Answer, Click. Go ...

Dark star, who has known no
historical shape, but summons
the swooning sun and cold,
diminished Pluto,
as do the ghosts who roam
our napping houses
and see us through
mannequin eyes and pass
through us in digitized clouds
of moneyed seas

Born of the earth,
this failed and fabled space,
where darkened dreams
dare us through tubes
of pixilated light,
and friendless faces,
quartered bodies,
are our avatars
in the endless night ...

Ask me a question. Anything.
Play me with your games.
Answer me. Anything:
Demons, be loved!

I thank the sky lord
for clean water to drink

Thanks

I thank Tom Clancy
for providing so much
damn PR for the military
industrial complex

Thanks

And a special thank you, too,
to the clown in his flight suit
skybombing us in his dreams

And a special fuck you to
the apocalypse for being
such a damn Good Book
and making it so hard
to get clean water
in Beiruit
and for the passing
of fluids through
his oh so cool
heliopadster suit

And thanks for a hole of hot sun
stretching toward the East,
causing a bubble that burns
little words into a diplomatic urn,
and thank the world
for what the devil would do

His imitation is your mastery
as the nations fold and unfold
and the baliwicks bawl
about the rule of law

And thank you money for your energy
passing over the world like a green cloud
being and for hell being all filled up,
by the counting of your digits

Thanks a lot for my sanctuary box
Thanks, thanks a lot
Gift thanks to this gift, this square
where I stand with my porridge
and my cash register or gun

Oh, so much thanks for this taste,
for melancholy and sleep
to keep me not so much
sane but at least in a state
of palatable paranoia

Thanks for allowing me
the rather obvious conceits
of always wanting more
and giving me a way
to step out of the circle, hey!

I saw a flower child with a ring in her nose
and a house as big as a cloud
hanging from a cliff like a prisoner in a noose,
a rustling from the trash bin, a sticking of my heals
into the carpet, and facing the wind with ear bent
I was forced to wear some kind of ridiculous
head contraption and now I can't hear you
and now I can't get to sleep anymore
and now I think Orwell is right, always right

August is in arms and the president is on vacation
and the world burns and the seas swell,
satire rings more true than ever before
and Ginsberg howls from the grave
and the world heard over my headset is corporeal
and now I hear voices and, fuck, everyone else can, too.

And they are the same voices from the same damn
electronic fireplace and country twang is the radio salute
and Operation Wannabe Warlords is just a rush
for the kiddies in the suburbs and those two characters
from American Gothic have left their pitchfork to rust
and their haybales come to use now in polystyrene bags
covered with American flags and the media,
allowing us a glimpse, think that's their best effort
for sticking it to the Man and those haybales won't
dry in the barn because it's just too fucking humid
and the seas are melting from ice into dust
and the country crooner is a caged old bird now.

For exactly one decade
I have made a habit
of smoke-toughened
into leather-lunged
bouts of caffiene-induced
delusions and other
observations
from the broadcast
centers of the monoculture,
usually staring out
at parking lots,
sometimes at mountains,
sometimes the sea

During these years
of nicotine reverie
I have sent myself
naked into the world
as a statement
opposing me,
seeking you:
A pretty
silly exercise

Especially since
now I have found you
Especially since now
I have acquired a need
for reticence,
a hermetic safety zone
from all of that
attention seeking
and performed
self pity
that is the act
of writing poetry
in a public place

This need for privacy
I believe is healthy
since the heat rising
from the cement is getting
more than just intolerable,
it's apocalyptic,
as are the stormy arms
of August

These days to dive
below the surface
into the womb of water
as lightning strikes overhead,
just a brief swim to exist,
below the waves,
as a teasing of fates
in case an electrical charge
were coming,
is everything:
I'm in happiness,
beyond its natural limit;
in hope, beyond its most
fearful flight

An Official Statement from Rodrigo et Exciso Industries

We most humbly apologize
for the series of unfortunate events
leading to the catastrophic batch
of pancake mix products
used to sanctify your
national rituals

