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Jester Hat

/ the proverbial phoenix / Leave a comment

Place the hat upon my head sir, as it appears I am a dunce or perhaps a jester. I have to laugh at myself as I fail to be a quest of which you sequester. Im just a guest here, a pat on the ass of fine stature. A statue of marbling fractures you pass by in the court yard, falling apart as I try so hard to make you laugh and request more, of me.

Asking to see what I bring. Asking to see what kind of performance I will sing, and will I jump through the rings the master holds out for the show to the whole audience be seen, you and they clap, end scene, it’s dark.

Did I play the part? Was the flute not good enough, should have played the harp? The harp not talented enough, I offer snow whites heart. Actually a pigs, but the knife wasn’t sharp. I worked so hard to make you see the chard’s layering in the prankster cards, did I make you laugh?

Passed out now from my undisciplined efforts for attention. Regardless of all the qualities I offer that you like and mention. I guess I have to remember the intention, and that it is rarely the same as mine and so my spirit needs an intervention. Rest easy myself, rest from self contention. Entertaining on others peoples stages are not my destination, so I dance for myself, no other explanation.

Halt, Past.

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Preserved in the past,

the present will pass and become passed,

passing through portals,

a passage pursued by mortals,

trying to immortalize the atrocities committed as merely cordial.

Dialing in the correct order,

measuring the mortar,

aligning boundaries and building up borders.

No strong enough a soldier

can break through what has been soldered and smoldered

under the burning embers of coal.

The soul

tries to rise from the ashes of shame,

from the shadows cast in blame,

a game of then and now with no sight of the future,

aside from the sutures.

In spite of the putrid

oozing of endless boozing in a punch drunk love.

Above

it all, yet looking down,

a broken smile

known as a frown

is the gown plastered on the face of disgrace.

Placed firm in a foundation of cracked cementing statues,

lamenting in laminated hope brochures,

which lock in the last known attempt to procure

a treasured polished piece.

It’s niche,

and not quite as ripe as a peach.

Peel off the veneer,

all unleashed,

the superglued splinters fall at the feet.

It had always been incomplete

but entered into the show to compete.

Completely tarnished,

streaks of varnish

drip stains on the remains

of what the future could not halter,

the alter.

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Why getting dumped on Woman’s Day (weekend), during Women’s Month, honors the Celebration of Women, Woman’s Day, Woman’s Month, Woman’s Life.

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This may seem ironic at first. Getting dumped honors women you say, how’s that? I know, it may be hard to see that as true at first, but the playbill that we have all been watching, was not what I auditioned to be a part of. I think it is safe to say, that a lot of leading women “roles” are actually a monologue of the deflated main character’s hopes and dreams. So what better way to step back into the limelight the woman was destined to play, than by being let go by a director who lost the lines to the script?

Break a leg!!

Oh ouch, I mean that figuratively, because we may need that balance as I explain just how empowering it could be to get ditched by the garbage delivery service. It’s like scoring a vintage Tiffany’s lamp in someone’s “FREE” bin on the curb, that you just got kicked to. Perhaps it can be visualized as a rare recording that just got remastered and goes platinum in a week after being dropped by a “bigtime label.” Actually, if you’re thrifty, it is as invaluable as the Juicy or Coach bag tucked away in the back of a dirty shoe shelf at a Goodwill.

Ok, ok, but why is this such a good deal?

Frankly, because I am, as you are, worth more than the mass produced cheap trash that was being fed into my soul.

The dish that I kept ordering and tasting was delicious though. Like downright made my mouth water. Every single time I sat down back at the table and I waited for my yummies, such a tasty and delectable appetizer. I was hungry though. The chef and I talked and clearly he was still a line prep. I love a man who can cook. So he kept feeding me the little delicious morsels that were filling me up, with an order on the line for the main course. My hopeful chef though, was still picking out other ingredients. He was ordering and eating from other menus as well as cooking really well for personal company. It was as if this prep cook was bringing back some of those leftovers and trying to serve them as fresh and uniquely supplied from his growing garden. I got food poisoning. Every time I bit into the prepared meal, I was dished out more watered down, reused and polished colanders caked of uncooked yolks.

