As I write about broken heart’s being mended with Al Green singing in the background I am ushered into my most vulnerable piece of self. Love is renewable and must be revisited day after day, year after year. Rock was and is still very protective of my shattered and deepest self yet LOVE is a journey I once ran through, jumped over waves for and got lost in so deeply that I could not find my way back to who I am. I still inhale the smell of you even when you aren’t near and I still get jealous after nearly two decades of “us”. Remember our passionate first meeting? An autumn blend of whimsical laughter, intellectual virility, a chemistry so robust with first love sensations and our everlasting amusements, surely you recall? What about the sunsets in Amalfi, sunrises by the sea and how I looked across the table over coffee in to your eyes on the veranda and felt like I could fall out of my chair? Now in the mirror a version of me I am still trying to get to know. I hold on to our kisses in the lush Swedish forests, our dancing in the living room at midnight on New Year’s eve and the smile in your eyes when I once did something so simple as to make a hearty, warm soup from my heart to feed us. I can feel as if I am losing this battle with my body; I am not afraid of my pain, but of yours. Must you keep picking me up off the floor or guiding me when my balance is askew? Will I hold you back from finding out more about yourself? I want to walk through our life of mirrors and see everyday we had together; the tipsy Bloody Mary Sunday brunch in Andersonville, the heartache when we could not be together, you holding me in your arms and saying, “you’re the girl I always wanted”. I say “Bravo” for the way we have blended our differences into a special cocktail that tastes a tad like southern moonshine with a bit of je ne sais quoi. You know most all of me, my fears of losing those I love, my need to hold on and never let go of anyone and how I wish my childhood could be redone. You know how much I adored my big family, my mother and my insistance that we are not at all alike (but we are). You know how I hate feeling left behind, the story of not getting matching pajamas like my sisters, my pathetic need to repeat stories of my emotional scars, my greatest mentors and my need to have a best friend always and how afraid I am to be alone. You know I love pigs and bunnies and how I want to save the world around me, and how easily I cry when I realise I can’t even save myself. You know how to fix my drugs, treat my physical pain, how to handle my anger at myself for ruining plans, burning food, forgetting I am running a bath, forgetting one language and speaking another and you are still here, loving me despite my body’s falter, my mind forgetting my intentions. I lose my self into old songs, red wine and wish I coud promise to be here a long, long time. You are the boy of my dreams, too. I love you. I love you. I love you. You know I am repetitive.
“Baby, don’t listen to the people who come to you and say, ” What you wanna be when you grow up?” ’cause they don’t know nothin’ ’bout our world”. That’s what Grandma said. Our country is a damned place, she says, it’s stolen. When people go and take other’s land, kidnap children from their soil and beat ’em, hang ’em, drag ’em behind they ole trucks laughin’ whiles we momma’s weepin’ they don’t get to ask you nothin’. Tall in they suits with those big white teeth smilin’ like they give a damn ’bout you. Naw. Naw. Keepin’ guns so they can be freer? That’s nonsense. See all that blood running ‘cross the front page? That’s our blood, too. They kids don’t get shot in the face. They rich and in charge. That’s the truth child, you try to stay alive and out of the way an they still come for ya. Makes me think why’s we born if we just all gonna get shot in the head, by police, gangs and the people say we got freedom, we are the best land, pledging allegiance to some heathens overcooked philosophy. Hell, Ben Franklin was right when he said the National bird should be a turkey. Can’t kill the vultures but we can slaughter indigenous people and eat from food lines. Giant cans of peanut butter, damn government cheese and those crackers get off ’cause they be mental, sick. Jesus Christ didn’t hang up on that cross for these nasty men. Granma’s in heaven and she knows what she’s talking about. She saw it all comin’. I wish I heard her when she said in my dreams “keep the babies home today”. Dear God, don’t bless America, bless those babies that went to school today. And now, Now what I really think is why, be true to the red, white and blue. Think Russian’s all evil when you’re serving the people this nauseating morning news same time Johnny Depp laughin’ ’bout Alpaca’s in a courtroom. America, you ain’t beautiful, you lost your damn minds.
