Sometimes Maybe

Sometimes I want to be a kite

Ripped and tugged by wind’s whim

Rising above spectators

Admired for my brightly colored dips

That write nonsensical whispers

Of promises made to a forever not witnessed

Sometimes I wish I were a bear

Raw with raking power paws

With heavy duty claws that help me eat

People I don’t like or those who disturb me.

Sometimes I wish I were a siren

One that rests on rocks singing sweetly

Lulling sailors to their doom upon my rocks

Jutting breasts and flirty hair calling to boys

“Beware! Beware!”

Sometimes I’m glad to be me

A chubby tubby funny woman with dimple cheeks

Cracking open frozen hearts, not of ice

But stuck in places not so nice

Places that don’t remember their worth

Burying their beings without much mirth.

Rumble Strip

Cautionary sign

Cautionary sign

Here!

Let me strip naked, remove my facade,

so you can see inside of me

that I’m human

and not God

Here!

Let me wipe away my poker face

so you can peek beneath the mask

realize my barren

mundane task

Here!

Let me demonstrate how dying feels

be locked up without parole

be removed totally

life without a soul

Filly Ranch with Fleas

I'm a Seahorse

I’m a Seahorse

There are multitudes of angry words corralled behind her tongue

Waiting anxiously to stampede into the unwary ears of the unforgiven wrangler.

He doesn’t suspect that his lasso of rage would harness responsibility for his neglect.

She is unbridled in her disgust.

She halts without warning, veering suddenly towards the truth.

Although she relishes her saddle for its beautifully intricate design,

she bucks in furious battles against the reason it was placed on her back.

The cowboy remains oblivious to the pain of the branding iron

with which he sears her flesh with his signature as proof of his mortality.

The wrangler arrogantly believes he is bigger, better, stronger than she.

But her spirit hasn’t been broken. Her body is faster, smarter;

more adept at navigating the directional and environmental changes he affords.

She is her own shelter, her own stability, while he is self-oppressed at his hearth.

He is completely entranced and entrenched by his campfire of hatred.

It makes him unaware of her riding away at a full gallop into the sunrise of freedom.

I’m a human, not a lady

I am not a good girl

I am not a good girl

Why do I need to act like a “lady?” What does that even mean? Be a yes, sir, no ma’am demure wall flower in hopes that I’ll get picked to be the next Cinderella? Does that mean I have to put someone else before me always and pray that my needs get met because I was a good girl and followed the rules?

Why do I need to play like a boy when I can be a woman and ditch cars, ride horses, bake cakes, kick dirt, saw wood, paint wordy pictures, dream just like any other human? Why does that even have to have a gender placed on it? We all know what we can do, why separate the two?

Why do I have to be respectable in public when the public slut shames my gender? Starts war upon my sisters with horrible results and back-alley horrors committed against their beauty out of spite, anger, jealousy? Why do I have to bow down to the “mighty” man of six years old because he was born with a penis and I was not? Fuck that. I’ll be who I am. You adapt to me. I’ll color just enough inside the lines so that you’ll have no choice but to look at my art, but when you start telling me that a sun has to be yellow and not purple, we’re no longer friends and I don’t have to be nice to you any more.

Why can’t I be passionate no matter where I am? No matter where I’m going? No matter what I’m doing? If I feel it, why should I make an excuse for loving my life and everything about it? This seems insulting to the very gifts I’ve been given. This seems selfish of me to hold back the beauty that is everything I am. It’s disgraceful to not be passionate about the life-gift we’ve been given and I don’t think it has anything to do about being a sexual being.

I treat my body like a temple, not a mausoleum. I don’t need quiet pristine walls to know that I’m alive. I need vibrant colors, loud music, laughter and singing, dancing at all hours with colors winging the ceilings and candles and joyous arousal. I need hats and capes, and delicious chocolates dripping with harmony. I’m here to live life not pretend I only want a little bit of a taste. I want the whole damn thing. I want to swallow it whole and chew for hours on ideas and thoughts of what I see; experience on every level.

Why can’t I treat my body like a motel if I want to? Why can’t I take a lover into my arms, no matter the number, no matter the reason? Why should I be held to a different standard than someone who happens to have different genitalia? Why do I need to limit myself to the taste and pleasures of one gender? What if I want to dip fingers into honey as much as I want to lick my lips up the honey dipper? Why can’t I smear sex on my body like peanut butter if I desire it? That’s a horrible double standard and I refuse your rule book, your little black marks, your stigma, and your anger towards my freedom to choose what I do with my body. It’s not some body. It’s MY body. See that? It’s not called YOUR body. It’s MY body. I can have a revolving door if I choose, so don’t dictate my hours or my calling. It’s not your motel to run. I’m sorry you’ve found the Bates Motel more to your liking, lurking with the dead and dispassionate. That’s not me.

