All sleepers seem helpless, snuggled up or spread out limp snoring a little breathing slowly completely at ease maybe some twitches when they dream, but they are not helpless. They are whole. They are sturdy.
They are filled with joy.
Category Archives: faith
Sleepers
Filed under dreams, eternal, faith, forgiveness, hope, kindness, love, mortality, prose poetry, soul, spirit, transcendence, transitions
Between The Lines
Boy, did she know how to read between the lines! And upside down, and in a mirror, and in the dark. She knew how to read in Braille, in cuneiform, in emojis. She could read between the lines, and hear the unspoken secrets of many people. Not all, thanks be to god.
Goddess. There is only one woman, she heard in her head. There is only ONE WOMAN. One universal truth. Many fractured mirror truths. Everyone was cracked, somewhere.
Filed under acceptance, beauty, compassion, dreams, enlightenment, eternal, faith, fiction, tribute, Uncategorized
Priestess
Sometimes we must learn to live with uncertainty, the priestess said. Sometimes we must endure the unendurable. She smiled at me. Come take a walk, she said. Let’s walk over there, under those trees. That pine grove over yonder. Under those quiet pines, on the hush of the needles. Let’s make a basket out of them. Let’s walk to the spongy banks of the creek & watch the salamanders wiggle across the damp. Let’s phone home, and listen to your mama’s voice. Go ahead, let us surprise ourselves by crying.
(Illustration courtesy of Mike Willcox, https://mikewillcox.bigcartel.com/product/the-high-priestess)
Filed under animals, beauty, compassion, courage, earth, faith, Uncategorized
Prayer, a prose poem
Prayer
Oh! It happened with the first naked, helpless chicken in the oven I recognized… Mommy, get it out, let it out, I cried… chickens have their own heaven, my mother lied.
At six, I dressed as Saint Teresa of Avila for Halloween… that year, I felt sinful accepting candy. More than anything, I yearned to bless their dear hands moving with generosity toward my outstretched pillowcase.
Later, I tried bright blue skin, leading my perfumed cows to drink. I wore robe of scarlet and gold, a red galero atop my head. I wore fragrant saffron in my hair, eating nothing except fruit from the ground, sweeping the earth bare before my steps… with a broom I made myself.
I danced in green meadows, wrapped ribbons around a Maypole, reached high for a golden ring. I sank into plushy new grass. Once more, the earth herself said to me, you will be all right, you will always be all right, as I lay upon her — a small, breakable doll. I lay on my mother like that (like that) (like that) (like that) for hours, eyes shut, and felt her words eternal lift off the roof of my skull and cleanse me of my fear and shame like fast-running, silvery water.
Filed under beauty, born again, compassion, dream, eternal, faith, god, hope, human beings, humanity, love, mama, mother, mothers, mysterious, peace, poetry, prose poetry, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, transcendence
Mercy
Every moment of her life had been marked by her soul, waiting and restless, trying to elevate itself. Yearning. In the end, she had done what she had HAD to do… she recognized herself only from a great distance. Was she Mary Poppins? Pollyanna? A doe-eyed Disney princess? She remembered driving across Western flatlands, as fast as she could, her head out the window, her face into the sere wind.
She, an Air Force pilot’s daughter, felt bad for the poor stewardesses, who knew what was coming in a way mere passengers could not know… stoically dumping everyone’s shoes in the bathroom. Collecting all sharp things, taking people’s eye-glasses away from them. She remembered walking along the edges of the Atlantic, feeling the cool sand under her toes. Mother Universe keeps her eyes on us all.
Someone reached out to grasp her hand, solid & firm. She grasped back. She looked at the sun through the little window, a flashing brilliant light, and lightly closed her eyes. It would be quick, merciful, and good. And right now? Right now she was still alive. She was still a witness. There was no other way to get through life. Mercy was revealed, and blinded her. Everyone was waiting.
Liturgy, a short story
The faith grew from inside my bones, starting with incense, candles, and bells. I loved the magic of my church. First down the aisle came the Verger. Then came the majestic candles and banners, singers and acolytes, and the hypnotic clouds of incense from a swinging ball. Then came the Assisting Father, the bearer of the holy Gospels, and lastly the Celebrant Father. The sweet fog of the incense hung in the air like a cloud of God, making everything in my head holy… making me, myself, holy. Holy: as in whole, complete, well-loved.
It all helped me pray. I prayed for lots of things, on my knees, eyes closed, hands together, kneeling in the pew. I just knew someday I would live in a convent castle, and be the bride of Jesus. But at the same time I was always a tiny bit afraid I might speak out loud; what if I said a bad word? Even in elementary school, I understood this fear should be irrational and unlikely.
But it wasn’t! My little brother had once, when he was under the age of two, shouted the word “fuck” while the Congregation knelt with their heads-bowed, palms pressed, in one of the dramatic kneeling sections of the service. And my baby brother’s voice was so bright, so free, so joyous… that even the Celebrant Father couldn’t keep from laughing.
Everybody laughed. Including the Assisting Father, who was round as a ball and wore his red hair shaggy, and had round, hippie glasses. It may have been High Church Episcopalian, but it was still Fort Lauderdale in the 60s. Thank god my little brother didn’t do that when I got Confirmed by the Bishop was my only thought!
