Reflecting

If I failed to see
You loving me
If I walked right past
The obvious signs
If you said the things
I wanted to hear
If I missed the cues
If I crossed the line

I wish I had told you sooner
That your heart had been wrapped
In rose papyrus
To keep it safe in my secret box
If I lost the moment
In haste and hurry
I wish I had known
Your heart was mine

I miss you in moments
Light with their passing
The space has grown wider
Your face is fading and eyes are
hiding
Too much light was shed on the truth
In unromantic and harsh beguiling
The door was there to be opened
And shut with such force
It locked from both sides

If I did not see the secret smile
The hand outstretched
Your knee touch mine
If I missed the invitation
To dance or sing
To stand beside you
To be your queen
I am at a loss for time behind us

Sorry that I disappointed
That we parted over silly madness
Broken hearted

Yesterday

Yesterday i was fired. For financial reasons she said... nothing personal. As if yet another loss this year after so much investment and hard work is not "personal". I chose to handle my exit with grace. Not wanting to give away my power or dignity... I simply shook her hand held in my tears and said I should be going. I expressed regret at the circumstances and emphasized how hard I had worked and how much I had cared about this job. The reply was that she knew and it was no failing on my part. Not "personally" anyways. These are just hard economic times she said. It is really a financial decision... I guess I was just not "valuable" enough to them. So I should not take that personally. Honestly even though I have swung from sadness to anger today...I am mildly relived. I have yet another opportunity to transform myself and my life and I am eligible for Unemployment Benefits so that may buy me a little time. For whatever reason life is testing us again. My husband and I have just had the hardest year of our lives and here we are again facing uncertainty. However... I am living in a space of recognition that it could be so much worse. I could be Haitian or have been on those two trains that collided or have been that Olympic Luger who died in that crash or live in war torn Afghanistan. I am all n'all pretty lucky. I have great friends and a wonderful family and a supportive husband. We at least for now... have a roof over our heads and food to eat. We have a car and the means to find and get other job opportunities. I count myself as blessed.
If there is one thing in life I have learned, it is that everything depends on how you look at it and react to it. I have choices now and I can see that as a gift or a curse. It is primarily up to me.
Today I am going to be proactive and take action on my own behalf. I am going to give myself a bit of a break and focus on beauty and creativity. I am going find a way to rise because that is one of the things that defines me. My Phoenix like quality... the ability to rise from my circumstance. Who knows. Maybe I can make some sort of career out of that. Maybe life has been training me all this time. Anger is good to harness but in this circumstance is a wasted emotion. I have learned a lot in these last 7 months. I now have skills and experience that I did not possess before. That is a blessing if only a small one for it will make me more marketable and who knows... maybe whats coming down the line...is far better and more suited for me.
That's all for now. Letting go of yesterday and moving on to tomorrow... embracing today.
AL 2010

Rage

Unmediated undulating riveting cries
The shrieking into the night makes muffled cries
Reaching out for you in the stillness of a moment
turning to black confusion and mud so thick
it slows the heart from beating
Shaking in words that are too big to wear
I make no sense as you point out how the words I am wearing
don't fit
I cannot make sense of them anymore
We talk in tongues into reflections in mirrors
An overreaction
You say

Varied wines appeal to dull the senses and make me more pleasant
With a cap loosely topping my carbonated
bubbles of delayed reaction
the cork long blown off and thrown into the garbage
Your carelessness rattles the fizzy nerves
explosions of too sharp razor edged biting points
made in rapid fire succession
only succeed to literally drive you out
The breach has widened again
I am alone

AL

Finding Joy

I have always been good at creating a upswing in my mood by engaging in specific activities. Lately I have been finding it increasingly hard to re connect to that part of myself. Today I drove through my old neighborhood. I drove the streets I used to walk with my headphones on, day dreaming of a life composed of exhilaration... the adrenaline fueling my motion. The thought occurred to me that if I could make a list of the things that used to make me happy...light my fire and inspire me, and then follow that list to the letter, whether I felt it or not that maybe I could get back to that place. Like leaving a trail of bread crumbs to follow back home through the scary woods. As I drove through the old neighborhood watching the crows pick at the grass in the passing yards and stopping to let a squirrel cross in front of me I began to feel a small flicker of inspiration. A smile could not help but turn the corners of my mouth up just a little. The circumstances that led me to dance in my living room and walk the streets of my neighborhood with headphones on for hours, to start an exercise regime in my bedroom and to write wild and bold poetic thoughts down...to organize and re organize my room to make it new, no longer exist. I don't roller skate through the cemetery at dusk anymore. I do not have to ask for permission for anything really and my wardrobe and home are my own. In a sense the freedom I so desperately longed for in those years is now my life and in a way has caused me to cease finding avenues for joy. I have nothing to work around besides my work schedule and myself. My time is my own yet I do not engage in these activities anymore... the ones that made me feel like anything was possible and that I could fly. The things that make me most myself. I have become a stranger to them. In my search for joy I have increasingly looked away from myself to things that I now see are not representative of my inner being.
The box of dark chocolate covered caramel chews and the pack of camels at my beckoning only serve to temporarily comfort as I drive and cry listening to the soundtrack of a life I could not have imagined would belong to me. Difficulties and complexities that now live on my face and in the green around the rims of my eyes have diverted me from the path that would have been. The choices I have made were based on too much thought and did not emanate from my core. They have chained me to a giant pillar of cause and effect that slows my stride and creates too many questions.
Finally a fury to write... a need to be nearer to her. The she that is buried and hidden under the boxes of years and lessons. Getting back to her may just be that simple... to find her using the language we both speak. Practicing to become fluent again. Nothing worth doing or having comes very easy in my experience. What once came to me like a quick bolt or breath of air, I took for granted. I let go of the thread and it has gotten tangled in the mess of other threads and ropes and strings. The work of untangling takes patience and time. Two things I have never felt ease with but that I now know will be two of the best gifts I can give myself. I know persevernce well...it is time to make friends with it again and get myself home.
AL