Although, for reasons
beyond our control,
as well as those we can,
we cannot fullly divulge, recite,
enunciate or simply explain
those circumstances leading
to the incidents in question,
our hearts got out to the families
of those who experienced
death or discomfort or both
from the clearly overzealous
applications of our potions, mixes
and accessories

We also thank your priesthood
and supporting public officials
for their patience and continued
business

Those relationships mean everything
to us because Rodrigo et Exciso Industries
is, if nothing else, a people place

We are proud the many denominations
of your faith have chosen our pancake mix
and asundry gifts and necessary toggles,
brushes and rubs are so much a part
of your holy houses

Your worship means the world to us

As you can imagine
those behind the so-called
“pancake plot” have been
severely punished

You can trust us on that score

While, certainly, the regrettable fallout
over the unfortunate event has been
trying for both of our nations,
our methods against the miscreants
were for more painful, and, long-lasting
than those horrors felt, in the last hours
by ttheir victims
We at Rodrigo et Exciso Industries
remain supremely satisfied
with the high quality of our
pancake mixtures, creams
and agents for fast relief

Working closely now
with your priests and personages
of high renown who have paid us,
handsomely,
for your patronage,
we have made great improvements
to our mixtures, creams, fixtures,
accessories and agents for fast belief,
as well as our security measures to ensure
the purity of our products and applications:
The Make-a-Mix Spirit Cleanse causes
no more moaning excess, rapid heart rates,
vomiting, heaves, sores
and so any further anxiety
is no longer necessary

Which means our products
can be used in your rituals
without any more tumult
or torture than is
absolutely necessary

No more stigma
No more stain

Blood is no longer
needed as a substitute
for milk, whiskey, or water
(depending on the denomination):
A graft of skin will do

And when it’s time
to put your ass in the air
to receive our golden spike,
there will be plenty of time
(and advanced notice)
for you to become mortal,
wounded, of plaster and still

Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots

Arizona, an inequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here

Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure

Arizona, when can I stop sweating?
I swear in the heat like a pizza oven

Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air conditioned caves
is conditioned to respond
in all the right ways

The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high

Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone to lean on
for company

By GPS, you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs

Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore

Arizona, my life's belongings
are melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while

The world is flooding as you dry up and blow away

Arizona, a kid almost got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free
and all the lizards are gone

Arizona, you are sucking in souls

I think you should battalion
the borders with snow

Four pigeons
by the whirlpool
coodling up chlorine

Flying life, safe as ginger
in a cabinet,
extrapolates lifespan

The wingspan
of swimming pool pigeons
is dependent upon supply,
depth and demand

It is to the good fortune
of the young chicks
that their short necks,
soft beaks, cannot
reach down to drink

Six poisened pigeons
find survival in the short-term
risk at the swimming pool lip

Later, they will plummet
to the floor of the concrete
cooridor

Anonymous slaughterers
break off with the wind,
bleached and careening

Genius, dense as cobalt
resides here, breaking the glass
shattering fortgetfulness

Masters of accident and intention,
the labored conceits of high words
timed for ill effect, for pens
warmed up in hell, for swords
thrust in God’s eye, as the rivers
run thirsts for bloods,
mocking heroes, making
heroes of mockery

During the program,
the light goes through
Numbers one, zero, zero,
zero, Oh ...

I stay low beneath the sun
running a game in my head ...

Look short, lean on the high side
trust is a gap-toothed old friend
real or imagined as concrete blocks
on the walk rolling on to forever

Cheese steak, Philadelphia,
never liked the place, though
I’ve never been there, but in the long drawn out
portal of impairment there are those I’ve met
who taught me not to like the place

They were no morning doves, blasphemers
or cowards or other kinds I can relate,
mostly just commercial power dogs
blind to trees, my tears, my river
of grotesque memories to which
I fill in my familiar streets

Manic miss, the mourning missy mists
as the sun comes out as I learn
everything I have believed
since I was a child was inexact,
not exactly wrong, but incomplete,
a pyramid of obscenities,
between the brick and eye
I cannot delete

The older you get, they say,
the less you know
Orange blossoms die
in the drying sun

But you can ignite your morning sock
with a drink of chlorine to ignite
adrenal glories, borderline stories
since the gory truth of the matter
is I need scatterbrain automobiles
of desire to burn up the road
in order to get out of my own way

Progress is personal that way

Hip quirks of commerce, commerce
of caffeine, piped-in music to drain
into the ears, the mouth, the throat ...