“Jesus loved children,” said the Celebrant Father, and the service flowed on without a hitch.
Rain for Remembrance, a poem
Rain
The woman sits up all night, listening to it rain. The woman has often sat up all night waiting for one thing or another to either leave or arrive: bandaged fingers, whooping cough, her own lookalike grandchildren. When she can, she sleeps next to her dying mother in the king-sized bed; she bangs her own shins on the high rails, climbing in. Her arms and hands are able to lift the wasted body of her dying mother with amazing ease.
She watches & waters the great rack of African violets in the living room; grows wheat grass for her mother’s cat. Other times, she sits in a high-backed wooden chair, needlepointing forests in wool, chain-smoking for hours. Her mother will die very soon; then the daughter will put on her navy dress with a large, elaborate organdy collar and fail to draw a deep breath for several days. The woman’s several brothers and their children will fly in from all over the country, and flower offerings will dwarf the grave itself.
After the burial, the woman will pack all sorts of mementoes into her mother’s old cedar “hope” chest: yearbooks, diaries, photographs, diplomas, invitations, programs, baby booties, baby spoons, baby cups, even a rather grisly alligator purse, complete with the head, legs, tail & feet and sharp black claws. When she has nightmares, more often now, she sits up all night, her fluffy gray tabby queen on her lap like a hot-water bottle. The cat’s purring leads the woman away from the perilous mountain passes & rocky cliffsides inside her head and back to level ground, so she can help her mother die properly. That is what proper love looks like, she thinks.
The Rosenbergs & Me, a reflection
The Rosenbergs & Me
Ethel arrived for court that day in a wool elf hat, beaming. Her chin had grown double; her skin was flawless and glowing. She wore a bit of lipstick. Julius didn’t smile or frown — he looked like a man who had just woken up from a long, dreamless sleep. Ethel draped her gloved hand over her belly as if to shield herself from unseen bullets.
Ethel & Julius grew up poor in New York, and came of age during the Great Depression. They grew up going to rallies for the WPA, listening to radio broadcasts by FDR. I grew up watching the rich debauch themselves in South Florida, and came of age during the Disco Years, the anything-goes Seventies. John Travolta, spinning like a dervish in his white polyester three-piece suit.
Ethel and Julius and I were all politically inflamed at an early age — I wrote to Nixon at age 11 to protest lax emission control standards, and got a personal letter back, signed by Rosemary Woods, Queen of the Accidental Erasure. Julius was contacted by the KGB and asked to spy for the U.S.S.R. He found it flattering — was he really that important? — an offer he couldn’t refuse. There were no KGB agents contacting me, but if they had… how would I have answered?
Unfortunately, in addition to the political, I also got inflamed past all reason by my mother’s drinking — I used to fling her gallon jug bottles of wine into the canal in the backyard. My reaction was a type of revolution: I wanted to throw off the chains of her alcoholism and be free at last. I wanted to throw off the chains of her drunken love just as much, if not more, than Julius wanted working men and women to throw off the chains of their capitalist oppressors.
I had an ongoing fantasy: a mother who could be confided in, a mother who wouldn’t judge, become angry, or load me up with confessions of her own, far greater problems than mine would ever be. Once, I dreamed Ethel was my mother and it was a relief; I knew she’d fight for me; have my best interests at heart. She looked to be a normal mother, cooking meatloaf and mashed potatoes in her tiny apartment kitchen, smoothing her boys’ foreheads after bad dreams, murmuring soothing words in the darkness.
My father and his left-wing ardor neatly complemented the Rosenbergs. He once ran for Santa Monica, California city council on the Communist Party ticket. It was only a few years after Kent State, the simultaneous apex & abyss of the “age of Aquarius.” My father and I never discussed the Rosenbergs; we were in agreement on most things.
Ethel, Julius and I all studied Marxist doctrine, and I toyed with the idea of joining the American Communist Party. I read the Party’s official platform (from the 60s), and decided, after considering Ethel & Julius’ fate, that joining wasn’t such a great idea. To think was private, to act, public. Plus? I wanted to be a lawyer someday.
The Rosenbergs had a larger purpose — to transform society from what they viewed as unfair to something more egalitarian. This is what most political rebels have wanted. But who defines fair? Those in power? The USSR hardly turned out to be an entity worth dying for. Are Julius & Ethel content in their graves? Maybe I should have been sent to the electric chair.
All of us spin out of control in some fashion; Ethel & Julius got caught committing actual crimes. The main evidence against them was the testimony of Ethel’s brother, a man who turned State’s Evidence to protect his OWN WIFE. He didn’t actually believe Ethel & Julius would ever be executed. The government only wanted the Rosenbergs to name names. They, however, remained silent.
After their deaths, Julius & Ethel were laid out in religious garb. They didn’t look dead, just asleep. The embalmer did an excellent job. Three hundred people came to look at them. The dead Rosenbergs left behind two young sons — I left behind my mother, slowly dying. She was a child who wouldn’t grow up. I couldn’t be her mother — her own mother couldn’t even be her mother anymore. She had worn everyone out! Julius, Ethel, don’t ask for God’s forgiveness — I can’t bring myself to. God should be asking us for ours. Our enemies have already forgotten us.