Homeostasis

How do I reach that point
of not
tipping?
The balance of weighted circumstances
To be in the even unveiled lull of
daily life
to be
How do I get here to that jagged place
of reasoned out insanity?
The stopping
a question that is harder to answer
living in the median but openly
Where is the gravity that pulled
in even keeled
even endorsing
evening
activities?
The farther away it all seems
I have lost my toes shoes
Once worn with confidence of stiletto walking
bloodied toes a blessing
now with heeled feet
bloodied heart and soul a bruised compromise
I cannot find the wind
I blow the air around me to make way
for
something
Where is that tightrope once
easily traversed?
Wrapped neatly around my neck
I dangle
blowing at thin air and pointing my toes

AL

The Poetry of Lovers..One of Two Parts

The chaos of my mind leads me astray
To a place I find strangely familiar
Suddenly I am alone and frightened
And you find me
You know the way
Through the ancient caverns of useless hurts
To lead me home
And hold me in the warmth of your gaze
Slowly unwinding the knots I create
Making sense of the matrix
Knowing touching feeling saying
The truth
It is you
In your warm and thrusting body I find myself
Loving you loving me
We are souls entwined forever in time
Bodies revealing what words cannot say
Tongues tasting appetites freely and same
The beauty in thoughts once felt shameful becoming apparent
You are me and I am you
We are home.

Angela 1/09/2006

A Momentary Glimpse

We found each other somehow once
In the lost wild searching
I have no hope of recovery
Only the understanding of what was

We were right I thought...
Did I imagine a false reality?
The timing was wrong... choices made in haste
Fate intervened for better or worse

I loved you. Did you love me?
I could have imagined it all
I know it was unfair. Expecting nothing
The wanting
of everything

You were right to keep yourself from me
I was right to offer myself to you
What is right anyways? truth I thought
It was
A time

You said things. I did things. we shared everything
Did you feel it? In the end I don't know
Maybe silly. A wondering girl impressed by notions
I don't care about being foolish
It mattered
you
mattered to me

we hurt each other in confusion...disappointment...frustrations.
You were wrong. It was a good match with bad timing
I was wrong to be angry
how could you lend what you may not get back
needing it
without guarantees
did you hurt me on purpose?

I bled. It ached and the missing of you. It
lingers
was it all imagined? Maybe. I could have been fooled.
I saw you. I love wholly.
I was not supposed to. and did.

You could have liked. Needed. Used. It does not matter.
If I read the wrong book in your eyes...
Well.
I wanted to see...know. Hold and dance.
In the unguarded moments we held promise
the beautiful open running red wine and laughing moments
Even in the loud yelling silent hurting there was promise

what could not be was
at least for me
I think of it now and the question of you is left unanswered.
Do you wonder?

You said I was the woman
were you the man? You said you were
If I could fly would you have run the distance?
Unburdened
I lay myself bare
the hiding. ridiculous in the light of memory

Did it matter? My friend and lover
you buried your head in my breast
if only for a moment
was it just to breathe or for other reasons
The work became us
was US

I wanted what could not be mine and was
overreaching
you
overreaching me for me
was it right or just another moment in your busy mind

Straight shooting your armor and appeal
where is the answer to my call?
Lost in the stillness of surrender or alive
in your memory
am I there?

You do not owe me but to say
what was for you
if nothing
i surrender my memory to truth
I believed in you. believed you.
with my body I let you in
were you passing the time or did it occupy you
in my absence?

I expect no response
would be happy with one line
doubtful of your reception of my reach
my friend would tell me
what was real?

Time has moved us on
you said once we would catch up down the road
if you would like not
for
the finding of other moments they will escape us
just know
this is the truth...unguarded and free
it is why and how
you said no goodbye but I believe
you meant
there will be no more
wild searching here.

the moments passed and you with them
I accept
I only wish to know If my mind was full of tricks and illusions
so as not to fall prey to its pitfalls
ahead.

AL