The Chrysalis looks dead; that is its disguise. A simple, broken leaf, soon to be swept away by wind or rain. But in fact, it’s a puzzle box that holds the whole universe inside itself; an unbroken chain of DNA, an augury of “becoming” dating from the dawn of Life itself. So is each of us a Chrysalis…of what? For what?
We are powerhouses seeking ignition. We can feel the slow-gathering strength within, but we are still mysteries to ourselves. We need the Other to become a Full Being. Plato posited that man/woman are separated angels endlessly seeking their other half. Your duty is to protect the chrysalis so that it can unfold in its own good time. Be patient, your day of flight and connection comes ever closer.
HOT PROWL
Don’t wake up. Surveilled by night Your chiseled torso Slackened with exhaustion. Touching things that once You touched, Listening to your apnea; I turn away before you turn. Making peace with all my choices. It’s been worth everything – Winning in divorce a Hard-won superpower: Invisibility
Life is always a collaborative venture. Cooperation makes the world go round; you are not going to find a SoulMate without carefully orchestrating your dance steps together. Working together on constructive plans that will pass from one generation to another has created multiple marvels of engineering and design.
But among human beings, at least, the chain breaks down when some of our less attractive tendencies toward competition, paranoia and greed rear their ugly heads. And there is little that can be accomplished on the human plane at least without seemingly endless slatherings of goodwill. In the animal world, cooperation goes much more smoothly, with social insects routinely building cities that rival the Eight Wonders of the World.
Human marriage is a two-way support system; that is the reason for its longevity. Divorce and dissolution come when someone feels they’re getting too little. Cooperation always offers chance for communion, that vital sense we have of being a necessary part of something bigger, more long-lasting and more important.
Division of Labor – We’ll never be able to do everything to achieve our goals. We are going to need help. How do we get other people on board? How delegate effort? We need to brace ourselves for “pushback” as in, “Why should I help you?”
We may have to help other people with THEIR goals! When we made our list of resources, other people figured prominently. Now we decide how to “sell” our ideas as well as ourselves! Why are we worthy of help and assistance in a world that is begging for it? As so often happens, the best advice is to “start small”. Offer a friendship transaction: “I’ll pick up this item for you if you pick up that item for me.”
“Cooperation” is reciprocity. We are looking for an equal relationship that respects our essential differences. We not only need support on our life path, we are eager to support the Beloved.
“Cooperation” protects us from one-way relationships. Above all, we don’t want to get sucked into another’s cycle of destruction. This pathology currently goes by the name “narcissism”.
“Narcissists create a shared fantasy of victimhood.” Narcissists LIVE in fantasy. They create not only a fantasy version of themselves but also a fantasy version of YOU!! This is critical for comprehending the anguish caused by abuse. They are excellent manipulators; they create an idealized version of the victim, and narcissists somehow convince the victim that they should play along to receive the benefits that they seek.
The narcissist secures the “power” of shattering this fantasy whenever they choose (known as the devaluation and discarding phase.) They threaten to deprive you of your perfect self-image! That is why we experience so much pain. We are not grieving the loss of narcissists. We are not grieving the time we spent with narcissists. We are grieving our idealized lives and selves!! Narcissists are filled with a senseless, secret hate (usually based on envy) that requires them to degrade and disappoint you – probably some “magical” re-enactment of a catastrophic disappointing degradation THEY experienced once upon a time. You can’t be their therapist.
As soon as it becomes apparent that cooperation is not only impossible but that your suffering is required, you need to GET OUT NOW. Willingness to give is the necessary foundation of SoulMating.
Solitude is required for reflection, and reflection is required for growth. Growth is required for choosing a soulmate, because the choice cannot be haphazard but the result of self-knowledge.
Solitude is not loneliness; it is the Art of Being Alone. Wise Ones have told us that ultimately each of us is only alone; we are born alone and we die alone. Plainly, this cannot be true. We are as social a species as the ants and termites. But just as one could argue that every worthwhile achievement has been a collaboration, one could also argue that every worthwhile idea was conceived in solitude.
I prefer to think of our “mental, emotional and spiritual pores” having both an “on” and “off” position. There is outflow, there is in-flow and there is no flow. All are necessary to the health of the human being and all are necessary to the maximization of human potential. Depth psychology merely systematizes the layers of human consciousness and sub-consciousness whose existence dreams have always demonstrated.
