wall streets,

with English ivies

that choke the stars

of persons

Transposed,

black "lorsque" eyes and

migratory tonsiled vocals

singing gutterally

into the nonsilence

of night, wince

the global heart

cries,

as to Where? does small

ambition

crawl,

to untold

beanstalk heights...?

I don't want to lose us

to the abstract columns,

bookended sidewalks---

the fiction

that curdles human blood,

with salt, or twist-of-lime Realty,

downed in a gulp!

an acquired taste

we connoisseur to,

as an aspiration...

hungover

the shoulder loosely

with pompous name

like Olympus or Olympia

that could be picture maker,

or picture taker,

or landscape,

in fanciful distance...

in any case, or shelf, or reservation

a higher order, for a cold

sampling

of what every fresh foundling

knows as ferment

and decay...

otherwise known as

...Civilization...

There are events occuring

Strange people emerging

When the darkness comes out

To hide them.

Inside the safe cocoons

Of sanitized civility,

Most of humanity

Are sequestered away in ignorancy.

Night after night

Out in the elements

Lurks the anomalies

Freak shows revealed accidentally.

A power line melting

At 3 am a few yards away from

Fireman wading fearfully

Into green glowing ocean waves.

A mad woman tells you the answer

To your question unspoken,

At the train station,

A man rewinds.

Hungry carnivores

Make desperate requests

Then vanish

With the morning light.

Spend some time

In the wilderness

Of the city at night,

Under the lonely

Moonlight.

There is an underground

All around you,

Shadows swallowed

Into disappearing staircases.

You would never even believe it,

If you saw it with

Your own

Eyes.

Looking for a spot to be alone he wandered north

Rocks became a dried crust of mud where trees and grasses accustomed to inundation and summer drought made their home

Bound by the shore of the river he focused downward, not outward

Determining a spot to be, just for a while

He had left work behind, no one knew he was gone. No one would miss him

This will do

A westerly wind blew through the river gorge to the plains in the east shaking the wildflowers in a jubilant dance

He settled into a spot, the flowers becoming a quivering layer of purple and gold at eye level stretching a hundred feet

On his seat he overheard a plover’s cheep

Her dear man replied in kind upon the sand

And the human man faded from this place

On fleeting feet she checked the sand

And peered around the land for danger

And “cheep” called to her man

And with flowers jiggling and plovers peeping the human man un-faded back to this place for a bit and considered the wind blowing and the sun shining

He watched the plovers and wondered why they always filled him with such a strange sadness

Like a sweet red juice leaking from a fruit on a tree. One that had suffered an unexpected cut and had not yet scarred. One no one would eat

A single note, no song, but a call, filled with worrying love. A desperate call saying over and again “I don’t know what I would do without you.” She cheeped to her man

And he called back “I am here my dear, and yes, I don’t know what ever I would do without you”

And they each peered around for danger

The human man watched their feet as they scurry and stop and watched their round eyes as they check for danger. And their cheeps squeezed the juice in his heart as the flowers shook and danced faster than one could ever perceive

He felt the space. The space he had chosen as his seat

He felt the sun and he felt the warm air

And though it blew around him he felt it wrap him and squeeze him tight

He felt what the air was made of exploring the surface of his skin and explore beneath it and explore the sadness in his heart

The delicious sadness that he never wanted to let go of

He wanted it to burst from within and run slowly to the sand, but he never wanted to let it go

He felt the heat of the sun and what it was made of

Exploring the side of his body from the south. Touching the stuff he was made of and making its way in and through as he faded again

He’d taken the path of purple and gold, a blur of jubilance at eye level. And on into a cheep

One which could be considered brief but could be ridden to the source for as long as one could stand from the plover to her man

She called “I don’t know what ever I would do without you”

He called back “Yes, my dear, I am here. And I don’t know what ever I would do without you”

I saw you crawling

Here and there

Amongst the graves of man...

I called you back...

Your face was rare...

The blood from my veins ran...

A parasite with cup

Shaped mouth!...

A man with insect eyes!...

You wore a penetrating gaze...

That tripped all

Wires inside...

Both bulbs upon your

Puckered face

Held static left and right...

I felt that I'd

Fallen asleep,

And woke up in a fright...

...And sure enough,

Right there I was with

Cold remote in hand...

I lay upon my bloated couch...

An exile from

Far off lands...

The TV stared me down

So bright...

I felt it's toxic touch...

I'd fallen hostage overnight

Like some

Anemic lush...

Just where were you,

My windblown heart...

My star-eyed, lone wolf girl?...

You left me tossed

Down in the dirt...

My corkscrewed mind unfurled...

I lost my license to survive...

I drifted over waves...

Upon a stormy baleful sea...

I struggled on for days...

When oil clouds and tempest cleared

I came out with resolve...

...Now here I am,

On my two feet!...

I walk with sailor's gait...

And if I cross you

On the street you'll

Come to know your fate.

