nothing more in the world was there except to write, and not my book but from the poetryplaceallllday, but also there were all my dreams and I had to talk to Sean.

He texted this morning Nate Dogg died.  Turns out he dreamt about me too and in his dream he asked me wutsup with you how come we haven't been talking which of course meant we had to talk, and now.

I love him so much, my brother.  We are very, very different.  He is in a corporate job and in June of last year he and his fiance moved 2000 miles away in order to pursue the growth of her corporate position.  They live in an enormous brick home in the suburbs of Memphis the kind with interior decoration and an inground swimming pool, they married this past fall in a huge fancy affair, they are now expecting their first kid. And this is it, the half and half.  None of that lifestyle is part of me, but that life and those who people it are, and so on my slip-slide in to the poetry dream this morning I called him back because this is what it is to be de dos mundos or "of two worlds", the first world is the inner, the poetic dreamworld where myth is real, and reality bendable, and world number two is where most the other people always live, the topside world of responsibilities, obligations, where also our relationships and heart-ties lay.  I have an enormous amount of relationships and have always put a lot of myself in to my work.  It is a hard walk to keep the line of--being of two worlds.   I talked to my brother strongly, clearly, he is the only one now that I've told about all the inner quiet things happening.  The hopes, the action.  The topside realities blended with the inner poetry visions, the alchemy.  The blending of both worlds, the manifestations of my true dreams.  For most I dont have the energy or clarity to speak it all out, but I told it best I could to him, I told it all.  Likewise my brother, the man I admire and look up to most in this world, told me his. 

Sean and I were suburb brats raised in a coosh lifestyle, playing 'intendo and crossing the swingset and riding BMX bikes and hanging with the many other kids like us in the neighborhood.  Kickball in the deadend and playing games I'd make up like murder mystery or war games that would take us for hours out and about on foot.  Just miles away was Baltimore City, hon, its highrise projects and kitschy thrift-lovin stoop-hons and blue collar factory workers corner to corner from the other.  In the early 90's hiphop gave way to gangsta rap, 92Q and V103 out of the city were hot and here is the miracle of how poetry, the poetic dream does. I was becoming a drug addict then, just starting, and Doggystyle was Sean and I's shit and it felt so real!  All that funk us white kids were nodding our heads to, without even knowing it was the very soundtrack miles away in our own city.  Playing out from the bathroom boombox, shaping us and shaping me and our popular culture sure as we shaped it.   I watched 8 mile last night for the first time in a while, the battle at the end gives me chills.  That movie was supposed to be 95, the year I graduated highschool. Biggie and Mob Deep are all over the background while they drive beater cars and puff blunts and dream of some day.  I did that same shit in 1995.   But I went back to my coosh life at mom's at the end of the day.

I love that Nate Dogg, all these years later and from way different places, is where my brother and I meet in the middle of those two worlds.

Here is my fave most recent clip of Nate D. Be sure to check it out, 1:28. Listening today I realized what I always loved most about him, how his baritone voice was low enough to serve as a baseline interlude.    Ahhh god just hearing him makes me hottt

Also, for good measure.  A little Snoop Dogg, original shiznet for dat ass~
RIP Nate D (fb users go here)

Dogwood Motel, Idleyld Park, OR. North Umpqua River, June 3, 2010.

I am alive in the night, the night is nothing but rain.
The rain takes its time coming alive, it is a steady motion
and soon as it is living it comes apart. It quarters itself,
and I dive back again, driving along side the river, I jump in.
Umpqua Valley distraction, land without dust. The river runs high,
the rain runs the roof line it drips in the gutter and out back still
the coy fish silently swim. I swim, I swim silently, I imagine the body

of our bodies, I imagine
traction, I imagine depth, I imagine bodyless motion inside the waterless
sea. I imagine what must already be a dream, what must already be night
what must already be nothing. But rain. I imagine a hand, the hand of your arm,
it takes my chin, adjusts me. I imagine being pulled in.