The yolk was on me….

Let me tell you folks, the yolk is runny. Almost as runny-y as I am…..was….back into the shallow end of a pool that I thought kept getting deeper. Deep enough that I seemingly kept drowning in the buoyancy. I like to swim. But here’s the thing. Sometimes my water is really really dark, stagnant and pungent. I think I must be my own pool boy who just came fresh out of the gym, but has no flex. Mostly though, often I am a deep sea scuba diver that cannot navigate the way through a pond of my own wastewater. It is this environment that any sea-goer of my ship must fare at any time the storms roll in. But they are ripples from the rains of tears that were collected from the scorches of the thunderbolts at sea, where my nets have always been cast, since the time I was a Moses in the reeds. A collection of a liquid story.

An open book kind of story.

A story where it can get really difficult to trudge through those rambling rants of agony and loss. A long narrative where the writer has emphasized every letter to its fullest enunciation, giving exclamations to the most grueling grief. I narrated chapter after chapter of disbelief and debilitation followed by triumphs, joys, and reconciliations. But when the readings started reflecting and recording the rips the pages have held since the beginning of the press, the reader suddenly forgot how to read, shut the book. When opened back up to the joy of expression, after spurts of censorship, its an easy read with short stories of love, growth, and excitement. Yet when the next chapter, needs, to have its own title, needs to be enveloped into, co – authored and on the same page about where the rips are from and why they keep ripping, it suddenly becomes a comic book to the reader. Audible laughter became the veto to my voice and the red pen to my memoir.

MY memoir, MY Memories….

Many memories I have that I will hope to wash off the body like a temporary tattoo, where once the image was bright and crisp but the lasting result was a dull residue. Unlike the marring fingerprints from handling a collectible art piece to handily, some of the markings, the scar on my back, will not wash away, scrub away. Thankful I am now aware that I can have something incredibly beautiful braided onto my skin and seek healing in the process. As an artist, what is any better a way to express a scarred and tossed away clay lump of “too much mess,” than to become my own flowing and evolving masterpiece of self allowance and mastery?

A mastery of mind release.

See? It is now to become a release of all that was bound up in reflexes heightened to rubber band reactions. Wound up as tight as it could wind and triggered at its last of elasticity, snapping out of sight, and all that is left is the waves of energy left behind. The reverberations generated have shaken the casing off and created an emergence of what is to come. A flooding of all that has been dammed, from all the damns that were uttered, has come rushing through, ready to cleanse the basin. Gleaming and polished porcelain now, a receptacle of rejoicing once the voice was free to flow.

Flowing freely …

Freestyle forming now. It becomes time to see the freedom in becoming free. Not inundated with the pressures of not being able to withstand the opposition to expression. See now, the hardening chiseled away and reveals the treasure of those pressures. A diamond. Lighting the pathway which has been cleared to lay the new foundation of my Kingdom with the precious gems of the noble build. It becomes time to apply my own masonry of paving the way to a star studded encampment that will encompass all that is glistening in the glory of growth, and no longer held from progress. A lamp unto my pattering feet…

As I finally walk away…

Walk away from the table of poison where I no longer have to wonder who’s garden you pillaged to plate my palette… As I float away from falsity of finding depth in your shallows and shark infested wade pool that just waits for me to emotionally bleed and feast on my fears… As I saunter along into the sunshine and seek out only the growing seedlings found along in salutations of honesty and full hopes… I am upcycled from the bin of bruises you boxed me in and will encase the world in an array of raw and real reverence. I have become the priceless point of existence where all that reflects back to me is an understanding of what I know I am worth. And as far as being discarded in the dump, I realize that you are what you eat. I ate a lot of garbage, I became a lot of garbage. I was fined for wanting to reduce, reuse, and recycle from trash to treasure. So, while the garbage man is still making trips back and forth to the dump, I, a rare and valuable creation of star stuff and bright lights am able to find the value of the depths and rise above the heaps, where there are no more shadows dimming the hope and love I have to shine.

