And the bells were ringing out for Christmas day.

So, this is the time when it's mostly dark most of the time, but the sky is the brightest and richest thing I've ever seen. The wind goes through me and I want to curl into myself all the time. But it's also the time when we cultivate the light and the warmth within ourselves and pass it along in neatly folded packets, from pocket to pocket. It's the time when I am most grateful for the gift which have been passed on to me, like the dream I carry and the wishes I scatter. Most of all, I'm grateful for the chance to explore the inner caverns of a dreamer lover-someone who I've known forever and ever, yet cannot fully grasp. He' someone who I'd thought I'd never connect with, yet have always been drawn to. The most frightening idea turned into the brightest fire and the warmest night...

for reverent green? forever in green?

I like to look in windows at night to see the yellowish warmth hidden within. When we're riding through the mist, in the chill of the early winter, I know that we will make a warm space for us and that the glow will draw others in as we light the fires. I like to be warm in the snowfall and watch the magic of twinkling lights and sparkling ground as we cover miles and hours and distance that we never thought possible, even though the whole world was watching and waiting for us to understand. r

For my Mom Mom

She used to feed my graham crackers with strawberry jam on them and keep tins of sweets hidden under her bed for when I would stay over. She would call me precious cargo and speed through the city with me belted into her passenger seat while she yelled at other motorists. She taught me a lot about being a lady and even more about being tough. The first time I ate pumpkin pie, it was because she told me to stop being stupid and just try something new for once. She was 16 when she had her first kid and never lied to me about that, choosing instead to tell me to be careful not to end up with one of my own. When I was 16, she helped me dye my hair blue in my mother's wash basin because, as she put it: "If you're gonna make yourself look like an ass, you're gonna do it right." My mother still has not forgiven her for this, but I never forgot how to use a tint brush after that. She was the kind of woman who would lug two oxygen tanks and half a dozen pill bottles through the inner city just to make sure that two squirming 12 year olds got to see the latest Nightmare on Elm Street in the theaters, on the day it opened. She chose her battles wisely and knew when to give in, but she could stop you dead in your tracks with one dirty look. Even at the very end of her life, she still went out of her way to make me feel special with 32 different kinds of cheese sandwiches and cakes on my 17th birthday. She was always my rock and my idol and my safest place and I will always miss her.

Daisy, Daisy Under The Sky So Blue

I used to wonder why I never got them. Why no one would ever bring me one of the 20,000 types of daisies out there one afternoon, when the sunlight was streaming through the windows but it was too chilly out for blooming. So one day, I made some for myself out of some dirty old cardboard and an old screen. It was good day; just rolling the ink over the surface and feeling like I was adding something beautiful to an otherwise bleak place. It took me years to accept that no one but me liked them and they stayed locked away for some time.

It's that way with kindness too, isn't it? You open yourself up to let a little light out. And it hurts to be so open and so exposed, like you split your ribs wide and ran with your most vulnerable part forward into a war. And it is hard for me to accept that, sometimes, that kindness meets cruelty, so I wish I could lock it up like my daisies.

The problem is that nothing is that simple and nature rarely hides for long. The clouds only cover Orion for so long, and you eventually have to let yourself go again.
And it's hard to be this way when the world is not and hard to let go of the hatred that comes when you're left holding your peace in the palm of your hand and the ugly whine of desperation
still rings in your ears.

So I pray, with a candle and a pen, to being able to breathe and to be able to see the beauty and the peace which is right beside me even when the sunlight streams through the windows and it is too chilly to bloom.

I hope you can someday do the same Les Petite Fille, because karma can be a real bitch when you don't.

Sometimes, It's Just Like Bile.

And I never know how to explain the fear I feel, except to say "It's like a storm?". When the whistle blows and the cracks in the sky get more vivid and I remember the 14th day when the rain was so fierce and I was so scared of a spoiled little girl with claws a mile long and I was right to be. This voodoo magic of silent worry has always worked before, but now it failed and I fell into a rabbit hole of anger and maybe even hate. And, oh, now I know regret like chewing on bile in my sleep because I was focused on kindness and I forgot that sometimes it doesn't pay.

I've never been one to play a game or take a risk but I'm right here, where I've always been and shaking and reaching out. I want things. Like to be a new penny in your pocket and to let go but it's a process just like any other. I only want to be better than the bottom of the heap. I only want outshine those who are broken...in your eyes. No veils, no lies, no holding on to that which can't be repaired and no blank and manipulative eyes.

ribbit

I like frogs and turtles and owls and squirrels and I can never spell "necessary" correctly. I like to eat strawberries and split grapes between our mouths as the planet spins and we all howl at the moon. It's been a minute now and I feel dirty and clean at the same time and sometimes, it makes me profoundly sad to think of you, but mostly I just smile and think of the way we slide into place. "If the fit is good" a queen once said, "then, honey, you got yourself a winner." And I love the way your colors shine when you make them bend with the light of insight and your spirit.