Filed under adult children of alcoholics, alcoholism, children of alcoholics, civil rights, compassion, courage, death, dreams, empire, faith, fear, fiction, god, grief, history, humanity, identity, justice, karma, law, love, mama, manifesto, mortality, murder, passion, peace, personal responsibility, politics, short stories, star spangled banner, tribute
The Song of Women of Jaded Time, a poem
The Song of Women of Jaded Time
(for François Villon)
Talk to me this instant, or don’t ever bother
talking to me again. You think your sorrow
is like a flower, you beautiful, pitiful Italian;
but you are not a paragon, not crying like this.
Underneath my foot you shall find perfection.
You are like an echo of my own will, you shall
learn to speak of my brutality all the time,
and love it. Under this river or in your hands
I shall drown — how beautiful is too much human pain.
May you sing your own black heart forever!
Listen to what I say, but don’t hear it with your ears.
Listen with your heart, you are like a blooming flower,
you wild, beautiful fool. Your injured foot is far more
beautiful than my own. Don’t repeat me, speak only
of my brutality all the time. Under the water I will drown,
or under your hands. How beautiful is too much fever,
or human pain? May you sing your black song forever!
Or, perhaps you are like the wise, able Heloise,
and my blessed foot will kick you hardest
when you are already down. Like her dim-witted
Abelard — for love, he ceased breathing. Love,
I think you resemble the king that commands
none but the harridan. First, jettison your silly bag
of river water. Long may you sing your black heart!
You are wise, and blessed, as are all ill-fated lovers.
For love, we cease living — we all resemble royalty
in this way. I command the bitch who is my deepest
self: first throw away everything you hold dear.
May you sing with your thick blackness in my life.
The queen of white is coming to lie — she chants
regally in a serene voice. I was born of Bertha
with her grand feet, she of Beatrice, Alice,
harem dancers all, colored in the main for beauty rather than wisdom.
And we come, too, from Joanna, the beautiful Swiss girl.
The English back then were belligerent, though mainly
in Rouen. Or do I see in your sad eyes, your oldest
unforgotten queen? May you sing of your black, tight
heart until the words choke you with regret, with forgiveness.
I was once a queen, of all I surveyed.
I sang with a stilted voice. My mother,
my grandmother, my great-grandmother
were all such foolish harem dancers,
too lovely to look at and let live.
And the beautiful maid who cleaned
my rooms… I was always bitchiest
to her just before the dawn. O, your
sharp eyes went through me like a sword.
May you sing your own praises until nightfall!
O Prince, do not ask to love me except for cruelty,
do not wonder where those other ladies are, this year —
what a sad refrain your unshaven face reminds me of.
I used to know someone, he was a lot like you.
May you sing lullabies to your faithless black heart!
O my lord, do not ask me to come to you out of
kindness — do not ask where I have lived until now.
What an ancient sorrow you have reopened!
May you sing this pain into the book of all eternity.
Filed under acceptance, anthem, anthropology, beauty, birth, black, blood, civil rights, compassion, courage, death, dream, dreams, earth, enlightenment, eternal, eternity, evolution, faith, forgiveness, friendship, good, grief, health, heart, hope, human beings, humanity, justice, karma, kindness, law, legal system, life, logic, loss, love, manifesto, maturity, mysterious, passion, peace, personal responsibility, poetry, politics, regret, relationships, science, sex, sexism, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, transcendence, transitions, tribute, truth, universe, wish, world, youth
Empire State Building, a poem
Empire State Building
Twenty years ago we finally went to see the sights,
riding the train through flashing dim green suburb,
glassy sharp-edged slum, the skin stretched
pale and tight over your fine cheekbones —
you didn’t really know how to be afraid of death,
simply of heights and under-grounds:
you wanted always to be on the surface of the earth.
Your demise was still an abstraction,
discussed in the evening while sucking cool mints —
the natural order of things. I dragged you
all the way to the city under the water from Hoboken,
then marched you up to the roof of what was the tallest
building in the whole world when you were young.
I haven’t been here since it was built, you said,
and though the blood sank to your innards in panic,
you kept walking; I kept pushing and pulling you
forward, propelling your solid weight like a cart
loaded with spring lambs. Your hand, soft
wrinkled palm, roughened fingers speckled white
around the knuckles, gripped mine, but I showed
no mercy; I was forcing you to confront the bitter
end ahead of schedule. I was being cruel
to make you go look at the thin sparkling air
of the heavens and you knew it. But later,
my love, as you lay sweating, heavy and motionless
in your bed as though carved of wood, deprived
for weeks of even the common decency of words,
weren’t you glad you went with me once more to the top?
Filed under beauty, compassion, courage, daughter, daughters, death, empire, enlightenment, eternal, eternity, faith, family, fear, grief, heart, hope, human beings, humanity, kindness, loss, love, mama, memoir, mortality, mother, mothers, mourning, mysterious, poetry, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, transcendence, transitions, tribute, truth, universe, wish
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 