I refuse to love unconditionally. If I were to do that, I’d be God or Goddess, or Buddha or Christ and I’m not any of those. I’m a human. I can look at you with disgust if I want to. I can refuse you entry to my chapel of horrors and my circus if I don’t like your act. I don’t owe you anything which, as many misconceive is what love is when it’s unconditional. That, in many people’s minds means without question. I’m not going to love someone who harms children, particularly me. No way. Been there done that and I’ve served my life sentence every day since my birth. No. I will not.

This part I can agree with. I will speak my truth and I will live as honestly as I can. Not for your benefit but because my spirit is peaceful when I know I’ve done my best to follow my own compass without your rules holding me to unrealistic and unreasonable behavioral constructs that do not belong in my body, mind, spirit, or hands. What I will further agree with is that if you trust me with your heart and I trust you with mine which means we vow, with word or not, to never betray that trust intentionally, you will never again have to feel alone.

New Moon

New Moon

New Moon

Will you come spiral a dance with me

without your shoes or dress

on the naked earth

with a smile and a blush

your only adornment

under the dark of the moon

or the lavender of twilight

gleaming highlights of stars

on the curve of your knees, hips, and breasts

while the lungs of summer exhale

its final breezy breaths

until the wheel has come full circle?

Will you surrender to the rhythm of night

embracing the cicadas and crickets

as the treble notes of the living dark

while the thumping of our feet on the dirt

rustle leaves like the skirts we puddled

at the edge of the clearing

where the last of the season’s fireflies

beg for a mate to relieve their lonely hearts

while we build momentum in the cooling air

wildly sacrificing modesty for our natural state of being.

I See You

Kaleidoscope_13I see you. You are not invisible to me. When I look at you, you wear no clothes. You wear no physical form. There is a ball around your body that lights up when you’re around people you like and dims when you’re not fond of them. The ball has colors and patterns that are spectacularly blended to me. I see you.

You’re a kaleidoscope of vivid colors that ebb and flow depending on how you move the liquid essence that you float in unwittingly. Where there is pain, I see the darkness. Where there is love, I see the light. Where you reside is usually a central color that tells me everything I need to know about you. I am a voyeur of sorts but not the creepy kind. I will not jump from your closet unexpectedly one night. I will meet you on the terms you’ve established. Because I can feel your intent.

I’m sorry if you feel I’ve invaded your privacy. I don’t know how to turn it off. I don’t really don’t want to because it’s served me so well. It’s proven invaluable to me to seek others of the light. It’s proven invaluable to me when I know I can’t trust a person because they are too consumed by material things to know they’re spiritual beings. It’s guided me effectively to incredible experiences through people with knowledge so deeply profound that I sometimes weep with gratefulness while others cause me deep caution.

It’s a feeling of authentic appreciation of identity that can only bloom with the watering of confidence when I see people that fit into their spirits; That “get it”. When I see someone working actively to grow into their spirits, I can forgive almost anything they do because I witness the evolution of color as if a perfect painting were in the works and I get to watch the brushstrokes fall on the canvas. It’s glorious to see. My gift allows me the privilege without effort.

There are also people who are not exactly dark and not exactly light. They are in a flux between worlds. The material world grabs their ankles and wrists tugging them away from their destiny. Their spirit self does a watoosie trying to find footing, trying to fill in the blanks. There are some that stand in this disarray and cry out that they don’t know who they are or that they don’t know what they’re doing. Nobody knows for sure what we’re doing. We just come up with a plan and see how it pans out. If we’re lucky, we have guides to show us the way out. I am one of those guides but I don’t know everything.

It is increasingly difficult when I feel as if I am carrying/dragging them towards the light. They start off saying, “Oh yes! I really want to do something different and I really like your ideas. Let’s go on this journey together.” I comply and we have long talks deep into the night. The kind that feels like it is the most important conversation I’ll ever have. For that moment in time that glimpse into the moonlight or the daylight it truly is. The intensity can’t be matched because it is so relevant. It is crucially real. But they fall back asleep and forget that we’d every spoken the conversation. With some, that shine so brightly but fear themselves, I keep trying to wake them up because I believe they need to be; because they said they wanted to be.