Meditation and mindfulness seek to capture the exact moment when the soul experiences itself. This is not possible without regular periods of scheduled and enforced solitude. In-breath must equal outbreath until suddenly the lips of the psyche part and, as in a “magic eye” painting; the familiar world dramatically shifts to reveal under-worlds and over-worlds of multiple meanings and intense possibilities.
Self-Sufficiency: How panicked are we by the idea of being “alone”? Even those of us who are introverts are sustained by a complex net of relationships, any adjustment to which could drive us back to infancy. Are we alone even within our relationships? Are we alone on our planet? In the universe? It is surprising how much this fear can be seen lurking behind our consciously assumed states of mental “good cheer”.
Most of us work in collaborative ventures; nothing we do would be worthwhile without, at the very least, someone to assess or appreciate. It is time to take stock of our internal personal resources; those that owe nothing to the support of others.
Opportunity; Much of what we think during the day is in fact a dialogue. It is salutary to ask ourselves: who are we talking to? Is this person imaginary, dead, alive? Are they helpful – or cruel? It’s common knowledge that we speak more insultingly to ourselves than we might to anyone we know! Time for a “voices” upgrade. These are part of ourselves talking to each other; possibly parts of ourselves we could do without.
And is that the best way to accomplish our set goals? Now’s the time to understand that, given education and culture, we can never be “alone” in the sense of bereft of help. We have countless models we’ve been choosing from childhood up. Who are they? Do we need upgrade them, or just name them and learn to deploy them more effectively? Some of us are surrounded by a mix of celebrities (Humphrey Bogart in “Play it Again, Sam”) some of us by the loving dead (Granma and Grandpa) others by cultural icons (for me Shelley, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson) some of us by imaginary friends or even angels.
What’s working for us and what isn’t? After all, we furnish our own brains. Let’s decorate by design.
Danger! An important component of the confidence we desire to cultivate is freedom and self-determination. We all know how unsettling a date’s visible desperation can be. We instinctively back away as from a sinking ship whose whirlpool threatens to suck us in. In other words, the best way to gain a soulmate is to be able – visibly! -to live without one. This sounds nonsensical; but look at it this way, you ARE living without one. Is your desire to change your life based on the indisputable fact that your life is a mess? If so, we have to turn our attention to THAT first thing, otherwise we are the sinking ship no one wants to get near, much less, on.
Challenge! To increase our chances of finding the best person who is right for us right now AND in our future, we have to GIVE ourselves a future. No other person can be our “future.” We need to have a vision of a future we are working towards. That is what we want to hear about our date, and that is what they will want to hear about us. It’s time to become your own best friend, the one who really cares about you and gives such good advice
HEDGEHOG CROSSING ROAD
Spines erect as swords She waits To tilt the windmills rushing by Machined from hell to trap Her tiny weight of soul and fur.
She fears not. He who protects the sparrows Comforts her. The air is sharp With winter not With false regret –
She lifts her head to gauge The moment ripe for flight Unaltered in her captaincy of self. She’ll reach eternity or the pond
The Moon = SUBTLE INFLUENCE : “Botticelli’s Simonetta”
“Secret crushing”
The Moon and the Sun have nothing in common. The Moon is a planet, the Sun is a star. The Moon doesn’t give light; it reflects light; it must be tired of being compared to the Sun. What an unfair fight!
The Moon is our hostage, circling us slowly. Balefully. Oh, it has its worshippers. I mean, which would you rather be, Moonstruck or Sun-struck? You can recover from The Moon. The Moon seems manageable; Earth has visited it many times. The Moon is symbolic; vital for poets; unavoidable for lovers. The Moon is the Planet for people who like to sneak around. The Moon manages our tides, but subtly. Cruelly. She is the Queen of passive aggression.
There are two ways to accomplish anything: full-frontal or “sneak attack.” This knowledge, so dear to military strategists, is one of the first things we discovered as children. You rarely get what you want simply by asking for it. Instead, you must study “the target” and determine likely responses. As children, we usually realized it helped if “target” was in a good mood! Bad mood targets say “no” to everything!
But this simple reality has important ramifications for us adult planners: there is also “weather” in the world of human desire and accomplishment. It’s much more difficult to “take off” in a storm. The Moon is visible entirely by borrowed light, but that’s the least important thing about her. Her power may be invisible, but we can feel it in our blood, in our bodies!
There could be no more useful introduction to the potency of Subtle Power. Sometimes in order to achieve our desire we must prepare our target to even hear us. Jesus illustrated this brilliantly in a series of parables anyone would understand. When he was asked a question, he’d tell a story whose moral was obvious. He allowed seekers to answer their own questions by first determining what “paradigm” matched their circumstance.