7/7/24

Bunny Villaire

“What was it like?”

How to express it in a way they could understand? “Sunshine without fear of burning. Peace without threat of war. Absolute and unconditional love with no possibility of hatred.”

“Okay,” Jake rolled his eyes, “but you could do anything you wanted, right?”

I sighed. “There was no want. No desire. No need. No id or ego at all: Just being.”

Groans all around. “Sounds boring. My heaven has all the pie I could ever eat. And lots of mind-blowing sex with no STDs or unplanned pregnancies or broken hearts or misunderstandings.”

“Forever?”

“Oh yeah.”

I shook my head. “There’s a book, The Incredible Lightness of Being. When I first saw it, I thought I had found a kindred spirit. I was mistaken. But the title encapsulates what I remember from before: lightness. Lightness as opposed to darkness, lightness as opposed to weight, density, depth, pressure, force. Indeed, an existence quite the opposite of this…this…” I pointed to my head, “being weighed down, by this mind, this body, this world with its moon and sun and a night sky full of lights, stars, that have long since ceased to burn and a universe full of mysteries we of this world are too small to comprehend but of which I was once an infinitesimal part.” I smiled at the group. “In sum, an incredible, unfathomable, lightness of being.”

There were a few good-natured boos and hissing. We were in the tv room, but no one was watching tv. They were all sitting around me. I was the entertainment of the moment in this world of the psychologically damaged, safely removed from the world of the more sane. (I am loathe to call what lies beyond these walls sanity.) In here, not unlike some out there, we have those who hear voices that tell them to do questionable things, those with patterned scars, those who think themselves Queen Elizabeth or Jesus or God. And then there’s me. The girl who fell out of heaven – as they like to call me.

I was just like anyone else until I hit puberty. Then, for some reason, I gained the ability to remember before. My mistake was in descending into the depths of despair finding myself here and now, and then sharing why I was depressed with others.

I have lived within these walls ever since.

Would that the memories awakened in my pubescent brain were the result of some chemical imbalance treatable by pharmaceuticals and therapy. I would gladly recant my confession of prior existence and tuck it all away as a psychotic break brought on by a hormonal imbalance, parental separation, and/or abuse at the hands of a dear relative.

But, alas, it isn’t, and I cannot.

Once, I was a part of the infinite vastness of the universe. I suspect each of us was. There was no I or meor you or us or them. There was simply being. But then I was thrust into this world of finite existence. I became I and discovered a world of others, different yet the same. Equally finite, entombed as we are in sacks of flesh and blood, desperately seeking meaning, ignorant of before and always longing for some imaginary, glorious after.

And in my position of knowing, I still must wonder, will my after resemble my memories of before? Or will I remember being “I”? Will remembering this I mean an eternity of hell as I am once again a part of everything and therefore nothing yet aching with a memory of self?

Or will I be granted the bliss of oblivion? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…

Everyone I have known in this world envisions a heaven filled with pleasures of the flesh or being reunited with those they once loved (what if they loved someone else?) or meeting the Creator.

They imagine hell to be the absence of those things. Or fiery pits of damnation.

Or, perhaps, simply, being forgotten. As if one never existed. As most everyone who has lived in this world has been or will be. I have every reason to believe that the after will be a return to that state of being I remember from before. Beautiful, if one has never lived in this world.

It is a curse, this remembering.

My question is, will I be damned to remember this world for all eternity? Forever weighted by the memory of this I, no longer at one with all that is and ever will be; or will I be allowed to drift into infinite oblivion, once again a part of that incredible lightness of being?

“All right, y’all. Party’s over. Line up,” said the nighttime aide pushing the cart of meds.

I will stop writing now. The pills will do their work for a little while, and I will sleep without dreams and forget. Until tomorrow when memory awakens once again.

I have a simulatinous multiple existance. Days that were never mine come to me throughout the ordinary walk of life. In one moment, it's early am. I'm putting away piles of laundry in my 1950s wood-trimmed, needs-new-carpet humble home. The next I'm on the side of an evergreen-laden mountain in a new-age cabin with a stage, a string of lights, a handsome stranger with an accoustic guitar, his lady with a microphone, and a tipsy but intimate audience. It's dusk and dreamy. I get the feeling, I know these people well and this mountainous town is home. I'm older here, more myself here. I never left folding my family's clothes. I feel cotton and the hustle of responsibility but I'm also here in this other moment looking at it through some sort of telescope. It's illogically familiar, metaphysically real and I smile carrying it's warmth in my chest.

Later, I'm out with my son at our neighborhood's run-down park in flat middle-America at a picnic table getting feasted on by mosquitos and feeling the weight of having to work tomorrow. But I'm also not. There's a blonde blue-eyed stranger in a 50s diner with a white leather jacket staring at me. He's as equally startled and frozen by my presence as I am by his. He's sitting on the retro table, his legs spread, elbows on his knees, feet on the cushoned red barstool and facing his friends but I can't see them. Only him. He's stopped talking the moment he saw me. I get the impression he's a "bad-boy." Our connection isn't romantic but it's strong. Soul-strong and as caught-off-gaurd by how unrelatable this world is to my interests, identity, age, and way of living, I feel calm. I feel love. I'm still supervising my son and being baked by the praire sun but I smile carrying this alternate-world connection simulatniously in my current being.

