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: spirit
Sleepers
Filed under dreams, eternal, faith, forgiveness, hope, kindness, love, mortality, prose poetry, soul, spirit, transcendence, transitions
Weight
You were not built to carry the weight of this world. And yet. It is upon you; you feel it, heavier every day. Your prayers have been shouted and whispered, in communion and all alone. There are four thousand languages, in this world. Don’t you think God can speak every one? Never be afraid to grieve; to cry; to pound the ground; to bang a drum somewhere; to appear naked as a jaybird, before your maker. And don’t be afraid to make your own mark, on the wall of a cave, on a server, in a cloud. Do you need a map? Some create their own, mandalas with colored sand, swept away after three days. There are so many ways to pray, and the most important way is kindness. You, my beautiful daughter, will begin and end with a simple breath — and you, my well-loved child, were not built to carry this weight, the weight of the world.
Filed under compassion, courage, death, dreams, earth, enlightenment, eternal, eternity, everything, forgiveness, god, grief, heart, human beings, kindness, love, mourning, religion, soul, spirit, spiritual, spirituality, transcendence, universe, world
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.
The Iconoclast Says Goodbye, a short story
The Iconoclast Says Goodbye, a short story
Dear Zarel:
It was 1977. You’d majored in filmmaking at the same expensive, private school Stephen Spielberg went to. You were 25, and stalled. For entertainment, you drew a cartoon strip, Fred and Edna — they were strange four-eyed aliens, and of course all the humor was sexual. You had another idea for a cartoon — pieces of meat talking to each other, perched on barstools. We met at Mr. Pip’s discotheque. I was 5’ 7” and weighed 130 pounds but thought I was fat. Everybody was skinny then.
All that cocaine; cutting edge. You asked me to dance, I forget whether you asked my friend first or me. I would have been slightly offended. I knocked your glasses off on the dance floor. It charmed you somehow. We were drinking, probably vodka gimlets, that was my idea. We went off in your car, you parked at the beach. You got my number and said you’d like it if you could be my first lover. You cooked dinner for me at your parent’s — they were away for the weekend. I was impressed with your cooking, the French antiques and the view of the bay.
We took a sauna in your parent’s bath. We went upstairs; I was only slightly spooked by the huge oil painting of your mother in full jewelry regalia on the landing. Out came your pack of Trojans; it was difficult, painful. I can’t say I enjoyed it much the first time. “It’s just… got… to open,” you kept saying. My muscles were clamped tight as a vise. You worked up such a sweat trying to impress me, later you revealed you’d slept with hundreds of women. Over time, things improved for me in bed, but the closer you came to me emotionally, the faster I started to retreat.
I always dreamed and schemed for love then got strangely revolted when it appeared. I thought you were too old because you were approaching thirty. I felt typecast, imported from the sticks. Your mother seethed, your father smiled benignly. Every Sunday morning, you brought my mom the finest nova and bagels — but my grandmother cast a dour eye on our trysts.
For fun, we drag-raced on I-95 — always a tie. You said I liked to dominate relationships — to me it didn’t feel like domination, only self-expression. I didn’t want to be owned. You weren’t romantic enough, and never romantic at the right time. It could have been worse, for my first affair. If only you’d given me a nicer present our first Christmas together, maybe we wouldn’t have broken up.
I just didn’t like the sugar dispenser. Then there was your plan for my prom — you were going to wear a T-shirt printed with a tuxedo. I was 17 — I wanted to be taken seriously. One night, lying on my mom’s couch we discussed marriage and children — you wanted to name our first Bozo — but the next morning I knew it was over. My heart was sheathed.
I liquefied in your arms, then dribbled away. You tried for months, told me how wonderful I was, how beautiful I was, but I didn’t believe you. You said you were too busy for friendship. It had to be all or nothing. After we broke up I saw men who reminded me of you everywhere, and every time my stomach lurched. I waffled, waffled, waffled. I bought a plane ticket to see you, then came an attack of conscience, or memory, or both. You wanted to be my alpha & omega. Nice dream, love love love.
Goodbye,
your Iconoclast
Filed under adolescence, apologia, dream, dreams, friendship, heart, human beings, identity, life, loss, love, maturity, men, mysterious, passion, personal responsibility, relationships, sex, short stories, spirit, transitions, woman, women
Where Does It Begin? a poem
.
Where Does It Begin?
(originally published in The Charlotte Poetry Review)
Possibly with well-steeped tea,
gooseberry jam on raisin bread,
lots and lots of idle chatter;
later, he could try daily walks
through the woods — though she
has resolved she is finished with
nature — still he persists
in pointing out the log in the creek
holding five mossy-backed turtles;
if all else fails he could try
brushing her hair in the rough manner
of a mother, offhand, impatient fussing
to decipher knots. He could place her
in a room filled with the images
of budding spring trees, on a wide,
comfortable sofa, her stockinged feet
perched lightly upon the armrest
as she reads. The sight
of the frail new leaves will work
upon her, surely? Better yet,
he could fill a bowl with fruit,
three kinds of berries,
layering green upon yellow
upon blue upon red, teasing her
with a few squares of chocolate,
protesting all the while
that he always says the opposite
of what he means. Who lived my life
until this day? she will say. I could
ask myself the same question, he will
say by way of answer, placing his hands
lightly, lightly upon her shoulders
War, a very short story
The woman thought of God a hundred times a day. A thousand. An infinite number of times. Consciousness on the quantum level. And each day, she grew unhappier. More discouraged. Bleaker. Uglier. Sadder. More uncertain. In the trenches. Wanting to know for sure, and be done with it. The big picture… could anyone see it… could anyone imagine it… could she, or anyone she knew, ever have a clue to its subject… its matter. Most people seem strong until something goes wrong. Could time really heal?
