She's turning 84 soon.
I don't remember exactly the last time I saw her but I think it was at the funeral.
Death weighs heavy on hearts that love,
And she had become weak.
You could see it.
See it in her eyes when she cried.
You could see it in her hands.
Oh her hands.
As weird as it may be, her hands were the first thing that I remember about her.
She wore bands around every finger, like the rings of a tree truck when love has aged into something less adoring.
Yes she was a widow but she was the Queen.
Being too young for school, my sister and I went to her house every week.
And like clockwork she repeated every move she had done the day before and the one before that.
I remember how much she loved to knit and crochet.
I told her that I wanted to learn and she told me "good for you. You'll see it is very relaxing. Doing the same things, you don't really think about what you're doing anymore"
I crochet whenever I have the time and I now know what she meant.
Most times then not, I seem to day dream; thinking, about anything.
I remember her collection of books and newspapers, the bibles that she kept by her chair.
Of course they weren't of my interest but because they were to her, she would always be reading this one book.
Even when she fell asleep, she could not put the book down.
She had told me that she read it 4 times and she planed to do it again.
It was called "Julie of the Wolves"
I bought this book a few years ago and I still can't find it interesting.
It sits on my shelf, untouched, but unforgotten.
She is a babysitter, and a mother as well as a grandmother.
Family and friends were always over at her house, company was always welcome.
She had many kids, and her kids had many grandkids.
Her friends that came over so often had kids that had kids and it took me a while to realize it but,
She was old.
She is old.
She is a family tree that has grown bigger than most because of the love she spreads.
She tought me things without even realizing it.
I learned how too make the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
There wasn't too much of either and she always cut the sand which in half to help my sister and I know the good of sharing.
Almost like herself,
She wasn't too strick or too nurturing, she treated everyone equally and did nothing but that.
Its been 8 years.
Her daughter passed away, I'm still not exactly sure how or why.
It was the only funural I was ever invited to, and I cried.
I cried when I saw how hurt she was, how hurt everyone was.
I didn't understand death until that day.
I looked at Tanya's body and I realized why she was hiden under a sheet.
Its been 8 yeas since I have seen her.
I follow her on Facebook, the only way I can keep an update on her.
Death weighs heavy on hearts that love, and she has become weak.
She is fragile and old, I know this.
Its because I was just invited to her 84th surprise birthday party that I was bombarded with memories of her.
This woman has changed my life, not just by being her, for giving birth to amazing people, for introducing me the people that I know as friends today.
Her name is Charlotte, she likes to repeat things over and over again.
Sooner or later you don't even start to think about it anymore.
You just day dream, and think,
about anything.

Breathing in the dark,
Chemicals cloudy
Aged and coloured,
By the breaking down
Of skin, soft tissues
And dreams.

Animals dream, too,
Here in tubular palaces
Captured and floating.
Each footfall vibrates
On singing parquet
And they stir,
Timed by my movement.

Breathing in the dark,
Heart settling to a rhythm
Swaying in time,
With these spells of ages
And a Blackbird caws
At the centre of my brain.

In dim-lit netherworld
Songbirds feast
On plastic berry Bacchanalia,
And the owl eyes a mouse
Who has yet to discover
His second death.

A fox cub
Curling infinitely about herself,
Shows a varnished bacon tongue.
Cutesy and hot-headed in her starring light.

And I…
I stand as still as they.
Suspended in this spirit lab.

A player just as beastly,
Mentally reanimating
Every twitching nose,
Lightless eye
And curious, scratching paw.

The smell of the foundry surrounds you
abounds and wreaths around you.
A man of ore, born of the earth

I thought of you as Roman.
Alive, shuddering with the stress
and exertions
of recent war

The thrill of hardship
fresh upon you,
made ever-stronger by violent work
your fibres stretch then relax
to gather in quiet, resting power

Glittered in sweat,
you have raced through history
to arrive, tattered and magnificent,
heaving, and worn like a mountain

I have melted into you -
piston thighs greased with excitement!
As your black-ringed fingers
chase a whitened path,
through my pebbled steam

Our minerals mix:
salt and blood, tears and love
and the hooves of legion drum in my ears,
outpacing a gathering storm
as little death overwhelms me

You are home,
hanging suspended in a grief-cloud
above me.
And I invite you, with a succession of imagined dilations,
to rain down.

How did you fly to me?
Did you ride a rain cloud?
Or did you float on rivers of tears
Just to cross the distance?

Femme fatale
Lost angel
Featherless wings
And plastic halo

How did you reach me?
I was sitting in silent cities
Watching the rivers rise
When you arrived

I was only waiting on the flood
Waiting on the blood
Waiting on the end
When I found you

Gloria
With plastic halo
Gloria
Victoria

We all want to disappear
To tear our insides out of the existence sphere

So familiar
and we call it Now
But the energy that's flowing
is strange and overpowering.
Be not afraid
for you are with God.
Come closer and feel the surge
of His Power
So you'll feel comfort
and not fear.
Honor each moment
and truly live it.
I don't even ask for gratitude
but simply experience it

So how is it to be God?
Just be in the Moment
and *just Be.

The fleeting, yes, my heart’s desire

the barely-there, a wraith

Ephemera, whispers on the wind,

impermanence my faith.


I tremble before the eternal

faced with nature’s stand

Beneath a soaring mountain,

being scoured and withered to sand.


In the shadow of mighty forever

I teeter above the abyss

Toes inching and sending down trickles

the landslides remind me of this.


I sleep in perfect hollows

and cut my teeth on bone

The glory of calcification

rolls in my mouth, I am home.


Cascading the ones gone before me

throughout my own blood by their dust

Absorbing a lifetime in seconds,

turning my fillings to rust.


Temporal consumption thus rendered,

my heart winds to stillness sublime

How quickly we flash to our endings,

how rapid the animal time.

Here in the desert
it's been raining
on and off
            for days
making the succulents and cacti
glisten with wetness
their thick skin sparkles
and catches nature's ironic eye
flowers and plants shine
so much better in the half-grey
Here in the prehistoric depths
Of rocky whitewash and silt
             flash floods rush through
flushing out all guilt
         And inside
a raging storm commences
and I feel so blessed
to be a part of this celebration
my lungs expanding in my chest
I breathe in deep
that fresh purity of air
let it cleanse right through me
from my toes up to my hair
It rushes in my body
taking no prisoners in its force
flows through every vein
cleansing poisons in its course
its power flows into me
washing out this stubborn pain
Turning the confusion
                     into clarity again
From inside subconscious thoughts
           realization thunders
rinsing from my mind
                 the emotional strain
and replacing it with euphoric wonders
Come, my raging desert tempest
Bathe me
       penetrate me with wet
restore and purify
my being
take over and disinfect
let me feel my own strength
until it pours out from my cells
into the space inside my heart
where love and lust still dwell
My tears mingle with the sweet drops
                as I fling arms open to the sky
releasing strikes of lightening
for every word I cry
as I summon, pray for lightness
mixed with the sturdiness of earth
Let joy rise up and bubble
within my being
as rebirth