Benjamin Franklin is dead. Capitalism is
fascism outside the box of the electorate
and all that remains for the taking
is democracies dropping dull
as the thirst for beer, cigs, cokes,
loads of little pills, drowning out
any chance of waking

The other day a storm came
and left puddles in the parking lot
and then some guys came by
and washed the water away

Six hundred miles of the Colorado River
snakes it’s way toward oblivion governed
by the rush toward disharmony

It rained that night and it was not enough
to feed the liberal arts retreat

I got robot leanings
I crave firm meanings
but I’m not a very good robot
and it gets me blue
though I’ve rediscovered my
A-dee-dee in your certainty,
your bricks and blocks,
your methods of narcotic
information, your great ideas
for getting lock-step
with the city scape,
your clean machine
your hearts of vogue
disclosure, opening through
my donut hole of despair

This is not enough
Somehow, I don’t end
up screaming out during
this naked lunch along
the narrow channel
you provide, narcissistic bastard
of bazillion rooms for an empty house

And now that Dan Brown has co-opted,
made corporate all disblief,
the endless cosmic paradise of history
is elusive as the facts of nature
we no longer need to disprove
as the physical universe
shelves the metaphsyical self,
and the shadow people squeeze
this lemon dry, leaving only
the seeds on the tarmac
for birds to eat up,
for birds who can only squak for answers,
birds to serve up the shallow
surface of a simmering deep dark well
that appears to be nothing but
a cast of inbreds gripping for power

Revolutionary monsters,
collectors of hebrew letters
chained up by white knights
who scoured the Holy Lands
for relevant ricches
for an everpresent dream

Yes, the world is replete with guitar stars
and assasins capable of spinning
schemes to make us feel better
then comes clever wordplay,
then comes prosaic pop,
then comes the heightening
of the humdrum, of novelty
of pathetic little stories,
wrought Beatleesque
as we test the business end
of this busted bus, for young bucks
worth singing of

If my brain is a factory
churning up dread, then I wish
I had a camera for those
brief moments of ecstasy
when I am the real me
reverent, at Fenway

Stephen King is multiplying
nightmares by the boxcar
and conservative talk show hosts
roam free on the pricey shelves
of liberty

How do I not wake
in tremors of fear?

The boatman loads
a gunny sack
The boatman is prolific
in waves and waves

The hearse is an alliterative
anticipation of the worst

Shakespeare drums up three sermons
based on new product by Paul Simon
Garfy yoddles, icons deconstruct

late in life, late in life
doling out snippets
for old yups
Great artifice
served up like
cold cuts
a generation so far
from their overrated riots
in the streets of the 1960s
they can barely crap over
the latest name-brand smash

Fortunately, Neil Young does
remember, a lonely man doesn’t
need him around anyhow
and each time I enter your aisles
the need diminishes for the media mad
toggles for what used to be
known as chaos, but now
is regarded as proof
the liberals were wrong

I know too much
I’m a stoneface
an Edward R. Murrow
without winking
can’t even drink rain,
quit drinking

The broadcast is leaking

City life is the poverty of seeing

Poor bleached white boy
on the sand, sinking

At night it’s different,
the open desert
(now that’s a funny one)
goes on notice as missing

Closed in, safe, hot burn
bags of bones
The bookstore is a parking lot
for words

And at night, body part theater
passes the time while my
little ark of verbs lie in wait
as a final sacrifice
for the final fire

I am cloud cutter,
a palace of clutter
sifting around for words
that, when I find them
die again