I planned a trip back to where I was from.
I planned a trip back to where I was animated.
I planned a trip back to where I was drawn to life.
Land of moss on trees. The moss laces deep things out of me
I will never know. The moss drapes from trees and curls itself
into my toes. The moss dances down the stream. Dancing stream comes
from high tops of mountains where alder trees and first growth haven’t been born.
Sunlight stays there in the grass at the tops of mountains. Peregrines and hawks live
and shriek in circles imagining the sky. In the middle of the forest deep the air stays
under canopy, has a dream of sunshine and a meadow it never sees, it does not realize
it is dreaming itself. It does not realize it is dreaming nothing. The night is not animated
with anything but the night, the reflection of itself on itself. Voidless. The void with void
makes it without nothing, makes it without itself. Makes it eat itself, devour itself whole.
The night eats itself, because it is nothing, so too the dream dreams itself and makes it go away.
The meadow eats itself, eats elk, eats mice, eats snake and small beetles that burrow in dry dirt,
they never see the sun. The water makes its way all back to the yellow flowers of sawtooth.
Bath of river, bath of moss, bath of lichen and green algae so dark it looks like blood attached to,
dancing from the stone.

The same nite as our friend M’s death
I set the map about me on the counter. It was a map with lots of green.
It was a map I had little trouble trying to read. It was laid out before me
like a broad highway with easy lights and no traffic and the places to stop
already computed in to my autopilot vegetable mind. The mind part that knows,
knows how to drive, knows how to switch gears in rain coming down no matter
the foreign town, the mind part that knows how to ease up on the gas, slow down
with out brakes, how to make room for other drivers on the road. Molly died.
She was a sailor, a sailor, alone on the east coast, on an eastern shore of an east coast town,
a poet, a poet alone on a wordless continent in a voiceless town, she was a sailor poet magi,
a sailor poet magi god who died alone because she didn’t think she could die alone.
Is she dead? The bird outside the harbor asked the sea. Is she dead? The yellow sawtooth
from the high desert somewhere above Willamette poured out the side of a flat mountain wall
and asked me.

I went down to the bay, Winchester, to see for myself.

Molly, are you dead?

I lay down, see, your heart floats out on to the top of the sea.

I imagine being pulled in. I followed the Umpqua up from the sea, I followed the river up from the bay,
I followed the bird down to the harbor the harbor followed my longing out to the sea. I imagined you,
I imagined us, I imagined us naked as one string of water endlessly running inside the stream our bodies twirled together like sound, like invisible light that only water can see. I imagined you glowing, I imagined you naked, streaming and twirling alone inside of me. I imagined you hard, hard like mountain, hard like stone, hard like the hole the water pours out from on the side of the road. We were invisible to the other because only invisibility can see itself, can see the nothing in itself. We were invisible to the other. I came here came back from here back to where I was drawn to life. Water poured out from me, water poured out from the sky. I poured out from me, you were there. You were not there. I asked myself where you were, where you went. You said where I do not know. I came alive then, to the nothing, I came alive in the nothing in you.

Poem. Groups.

I will remember this: that
was the winter I ate only brown rice or
met friends for deals in town beside the
beach on weeknights. And listened to
Iron & Wine which is not like Neutral Milk
Hotel I think to myself bc in college when you
first listen to Neutral Milk Hotel
or Elliot Smith
you still think I’m the only one.
There was a group of us. This
group we worked together
it was in a restaurant.
And we made light out of one
another by going dancing and
drinking and sharing our likes of
certain music, sushi or fancy shoes.
It was a cold winter, it was dark
and that is what we will say: we
made light out of each other. For
each other, for our selves. We
became good at showing up to
shine on the other from within.

Years later I will liken them to
other groups. A single member who
maybe I will run in to at the club this
weekend while dancing or maybe next
time I’m home at the grocery store with
a cousin probably not tho hard to say.
Groups I used to drink underage with
get high bum smokes or sneak out. Groups
I listened to Elliot Smith with or sat under
bridges with listening to ourselves sing
the whole ordeal of getting clean. Groups
once likened to other groups long
gone other groups I once lived beside
the ocean with went barefoot with once took
short cuts through alley ways with laid on
our backs in the sand together
groups that years ago in the summer
when we didn’t need to make light
joined me after midnight so we could swim.