Shine on, me, you, crazy diamonds.

Beat. Seat. Obsolete.

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i only wanted you. i only wanted us. i never said goodbye but you said im too much , youre not enough. how do i compete, you made it complete. i am in defeat. i couldnt see the seat. i was trying to heal from the feats of all the beats of the poundings on my soul, voice, heart, and body. i embodied the wounds that swallowed every step of my feet. i could try to be discreet yet the sheet of melancholy music collects the rhythm i weep. man just sweep me away to a time that was sweet and indiscriminately obsolete of the events that now separate you from me. never was my choice you see, but i guess now i am free. should i thank you baby? you must not have wanted me, you never asked me back after you told me to leave, leaving me to contemplate all the different fates that had a serving of all chipped plates. i still would have set the date, and laid out new china, finer than anything we had ever dined on. but i am just whining on, its my song and i can see that all along i am strong, i just wanted us to be forever long, is that wrong?

This mourning

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My heart pounding, bags at the chair, I’m ready to leave… for the minute?, hour?, day?? I don’t know, but I feel my heart ready to explode. I say I’m leaving, just ok. We embrace, my heart is pounding, surely you’ll feel it and say something. Nothing is said. My hearts beats faster. Time to pull away, you still embrace, say nothing. I grab my bags, unlock the door, silence is walking out with me. I say I love you, you say I love you back, nothing more.

You walk by me and your phone is in your hand, head down. You walk by me and head away. I am left to sit or follow. You walk by and smile. Head down, phone out, up to closing of door. I am left to sit or follow. You walk by me and your hand reaches out to graze me, your gaze head down phone out.

I had a dream this morning. I shared and cried about it this morning. I had a dream where I was crying and mourning and I shared about that this morning. I am in mourning this morning.

Christmas I say is sad, I found an ornament. I say it is sad that I haven’t bought new ornaments in a long long time, the newest one I found yesterday. It was sad to find the ornament, the newest ornament, it’s wreath of Heaven Baby, ornament. This is why I don’t like to decorate, find new ornaments, it’s just sad.

It’s a sad ornament filled, I’m in mourning and your head is more often lately in your phone, I am having anxiety, you’re probably going to give me grief over this act of grief and lack of acknowledgment, and the day is going to be your family decorating with ornaments, will I might get accused of abandoning you all while I’m expected to sit extremely uncomfortably, and I got a lot going on and things I should be doing other than being made to feel like a what’s your problem and probably won’t check in on me, kind of morning.

I’ll go grocery shopping instead.

BMD . a story about how the body remembers even when the brain doesn’t

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Through my grasp it slips, the grip’s loosening over the gap of gasps as it becomes a familiar feeling, the reeling in of what’s real, what’s really happening, the fastening of the winds whipping the sounds of silence violently through my soul, now on the cusp of cold, screaming silently into a sound chamber where only I remember your name forever and when to honor… except for, I dismayed, could say nothing, except for the engrained tear exchange for the DNA’s reframe of the refrain through my brains terrain of dry docks and torrential rain.