I am the sheet
that keeps us cool
your protected dark
is my sanctuary

I am the dim prize fighter,
clunked down dung, dumb in
memory, the asphalt gets
titled and I fall back
the hill to you

I have eyes that wear down
from wondering

23 Roads to Mythville
An apocalyptic journey across America and meditation on the imposition of order in space, both cyber and dirt real. By experiential author Douglas McDaniel, who explores the mysteries of American networked life. Read more






Ipswich at War
A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, poet and essayist Douglas McDaniel moved to Ipswich, on the North Shore of Massachusetts. A collection of poems from that period of fear and anxiety, as well as the polemic essay, "Media Arts and War."
Read more







Glasnost Lost
As an act of defiance after the botched election of 2000, experiential author launched himself into a journey into the underworld of American life, or, what he calls: The Science of Descent. Read more







Godz, Cars & Cannon
Experiential author Douglas McDaniel launches drives into the networked thickets of American life, looking for signs of myth and romance in the age of automotive machines.
Read more







Many Moons the Mythville: The Collected Road Poems
Poetry written during a 10-year span of criss-crossing America in a roving-eye view of the turn-of-the-century landscape of Mythville, or, as the author puts it: "It's all a bunch of Mythville." With work from four separate books by Arizona-based author and poet Douglas McDaniel, the bard-inspired voices of Milton, Blake and Yeats, as well as the saturnine streak of early beat poesy, ring through this collection of poems and essays. From the southwestern deserts to the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, "Many Moons to Mythville" is a foot-to-the-floor blast through the mythical roads of American life.
Read more







Human Search Engine

The journey continues as the quest for myth in an age of information overload leads to online life as an editor for Access Internet Magazine. A story about all human search engines as they chase the ghost in the machine.
Read more






William Blake in Cyberspace

Experiential author Douglas McDaniel takes on the visionary art and poetry of William Blake, comparing an otherworldly worldview to that revolutionary, romantic era to our own wild, wired, mythic world.
Read more








The Kachina's Son

Poems about the Four Corners area written while author Douglas McDaniel was living in Telluride, Colorado.
Read more








The Road to Mythville
A collection of poems on the new millennium in America, drawing from decade of bouncing across the country as a journalist and Kerouac-style poet, from the Southwestern deserts to the shores of New England and back again.
Read more

Exile from Iowa

By Jaimie Ondrea Dunn

The Feminist (in her former days)

Every once in a while, old pain wells up to be dealt with, reprocessed, let go. The only way I have devised to do this effectively is to write about it. Maybe someone else in a similar situation will find comfort in it. Maybe pain's creation of beauty is enough. Maybe my ego is healing from what happened when I submitted these poems years ago to be published (mis-editing someone else's art should be an act punishable by public humiliation; that's what I endured, after all). Whatever the case, I feel moved to share it.


Not the Allegory of the Cave, Exactly

The path of the Spirit
is the path of the Flesh
Plato had it all wrong
when I bleed every 28 days
I encounter creation
and when my body has purged itself of the old
I reinvent myself into a pattern
that you do not know.

I wanted you to be my beautiful lover
to crave the space I inhabit
to know me apart from the fictions
of other women and bodies.

Your filterless gaze,
it convinces me you are a victim
of your own desire
but, baby, I've known desire
I've pushed against it with my thighs
felt its comforting press against my stomach
held the fullness of it inside me
so I know that it propels me
unlike when you were drunk, stoned, and defenseless
against the sexual onslaught of an insistent woman.

The desire that moved your hands over her body
and not mine
is your birthright
for you are male
and do not
know how
to love.

For Those Who Have Suffered Broken Hearts

My friend Ellen performed this poem at her senior voice recital after my friend Kara set it to music. It had a bluesy, haunting kind of feel to it. It was sung a cappella. Read.

Free yourself.