Her belly grew heavy and cold, a dizzying pit of endless space. Would she ever be able to see it through to the end? Where was the end? When was it reasonable to stop trying. When was it the right time to stop trying… too hard. Where were people when you needed them. Bullets never did any body any good. The first human-killing weapons led to more, and more deadly, machinery for war… cannons and tanks and bombers. Land mines. Napalm. Nukes. Propaganda. Poison. Secrecy. It all boiled down into the same rotten thing, in the end.
Terror. The dog barked and barked and yelped and whined and barked some more. He was single-minded; his existence that moment was all about the cat, the cat behind the sofa. She refused to be ruled by terror. She growled and hissed back. She sat just outside his reach and baited him. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it backfired. Sometimes the dog came so close to her, his mouth closed in on the long, silky fluff of her tail. He bore a complex pattern of red scratches on his black and white snout. The man wanted the cat gone in the morning. What if he insisted? The man, or the cat? She preferred the cat tonight. No telling about tomorrow.
Filed under anger, courage, death, fear, fiction, grief, heart, hope, human beings, humanity, loss, love, mourning, murder, peace, personal responsibility, prose poetry, relationships, short stories, soul, spirit, united states of america, war, wish
When Things Got Too Weird For Ripley (Believe It Or Not)
When Things Got Too Weird For Ripley (Believe It Or Not)
Notwithstanding the fact that he still received more letters every year than anyone on earth, including Santa Claus (Believe It Or Not), his sinking fits of despair started to occur with frightening regularity, after the war. On his way to the far East, for the first time since Pearl Harbor Day, he stood on the naked, turkey-breast hull of the sunken battleship Arizona, looking down at his own well-shod feet as though the rolled steel were transparent. He could see the innocently disarrayed skeletons of the young men entombed inside (Believe It Or Not). His full, delicate lips, firmly closed, covering his distinctive, protruding teeth. He was speechless for the first time, in fifty-odd years.
Oddly, he couldn’t take his mind off his Tibetan skull-bowl, back home. He felt the hinged roof of the bowl under his cold fingers, he tasted warm, sacramental blood and wine, mixed in equal parts, sharp and bitter against the roof of his mouth like the blade of a rusty, iron sword. For the microphones, he read aloud the notes he had with him, but his voice wasn’t Ripley’s anymore, it was the gentle, quavery voice of an old, old man.
Since his first success, he had been a hard-working, hard-playing man, with the immodest tastes of an oriental emperor. He earned a million dollars a year, and knew how to spend it. On better days, he’d have six smart, well-dressed women under his roof, for energetic conversation, for private fun and games. Out on his secluded spit of land in the middle of Oyster Bay, they’d barbecue whole pigs, split sides of beef, and the flavor of the smoked flesh he tore into was marvelous, marvelous.
Later that day, continuing his flight from Hawaii to Japan, he lost track of where he was for a few moments, and through his puffy, heavy lids, the woman bending over him with the pitcher of pink lemonade looked exactly like the love of his life, dead ten years that month of cancer. Dear, sweet, Ola, he almost said, but caught himself. Though his temples sweated copiously, he refused to soil his handkerchief, letting his shirt become wet, stiff with his salt.
His live radio broadcast, next morning, from Hiroshima’s approximate ground zero, wasn’t easy, not with him sitting at a card table, fumbling with watches frozen at the moment of detonation, staring at a vaporized child’s wool-and-silk-ribbon slippers, retrieved intact from the dunes of sticky ash (Believe It Or Not); the only artifact to survive the blast for many thousands of square yards. He haggled over price and bought it for his newest museum, opening the next month in Las Vegas.
As long as he could remember, he’d been happily locked in an embrace with the whole odd, eclectic world, savoring each one-of-a-kind moment his physical bulk passed through. Here at Hiroshima, for the first time, that innocent enthusiasm which had brought him so very far from Riverside, California seemed to encircle his tired neck like one of the great unwieldy money-stones of New Zealand, giving little joy.
Upon reaching his final destination, Shanghai, he saw his dearest, most beloved city in a panic: everyone knew the Reds were marching down from the hills. It was only a matter of time before the soul of China became engorged and insensible with Mao’s revolution. Voracious appetite of old absent, he forced down a quart of sticky rice with Seven Delicacies for show, for form, so as not to upset his agent.
A week later, back in New York, for the second time he faltered while on the air, then passed out, slithering to the floor in his fine wool suit like a large scrubbed potato, hands scrabbling against the studio floor, grasping the taped microphone cords with a syncopated rhythm, his young female assistant staring at him like a ritual mask, her mouth a lipsticked slash of fear, babbling nonsense until they thought to turn the mike off: the perils of live broadcasting.
That very night, Rip called his next-door neighbors from the hospital; I’m getting out of here tomorrow morning, he said. I’m taking us on a long vacation, God knows we all deserve it. He hung up the black phone and leaned back, dead before his head touched the pillow. Years later, his dearest friends all said it was a blessing he didn’t live to see how the world changed. The world changed and made his collection of physical oddities seem, by comparison (Believe It Or Not) warm, safe, what we dream of when we dream of heaven, not one of us doubting for a minute, anymore, that fact is stranger than fiction.
Filed under blood, compassion, death, evil, fear, grief, health, heart, human beings, humanity, ignorance, life, logic, loss, love, mortality, mothers, mourning, murder, mysterious, nonfiction, peace, personal responsibility, politics, science, soul, spirit, star spangled banner, tea party mad hatters, technology, transcendence, transitions, travel, trump, truth, united states of america, universe, veterans, war
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 