-words by me, art by Chuck Angeline

The Ark Of Vulnerability is Apon Us.

I don't know where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins. It's all a mystery"

It's the times when
the journey of your rough hands
meets my flawed
topography and the explosion
starts to dissolve my edges.
In that shrinking moment
I am everything that was
and everything I will be. Moving
with you, beneath you, above
you, around you.
We are a particulate
symphony of harmonic buzz--
a little death, a tiny
birth, and cleansing
of the mirror so we can
breathe again, and step
hand and hand along the path.

You See Stars That Clear Have Been Dead For Years, But Their Idea Still Lives On.

"All ever see of stars is their old photographs" -Alan Moore

Since I was a little girl, I would look at the sky nearly constantly. At night, in the back seat of my father's car, I would lean way back and crane my neck to look out the rear window in order to trace our location by the way the power lines and the stars crossed one another. My belly would do loops over the hills and I would make up new constellations as we drove along. I always knew we were closer to home when the stars would fade around the edges of my view because of the street lamps glowing on the side of the road. I always felt more and more homesick as this happened because I believed I was leaving my family behind in the sky. Later, when I understood space a little, I knew how true this was and started feel like every star was its own viking funeral.

fevers and mirrors

He said I was pretty from the inside out, and I didn't know what to say, so I traced a kindergarten heart on his chest and continued to drool into the crook of his shoulder and think in half french and vibrant colors as the indian summer washed over me. "Je vous aime mille temps sur quand nous sommes ensemble bouclés comme ceci"

She's a Christ Forsaken Angel

So I danced, off my head—

out of hand, with a magician

from a years old

dream along the belt

of a homebound warrior

while the tentacles of space

were tightly wound around my waist.

In the slanted light of fresh motes

we ate a black hole breakfast

of cool flesh and scented

shells. I turned my hair

into a constellation

in the grass, and drank in the dew

of a thumb charting a universal

map of freckles and scars

into the vastness of unlearning.

And in the blank space

of spirals and scribbles

there was finally room

for me to roll a rainbow

across my eyes as we moved

softly, into in night. Butterfly,

constellation, owl, magician, warrior—

this universe is finally ours.

The words are mine, the image in Tara McPherson's

This Guy

Reminds me to always remember that I have a spirit and dreams and soul. Because I often forget to nurture those things when I get too busy.

Five Subversive Figures Who Influenced Me At Far Too Young Ages!

Tom Robbins

Bisexual cowgirls, mutant hitchhikers, the corpse of Jesus Christ, peyote eating mistresses, attic bound princesses in love with terrorists, belly dancers. What wouldn't a 13 year old girl love? I ended up reading and rereading Even Cowgirls Get The Blues until I broke the binding. My 9th grade writing class was thrilled with my description of the prairie sex scene. The teacher? Not so much.

Tomas Wolfe

I found The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test on my dad's book shelf in 7th grade. I loved the descriptions of the Merry Pranksters and, of course, the sex. I probably could have kept this one under the radar if I hadn't taken it school with me. Apparently, middle school councilors become concerned when a 12 year old is talking about LSD and freakouts.

Hunter S Thompson

After the Wolfe book, there really wasn't any harm in reading Hell's Angels, right? Wrong. Well, reading it was just fine. Explaining it to the grandparents of my middle school BFF was not. They actually forbid her to hang out with me after that.

John Waters

If Crybaby and Hairspray were ok to watch while babysitting, then why not Pink Flamingos? I, again, might have gotten away with this if I hadn't attempted to discuss the dog shit eating scene with my dad. I also became fairly obsessed with drag queens at this point. It was crushing when I realized that I could never be one.

Dorothy Parker

Cute little couplets are one thing, but a ninth grade English class may not be the best place for Resume. At least, that's what my teacher told my dad when she called.

She Looks Like Little Birds Come and Dress Her

A little ghost, a little owl, a whisper in boots, along an edge, beneath an arch, into a void. The vastness of everything and smallness of it too. And always, always, the swallows who come to dress me every morning in rags.

Orion and Owl

And I am like a little owl, maybe. I build a totem in my dream of rose quartz and stars and it will help the warrior on his path toward the mystery and majesty of a universe which is, always, flowing through us, around us, among us, within us, without us. I pick up trinkets and talismans along the way like frogs and turtles and swallows and flies and I mark myself with wings to fly away and a star to bring me home. I drift forever upward into that vastness which I don’t need to understand to feel it in my center like a glowing swirl of pinprick lights, stand on tiptoes and block out the glare, to reach into my beginning, my center, my end. Pray for the constellation across my cheeks to always burn bright in sunlight and warm in the dark and breathe, slowly, deeply, madly, as I come to a flittering stop. Resting finally on this warrior’s shoulder and building a nest in his hair.