“They say to love is to bury…”

All I have done is show my heart bare,

to shine the truth that I feel,

but try to cut it down,

deny me the honesty I reveal.

 

You can’t.  No matter how much you say about me, no matter what hateful lies you spew, there is no way you can erase my history, erase my love, erase my peace and the knowledge I have.  I have so much compassion for you.  We have both felt loss, both felt pain, but I have not reached out in anger for a long time. I have seen what you have written and I allow you your expression.  Why must you continue to scratch out mine? 

Perhaps it was a moment of weakness, one which you regretted the moment after you scratched with fury. I can only imagine what was coursing through your heart.  I am sorry if it caused you hurt, I am sorry that we cannot break free of this dance.  I wish we could live with each others memory.  I wish we could inhabit the same grief.  We both love, we both lost.  We both wish it were different.  I see myself in you.  Someday maybe we will be able to let each other live with peace and love.

Letter to Jonny, per his request.

Well….memories huh.  I remember a lot.  Like the first trip we took down to Travis’s family homestead, we drove in his roommates (the one who we were the witnesses in his crazy marriage) maroon Mazda minivan. and had a sign that said “show us your tits!” which we proceeded to show (especially me, you guys thought I would get the best response) to every woman we passed, including some really heinous old ones.  We never got anyone to do it though, a few truckers honked for us.

We ended up getting lost on another trip down there, and drove up and down the Salinas valley.  We were super stoned, so I think that contributed to the lost factor.  We turned the wrong way out of a gas station and went two hours out of our way.  I remember hauling ass in my piece of shit Stanza down dirt roads with cliffs on one side, the Snixs. pumping on the radio spewing angry anti-Semitic punk rock.
I also remember getting oysters for you with our last ten bucks, buying a box of wheat thins for me, and then leaving Leroy in the car while we went shopped, and he ate the wheat thins and the left over sauce from the oysters.

We ran out of gas on the way home and got five bucks worth from the triple A guys, no charge.

It seems we were always on the edge of having no money…
I have more memories, but I gotta go, I will send you more don’t worry.  Do remember Leroy and you getting chomped by the pit bull?

Love ya
Lee

The one where my friends make stupid choices.

How is it that I have become the sensible one?  The one who doesn’t drink, doesn’t jump from overpasses onto the road, doesn’t drive drunk, doesn’t make a fool of themselves, doesn’t injure themselves while drinking?  How is it that I am the one who grew up, while everyone else is still…stuck. 

Didn’t anyone learn from Jerin dying?  Does there need to be a bigger hint? For me, I needed to be snapped back from the brink on New Years Eve by a cop and one night of smashing my head into the “silent partner” in a police cruiser, then walking a few miles along a highway while being hit on by coke-fuled Spainiards.  That about cured me of my need for stupid decisions.

I was 21!!!  I figured it out, drinking wasn’t cool, it was a waste of time, but most of all it is BORING.  Dull, downright stupifiying.  And still, these people I know, and my friends, continue to do the stuff we did when we were kids.  Over and over.  You are twenty frickin 4-5-6-7-8-9 years old people!!! Figure it the fuck out! I am so tired of being understanding, of being the friend they come to when they have gotten it together again.  But I guess I would rather be that than be at their memorial.  It just breaks my heart, pushes me away, when I hear of them putting themselves in unnecessary danger.  We have so little time on this earth.  Why squander it doing the same shit over and over, half of which you won’t even remember?  I just don’t get it, and I don’t know how to reach them.  I love you guys, that’s why it breaks my heart.

Empty Rings

What is it about today, just another day, just an ordinary day, we have so many of them they tend to flit by before we can see them,

butterflies or hummingbirds flashing colors but no patterns visible,

the sun shone hot today on a slide of steel and I saw a river, muddy, red, green and glistening under maple trees

boughs heavy with ripe leaves,

i imagine us daintily dancing from limb to limb,

like the 5th graders, but with something other than kettle corn on our minds.

These days among days, mid July,

dry,

I remember running my hands through the wind outside your car,

pushing back at the oncoming currents of breath, letting my arm be beat back to the rhythm of Rage

freedom of

no bills, no home, no needs

hot and arid, the middle of Montana at night,

where the stars reached out and struck us dumb,

with beauty, love, stillness of time.

We felt forever, and never, and nothing, and everything,

all crashing within our breath, and hands,

and bare skin.

I would encircle your ribs with my strong arms, holding you in,

making sure you didn’t fall,

didn’t disintegrate into dust and float out the window.

You were so fragile, this boy trying to be a man, to be strong,

to be all that you could be to run away from yourself.

 

 

 

I miss you.

May is gonna go out like a lion.

April went crazy.  I don’t know where it all went, really.  Just seems like a breath ago we were standing on the mountain, giving Jerin to the wind and the water.  Now, there is mostly silence there, and my grandfather has joined him.  They were these two poles in my life, one reason, one passion.  Always pulling me in directions I wanted to go, but couldn’t figure out how to stay within.

I miss them both.

My grandfather was such a pillar in his circle, and I stood just outside.  Actually, far outside.  I was on the other continent from him, philosophically. I wanted so badly for us to know one another, but there was just too much to disagree on.  Fundamentally, he was a consumer, I am not.  He believed the world was here to be devoured by innovation and “growth”.  Of his generation, I suppose.  And now he has given me more than I ever imagined, to do what?

What do you do when you are given more than you have ever dreamed you would have?  Not those “what would you do if you won the lottery” amounts, but enough to fulfill some fantasies? Do you give it all away?  Part of me wants to do just that, pull a “Into the Wild” maneuver and rid myself of the pressure…my reasoning mind says to invest.