And I could tell you a million more. I can't predict when the veil between my multiple existance will happen. Sometimes it's multiple times a day, sometimes it's months apart. All I know is there are without doubt worlds within worlds and I don't fight them or seek them, I let them happen and enjoy both my primary being and all it's alternates. And something else I know? It's not being highly imaginative and I'm not the only one who experiences this. I call on us to feel soft about it, to observe it and live it, to love this life and know it's quite likely more than one.

-Jasmine @bysomegirl

How could I be so wrong

About being so goddamn right

How could I do it for so long

And lose the goddamn fight

How could I walk along

The path without my sight

Why hum along to the song

Of the Sirens in the blight

How could I bang a loyal gong

To the rhythmic staccato of might

And play to only the royal strong

And the changing tunes they write

Why do I long to so belong

To the ones who sit so tight

Above the tongues of hangers-on

Who only thirst for height

The pyramid that seems to spawn

Keystones of kings, alight

Who roll downhill to the pawns—

Like them--and me--alike

Winners and losers start out at dawn

The same and equal, despite

The change they will have undergone

Of lifetimes overnight

Abundance and effacement march on

Some accruing, others lost in fright

Once I succumbed to the rites of wrong

I'd lost the goddamn fight

Bark

of dog

wood,

white

and pink

hold--

a soft bite

on the eyes

berry,

red drops

of blood,

Handel

stitched

ball,

in leather

driving glove

amplified

off base--

your old man's safe

and we don't

play games

07.14.2024

Shifting Realities challenge @Bunny

She came for only a brief visit that night, perhaps from a dual-sided realm, belonging to another reality. I had just laid down and closed my eyes with the intention of finding sleep but heard an undistinguishable, slight noise in the semi-darkness provided by a kitchen light. My head lifted ever so slightly thinking my child might have come for a visit. Instead, my eyes focused on she who stood at my bedroom door, illuminated by an infusion of light. Startled, my mind screamed, “Who is this woman?”, but before I could legitimize the direction of my thought process, she disappeared as quickly as she had arrived.

Quickly, I sat up in bed and reached to turn on the light. Surprise and something more akin to an incredulous lack of belief filled me. Had I just seen a ghost? She was gone, but the memory of exactly how she had appeared lingered vividly. It was not that I did not believe in life on the other side or ghosts, it was just that I’d never seen one appear before my very eyes during the fifty plus years I’d spent on this earth. Sure, I’d felt the energy of other beings I could not see, but no, I’d never had a visual before, and this one, where she was a full life, color version of herself. To this day, I can recall nearly everything about her without fail.

She was not a young girl, but appeared to be more like a woman in her thirties or forties. She was dressed in a full, purple-colored skirt that stopped just above her ankles along with a blousy, white shirt that ever so slightly off her shoulders. Her waist was cinched with a colorful scarf or tie, its ends hanging down along the front side of her skirt. Her hair, a golden, almost light brown color, reached to her shoulders in a multitude of ringlet curls. Her appearance strongly brought to mind the image of a Hungarian gypsy woman.

Wide-eyed and now fully awake, I wondered just what had attracted the gypsy woman and even pondered the possibility she was my Spirit Guide, but as the woman had not left that impression upon me, I quickly dismissed the thought. That evening, just before to bedtime, I had listened for several hours to a variety of classic Italian songs, better known as the Musica Bel Canto in Italy. I truly believe the natural and divine force of beauty found within the music, and most especially the rhapsodies of the violins, drew this ghostly woman to my home (or at least as brief as far as my eyes could detect). The next day, as I recalled the woman’s surprise appearance, I still found amazement in what had transpired, and I knew, without doubt, I had been privileged to see beyond my little world. It was all I needed to further validate a belief in other realms of possible life, well beyond our ken.

I believe there is much we do not understand and even more we will never know. Still, as we move precariously within the scope of our mere existence, we should take care to tread cautiously for you never know who may be watching from the shadows. Even now, as I sit alone at this computer, typing my recollection of a shift in reality, with my back turned against the interior of the room, I am compelled to turn around in order to ensure my solitude. After all, some such visitors may be inclined to make return visits when least expected.

wheels & steps legs fall flappy muscles & all

you rise again

strength like Hercules with a spirit of Athena

undeniable

you shine while wheels spin

a million colors bursting forth

a personal rainbow following you

beautifully different perfect as is.

maybe they say disabled but no labels will ever stick

lucky though every sunrise a world painted in rainbows

all thanks to you

glistening like diamonds do

how could you not be. . .

loved.