Of Note: Self-Portrait In Ink

by Bruce Beasley

As the gone-
translucent

octopus
jet-blasts into evasion, vanishing

while its ink-sac spurts
a cloud of defensive

mucus & coagulant
azure-black pigment,

self-shaped
octopus imago in ink, so the shark

gnashes at that blobbed
sepia phantom,

pseudomorph
that disperses into black

nebulae & shreds
with each shark-strike

& the escaped
octopus throbs

beyond, see-through
in the see-through water, untouched--:

so, go
little poem, little

ink-smudge-on-fingertip
&-print, mimicker


& camouflage,
self-getaway, cloud-

scribble, write
out my dissipating

name on the water,
emptied sac of self-illusive ink...

____

This is a love story; and
bitter prayer, in disappointment to
be more than
I have been.

Helllo, Lover...September September & ALL that I love...

Remember the Sex in the City when Carrie's walking down the street and in the window sees the pink Manolo's with the ruffles? When Miranda has Brady and Big leaves for Cali and they have that great dance scene in his empty apartment....but before all that, on the street in Manhattan, remember that fine epic moment of first sight, when it's just Carrie and the shoes...

Remember? Helllo, Lover...


I get that. This term came to me this morning, actually just now. First Sight. Here's what I mean--by first sight--and by the simple, breathy eloquence of Helllo, Lover when it comes to something seemingly unremarkable in the scheme of things, like a pair of shoes.

I believe that we all, inside the deep secret mystery of ourselves, have our secret visions. I believe we all have that feeling of, or picture of, who we are in our truest way, of how or who if ever the circumstances would just line up to accompany and support us, we are or would be at our most free. At our most happy, or content. I believe that most of us associate this idea of the inner contented self with things, with the house, or the right car, or outfit, or job or profession or relationship or city to live in or whatever it may be. And I also believe that it's this mistake, associating the secret inner dream with things or stuff that leads to endless discontentment.

But most of all, I believe in the importance of that inner dream, in that vision of happy. And I believe that on the road map of who we are it is those things, that stuff--ruffly, pink Manolo's on thin black stiletto heels that make your breath go woozy and your chest fall a little shallow on First Sight--that best help us approach who we are in that inside place. That best arise the inner reverent place of YES, this is ME. It's not, in other words, the shoes that count. It's the inner response of Aha, yes, amen! that does. It's the little guideposts to being true to ones self, to uncovering and being I am...

So that was me, this morning, first day of September. I finally, finally! Have two days off in a row, which hasn't happened since I got home from cousin Jackie's wedding in Maine on August 10th. I woke up. I am off today and tomorrow, my first submission of my novel is due to Erika today. The light was coming through my window, split by the chokes of the blinds, moving on my bed to the luxury of the leaf movement in the trees. It is that dark yellow light of fall, which has been here since mid-August and grows in momentum each day. And I woke up, and my eyes opened, and my spirit was singing with a literal inner smile I could feel~~Helllo Lover!! Ahhh, yes...Hello, Fall!

It's hooot out today, but that doesn't matter at all. Because September, same like Poetry with a capitol P, is something I associate with, something that directs me towards the inner vision of me. It's nothing I can own, just a sense of life, of vitality and emergence that counts. 2001. September. Second week of my senior year in college. I'd been clean for 10 months and was hanging in Ocean City with some friends. It was a Sunday, football was on and the air coming in the screen of the oceanside condo I was chilling in felt flirty like it was twirling the ends of my hair and whispering against my skin and also it smelled like the sea. And I was on the couch making out with someone for hours, and I left with a surfboard under my arm and I still remember the pavement on my bare feet and the soft way my longsleeve tee caught the twilight seabreeze. I picked up chinese food to take home and wrote for hours in my journal that night and showed up late for class the next morning, having stayed at the beach til the very last moment I could. It wasn't the beach, or the football, not the air or the late light, not making out with Joel or the surfboard or the luxury of affording take out Chinese. It's none of that still sitting with me now--it was the freedom of life that I loved, freedom of in moment living that is sweet as Fall Beach Air that makes me reminiscent, and most important: that holds me to the inside me of all that is still possible in the endless stream of I Am...