Plotting the “weather” and analyzing the “players” tells us much of what we need to know when planning to move forward. It can be admirable to lay all our cards on the table, or it can be foolhardy; as men discover who propose on the first date. We’ve been given complex brains. Let’s use them to think strategically.
Do you have a secret crush? Do you know why — or is not knowing an important part of its power over you? What’s influencing you? Where is this pull coming from?
The moon exemplifies subtle power; entrancing its quarry like a sidewinder. That means it’s time to “think outside the box” and take a deep dive into the “hard” wiring of your motives and desires. Just how “hard” is that wiring? Just because it’s “factory-installed” doesn’t mean it can‘t be improved upon.
“Customization” according to your unique requirements is far superior to accepting whatever your biology throws at you. Let’s study our own blueprints with a view to a possible re-design if we don’t like what we see. We all have nonsensical fears, triggers and prejudices; keeping them in darkness allows them to proliferate, even assume command. The Moon is one of the Imposture archetypes (Fireflies is the other) but the moon is more about you posing to fool yourself.
We who seek our Perfect Other Half wish to be free of all that. We want to know what we actually want, what benefits and what harms us and all we want is the ability to speak it honestly. Let’s compare your real self, your desired self and your social self to your desirable self – and learn.
Can you change? This is the most important question, because you’ll have to change to blend smoothly with your other. Resistance to change – to experimentation, to re-design – is the biggest red flag there is. It’s a deal-breaker.
SIMONETTA: Botticelli’s Muse
Ah Simonetta! You were always All the faces; how we
Pity the griffon backed toad Who dreams of you And you alone;
Excepting your fatality – Eyes flint deep, pebble shallow, Thunder lines coiled on Lips pursed tight
A tantrummy child Punishing parents by Refusing to breathe.
As this world is not Perfection you can’t be; Yet somehow you embody
Everything we yearn for; your Pear-hard belly Anticipating ravages;
Unto that scar that splits you twice Equator-wise, spilling out the thistle-tailed phoenix
Who perpetuates your face, spinning Ropes of rubied veins and Clouds of gilded hair –
Arching you back to Burst you, husk and all Against the sun.
Dormancy casts us into contemplation, and contemplation heightens our uncertainty. Duality reminds us that meditating on the opposites in our natures must become part of our standard meditation practice. When we desire to bring a soulmate into existence we ask ourselves: what does it mean to be “opposite”?
Consider all sides of this equation; consider, also, that we ourselves create and trigger our own “opposites” so we must observe the infinite potential conceived by the opposite of intention, designed by the opposite of desire, spawning the opposite of Being itself.
It is human to want two conflicting and contradictory things at once. When we “choose” any one thing, we give its shadow power. We still “want” the neglected thing: perhaps more than ever now that we can no longer “have” it. This can’t “hurt” us so long as we’re aware of it.
We must expect the path not taken to rear up in our dreams and stake its claim to our life. When we see it, we dismiss it again: “Begone, I don’t want you. I have not chosen you.” Every time we make this statement we diminish its force a tiny bit. The worst thing we can do is become its advocate: “Maybe that’s not so bad. Why can’t I have both?” If we make that mistake we are setting up a vicious circle of longing for the way not chosen; we may decide we are more about the bad choices than the good ones: “I just can’t help myself.” Speak the words “Begone. You have no power over me. I have not chosen you.”
Every time we say them they become a little bit more true. We have the right to become good souls by design, not monsters controlled by appetite alone.
Approach/Avoidance. Fear/Attraction. Love/Hate. We feel all these emotions at the same time, swirling together to form a new emotion, ambivalence, which some of us try to negotiate using experimentation, “safe words”, role play. It’s possible; but rigidity is always to be distrusted. If we are manipulating a series of masks to hide behind our purpose is automatically defeated.
What is that purpose? Self-knowledge. Self-revelation. Authenticity, followed by the bliss of Other-knowledge; other-revelation. And the fact that, together, soulmates become a multiplied force of never-yet-seen-in-the-history-of-the-world power and personhood. To achieve this goal, we learn to accept and know, tolerate, negotiate, master and revel in the wilderness within each of us and the wilderness we create together.
This course can be fearful, even shaming. We will decide several times a day: “This is too much for me”, “I can’t do this,” “I’m not good at this.” How dare I release you when I can’t release me? How can I create you when I can’t create me?” We dare. We can. With the ultimate result that we release and create, Us.