It’s key is hidden, I misplaced it among my own feelings again. I am alone inside a body that lets me down, hurts me and I can’t get out. I see me walking like Jesus across the sea and then sink without a fight, drowning in my mysterious mind. I am so grateful yet undeserving of salvation. Sanctuaries for Love should be everywhere, not just for those seeking redemption from our earthly delights that were indulgent or a sinful play that some grand Creator would frown upon. The gates are always open to love more, release ourselves from our own arrogant beliefs. I am burdened by carrying me through life; how then can I carry some one else? I see a white wooden columned southern USA colonial home with a long drive and weeping willows, a big porch and spinning ceiling fans. I am the youngest broken one there and I try to cheer my southern company with kind regards and smiles. I am in a sanctuary where I no longer feel like a worthless woman. I make a difference because I am not in the agony that I rise and face each morning. I can quit because I will no longer ruin other’s good times or my own. I can be quiet. I can be kept and have tea and maybe sometimes I will wonder about Jesus and God and bad and good but I will be my own judge as my heart is pure.
Handwoven lace, spun from a magical spider’s web fashioned her posture; veiled were her dreams, old lover’s deceptions and all unbridled emotions. Before, as if in another life she had been the lead dancer, the one spinning to pretty notes, unwinding with the delicacy of her spirit. Poised, she leapt through memories both shiny like sapphire and fragile as opals. Around her was a still, mirroring pond of light. She was a lost feather, floating solo from high above, performing an impromptu pirouette and free falling in the breath of cool northern winds. Her eyes were stained with glassy ice blue tears which solidified as soon as they breeched from their ducts. Snowflakes flew around her and she became cold, landing hard upon the marbled stone beneath her. She lay there and closed her eyes. She wanted someone to stop the tinkling of a rhetorical melody from her own music box which continued to play beyond her control. She had broken her strongest leg, the one she used to lean on when avoiding painful lyrics that reminded her of flurrying youth. Her shadow was growing old and her desire to dance more began to fade. No hand came to help her up and no one knew that she lay in pain; truth be told she did not long for help. The ballerina knew she was doing all she could to mend her wounds and protect her future from being shattered. From the heavens the moonlight crystalized her beauty, shielding her from surrendering herself all together. Her strength although enervated, would call upon her to rise again. As all folkloric sagas have us to believe “amore-propre” is restored and the beast within is slain or out-witted, the beautiful one’s faith is redeemed, and the Prima donna always experiences a reawakening with butterflies swimming around her head and that which was her nemesis is obliterated. The ballerina in this story is glued carefully back together and placed en-pointe, center stage in a polished oak jewelry box; the golden key is wound and she spins ever so slowly as Lara’s Song resumes. Somewhere my love, within this broken Ballerina her own needs were forsaken without mirth; to see those she loved resuscitate their own dreams was a gift for she once again had an honorable purpose.
The best of me, you, them, us, and all is Hope. One steps in and out of light, some of us even crawl as we are so broken and dark within that we need others to pull, push and not give up on leading us into streaming rays of what many see as simple “Better-ness”. The closer we come to our own Truth, our ability to grow stronger begins. The realisation that most of the modular examples of humans do not want to go into the depths of who they are is a reality that the evolution of western societies have placed us in. We are “what we do”. We are subjected to a deceptive construct of expectations and judgements. What is really inside your heart, your soul, your mind? Can you say how you truly think, feel and free your voice for other’s to hear or is it too risky? In my five decades plus I have learned a little bit, but Oh! there is so much more to take in. I discover so much more in each moment that I am hypnotised into being a servant of “More”. More than I knew this morning, more than I knew yesterday and I laugh at the rays of sunlight dancing across my heart’s steady beat. I am a painting, a structure framed in bone and my emotions blend into my visual perception of what colour truly is. I am orange, like a clementine imported from Spain. I am as yellow as the lemons which fall along the streets of Amalfi, green as the the stem of a daffodil. I can be black as the coffee grounds I push through the petite glass press each morning, or as rich of a brown as the newly turned soil where the potatoes and garlic are growing now. I, too can be a shade of blue that only can be seen near dusk over the forest’s treeline where night and day blend into a pale magical phase. My palette is as varied as my experiences, some days I feel wonderfully whimsical as a lilac and others I am like the brooding, burnt, melancholy ochre dug from the dry sun baked earth in Morocco; this is my portrait and it changes as my life flows from one hour to the next. When in physical pain I find the most healing hues are tossed like a salad, spread across me like an old quilt and as they dance my suffering returns to gratitude. How did living with severe pain lead me to being thankful? What began as a diagnosis, a prognosis and then a turbulent period of misery led me to my inner oasis.