Mythic Imagination. Mythic Imagination, the only true thing (follow this link!!!! Click on Number 13!!!!!! LISTEN!) Mythic Imagination. The Only Truth. Constant Potential Source Capacity for Creation. It starts in stillness. Stillness is necessary to being awake. Being awake is how to recognize what stirs you. It has nothing to do with what you own outside yourself, and everything to do with what you say yes to within. It is why I devour my Vogue page by glorious page even though I doubt I'll ever own a single designer name. Mythic Imagination. The only truth we have, the only true tool that matters. First Sight. What stirs you? What says yes, makes you gasp or makes your breath fall short or your inner thermal rise? That's your first sight. First Sight is only so good as the innocence of staying yes to it than allowing to let it go as to say yes again! As Zen Masters teach with the Beginning Mind. Let it pass then Return Again, return again, return again. Let it arise and pass, anicha anicha changing changing. Let nothing dampen or grey this vision, this inner stir. Let it remain always Me, in my quest to be me~ that holy sacredness of Ahhhh, ohhh, Helllo Lover. That inner sacred harmony vision of the First True Sight of Me. Guidepost to all and Who I truly am, and can be...

Me, with the Advanced Copy of my writing partner Erika Robuck's next book!

Woooooooooohooooooooooooooo!!!

poem. unedited. candle-burning.

Winchester Bay, OR. June 3, 2010

What if these leaves are unread, or worse, dry, not mighty, by the ambiguity of refusal
Ever after, what then, becomes of Crow~
Perched first in shadow, waiting, waiting
My returm, waiting on the wind, waiting on the sea moss that hangs
From armfat branches of so many coastal trees from the armfat moss
And mold that fight each other in the longest dying, the trying of death is what’s timeless, and means nothing, other than arm fat breeze. Ground squirrels and chipmunks come and go this is home, make this home with their rodent breath fat on chanterelles and lichen, and mud. The sea breeze and sea trees grow in Lane County right out of the dunes, as if sand were enough. NO!! No I rattle my fist in it the painted gourd from Bobby Rays, invisible, no it is not enough, it is not enough to grow merely in sand
But that is elemental. Sea breeze incense air, salt seems too much but is enough, sun is fire & now,
Crow flies by window and says I’m ever in the shadows shadows are elemental your name is made of rain

Scathach, goddess of Celtic Warriors, come to me. O Goddess of birds, o trainer of men, come to me. Come to me now by cry that you are bird goddess, that you speak the words and know the magic names of all that takes air, that take to air, of all power and medicine that flies. In the magic hills top of Willamette Southside of the Breitenbush I spoke your name but first in silence, first in the powerful spell. hush of wet pine and mats of leaves did to me I knew only for one minute what it meant. Wolves travel hilltops for you, wildness speaks the power kernelled inside your breath Scathach, Scathach do you see what I can see can you see the speak the dry bird tongue rasp of cry that shakes the forest down drops loose leaves too the ground forces detritus above and under, constant change, constant turmoil of exile tension of self upon its self, blundering up the side walls, blundering up the scurried harried walls of herself, herself an extension of river breath and mist, can you speak the black bird name? Can you speak his voiceless vocabulary the yearnful calling? Is it just emission, do you choose it only as a game. I spoke your name. I spoke your name once for the yearlings cry, I spoke your name once for the pear tree, I spoke your name once for the mist of muse that blurs in the fog impenetrable banquet net gathering and catching and harnessing the sky I speak your name once for the buddhafull belly of the land once for the boulders built in highway categories out of words from the land I speak your name for fear of the Detroit damn I speak your name for the spell of India and the death of cartoons I speak your name for the tongues of the river tongues drunk on their own breath drunk on their own licks drunk on their own current drunk on their own madness drunk on their own cities drunk on their onw joy drunk on the belief of their own ecstasies I speak your name, I am drunk on your myth

O Scathach, if birds do not come to me? Do not come to train, do not come to be trained by me?
What then? These flowers I laid bare at your door out the Winchester Harbor fishing boats moored decks wet by nets tangled inner cabin dry and nestled boatopened bellys trying to scoop and save the sea. What then? I burn a candle not just for the lost poet sister, this morning, love, I burn a candle for me.