The Sideways Smile
I heard you singing and remembered All the things that you’d forgotten Seeing you clearly – like A fish in a hailstone.
Seeing your hands Long for a man I always thought Your upper lip too short Like a lion’s – in fact You have an animal presence –
Placing no trust in words Placing no trust in love Pretending you’d never met me Creating islands undiscovered Worlds unreachable;
You were the joke I didn’t get; I recall your sideways smile Blowing smoke between us Refusing to forgive the essential fragility that Marks us humans;
Fated as you were Always surrendering To the scornful cries of your Invisible hecklers.
The shadow=DISSONANCE “Considering the Chill Factor
“Confronting your shadow self”
We were very young when first we became aware of The Shadow. No happy moment, no celebration of joy is unaffected by its subtle miasma. But what is it exactly?
Much of childhood – history itself, in fact – is absorbed by the effort to put a name to this lurking angst.
Demonic forces, bad dreams, animals, reptiles, insects, The Invisible – entire populations of seemingly foreign persons have been stigmatized by this label. Which is not to say that somebody, somewhere, didn’t experience trouble from the reality of these forces.
Philosophers tell us that all we’re feeling is an inherent fear of death, but we can see that fear itself is hardwired into species who are otherwise unselfconscious of the limitations of existence. Perhaps all we have to fear is Fear itself, as the President put it. But who would willingly wish to walk fearless through this dangerous world? Isn’t it better to be prepared and take care?
A great man once advised us to be as wily as serpents and as gentle as doves. Good advice for gardeners! The knowledge that joy is fragile heightens its ecstatic power. Without this triple vision of past, possibility and future courage itself would be impossible.
Suspicion – There is something behind us. We can feel its unsettling presence. It seems to follow us everywhere, teasing a fine line between doubt and paranoia. In medieval times this “shadow” was represented by The Grim Reaper, complete with cape and scythe, reminding us the party would soon be over. We are warned to “Take care” by friends and loved ones; but against what exactly?
Doctors tell us to be vigilant about our health while at the same time they mock hypochondriacs. There are people who never “take care” and who insist that suspicion itself creates the monster, but on the whole, these people are not enviable. They appear to have rejected a “sixth sense” we’re all born with. Who would willfully blind themselves?
For those of us committed to exploring all our senses suspicion shadows joy as doubt shadows faith. Visually, shadows show us where things are. Like taste testers cultivating knowledge of the edge between sweet and sour we “feel” for the “turn” of the tide. The better to avoid it? Possibly to control it? At least to get an image – however brief – of the Thing that has been following, following?
Ascetics need particularly to arm themselves with some sense of when “just enough” turns into “too much.” Many authorities try to convince us that being a little “hungry” is a good thing. Certainly being “sated” triggers a drowsy, relaxed, state in which our “guard” is down. We do lose consciousness of that quiet little “frenemy” following. Following. The Shadow symbolizes a problematic development just coming into perceptive range.
Jung says we all seek our opposite, our “shadow self.” Feminists want house-husbands, wall street traders want supermodels. We yearn to recover our disavowed selves, blindly, subconsciously. Online profiles request specific “looks”, weights, backgrounds, experiences as if “soulmate” was a job. Yet we remain dissatisfied; feel shortchanged. Perhaps the shadow is fear of change. The thoughtful among us blame ourselves: “I’m not right”; the shallow blame the world: “I can never get what I want.”
The truth is we are judging plants by seeds when what we want are gardeners. We want to become gardeners, we wish to BE the garden. But how on earth can we do THAT?
Absence of understanding OR language renders our circumstances hopeless. We need another singer who will help construct a duet that doesn’t yet exist, a fellow artist of the sexual, the subconscious, the unconscious, who paints us as we photograph them. We need to be prepared to change places in a moment, to sing and redesign the other’s part. We must be willing dreamers with a huge repository of fantasy, fearless poets accessing a universal vocabulary. We will fall in love, then out of it, fall deeper, soar. It will feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar at every point as we blend swiftly changing roles of tutor and pupil. Prepare yourself to plunge into another and become them, as they remodel you.
CONSIDERING THE CHILL FACTOR
Considering the chill factor As I always try to do – That day was hot Too hot for love or war.
We sit in restaurants. I pick The blue-veined shrimp He picks the black-veined news.
Outside drunkards Carom off the plexiglass like entertaining fish. “They envy us” I say and Andrew says “How nice.”
I see a couple coming in; she holds him up As I so often upheld you. I know that touch – like surgeons who manipulate the dying.