My ego was a rhinoceros ready to kill all that made me feel good. I sank in deep mud and stayed there as if cooling down on the banks of the Nile yet my spirit’s nakedness unleashed a depression that no drug could take away. I had to rip my own canvas apart, rebuild who I could or would be and it took years. My fifth decade will always be one of my life’s most valuable periods of renewal. I have discovered that my pain led to the closing of many doors that should have been locked years ago. During this new abstract version of myself I would dwell on my losses, the life I led being stolen from underneath me and envy able bodied friends who slowly were shed from my company. No more deep forest dives, no more hiking for miles and climbing up mountains or cross country skiing; the smallest of movements need to be considered before engaging in every single step of every single day. “Guess-timating” what sort of pain level I will endure from any decision made each day has led me to sculpt a very fine mental map that is virtually traveling within me every second. I did not know in those early days there would be a shift in my endurance and mental health. In the NOW, most days I can not sit at all to eat with my family much less indulge in my love of cooking and painting. I can rarely sit for a dinner party, nor manage restoring a sense of order in my home, lift a potted plant, follow a conversation, make my bed, sleep soundly, wake fresh and be ready for a productive day, meaning how I once described the essence of productivity. I had found my new sketch repugnant, my emotions were entangled balls of wool and I quit. I just quit. Whilst laying in the quiet of each day, I began to face my deepest Truth, a kind of pain so blinding that it was as if I were staring directly into the sun with my eyelids pinned back as intentional torcher. All I had run from, all I had never wanted to face lay with me in my muddy rhinoceros hole. I remembered. And I remembered more and more each day. There was no where to hide and I had to lie next to my past glaring at me night after night, dream after dream. I will never be able to give this process enough credit for saving my NOW. I had to be heard, seen, held and pulled up and it would take re-breaking my heart one memory at a time and a team of guides to rescue my future. The cork popped and like an unexpected flash of rain I would be soaked in seconds with what I assigned a name, terminal despair, or TD. I knew I had to break through my mind’s window, walk on shattered glass, and return to my truest self. In doing so I would fall into the arms of my grandmother’s spirit, call on wise women and old souls to push me into the tiniest bit of light and learn to trust enough to honestly love another human being without resurrecting fear. Fear of betrayal, of being left, of not being good enough. The one who managed to pull me into the light a little more each day was ROCK, my alter ego, and the whispering spirit of Nature’s call to revisit her beauty each day; her majestic sunrises, her wild North Sea storms that are never to be reckoned with and her profound ability to try and recover from humankind’s blatant abuse. I meshed my being with the fight Mother Nature is up against each day as her water’s become spoiled by selfish beings, as her protective layer in our atmosphere dissipates and she keeps reminding me to engage in “Bettering” myself in any way I can. I am part of a rainbow, I am a healer and she is mine. I also have learned that no matter what I have been through, I am in charge of the rest of my life. I still doubt if I am loved as much as I want to be, I still have weak streaks but the colours of me and my new portrait are fierce. And on the horizon I can see that my final sunset will be peaceful. Blessed Be.
In the deep green, the lychee layers sprawl; in the deep green my heart expresses all. Above, soft blue sprinkles through the trees, a sigh of light lands on me. The stones hold memories, ancient muted songs of those who walked before me with their own dreams strong. I pause to speak to the spirits around me, I call for them to help me see. Silently my grandmothers with wise women sing, of love, death and all in between. The wind so cool playing with branches gently swaying as my soul enhances. I want to weep yet I am boldly compelled to seek out guidance and perhaps a spell. If I can heal my child’s pain with divinity, I beg that you share your sacred recipe. Dear Mother of our forests breath, I will forsake all for my bequeathed. Take her pain and rinse her despair, show me again how she will fair. Within herself, give back her smile and lead her through this desperate trial. I walk away and ask once more for you to open her heart’s closed door. A Mother so vast, so grand as you must reach out and take her hand. Remember when she was so content, her love so easy, her innocence? Deep green forest and strong tall trees, lift her fog. Blessed Be.