Reminiscing. Play it Again Sam's.

The door of the CoffeeCat is heavy wood and you have to push it in the center of the handle with a certain amount of compact umph for it to swing easily open. This morning and without any anticipation upon the push of the door I got struck in the gut with the most endured sense of wistful longing, an immediate and aching clutch on my heart the moment I stepped inside.

It was the tunneled noise of the milk-steamer that did it. And the warm bouancy, from all the rain outside, inside on the air.

I scanned the room for a recognizable face and there was Liz, the barista I got to know first when I started coming here last year. She is in her senior year of highschool and an athlete so I rarely see her anymore.

Just that little familiarity added a certain tweak to my heart.

Sometimes, with the least amount of expectation or warning, this happens to me. I am struck by sudden and complete awe for life. For its fleeting passing. For all the little moments that are all the time sliding us by.

This morning it descended upon me in a memory so physical I could've stepped back in time. I worked as a barista in a coffee shop in Chestertown my senior year of college. 2001 and most of 02. Mornings in the winter each step on the cold earth I'd pound closer to downtown my breath would grow more severe--I'd clutch whatever thin little sweater I was wearing harder across my chest and see my knuckles redden by the chill. It seems it was always gray that winter. The door, when it pushed open, rang little bells and my glasses immediately would cover in steam and my nose fill with the most alluring savory smell of the homemade muffins, Comfort Food, that Natalie Comfort was busy baking. One of the other baristas, almost always, was already at work steaming themselves a morning wake-me-up drink.

I dropped out of college twice from drugging and booze--the second time it was in order to get clean. The year I worked as a barista, my senior year, was the only year I was clean while in school, and it's really the only year that I remember with any sort of clarity. And they are sweet, specific sensory memories. The inborn joy that bubbles out of Katie that would jolt my heart every Thursday afternoon when we would meet and walk in to poetry class together; the tweak of enjoyment seeing the new outfit or wig that Libby would have on when I would turn the corner on High Street and see her in front of the coffee shop on her smoke break; the peace, inherent, of the way Jazmine moved across our apartment--the way one person's nature can wordlessly inspire you to want more from yourself. Dear God did I relive the collective experiences of that time in a mere instant this morning~and oh did it make my heart cry out in longing over what used to be.

It made me think quite instantly about other times in my life that are no more than memory~other times and whole other groups of fabulous, wild, hysterical, ridiculous people that are actively no more to me today than, if I am lucky, a facebook status update. Crofton, the pizza shop, 6th street, Ocean Pines Beach Club, the boys from the beach. I guess what ultimately this experience did was force me in to the reality of what I've quietly been witnessing and coming to terms with in the past few months: that too, Chestertown, the people there and memories, Play it Again, Andy's, Truslow Road, Anngar....all those too will pass away. Have already begun to, and how the aspects of this have hit me with a surrendering that is much like grief.

There is no other way to put it than that. I am looking forward, in great joy and enthusiasm, towards this next unwrit chapter of my life. It thrills me to no end the great, raw power in this~of choice and faith when mixed together. The pure alchemy of it. Yet the picture would be incomplete without the other...the saying goodbye. I have learned that all things pass, and yet somehow come again~that this is the thing about life. Most experiences merely change form, whether they are relationships, aspects of our selves or each other, the work we do, the family we spend time with, the ways in general we spend our time. There is at work always a greater thread that is weaving us and nudging us and it is part the tapestry--and part our choice of the stitches me choose to make, that make up all of life. I am lucky today to still have close, amazying friends that span all parts of my journey, and too grateful as hell for social sites like Facebook because even if we dont actually talk or see one another--knowing for example that Jess Singleton is happy and has a dog and a job she enjoys out someplace in Arizona, or that Ryan Muller is surfing and chilling in Florida gives me infinite peace.

I am in the Coffee Cat right now, preparing to work on my book. A warm-up as Erika would say. Sweet sweet Erika from all the way back chorus and basketball practice at Arthur Slade.
In less than a month Coffee Cat will no longer be my regular haunt. Once, my senior year of college, the poet Li Young Lee came to speak to our Contemporary Poetry Class. He was asked about faith, and his belief in God. He could not answer specific to a godhead, or even to faith, but what he did say was that LIFE is in this moment, and this moment is also always changing and passing on by. I make practice, he said, of centering myself much as I can throughout my day and then in that centered moment, reminding myself by saying Thank you, Goodbye.