Nothing Lost That I Can't Find Again

Wrap around your finger
like a little girl twirls around a mayflower pole
inconceivable that I could ever hate you
but in the cave I peer out of
I wield my cat o' nine tails
twitching, pacing, waiting for a message
you bruise me with your silence
and so I lash myself just to test my skills.

The venom seeps out of the wound in my right heel
where the viper bit
I suck it up and spit it out
aiming your way
but, boy, you're immune to your own poison
you go your own way without making a raucous noise
consorting with your kind who feed on blindness
and here I am again left to test my mind-reading skills
when no frequency tunes in
I cut myself
and horror of horrors, I wait
to see if I still bleed
'cause they say that blood is thicker than water
and water's all you are, baby, water's
all you are
and my blood is thicker without you.

posted by Jaimie O. @ 1:09 PM 0 comments
'Tis No Simple Thing To Have a Heart

All apologies. To those who have wronged me or someone I love, I struck with calculated precision not because I hate you, but because I hate what you did, what your actions represent: a calloused heart. But in striking, did I merely justify your reasons for behaving as you did? Did I condemn you for your humanity? Did I add to the pain that found its only outlet in hurting another?

I dreamed of a tiger the other night, a magnificent female creature trapped in the house I grew up in, attacked with calculated precision for her wildness in the same way that I have been attacked for my own. She was me. I was her. As I approached her, her pelt sliced open and pinned to the floor like a mouse on the dissecting table, her heart beating fiercely, I was powerless to assuage her suffering or comfort her. I wept, woke up weeping, and cried off and on throughout the day. I, too, have suffered, prostrated before the dispassionate stares of cruel tyrants that jeered at my pain and mocked it. I do not condemn fellow travelers on this journey for their suffering or acts borne of it. I forgive you, for I recognize your suffering as my own. I advise you to cradle the beautiful new being you have become and croon to her, croon to her gently. She needs to be loved. And when she is so full of love that it pours out of her, you will know she is ready to share her love and life with a mate.

I forgive you. Go in peace.

posted by Jaimie O. @ 11:38 AM 0 comments
25.9.04
Come, Winter

Autumnal stirrings. Coolness in the desert. Performing again. Free-lance gig picking up steam. Money on the way. Love on the rise. Dog on the horizon. A new place to live in while the desert renews itself once again.


Come, Winter

This city touches me and I feel so dirty
soiled past the attempted cleanliness of 23 showers
and a face mask
missing the smell brought about by autumn decay
as the nights grow darker and shadows rise sooner
in the dusk, with rains that bless the Earth before she lies down to sleep
fallow once again.

Then the snow, yes, the snows bringing a thousand sorts of delight to all senses
crunching crisply underfoot
woodsmoke scents the air
after autumn fires of leaf
stars smoked with clouds
suns we assume to be aflame in galaxies where life,
no doubt, has shaped itself differently
to us, though we know not whether these suns
still burn, we see it now and trust the constancy of our own star
to sustain, always, life
no matter how long the winter.

posted by Jaimie O. @ 11:08 AM 0 comments
19.9.04
No, Jellybean, We Don't Make Things Happen . . .

. . . we allow them to unfold. A couple of years ago, when I was listening to the Pacific ocean, trying to sink into sleep, this was the message I received. What a comfort. To understand that the chaos of the modern age, so magnified in cities where Corporate Whoredom is the only way to make a decent wage (unless you are an exceptional human being with your own business, for example), is a passing phase. To understand that chaos is illusion, that the universe is a place of profound order and harmony where all is profoundly interconnected, brought my life's experiences up to that point into extreme focus. I proceeded with an elementary understanding of that message and have built upon it ever since.


But complications, as they are wont to do, arise. People act dishonorably and maliciously, injustice abounds on social, political, and economic fronts, and instability threatens, at times, to undermine our best efforts. It's the wheel, Jellybean, it turns and turns. Yes, Fortune turns her wheel. Sometimes, it's the chickens, and other times, the feathers (a rough paraphrase of some folk wisdom distilled by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes [check her out]). I've found that the most unhappy people seek to inflict misery on others or use power plays to gain a temporary advantage. And though I strive to practice compassion, I'm not that elevated yet, and I pity those fools, for fools they are, and I hope one day to live in a world where injustice is not a worldwide reality.