Pouring

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The love I give has continued to pour … fill full and pour more. The source of this love has been questionable for an unknown amount of time now. I can’t say when it refills or how. I can’t say why it keeps giving or what it’s motive has become. For it has been a wounded well since our time has begun. Before my bucket was used to fill your cup, before I knew you had needed more than me to fill it up, I had to re-mortar the bricks that contains the courage, just enough. The job was done in haste and maybe some despair, but I knew would hold with gentle care. If gentle hands pulled my rope, centered it with purpose and I’d bring up the liquid hope. My plan was to pour into you with all I could hold and refill so quickly that the exchange of warmth from my source to your vessel would never go cold. To keep releasing all into your hands for you to drink me, take in my delivery. To just empty over and over again… and then… I realized I was over pouring. Your hands were always open, to receive from any duct that gave attention. They always stayed ajar and your mind took note to the sources that weren’t too far. And in the brief moments when my pouring slowed down to a drip, so I could take a moment to evaluate the dripping in which I’ve been slipping, created by the spill over from the tipping over of other pitchers into your serving cup, you keep putting at my table to serve you up, and in those brief moments of when I drip, you sip from another drip line filling you up and clog up mine. Then you hold up your hands and all the love pours out. Every drop and drip from my heart spout and it stutters at its source, and I have to realign my lines, my strings, my handle, my encasing. I have to retrace the rebuilding of my walls and all my compartments, are they intact, where do I lack? What’s wrong with my pouring? How is my all not enough? Then I see that a segment of my wall has been sloughed. Etched with drills of a version of love that made my exterior soft, while my love just kept pouring right past this love blinding blind spot. Picked at quietly as I kept flowing on by, wondering about the little streams that kept seeping awry. Thought the loss was from the tears that I cried. But it was lack of care that degraded my interior. Pulling and releasing my rope at commanding positions creating tensions unexpectedly and force back of slack, slapping into my mortar. Close by are your hands prying down my border. Close are your hands being filled by others, allowed to slip in to where my everflow never stops it’s flow. And leaves me to wonder where my love is to go. Leaves me to wonder will your hands ever close? Will you ever be able to wrap them around my well, only open for pour, from my lovings course, only embrace and drink from my love source?

Can you look in the mirror?

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Can you look in the mirror honestly? Does it tell you the truth of who you are? Does it show you in bold all the little secrets you hold?

Can you look in the mirror with pleasure? Are you able to observe the crease of time on your brow? Do you see the lines you’ve said displayed on your head?

Can you look in the mirror with trust? Has your reflection morphed too? Do your eyes look at you with pride or is it behind the lids you still hide?

Can you look in the mirror with dignity? Did the ego wash away in the shower? Are you seeing yourself as well and taking that nakedness into the words you tell?

Can you look into the mirror for long? Is it a gentle and confident exchange of sight? Do you see a human with intentions pure or a facade to procure?

Can you look into the mirror and see truth? Do your eyes relay back to you reality? Do your lips form the way they appear as you speak or are they cracked and breaking speech?

Can you look into the mirror and rely on it to be accurate? Does it show you who you really are? Will your reflection last to be who they see you as or will you be a reflection of your past?

Can you look into the mirror and smile? Are you the same in both dimensions? Are you honorable in the eyes of those that seek you to be reliable?

Can you look in the mirror? Can you stare at yourself long enough to see your soul? Can you keep seeing yourself the same or will the mirror shatter under your shame?

Can you look in the mirror? Can you be present enough to see who you really are? Will you be able to be whole and clear and good away from the mirror?

Whats in my mirror?

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Where do I stand when I look in the mirror? My feet lost in the abyss and my mind in space. What part of me should I be looking at? I’m not sure what part to observe.

Do I start with my hair? The mane of a lioness that flows into the ethereal and sheds its warnings to poachers that I, have been here, this Space I claim, and I will return. The nest of knots that have interlocked and woven together with little outside assistance and certainly less time in process of realignment of strands to be side by side. The firey and wirey reachings of keratin and pigment that swirl and stretch, break snap , and grab onto the fury of expressions through the crown. Tendrils swaying lower and peering over my back and softly teasing my bosom.

Do I then follow the lingering locks? Loaded and unloaded, lifted and left empty breasts of past time beauty that will never have the lust again. Mounds of nutrient and nourishment now perused over like leftovers and cold storage. The swaying between sensual and supplementation has ceased yet the sloping has increased. Drippings of sustenance silenced and the yearning for connection screams. Etchings of years of experiences fall off the front lines and lean into a flattening scape of exiting excitement, lowering the gaze to the maze of the puddling of passions passed.

