I Am Not Your Victim

The worst-tempered people I’ve ever met were people who knew they were wrong.
–Wilson Mizner

I chased myself
In circles, ragged
Eyes hanging so sad
Heavy
Searching, seeking
Some invisiblity
Some nonexistence
Some thing

Oh lonesome fool
I was

And one flesh, I became you
Joining in the party of pity
Hanging itself to death each night
Lay me down to sleep

Silence, sing of sorrows
Bringing lullabies
Be them borrowed

I have mastered the art
Of screaming
Without sound

How can this man I half became
Be still too deaf, too dull
To carry
And what of me
Of belief, of wedding

Nevermore, nevermind
Axes buried

And I, the madman’s trophy
Am now
No more than nothing
But once upon a time

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Have You Ever Tried To Bathe A Cat? Turning Thirty Is The Opposite Of That.

Today I’m thirty years old. Yesterday, I wasn’t. I’ve taken it upon myself to organize a celebration in the form of pajamas all day. Holla! 🙂

The onset of middle age isn’t anything I expected. The deep pontifications of growth, time, and change haven’t hit me like I thought they would. I woke up in the same foggy-brained body in which I fell asleep and my coffee tasted no more bittersweet than usual.

So what makes these birthdays– the ones with a zero in them– such a big deal?

I’ve felt thirty since I was twelve. Maybe that’s why it feels so uneventful to turn thirty; maybe not. I’m an infant by comparison to almost all of the people I care about and it’s always been that way. My entire life I’ve stood on the outside of something greater than myself, stretching to see over some metaphorical fence to find a place I belong, a crowd that makes sense, some collective group of like-minded people who might provide my brain a reprieve from the monotonies of living. It’s why I started this blog, even.

And over the course of the past year since it began, I’ve certainly found my niche. Here in this space, I have an entire world of compassionate and intelligent people at my fingertips. I found a brother (Sprinklin Thoughts) and a few powerful people who I’ve come to consider friends (Wayward Spirit, Travis, Alarna Rose Gray, Jennifer Stuart, Sean Bidd, The Loon, Lucas A. Draeger, and many wonderful others). Not only have I found a place to build my bonfires, I’ve discovered company in which to stay warm and inspired beside them. The kind of kin that only the internet and a burning desire to be part of something could provide.

Thanks, WordPress. Happy birthday to me. 🙂

So while I’m playing in my flowerbeds and making dinner in pajamas, maybe someone can shed some light for me. What’s with all the fuss about “getting old”? Am I the only one who likes it?

Hindsight happens.

It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see. –Henry David Thoreau

I fully knew the probable outcome going into my situation. I forged ahead anyway.

I’m one of those people. I have to experience the truth for myself. If it isn’t firsthand knowledge it doesn’t feel like truth. It feels like secondary opinion.

Head knowledge is different than heart knowledge, and people like me will choose a broken-hearted wisdom over ignorant bliss every time. Without exception.

I’ve worked my way through the mine fields, planting a plant or two and singing my songs when I could. I came into things with a “can-do” attitude… I will leave humbled.

Willingness and ability are only divided by the variable of opportunity, of circumstance. I’ve at least learned that.

I wouldn’t do it again for any amount of money, or any promise of hope. Promises get broken. Money spends. There isn’t much worth gambling on or hoping for in this world anymore. I never really was the betting kind anyway. I simply took chances, and I took them not to succeed but to learn.

Succeeding in learning isn’t fun. For what it’s worth.

I’ve built a monument to tragedy in memory of innocence. I’m not sure which hurts worse: the memory or the tragedy.

Time measures our lives in units of sorrow, in incremental fractions of longing. In the moment, we only see what we can’t wait to have. Afterwards, we only see what we can’t get back. The “now” is a mistress of misery in this unseeing way, and the world –so madly– keeps spinning.

Nakedness, dawn breaking. Feel.

Emotions,
Wet blankets hanging us
The guts wrench
With twisting sensations
Of sickness
Bodies and lives

A song can take us by surprise
And just as quickly, kill us

Our ideas for tomorrow from the wilting of the spring’s tulip
Take their lead
In this oppressive summer heat

Unquenched kisses for woman primed, for a lady who will and has
Wait
Like knees in the fold of an ironed slack, a tug,
A pull, an infinite night for years upon years
Heaps of them all piled
Are piling

Can the forward motion go on
A lifetime without being kissed back

Empty lips, hollow soul
Unfold into nothing, explode

And still the winter will swallow
The seeds from the tulip inside,
As if tucking a death into one’s self
Should be so easy
…It is, in this small way

Seamless greed, the autumn keeps
Its secrets free of shame
And me, uneased
Unhinged and thieved
And always never being the same

But I a lonely nocturne came
And in
The shutting doors
The fruitless branch
The hiding place
Will be remained

A tight-rope walking
Dance of flame
A lonely girl
A nameless name

The breasted beak
Will speak and break

Out, away, forever

A quick thought to ponder…

“For a woman to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her emotional and intellectual capacities, would entail who knows what risks and who knows what truly revolutionary alteration of social conditions that demean and constrain her.

Or she may go on trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby consign herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal femininity – a perversion if you will.”

–Louise J. Kaplan