Although Lm is forever appreciative of everything ROCK helps her through she has one major hang up which is the sense of being forced to get “better”. Life can seem to be so much easier for others and frankly it’s annoying.
Blue Midnight hurts; my soul is regurgitating pain from those before me and those with me now in the shadows of darkness. I am silent yet my mind replays the choices, the sickness and the fear of never having a window that will open and allow me to breathe peacefully. Suffering has no boundaries, it seeps in through every crevasse of one’s inner room. From the corner where I weep I see from the doorway above reminders of lost loved ones and those still here who are waking in fear as they battle the demons of mortality. Disease, dictators, disasters. At this hour humanity is on it’s knees, begging mercifully to some entity they are half doubting or humbled into believing in as a last resort. Calloused knees from years of prayer, hands pressing palm to palm, grief calling in infinite screams. In the cellar of my heart I pull my knees up to my chest and count the steps it takes to find understanding and empathy within my relations with other dwellers in this existential well of echoed despair. Blue is brilliant when paired with gold and the moon dances across the ceiling as I lay in my pool of doubt and motherly concern for my inner child who sees clearly those who have trespassed her. The night is so long and sleep never comes easy. In a wavering state between rest and wakefulness the “gone wrong’s” of each day plague each cell of my body; my attempts to help pull a special loved one’s self esteem up and to show them there can be a day with goodness was thwarted once again. To lay in worry with the black and blue bruises of a beaten slave is my midnight. Oh, you damned mystery of all mankind, do you even hear me? Do you see how much suffering my loved one is enduring? How can you allow this? I have bargained and have even been willing to pay whatever penance you crave just to see my only child find revelation and self love. Are you abandoning her or me? Are you worthy of my sleepless nights full of fear? I wake each day to hope like a broken clock. Both hands are on twelve and I know not if it is night or noon; my heart is too heavy to pull another through this life. I carry the weight of my deeply broken daughter, my deeply broken self and I try to show the beauty that could be for her without success. I feel the swell of my own past, my haunted and branded scars of before and want there to be a magical spirit to protect my child from this world’s contradictions and horrors. I lay down and feel my baby’s heartbeat still and I beckon the universal dream of “LOVE” to envelope her and guide her to stand up and fight for her dreams. I call with my weak, strained voice for you to answer, please.
And to the Earth we return. In fragments, imperfect beings who lived imperfect lives. All the efforts we bestowed upon the tangible, the acquired, are left to burn or salvage greedily or if lucky, sentimentally. Maybe we were loved and mattered. Maybe we watched safely from our hearths the unlucky fights of those who battled with disease, war, hunger; we watched those who didn’t dodge harm’s way because they were born into it. Did the image of Jesus jump out and lift them to the heavens just before the final breath, did they feel saved and hopeful in their death?
In my chronic pain I relive, resurrect, replay, re-die and retry every single moment to find meaning in this shattered shell of a body. Before my physical pain I struggled with emotional trauma and the realisation that I was factually facing what was a subconscious willingness to remain a victim of my traumas, that is, my sexual and physical abuse. I denied the abuse and bowed to it and ran away from myself, my memories until I flatlined. I, on this very Good Friday am proud to free myself from the shackles of my BaDDaD’s behaviours, the “Bible Belt” of submission invoked by my southern mother and the men who were to love me who used me. To the family that was to love me who judged me I will step back and have a look at what you give to me now from your heart. I am a beautiful, reborn and rare baby black lamb. I Invite you to sacrifice my old self with me; raise me up on the cross of your guilt, of your shame and let me lie under the stone, entombed, in waiting and let me rise again and far above your pettiness and lies. Tonight I am letting go of you.