Take last week's jaunt to the mountains, for instance. I, against my better judgment, agreed to be escorted to a little resort community in Colorado. Telluride. Some would consider it paradise. On my most fundamental level, the place offended me. Imagine: a place overrun by yuppies and WASPS, not just your run of the mill variety, though, filthy rich motherfuckers who all looked the same. Those are the types that own the town. Then you have your standard issue hippies. I love tree huggers, don't get me wrong, and although I don't look like one anymore, I still am a bonafide granola on the inside. But these hippies are the types that must love shi-shi, and I don't get that because my bohemian friends abhor gross displays of wealth where capitalism has run totally amok and squashed any sort of real culture or beauty. Sure, it was there if you looked up, but for a few hellacious hours, I was in the Scottsdale of the mountains, and I hated America. Telluride exemplifies exactly what is wrong with this nation. How such a divide between rich and poor can exist in a land where the American dream is promised to all mystifies me. Why you would choose to subject yourself to an environment that displays this divide in its gross excesses and materialistic squallor for any length of time is not only puzzling, it is humorous, in a sardonic, mad kind of way. Whoop it up on the mountain, and pretend that the rest of the world is not enduring the effects of a quickening, an acceleration toward a new vision of community where everyone has enough and wealth is spread equally among those who work to create this new vision.

Hold on to your bootstraps everyone, because what is going on in the world is going to become absurdly tragic for a while. Work to make your own life a testament to your principles. Utopia may seem an impossibility, but it is in the works.

Check out an excellent new book by cybercaster Meria Heller, The Mouth That Roars, soon to be published and made available on Meria.net and via the Mythville community of self-publishers who promote literature that enhances the world. More to come when it is hot off the press. You want an amazing vision of the possibilities of your life and life on this planet? Then you gotta read this book. Beauty and truth distilled.


posted by Jaimie O. @ 11:09 AM 0 comments
11.9.04
Development

Living in the desert forces you to encounter your own reflection and shadow, repeatedly, until you are able to integrate past with present, emotion with reason, conscious with unconscious, masculine with feminine, illusion with possibility. It is a harsh climate for almost six months every year, three of those being especially intemperate, and it is dry. Lips crack, sweat runs freely, water becomes an impossible element to keep stocked in your system, and tempers tend to flare. The glare from that intense sun overhead makes driving without sunglasses very difficult, and when you are the unfortunate owner of an air-conditionless car, those daily jaunts about the Valley are unpleasant indeed. It's like baking in a low oven until you arrive at your destination.

Despite this, the greater Phoenix metropolitan area continues to sprawl like a ravenous, uncaged beast, claiming more and more desert as "resort" fodder to be divided into plots, commercial as well as residential for middle to upper-middle class housing. It's a rich person's paradise and a blue collar person's waking nightmare. It's my idea of a futuristic dystopia. The desert makes this city beautiful, and acts of near-psychotic brilliance make it an ugly tribute to humanity's chaos.

What to do in the sun-drenched illumination of mirages where water vapor is a precious commodity every bit as much as water is? Clouds need water vapor to hang in the sky, and at this elevation, little water falls. Oh, to see green things and smell the decay of autumn in crisp, shaded evenings.

Northward, ho. Away.

posted by Jaimie O. @ 5:06 PM 0 comments
7.9.04
Not Planet X, New Age Seekers: Enter Mercury

For those of you not in the know about astrology, Mercury going direct is associated with the return of normal communications and technological functioning. It also puts the go ahead on signing contracts again, makes finding a new job possible (at least, one working for people you've never met before: retrogrades are great for reconnecting with people from your past, thus finding a job working for someone you've either known before or worked for before is a-ok), and clarifies anything to do with communicating, relieving frustrations surrounding human interactions and technology, especially computers. (None of this happens causally, mind you -- as above, so below; movements in the cosmos are correlated with the shifting energies on Planet Earth.) It's a maddening time for lots of people, and it holds certain activities in stasis. When it moves forward again, life surges forward again. Needless to say, but say it I will, I'm thrilled.