I don’t say anything to people who are dark. I don’t squeal with delight when I see them. Their wounds run far too deep for me to do anything other than shine a light at the end of their tunnel and coax them from sleep if they’re ready. There have been times when words came out of my mouth that weren’t mine but were intended for a particular person. Just like that, it’s as if a small miracle, sometimes large, happens but it isn’t mine. That’s when my light can reach into that dark place and help bring them home to the light where they belong. Those are the people that shoot past me like a rocket grinning from ear to ear on the tides of self-discovery and I cherish each one that finds that place. I do not gift them because it’s already theirs as it is yours. I may just nudge the light a tad to the right so they can see they’re really okay.

But I can’t carry them. I can’t wake them up. I can’t do that. I can’t pick someone up and force them to embrace their colors. It is ALWAYS the individual choices that color their spirits. It is ALWAYS their responsibility. I learned this and other rules of engagement when watching the masterpieces I encounter.

I can’t tell people what color they will become but I can tell them what color I see. The colors don’t have traits as much as they have emotions attached to them. When I see the colors and I really like them, I have to wait. I can’t immediately bond with them because rarely, but it does happen, they are wearing someone else’s colors. Like maybe they had a bad interaction with someone so it clouds their spirit or they’ve just received great news and are wearing that instead of their normal vestments. It’s the wolf in sheep’s clothing that causes me to ease my steps.

The physical being, the way you wish people to see you comes second. When I see someone that matches their physical self with their spirit self, it’s a feeling of home. It’s a feeling of such personal integrity, I think, “YOU! You’re there!” Sometimes it surprises me so much to find an authentic person that I actually say that out loud. There are many people who come close to matching but, it’s like they choose the wrong pair of socks or the wrong shade of happy. It’s just enough off for me to recognize that they’re missing parts of themselves or aren’t aware they are. It is my experience that it’s typically the latter.

The physical being does matter. I don’t wish you to have the wrong impression. I do see it, but not until I’ve peered through the spirit. When I tell someone that they are beautiful, I see them as I’ve described to you. I wish I could paint each person so they could see their beauty too. As if, if I could create them on canvas, they might appreciate their own divinity that seems apparent to me. But instead I’ll follow the advice of my kind Uncle Les who said, “Mare, whatever you do, keep doing it. The world needs more of it.” So it is written, so it is done.

The Mute Woman

How to make a daisy crown

How to make a daisy crown

I made daisy crowns and dandelion necklaces.

I climbed trees with my knees scraping bark

to see what was on the other side of my neighbor’s fence

or down the hill, or off in the distance on a sea of treetops.

I drank water from the dog bowl to see if it tasted different.

I tried cat food to see if they liked things the same as me.

I wove elaborate stories, like plays,

that I repeated until I had them memorized

then performed them to blank-faced audiences of dolls.

I became a mosquito scratching relative legs until they sprayed me away.

I watched from my window, every day through winter to see the first robin of Spring.

I dashed wildly, madly through the scented Autumn leaves.

I splashed loudly in puddles

when I didn’t have on rain boots and when I did.

I drove a pedal car up and down the sidewalk in front of my home;

Mine was green, my brother’s blue.

I rode my bike as fast as the wind

skinning the ends from my toes for riding barefoot.

My baby doll became a real child needing care

right down to being walked in a baby buggy, pampered and cuddled.

I sang songs when there were people around

and when there wasn’t.

I wore the brightest clothes I owned with pride

but refused to wiggle my fanny at school for embarrassment’s sake

foregoing the envied bunny tail.

I dreamed of long hair like my favorite Aunts

but my hair was wild, unruly, and never behaved appropriately.

I played race car with the electric socket and a key

learning just how many people I could scare at one time.

I saw my world as beautiful, wondrous, and awe-inspiring.

My memories have not been muted, although faded a bit,

Dog-eared around the edges, notated and rewritten with crayons

reversed into a parking spot reserved for each one.

I take them out and drive them around adult conversations

but they get dismissed as comical fancies

disapproved of as childish rubbish.

But they’re wrong.

My childhood held many terrifying horrors.

I don’t think these wonders I hold in my memories are comical or rubbish.

They represented my soul unfurled like a battle-worn banner

proclaiming my liberty from my aggressive oppressors.

They were a time of exploration, learning, and comprehension.

They were and are my life boiled down to the simple things

that so many struggle toward, but I hold dear to my heart.