I recite all my blessings
As is known to happen occasionally
A moment of tranquil lucidity
I glimpse my life in sets of three.
Guilt for fucking everything up…sometimes I’m so far in it, I can’t quite figure it out. But there are moments when I gain perspective and I cast an inward eye. I’m sitting on a plane when I wrote this…give it’s a propeller aircraft, it was a short lift…probably having something to do with work I was doing with the marines. Whatever it was, flying always used to allow me to drift a bit. It makes me feel better.
The props spin hard, a deep numbing sound
And lug this fuselage across the ground
Now entranced, the runway fades
Chastened by the slicing blades.
We are taking off and I’m drifting…I looked through the blades and watched the runway fall away. I guess this is a form of meditation for me. Purely selfish. I never liked propeller aircraft…gives me a sense of vulnerability. It’s a little un-nerving in high winds, short landings or take offs…I think the guy sitting in front of me was the pilot. Maybe I was in New Mexico.
I murmur the names of those I love
And ask safe passage from all Above
In combinations of tender prayer
In quiet voice, into the air.
I am praying for safety…pure and simple, I’m preparing to say goodbye in case we crash. I do this from time to time.
As I skip in flight through altitudes
Or run a path through latitudes
Or longitudes of forest green
I recall sounds and smells and things I’ve seen.
And so I move on to meditation. The same sense of euphoria I get when I’m running latitudes. In the desert, I ran the mountains a lot…thousands of feet elevation distance ( I guess I call them latitudes – wrong term). As I’ve said many times, smell is a big nostalgic drug for me…I can remember the most peaceful of lifes events when I’m alone, in peril, challenging new places with consciousness.
Body Triangle:
Our encounter is through complex webs
Two paths split through walls of guise
We slipped the grasp of the mundane
In the covert moments of Life’s Sighs.
I try to do things in three’s here. The triangle is architecturally, the most powerful shape. I seem grasp that here. Not sure why I called it the body triangle.
I’m not sure why people come together. But I think, as a friend once said, we draw people around us in order to fulfill the promises of life’s lessons. Nothing is chance…we try to pretend, we go numb, we disguise ourselves and we never meet…or perhaps we eventually do, it just takes longer. Destiny, finds us. The more we resist, the more mundane life is…a sign is an expression of acquiescence…a giving in to matches that God makes for us. We have many mates in life…we have many soul mates. We have one life mate…the most expressive sigh I’ve ever known has been a kiss; and that, without any hesitation, is her and has never been nor will be anyone else’s.
Something I wrote in my past, were glimpses of my future. I wrote a poem about war, when I was 10. My mom found it the other day…never did I think I’d be a soldier. I became one. I disdain war…why did I join a side.
My children, friends, and family
And tragic lust and love’s broken ties
Lo, rock-a-by stars through speeding blades,
you there in the restful ends of my Life’s Eyes.
I lament here. I lost my youth, I hate divorce, I missed my friends, and my immediate family was scattered from corner to corner. I chased lust and love and I failed. I was and am so sorry to have let Him down.. I don’t like hurting people…and I’ve spent most of my life breaking myself down to prove it. I had no idea how far I’d go into ruin. I’ve brought a lot of people down. I just want One shining hope in my life. I’m not sure I can find it…I realize, it’s not mine to find, yours to find…but rather, ours to find. That is a scary proposition…because if we lose each other, we fail to achieve it and we find we were all wrong. This was a night flight I guess, because I’m seeing the stars through the blades of the airplane…I’m sleepy. The restful ends of my life’s eyes…as far as I can see forward…I’ve been deceived by my own love; by my own eyes. There is no You in the end…there is an Us.
I ask for forgiveness From All
Taken for granted, transgressed, spat with lies
In Gods cradle with you my heart
Our children friends and family…Life Size.
I want to be forgiven, but I cannot bring myself to ask for it. I have hurt people…and in doing so, I hurt myself. What will it take for me to be forgiven? Why can I not have my choices…why have I had to feign acceptance?
Prologue
Like a mantra, I recite all your names
In parallel this happens all the time
I roll swelling seas and catch the shores
And see the threads of love that bind
I was thinking of all those I know, knew and care for and pray. I suppose I worry too much about the past and people in it. They are not in the past…they moved on. It’s inaccurate to consider someone as “the same person they were.” I remember ocean swimming and how as I swim over the swells, I lose sight of the shoreline and I’m quite alone and remote – lost at sea for a moment. That feeling when I the shoreline rolls back into view is odd…all I feared, felt guilty about, loved, and toiled over are there and somehow provide terra firma. I guess I am trying to embrace the past and my failures. Not a popular stance with some people…many of us wish the other would not only forget the past, but somehow ignore it and extract it from our ‘essence.’ It can be done, but it is through tenderness, not amputation.
Disguised as ropes and chains.
I slip through fields I’ve passed
My companions gone their separate ways
Like things not made of things that last
I remember feeling trapped and desperate in some relationships. I remember wanting to stay but being cast out. I was thinking about Sandy probably…and my good friends. Things not made of things that last…it’s hard to assess the materials of the present; things come and go. Parts remain, others disappear. I’m musing here.
I wander in soliloquy
Inspired by you and ours
No matter how complex the journey
I find you through Archimedian stars.
Soliloquy is an oration to oneself…not heard by others; that’s how I mean it. Hamlet engaged in frequent soliloquy. Idiot. Inspired by you and ours is who was in the present at the time and “ours” is family and friends and companions past. Life is a journey…at that time, I was bent on those sardonic Aerosmith words. Archimedes was a great navigator and postulated (I think) that there was a central point of revolution (the sun). I remember hearing a professor call something an Archimedean point. I thought predestination was limited…we have a pre-established smattering of stars, we have choice in how we connect them and who we end up with. I guess in predestination, we are always free to make mistakes, but we end up at the same place eventually. The “you” that I searched for was a ruse, a myth. What I seek, is an “us”…. And by fate, she connects the patterns the same way and here “she” and “I” are…beholding an “us.”
We are the Archimedean point…one is really two, is really One.