I came across old lines from what seems to be a previous lifetime, but was really only nine months ago. What the hell. Have a read. Caucasian female dates Native American man. It was a painful experience for us both, I imagine, but he was still a fucker. Bad news, Stu. Not for this chica.

Between the gray and the white,
there is a thin black line
And, Baby, you put it there
Not me
I only put my heart on that line where you
made a highway
Interstate Number Three-Something-Five
that's where you put it
through the place I thrive.

What's the relationship between art and pain?
Does one need the other
to be understood, to sustain
the thoughtful grasping, misunderstood white flag
the child's asking, the prayer man's bag?
Is oblivion the end of pointless woe,
where no truth can stand on, nor beauty grow?
Powerful dismissals, denial's control
seeking shades of comfort, harmony's glow.

You made me small
and I stood there, grasping
my shadow's length, my heart's rasping
grew harsh and desperate, combined with despair
You made me small, tiny I, there
to the will you exerted, an ingenius plan
Retreating in fear, igniting my tan-
less flesh
igniting my wind-stoked heart
flaming me white
and guilty

In that moment between reproof
and defence
the world stopped briefly, tensions dense
Found guilty of anger, found guilty of pain
I retreat to my heart-cave,
become the stain
my ancestors wove on me
inherit their sin
I thought we could beat it
the domination, the din
find a new course to run on
a new way to love
but love's not what you wanted --
so, I'll clutch it, the dove.

posted by Jaimie O. @ 7:47 PM 0 comments
6.9.04
I Am Awake, My Mind Is Free

I've decided that I want a dog. Yeah, one of those panting, drooling beasties that smells unless you bathe them regularly and requires as much TLC as a small child. So I trot off to the Arizona Humane Society animal shelter and investigate the options after visualizing the perfect dog: a boxer mix with the personality of my uncle's boxer, Roxie. The first dog who took a shine to me was a pit bull, and I had no idea she was a pit until I asked the handler to take her out of the kennel . . . very gentle, a little high strung, but very cute and virtually shedless. The pit bull factor seemed prohibitive since I'm an apartment dweller, but in the next breath, I found her. The perfect companion. Boxer mix, colored the same as Roxie with the same temperament -- low key, laid back, gentle, and affectionate. The problem? Providing the dog with a home suited to her rather impressive size. Roxanne (kind of Roxie II) would be the ideal companion for me to lavish love and affection onto, but I would not subject a creature that beautiful to inadequate quarters. Too, I'd insist on pampering her, and that requires what? Money, honey. Moola, plain and simple. She voted most likely to succeed must find a job that compensates her for her considerable talents and passion, ethics and vision. Nonprofit sector, here I come.

Now that Mercury is heading forward again, I am certain that the ideal job situation is waiting for me to find it. My ideal employer will be delighted tomorrow, after a relaxing three-day weekend, when my resume is deposited onto her desk. She won't be a Sagittarius. She'll probably be a water sign or an earth sign. Definitely not an air sign. Feel me or ground me, but don't bullshit me or try to manipulate me. These are my prerequisites for a boss.

I can't wait to see what else materializes this week. I have a feeling that it's going to be grand, whatever it is, and it will be fully in line with my dreams and principles. Discover those, love yourself, trust in the universe to support you through the underworld and above, and ascend, my pretties. That is your birthright. For sure, it's mine.

posted by Jaimie O. @ 1:52 PM 0 comments
4.9.04
Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu

I'd heard it was possible. In fact, fellow Scorpio lady friends of mine had told me of their experiences with the phenomenon. Like the good Scorpy I am, I had read oodles and oodles about the experience and wore out several vibrators (and several former partners) trying to achieve this peak of all peak experiences. In the past year, however, I had sadly concluded that having even one orgasm with a partner would not be possible until I fell in love again. So I told the universe of my plans to be celibate until someone worthy of my love fell out of the sky into my lap. Then, after a few months of getting myself off with my adept little fingers and tireless vibrator, I discovered an amazing thing: Not only am I capable of having multiple orgasms, I can have them regularly. Daily. I shit you not. Excessive I may be when it comes to my appetites for pleasure, but I know from countless experiences with both women and men that this is the real deal. This is the big love. And the impossible dream of being fulfilled in and out of the sack seems too good to be true. Thankfulness to the universe is all that I have for such a profound gift.

