Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Dune
Frank Herbert

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Festival of Colors, Slams, and Fun!

This past weekend was Awesome!

For the first time ever I went to the Festival of Colors at the Spanish Fork Hare Krishna Temple! It was Amazing!! I went with a couple of my friends and...okay, for those of you who aren't familiar with the festival: there was dancing and we fed the llamas and at 5:20 there was the bonfire and the throwing of the Color! Which is bags of food coloring-ed flour and/or cornstarch. There were roughly (supposedly) 15,000 people there and me and my two friends went somewhere in the middle of all of them - shoulder to shoulder crowd - and they threw their colors at everybody (we got there early but still didn't purchase color) so we got covered in color - and shmearing it works best :) After the color throwing, we danced for like an hour and had tons of fun and then went home. Only we didn't go home...

After the big festival event there was a big poetry slam at Baxter's Cafe. It was the biggest poetry slam of the year here pretty much. For those who don't know, it determined the slam team who will go on to compete in nationals. A big group of my friends won, including: Michael, Deann, Cody, Jesse, Josh and will be going on to compete in Tampa in August. Congrats to all of you and those who competed!!! It was Awesome!

Happy April Fools Day!! It might be the first year I have no pranks played on me...
we'll see!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

LilyLoo and GockaBoo

My consciousness surfaces
With a hand on my face and the weight
of a leg across my belly,
Both belonging to my two favorite beings,
The pieces of me that actually make sense.

I open my eyes to his freckles,
A squashy nose and dimples,
A smile that exceeds the morning’s sunshine
Streaming through my window.

He touches his baby nose to mine
And moves away, grinning.

I turn over so as not to wake her
Gently removing her leg from on top of me
And turn to watch her sleep -
Amazed.
I hug her gently,

Amazed by the beauty of her peaceful slumber,
The mole just under her eye.
The mole on her neck.
A toy spazzes over us, crashes against the wall,
across my thoughts.

He peers with all his stealth over the corner
of the edge of the bed – grinning.
Look Mommy! Batman can fly!
Ssh! I shake my head, a finger to my lips –
It touches my smile and I laugh silently
So as not to wake her.

She stirs and then goes still and I find her baby hand,
Yet bigger still than his, warm and soft
And I reach an arm to him and he crawls up and digs
Through the blankets and my shirt to my tummy where
He took so many naps once when he was smaller.
He blows a raspberry there now.
And she says, Mommy! I dreamed there was a rainbow
and a pony and…
She keeps talking and he starts talking with her.

I pull the blankets up closer around me
and throw them off and over them
And the tickling starts and when we can breathe again
I say, how about breakfast?
YaY! They sing
And run away and I lie there, one moment,
Cherishing them, the pieces that make me make sense to myself.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
Ive looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
Ive looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
Ive looked at love that way

But now its just another show
You leave em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

Ive looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
Ive looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say Ive changed
Well somethings lost, but somethings gained
In living every day

Ive looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
Ive looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Banquet

I cannot be one with myself
And still be with you.
I cannot be in two places
At once.

I do not have three eyes to see from.
My third eye remains sealed,
For pain is forthcoming.

‘Five times the glory’ is the echoing phrase
I do not hear being shouted across the chasms.

I said six, not sex
And it was seven times, anyway.

And we ate and were merry
But only nine glasses were raised.
The tenth and eleventh were shattered with care
By the twelfth which belonged to a knight worth remembering.

I threw down my glass and threw up my hands,
And shouted across the table.
I shouted and cursed despite his angry face,
Made comical by thirteen years of neglect and ignorance.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Books are my Timeline

I’ve got my torn up copy of Les Mis hashed in half
Stashed in the pocket of the car I had in high school
Your Anne of Green Gables read to a baby girl wrapped in blankets
She was my first.
The picture books start from Maynard, stories still tied up from childhood,
Dedicated to the children I have now.

The thirty books in thirty days mark the ways
I tolerated living the shelter life
My way of rebuilding the library I left behind.
When it all was still fresh in my mind.

I’ll question your spending ten dollars on a t-shirt,
But twenty dollars in books,
It’s just 20 in food for my heartstrings.
If I’m an addict it’s to the cause of filling my shelves
With a legacy, my gift to posterity
Like Dad’s copies of Dr. Seuss he’s passed to me for safe keeping.

My cookbooks mark my days as a house wife,
My shelf of poetry builds as my friends grow during my single-life
I got a row of my colleagues, children’s authors now famous,
My Nemeses or something to shoot for?

If you can’t tolerate the clutter, I suggest you head for the door.
Books are my timeline which I go by
Of the places I been that I can’t revisit again.
They mark my place.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Friend

At the times when I feel the most
That I want to do some human disfiguration, self-maiming –
The opposite of preservation
You are there.
And you remind me why not to
Without the need of saying anything at all.

And at the times when I feel there’s an elephant sitting on my chest
And I haven’t done the required number of push-ups
That would give me the strength to lift it away,
I realize you are that strength.

And at the times when I feel I’ll just have to keep living in this pain today,
You insist on taking it all away.
Without the need of saying anything at all.

But you do say something.
You say to me, I love you.
With all of your listening.
And though I may wonder why you do,
It is enough that I know you do.