Most of me says to GO. Finally I have the funds to unleash myself on the world in the way I have always wished to.  But I now have a love in tow, and another who will not release his conception of security.  And so I wonder.  And my heart has grown roots now, to these people I dearly love, to this place I dearly love.  I have spent so long running…is it who I am, or was it a symptom of my avoidance of self?

I truly wish to give into the light; I fear the opening is contracting.

So I begin this with ventures, lightly treading on what future may unfold.  To meander around California for a while, see the places I have seen before, but with my little being of light beside me now. And then? New York, Alaska, Montana, Hawai’i, Australia, New Zealand…and then?  Who knows? The wind has shifted, and it will shift again.  Only the birds know for sure.

Oh My heart…

Aches for your voice to say once again I love you.

For the days of dry pine needles, tequila in Sobe bottles,

Of walking for miles to put one thought in front of the other.

I drift in and out of years, of days and breaths,

Trying to stay here when you keep calling me nowhere.

Some evenings it is better to sleep dreamless.

I need to escape your memories, these things that taunt me to drift.

We were something untouchable, and I am so unable to be reached now.

Everyone has moved on, or moved sideways, and it is not longer cool to mourn you. 

The silence is appaling.  What would you have wished?

TO SCREAM. 

You would have violently shaken me, given me reasons to feel my way along.

Instead I sit and stare,

remembering your ears, your smell…amazing how it never leaves me. 

Eight years hence and I can still feel your scratchy chest,

Your pine flavoring…

The memories enfold me in soft weightlessness. 

I fall into you, and you hold me so strong.

My mind falters not, my heart, molten steel.

teleological ethics

the world is getting so much smaller for me lately.  its just me and my son, and the rest is on the periphery.  it has been this way since jerin died, but my ocean wave joined me within when he was born. he came from me-it makes sense.  i just wish i could have been so much more than i am…i see where others have gone, and i see where i could have been…i know it would not have been true to my heart, but at the same time i yearn for the freedom of spirit that i have released.  am i selling out, or growing up?  i am giving freedom for love, impermanence for wisdom.  i am not sure who is winning most in the scenario.  i feel parts of me slipping away and i am wanting to melt away with them.  but i dont, i keep writing, i keep reading, i keep dancing with my sea.  i keep dreaming of the future, it comes quick.

its funny when someone describes how they want people to be honest, yet they are very rarely honest with themselves and are so wrapped up in delusions about their own lives i doubt they could sense a lie when it entices their ears.  hipocracy is ugly and i see it abounding, in our politics and in the every day.  its disgusting.

I love my naturopath

So my little blue eyes has an ear infection…nothing really to do about it but give love and mullen drops.  But he is so much happier today, just as my body is giving out on me.  I hate being sick, and I haven’t been for over a year.  I guess it’s time.  I am so weak I can barely pick up my 20lb bundle of goodness. 

 At least it is beautiful out, clear, cold, full moon.

 And my sailor is coming to stay for a few days.

He wants me to come to the islands so I can finish school with him supporting me, but I think it is a dream he has not thought out thoroughly.  I would be so bored, I think, going back.  I have done all that already.  Palm trees and sand are for when you have nothing better to do, and I have so much better to do now.

I just am not sure what is right.  I want them to be together, but I want my life as I am living it now to continue. 

My ambitions are wide and diverse, as always.  I am not sure what is in the highest good.

 Oh and turtle wuv has a new tooth…left upper.  For a total of three!   Finally.  I think that is also contributing to his cheery demeanor.

LeeLoo-stream of unconsciousness.

I love “The Fifth Element”.  I am watching it right now, with the captions on, while my poor sick baby sleeps.

 I can hear him sigh in his dreams, his eyelashes dancing on his skin.

 The memories are being formed to replace what I have lost,

but the skeletons of the past keep growing new muscle…

Will missing ever really disappear?

It seems everyone has moved on beyond what used to be, and I am alone with my memory.

Dreams still coming to me in wavy hazes, like steam from the lake, like the vaporizer bubbling by my bed.

I am still sick from sadness, I have not let it overtake me,

but I cried for you on Southern Cross,

after a run so perfect I wanted to give it to you.

 Where the surface hoar

)oh how we laughed about that(

scattered diamonds on my dark curls,

the bluebird of happiness, these skies that we cherish,

gleamed so pure and monochromatic,

I miss you so much, I read your words today, again for the thousandth time.

 There is no reason for my grief, there never was, it just exists now forever ingrained within me.

Asking to be written, and it has over and over but never good enough.

How can it ever meet with the perfection that is my dream?

I want to share it with the world, the things I know, but I don’t think anyone wants to hear them anymore, that time has passed, I was supposed to have passed.

It was should of could of must of been me.

I still feel the unreality of today, everything has a sheen of disconnect

my brain unhitched from my heart that day.  They went their own ways

one is on the sea, one is on the road.

School and work and sick baby and friends and love and memories and

My brain is working overtime.  As well as my body.  I am taking care of so much right now and part of me feels overwhelmed, the other part feels invigorated.

 I like it when I am manic.  I know there will be a crash, but I am planning for it.

I am so glad my friend M is back in our home state.  I just wish she could have been well to see me.  Soon though, I know we will have a reunion.

 I am planning a trip to somewhere I have been wanting to go a very long time.  I never planned to go with my child, I thought I would get there before I had one, but you have to play the cards you have been dealt, so here we are…here is a hint-

I can’t wait and we might not come back…it’s a place that has been calling my soul for awhile. A place I planned to go with my soulmate. Now is the time.