Ahhhh, reminder to be present. Thank you, good bye.

...the way the high hawk's key unlocks the throat of the sky...

Go here & read about this anthology, and also read Dungy's poem at the bottom of the page!

Short Poem. Immortal.

When I set out today I didn't know
I'd come here, to the park. I only
had mail to do--a post office drop
& didn't expect to be sitting here
across from you
perfect stranger
while you sketch me &
I pretend I do not know.

O my god...

Read this.

A Poet's Date, & Jealousy

I am jealous of him, and I miss him, in both the way a needy girlfriend craves attention and in the way you miss tossing your hair over your shoulder when it gets cut off or miss the outline between the trees of sky when suddenly the winter's gone. The way it is with that old cliche about not knowing how much you love respect appreciate etc something until you lose it--that is how I feel this week about him and I tell him this. Over text message, cuz it's the only way I can. You'll only have the number of real, true friends in your life that you can count on one hand is a line I was raised on, heard again again and again and so I value so strongly the connections I have with folks and understand what a brave and great gift it is to be "friend." If this exact axiom is true or not I dont know tho, it hasn't been my whole life yet or at least I hope not, but it is true that there are to me legit qualifiers for true friends. And so as men go, he qualifies, really currently he is only one of two men who do. My bro is the other one.

He texts about getting lunch and I agree because I know he is on Artist's Retreat and still was willing to reach out to the needy-girlfriend part in me. He's not my boyfriend we are not at all romantic we long ago discussed and then established that, it's just that he's filled such a huge role and taught me to trust again so maybe there's some of my possessiveness. We go to the Market where we always almost every Thursday go and standing in line I ask him to tell me about how it's going and that is when I realize I am jealous. When he talks about the songs he's completed, the songs he's writing, the songs he's going to record. When he starts talking about getting up at 8 and working all day.

What will it look like for me? Working all day? I found this quote from Rilke this morning.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such argumentation, discussion or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights. Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.

This confirmed for me what I am struggling to maintain belief in because nowhere, practically nowhere in the daytoday grind do I see this valued: the inner life, the spirit and surrendering to the rhythms of me again, the tides of my own soul. I am on an Poet's Date with me right now, and I stuck to it today as it was pencilled in. 3 o'clock Poet's Date with You. Which means time uncharted with nothing to do but follow inside of me what I yearn for. I am writing, I just read Neruda and got transfixed on the spanish differences in assumption that can be made versus the english tranlation. y que la edad escribe letras/con agua y piedra para nadie,/para que nadie sepa donde,/para que nadie entienda nada again and again until it rolled like washed pebbles with gemstones inside over and over on my tongue. Until the words confused me, the words confused themselves, the translation was one thing the words something else the sound they made too its own thing the heartfusionmomentofactiontransaction on the tongue a total other. The time to do this--to be brave and foolish and quiet and sighing long enough to raise and then honor the song. No place to go but here, with me, alight alight alive and in the moment with my spirit and its wants and its needs. I think of Oregon, I picture it in my minds eye and sometimes I am on retreat and it is just reading long books in bed, stopping trailside to write down the words, laying on my back on the hot sand the sun marking me and the combination brine and green buoyant sea smell of the Coast. But sometimes it is, it is writing all day. And to me both kinds of work, the action kind and the priming honoring the tides and spirit of me are equally important.

We are so sick with the lac of it.

We are so sick with the need for it.

I saw it, wordless in his eye today and want that, that fire that transpires to speak greater languages than I currently can, that writes itself on my skin with its words that makes it so I dont even need to speak them because it speaks for me so great from in my soul. I saw it in him today and made myself be happy for him We're in this together remember he reminded me last week so I chose to be happy and let my jealousy go.

Afterall I had a date with me today and here I am now and am swept whole in that clean deep sigh inside glisten way from listening listening and submitting to the rhythms and tides so he's right, and back I go....