From birth we bloom into small pieces of our influencers; be they biological, guardians or our adoptive family, they mold us and reinforce our beliefs. They can be good or bad and some down right insane. Lm comes from a broken one, a narcissist, sociopath, alcoholic, fraud. At some point in time we have a chance to release ourselves from the bondage of all negativity, hurt and wrong, after wrong, after wrong. I am not responsible for my father’s failures, dishonesty and lack of stability within himself. He had chances to show by his actions that he did give a shit. To do better. To live on a good path. He couldn’t do it. It was not impossible; it was a lot of hard work and his blue eyed white freckled privledged ass got him in and out of places, spaces, around rules, regulations, and he was a damn good con artist. But hard work he was too good for. He portrayed himself as the educated, worldly, white collar type. All starched and pretty when he really was just like thousands and thousands of others who’ve hailed from the “projects” of larger USA cities. He was a product of the government’s way of helping out people, of all creeds, races and dreams to bunker down and guess what to do with the rest of their lives. He would escape because he could lie himself into a better world. I watch all these fraudulent Netflix true stories and keep expecting him to be found and investigated. How the hell has he gotten away with his ugliness? There are many black men and women who have struggled legitimately to rise above their strife. Not everyone is leaning on a junkyard dog selling smack to babies. I was lifted from this strange and perilous lifestyle by my mother. She worked her ass off and honestly fought to the top. My father screwed around with his polluted version of his reality for years, yet still believes he is better than the rest. His current wife, the enabler and also younger than me he has used and abused; let’s agree it is their story to tell. I can only say that if you have one door slightly opening for you to “UP Your Self “, broaden your life and be better than those who have wronged you go for it. Hanging back because it feels comfortable or an anihilation of your duty to family togetherness is what the weak choose. They don’t run when their own sibling bleeds. As the Black Sheep I, Lm, am free because the one who was to teach me right from wrong left me with a puzzle with lots of pieces missing. ROCK puts these pieces back together and intel comes in slowly but surely of more lies upon lies that bury BaDDaD’s front. Behind those cold blue eyes are mounds of unearthed relics. The feeling he continues to project upon new people in his life makes them feel like royalty. They don’t see the grinding of his teeth, the tensing of his jaw when he is deciding his next move. But Lm does. He is 79 years old and can’t bare to to reveal his reality within. If he did, he’d be alone. That won’t happen because one thing that this white, nice looking well dressed man has that women of any color, men who are not white and those who have based their lives on trust, faith, love, TRUTH and honor is he will succeed in keeping his lifestyle through selfishness and living on lies. He will survive because he is a master of his craft. He recreates his name and his madly perceived world repeatedly. Does he or any bad man ever truly pay? Is their any truth to karma, any paybacks or divine intervention? I don’t know anymore. I just know a bad thing when I see it coming because I learned what a bad thing was growing up and running far away from my trauma and triggers was all I knew, until ROCK pulled me to my feet. I still pray just in case there is a higher deity who will show me that my own suffering has not been in vain. ROCK wants BaDDaD to pay for his violations of the heart, the lies, the life he has led. Lm has no belief in retribution. Lm just wants to be heard because she is good. She was always good and yet has days in which her mental anguish is so forceful she must go back down the stairwell and wait for some light again.
In the middle of my night and the morning light I often feel my heartbeat’s whisper. In the black starless sky I know now that I am healing, heading for a choir of unbroken bonds, true meaning, countless moments of Love that’s mine. I shake loose the shackles of my past, I no longer need to remember him, the One who was to be my lifetime protector. I lay BaDDaD to rest as my father. I see beyond my physical ability into a rainbow of shimmering passion, a place so blessed and perfectly mine. No longer will my heart be full of muddy trenches and unfathomable pain. He is gone now. He is a good story for someone else to tell. Like a child I make a wish and toss my golden coins into the sea. I know it will take a very long time to sink to the bottom and perhaps they will become lost treasures among sea glass and pebbles in wavy sand for some one new to find. I ask the spirit of innocence, the power of genuine trust to comfort me. Lay beside me now. Let my heartbeat’s whisper belong in good hands, sister to sister, teacher to child, mother to daughter and lover to lover. May I save the rest of me and float softly into my dreams without fear. Amidst my sleep I beckon no fear to wake me, shake me and remember the lost One. Come, lay by me. Gently sing my heart to rest; Gently Lay By Me my Love, your devotion is my breath. If a star should shine tonight it is just for you, the love who stayed steady when I was almost through. The air is cool with springtime winds and following my heart always wins. Goodnight my love, my lifelong friend, let me sleep beside you once again.
RealStuff by RealMe 
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