Do I pass through the ridges, over my roughened experiences of readiness? Rafting beyond the wild and untamed rivers that flowed out of the canal of my womanhood, where woman meets child and child becomes woman. The carvings in the rites of passage as the pathway was stumbled upon and often into. Paddling with fervor and full force embracing the waves and then, knocked out of the steady ship. Sinking deep into the plundering of what treasures would later surface to prove the journey is a darker blue than previously mapped. Out of the womb and wondering, now with proof of the seekers and the seers which now navigate the tides of life.

Should I lead with the lead that is in my step? Prying up the anchor of taking a stance and stabilizing with air underfoot I could focus on the pose of disposition. Repositioning the weight of wavering from flying and being pinned down my peddlers wane. Wanting to dance on the light of the angels flight but find the fight bringing the soul back to earth with the soles planted. En route, I am rooted and often rootbound, washing the soil off the arches where it still aches to curve in deeper from all the eggshells found in the gardeners path of composted dreams.

Ah, the dreamer of the dreams. The constant streaming of the “whats and what ifs.” Housed in a hard casing of in cases and protective barriers and screams in the middle of space. Pacing back and forth in the grey matter walking back and forth to the “what matters,” the equilibrium tipping the scale of reality and imaginary. The creasings, within ceasing to end the firing of thoughts full of delusion and fulfilling the illusion that the reflection of which the synapses connect recreate a connection. Direction of the waves dependent upon what is decides to replay. The brain, the sane, the same, the endless game of what is next and how to recollect what was witnessed as life.

Don’t let me forget, there is the life giver. The holder of golden slivers that are made with the dreams and stored as hope in the beating heart. Pulsing with the vibrations from the messages of purpose, proposing a rhythm to play to, sing to, dance with. Its warmth reaching through the entirety and simultaneously halting the course. Coursing with crumbles of ice cubing the cells intended to carry liquid thicker than water and bursting through barriers of self inflicted boundaries. It could be bound by the constrictions or confines of the coldness’ shiver. Yet, still it shimmers the prayers lining of reflections and silver.

And here I stand, in the reflection. The beginning and the end of what end to discover first. Which part interlaced within is the best and which is fraying at the ends as the worst? Through only the gaze of my view can I be observed. The iris interpreting what is pure and intentional or what is purely absurd. Refocusing and closing the lids of reality leads the creation of what could be seen upon the opening of the scope, my self microscope. Wipe the lense from the condensing vision of pleasing all other visions and watching as the singular is perceived as divisions. Left and right and pleading to combine the idea that the ideas are one. The view is changing, and as it is rising the veil too lifts to reveal the gaze back is mine. This is where from all time it ends and begins in self reflection.

Not an Angel

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Reality depends a great deal upon one believing what he sees—or seeing what he believes. Either way.

Richelle E. Goodrich

•

This is Casino, a pup that belongs to a man I met in the park today. Halfway from my work to my car this man sat at a bench. He looked up from his occupying moment and said “hello beautiful.” As I approached his direction he had at this point told me I was beautiful and pretty about 5 times. I smiled and made slight conversation with him and offered him a piece of chocolate. He told me his wife had died. My heart sank and I instantly thought of my loss. He again told me I was beautiful. I asked him the name of his pup and said to him he has his own little piece of luck. He agreed and giggled. He was playing ufc on his phone and I chatted with him about kicking ass in the game. As I thanked him for his kindness and was about to leave to continue to my vehicle, he asked me if I was an angel. I smiled and said no, but he told me again that I was beautiful. He had at this point also said several things about his life and invited me to visit, coffee, breakfast, etc. I now know where this man lives. I realized this man had a different brain than I, and it functions in a different aspect than my own. Developmentally delayed is how we’d modernize it. But somethings struck me as more like, life had happened to this man. And perhaps stunted him in a way that deferred him from fear, given him a more innocent and childlike approach and expression of his thought. Unhindered. Unfiltered. And then I realized that maybe he was an angel. Maybe he was sent to me to help me feel like I actually was seen, and actually maybe I am beautiful. And maybe my worth was seen through the eyes of this man who couldn’t help but share his luck of insight with me.