She wears my dress the one I wore the day you Shamed me Stuck me sizzling to the sidewalk – Shamed us both with red red stains.
“Andrew I don’t think I have quite forgiven you.” Andrew says “How nice” and Lays his coffee spoon upon the cloth – I hate the brown stain – it spreads like murder Like the bad smell of death Breeding fumes as we do Corpses in the sun.
I rise to speak Shrimp spewing from my mouth like Parasites. “We have always been So happy, you and I-“
Synchronicity = What We Need to Learn: “Synching up”
How do couples get “in synch”? How much of it is conscious? Synchronicity is more than symbiosis, more than coincidence. Like all true serendipity it contains an element of magic. If the bubbling primordial stew hadn’t brought the right ingredients together at the right time, life as we know I simply couldn’t have begun.
There’s always a strong element of synchronicity in teamwork, as in all collaborative enterprises. We become sensitive to the rhythms of the other. Feel the rise and fall of the others’ energy and must exactly time our moment to chime in.
It’s the Trust Game writ large across the heavens; the magic of need producing the miracle of response creates the synchronicity of Life.
Think about your interpersonal relationships as a series of concentric circles. There are people on the outmost rings whom we recognize but exchange no words with and know nothing about, down to the closest, tightest ring, where we maybe know too much about those people, possibly feel stifled, even a bit unchallenged by their presence in our lives. And our closest relationships may actually merge into our own space, until we can’t tell where we end and the other person begins.
Remember what it takes to achieve friendship – Are there once-close people whom we have banished to the outer distance? How did that happen? Any people we long to bring closer who seem stubbornly resistant to our charms? Do we notice any pattern in the way we relate to others? A favorite game therapists play is “Find the Father/Mother”. In other words, are we recreating any original family dynamics with other people we may know? (Critic, sugar daddy, permission giver, etc.)
This game can be extended to “Find the Sibling” as we study ways to become competitive by conspiring against a “common enemy” with fellow workers or even friends. Let’s make the effort to become more conscious, less rigid. We’re going to “work” this circle. It is not going to “work” us!
Being “in synch” requires understanding where the other person is coming from and feeling confident that they understand where you’re coming from. (And going to.) Do you enjoy learning? You’d better, because we have a lot of it ahead of us. Horribly, some people decide to settle down because THEY’RE TIRED OF LEARNING. They yearn for unchanging, static conditions! Yet your soulmate represents an entirely new world, and between the two of you, you will be creating another one. So there will be lots of learning going on.
If you are really phobic about “learning” new things, now’s your time to figure out why. It may be that you hate “tests”, (a perfectly acceptable human reaction to stress conditions) but you love gaming. In other words, YOU REALLY LOVE TO LEARN, aren’t afraid of challenges and relish the acquisition of new skills and worldviews, but you had BAD SCHOOLING EXPERIENCES.
You can see that’s entirely different, but it’s still helpful to know. The more your partnership resembles “school’ (with one of you as teacher/judge) the more unpleasant it’s going to be.
So prepare to match your quest to the type of exploration you LIKE to do and most importantly, talk about it. Your partner can’t read your mind and people are often shy and can’t find the words to quantify their emotion. But between the two of you will FIGURE IT OUT. “I don’t know what I’m feeling – maybe panic with a dash of dread?” you can help each other to analyze and assess. You’ll be talking not just about your relationship, but every relationship either of you has ever had. “I’m afraid to look back/talk or even think about this,” is an acceptable opening bid. And throughout this process, you’ll get closer.
Leaving the Coven
A craven of cronies stood Between us & God God hated short skirts, God Demands clones.
A damnation of judges Stood between us & Knowledge; truth exists Only in service to others.
A clowder of cretins Stood between us & Art: “Don’t be disturbing” “Never trust instincts.”
From the depths of This oubliette You drank the koolaid Guaranteeing your survival
Cherishing passion Rescuing me – As I rescued you So I could grow up And write this poem.
How good are we at facing bad news? Do we even want to know what it is? It’s impossible to plan for the future if we don’t intelligently strategize the things that COULD go wrong. We must weigh up our assets and debits – some of which are certainly emotional.
Are we self-sabotagers? Do we quit right before the final push? Do we make alliances with untrustworthy people? Do we make ourselves vulnerable to dangerous people? Are we secretly hoping for “rescue” – that someone all-powerful and all-competent will sweep in and take our “mess” away? Remember back to our inner power principle, the person we want to be. Maybe we get discouraged far too easily by the negative voices in our heads. The path of lifetime self-improvement after all, started with our neither being able to talk or even stand up! Practice, practice, practice: forming “muscle” – even spiritual muscle – takes a lot of time.
