I think I had better slow down. Sometimes my mind races into a whirling hurricane and I'm powerless to stop it. I want to just feel life, I want a break from the judgments worries memories associated with everything I experience. I want to be completely present. At the same time my body wants to move me into the present- wants to devour action, gorge on forward motion like a crazed pac-man- and it's always the thinking that holds me back. My impulse regulator is on overdrive, so that when I feel something in my gut I hold back from doing, but never from thinking on and on until the urge has rotted and my body has long since surrendered.

I have meditated in the past and that has always worked, but I think it is more than that. I don't allow (force?) my mind to slow down enough to get into that quiet space. Even before sleep I plow through a wall of speeding thought straight into vivid uncontrollable fantasy. I feel the dream taking me in, pulling me down this or that corridor, yet all I want is rest. Quiet. A dark place to learn to feel again- to relearn what a little baby does- to feel life, instead of thinking all the way through. Until it has passed you by and all your thoughts seem like a leash upon your neck that led you carefully, around the present. Around the places you wanted to see- so fast all you got was a glimpse out the window. Around the people you love, or wanted to love, where all you can remember are a few stray words, the way she laughed. Not the person just the 'specs'.

I have reached that quiet place before; I know that it is really there, and ever since I have longed to return. I think I need to get off this ceaseless subway and hike through those mountains again until I find it.

-Penny

Recording a fall

There is an emptiness inside me

a hunger for a different kind of sustenance

I'm sick of sweets and processed meat, I want clarity, water and wheat

I'm sifting the flour for specks of power the

truth is a burning building and water pours from the veins of those who came to watch it fall

Sometimes I feel like a sore thumb stuck out on the side of the road but no cars come to pass the mass of sheep bray and shove me the wrong way back onto the plastic grass
politicians roaming past with mouths foaming greedy devils in mardi gras masks
selling fear out of shopping bags like doomsayers
to numb dumb humans with tv fumes useless celebrity ‘news’
but when it starts when the oil rigs fall apart it’s all profit and no heart

I can’t close my eyes or my ears or my fists

scribbling on for every son and daughter they shot down told to submit to the draught when they could have taught thirst –
So
I wrote hope onto the faces of little kids disguised as butterflies sneaked it into the water supply and defaced the crumbling structure with my dissent the design
Now it climbs like iron vines over this corporate castle wall and I can’t stop
till I record it all

to hear

after I lost my voice

I started listening

to the upstairs neighbor's woody tenor

a deep echo under water

and the jazzy raspy pitch of the lady at the bar

that sweetly chirping flute- small children in the park

and on the crowded subway car

(yet in such solitary stifle)

I prayed that people speak!

I longed to know the texture of so many strangers' souls

from the way their words dripped, oozed, burst~

escaped as breathy whispers in the cold

but behind my desperate thirst,

the strange and sorry truth

that in exchange for this new faculty

(oh, suddenly to hear!)

the fiat- to be mute

At the Carnival

Big fake eyelashes

up close like spider legs

curled and glued

and forced in place

a scavenging seagull in the distance

my grief, strung on telephone wires

my flippant mind
straps me on this Coney Island roller-coaster ride
 Thud- thud- thudding up with
Erratic heartbeat joy

At the top, tipping
gravity compels this urge
to fall

it might hurt
or feel like freedom

but when it’s over
I’ll be back to street level

a rush of blood,
and empty pockets

surface

In a past life I must have been some aquatic entity. Ever since I can remember- say about three years old running naked on the beach, the sound and the smell and the giddy feel of the lapping water on my ankles has stirred me like nothing else. Perhaps it’s some subconscious womb-safety instinct, or even a memory of amoebic evolution, but the sea is my soul-mate. I have always believed that mother earth and father sky are marvels of divine wonder. I am in awe of mighty still mountains, the wild free beasts and watercolor washed sunsets that burn away the day.

Yet, nothing heals me like floating out beyond the waves.

The idea of this tiny fleck of being that is me- suspended on the wet surface of the earth- is enchanting. I breathe slowly and just listen, imagining the wind that blows a visitor from far-off places tirelessly continuing on its antediluvian course.

21 gears

fold me into leaves and grass
run rivers over land
dry and cracked
fill the sea with sounds of play
grow roots deep till mountains break
I'll take flight on dusty pave
dancing into the desert grave
roll past cities of smooth glass
shattering their filthy masks
plant instead resistant vines
to nurture the nature of creative minds
21 gears and years in stow,

Chase time
to find your way

Deciding

Well, it's time I stopped talking about writing.



She walks down the Brooklyn avenue doing her best impression of someone who isn't worried about how to look confident without the pinched step of uppity gentry or the slow swagger of street pomposity. And, after finding a sort of strained middle ground, she rushes on past casual stoop and consignment shop toward the elementary school.
Smile in greeting and how was your day?- later, everything is different. The skipping sloping stroll of hand holding and the confidence is effortlessly there. Somehow just the presence of that little person magically brings forth all of the answers.

whew, it's something. and that's enough


-Penny