Blessed be.

REINCARNATION
 
  The earliest recollection, I have of my conception, is when evil conceived me, like Adam and Eve, and she was me.
  I was in Egypt, and I was in Rome, and I even sat on a throne.
  I had a hastle, in a great big castle. I was stabbed to death, and left with no breath.
  And I was an Indian, and began to believe again. That I would find my twin soul, my forever companion.
  Then there were the early 50's, which ended very quickly, I ran out of luck in a Chevy pick-up truck.
  Here I stand today, a women born in May. Venus is my ruler, til Pan Horus becomes truer.
  As the Golden Age approaches, I yearn to learn all the secrets in Mother Moon's broaches, and Father Sun will lend a hand, to the Promised Land.
Heaven on Earth.
 
 
KARMA
 
  May I ask what is the point of all this pain and misery? If I were God, I would certainly show more compassion, and tell them about the mystery.
  You say children are innocent, then why do so many die, abused, raped, and killed, this is no show of your magnificense.
  Jesus died for all our sins, but sin is all around. I guess what he did, really didn't matter, so I guess we shouldn't mind, there are no answers to find.
  Is this all a hoax, maybe I'll just take another toke. To a peaceful place, Peace on Earth, all in my mind, all of you are blind.
  I'm really beginning to wonder, about the place called yonder. No one believes in miracles anymore, and most of us are poor. Oh how well you've evened the score.
  I DON'T THINK SO...
 
HARMONY 
 
  What would you think, if I really showed you who I am.
  Well, I'll tell you anyway, because I remember tomorrow, and I remember yesterday.
  I may be confused, but I have a guide, and I think I keep him quite amused.
  I'm not afraid, because I'm not man-made. I am fragments of light, energy super imposed, greyish blue is my shade.
  The silvery wise reflected in my eyes, I hold no lies. The limit is the sky, I feel sad for those who do not see, and let things go by, with never asking why.
  I spoke to a rose yesterday, I'm glad I was listening, the glistening water droplet called me, I felt the velvety petal with my nose as I inhaled its scent, Heaven...
  I look around me, and everything is alive, the wind wraps its arms around me, the tree's, their wisdom is so dear, the water makes me tranquil, it soothes away my pain, and Roxanne the fox, she understands...
  That I know we are all egual, we all want to thrive. The time of Earth School has once again arrived.
  Have love, compassion, and reverence for everything, and await the day when harmony shall sing.
  As I have learned, all things are divine, we all walk the same line, lessons to learn, things for us to evolve, and earn.
  In the end we are all friends. Our Uni-verse, It really is not a curse.
 
THE RAVEN'S CROW 
 
  Do I belong to you? A smaller version, but my cry is strong and true.
  We are the same, but not in name. We play the game of life, of difficulty and strife.
  You are larger in wisdom, we both believe in freedom, we must help create our peaceful kingdom.
  I have been a lonely queen, upon my throne, all alone, without my king. I still hold dear, your sceptre, your throne, and your ring.
  Full circle, I wait for the color purple, at the rainbow's end. You are my lover, you are my friend.
  I need a sign, I must hear your harsh cry, to know that you are here and alive, if not, I beg you, plunge and dive.
  Fourteen pieces divided in two, seven for me, and seven for you.
  I do...
 
These a just a couple of poems, out of many, Please tell me honestly, what you think.
Stephanie A. Graham
lotusheartone@aol.com.