Then we must face up to fearful destruction we had no part in; perhaps caused only by the principles of waste, loss and entropy to which the entire universe is subject. We need a philosophy to carry us through these times that helps us strategize thrifty methods of maximizing and healing what resources we have left. We need to know the difference between “value” and “price”. We need to recognize the outright gifts we have been given – such as the courage and determination that brings us to this place – and give thanks for them.
Conflict is an inevitability. No heat without friction, no forward movement without energy expenditure, no flight without first shedding our comfort carapace. When we want change, we are inviting conflict.
The question is how much in control we feel. Triggers “set us off”; i.e. trigger any chain of events we may feel helpless over. But are we? Can the chain be arrested at any point? Let’s bring our mind to focus on the problem. Human history is created by human intelligence; let’s problem-solve. “I will arrest and re-direct this change.”
Whore De Combat
My sutures hurt; I’m Completely unavailable, Unsheathing your ambition you Laced up my body like a jerkin Cut my breakfast with your corkscrew Swiss Army Doubled up and put away.
I’m fasting now Bracing for the worst I can’t eat anything that won’t Look right at me And want to know the truth; Who’s for real? What’s the state of play?
When searching for your soulmate this is no time to “blend with the crowd.” You need to discover exactly who you are so you can seek your complementary and missing elements. If you are uncertain or mistaken about your essential self, you won’t even recognize The One. You will be guaranteed to choose a partner based on false considerations of status or appearance. This requires you stop hiding your true self and allow it to emerge. Easier said than done! Turns out we all have been babying the shyly unique aspects of ourselves that don’t win instant recognition from the crowd. Well, we are going to have to experiment with taking Baby out for daily strolls and develop a bit of muscle. Don’t worry if the “likes” fall away – you are not trying to appeal to everyone. The creativity card means you will need to become imaginative in how you present yourself. You want someone accepting? Be accepting. You want someone brave? Be brave. You want someone who looks deeper? Look deeper.
Fire In the Dust
In photographs The ladies scream or laugh It’s hard to tell Heads back they bare their Grief or joy or Agonized relief It’s hard to tell. All that remains of them Tattered icons growing ever dim.
The fountains of our fear Leap high at first, like dancers Frozen at first burst Of freedom Paralyzed abreast The arc We cannot see What tortuous sign these fossils Meant to be.
In that first winter We thought the earth was dead Statues mated Trees erupted dragonflies The angry lonely Sang and cried. Somewhere some fetus twists and jerks Convergence of dynastic quirks
So drop the toxic cloak of bitter spite that Melts the flesh and terrorizes night – Waiting out a cycle’s sum Spinning down to kingdom come. For nothing vain, came nothing plain This world was born To live again.
As soon as we begin refining our list in search of The One, we are filled with doubt. Fear of Missing Out dictates that even as we are talking to a Possible Soulmate our eyes search out the door to see what new person is coming in. There is a glorious book, essential to artists, called The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) which is actually about self-sabotage. In the very moments when we are trying to build something critically important to our emotional, psychic and spiritual health, a demonic voice comes out of Who Knows Where, whispering, “It’s the wrong thing and you’re doing it wrong.” According to Steven Pressfield, if you listen to this voice you will never accomplish anything, because Honest, Committed Effort is required to get your project off the ground, even if it ultimately fails. And if it ultimately fails, it will turn out to be the very project that helps you see what is Really Important, and understand What to Do Next. Choose wisely; searching for a relationship that is restorative, not exploitative, a partner who is complementary and complimentary, and push doubt aside.
Cloverleaf
Some roads lead nowhere; They’re my favorites. I held my breath while You drew my face in Blinding strokes Creamed my mouth with curling lines Destroyed one picture; then another Never let me see. You Left at dawn while I Ran in circles, calling Raging, spending blackened Nights without you, No blue thigh to guard My trusting heart while yours looks out To gauge the coming storm. Trapped in cloverleaves, Sentenced to school by Streams of angry judges – Balked by The enervating past Of unlived lives Every face I paint is yours. Open up the chilly ruffles Of my breasts One more time – To beauty; yours and mine Electrify your Eldritch spine – Your body so much lighter Than the mountain that you loved Better than you loved me – The course you learned Better than you learned me – so Overconfident that you’ll come back I float across the powdered snow In bird-winged silence All-enveloping Unless I’m Lost?
Alysse Aallyn 