The View from Here

 There is a door

I don't want to close.

Nothing will come of it,

I suppose,

but when I find myself

with little to do

I look through it and 

admire the view.

And every once in a while

a warm breeze

blows through.

Conversationally

 I'm

never knowing just what

I've said

or what you really think;

I'm stuck trying to read

between the lines

written in invisible ink.

I've crossed some boundary,

unaware--

wondering how to get things

square--

or maybe nothing happened at all,

and you don't really care.

Unheroic Interlude 2

 (First see Unheroic Interlude 1)

Did I introduce myself? No, I started

my saga in media res--

so, here's how I got myself 

in my current mess, I guess.

If I could, I would give you my name

but I left it in another life

in my other pants, to my shame,

in a moment of strife.

I was raised in the shadow of Olympus

a cast-off twig of the family tree--

no titan, no goddess, just a mutt,

if you need any description of me.

She Arises

 In her new skin

flows the underground waters--

the same that flows

in the veins of her father,

an ancestral flood

of history

and also renewal;

the back-and-forth mystery of time,

like the winding of serpents

in her blood.

It all comes back: 

the cloak of invulnerability

made of her weaknesses;

the shining armor

of her raw, sparkling nerve;

the girdle of confidence

made of scars;

the jewels that have 

a thousand glittering flaws;

the sword of discernment

forged in the fire of mistakes;

the words of power

that are uncomfortable truths--

all and always contained

under her skin.

The wasteland is no longer

a land of the dead--

it is a teeming womb of the living,

and she is reborn.

Her love is with her

wherever she goes.

A Brief Thought

 As the flowers share the sun

under which they've grown,

the brightest light inside your life

is nothing you can own. 

Vision: Deep Water

 Your eyes, the portals to your soul,

were left open, and I slipped right in.

In I fell, lost in deep water,

full immersion baptism in

the sacred river. The surface still--

but the undertow! Running 

to some place guarded like

the holy of holies.

Escorted out, flaming sword at my throat,

I crept away in my soggy clown shoes,

a jester smile of astonishment

plastered on my face,

psychically thrown by unexpected grace,

wondering if I might return.

And I became aware

of something pooling deep inside of me--

the forgotten eternal spring--

the abandoned depths of my own.

The Wound

 I had been on fire

and still smoke in places

a haze drifting around me

and that unmistakable scent.

Parts of me are ashes

and I don't care

where they went.

Not traumatized--

cauterized.

The bleeding stopped.

The past is a scar,

tough but fading.

We are 

not wrecks,

but what escaped them.

Unheroic Interlude

 The nine sisters won't play with me

so I'm counting on you, gray-eyed 

and far-seeing, to remember me.

Where I left my heroine, she was

cooling her heels in the Land of the Dead.

She'll live (you knew that) 

because Immortals do.

It's what they were fated to.

And as for me, I guess I'll live, too,

if I can figure out my way.

We are skipping from the Middle East to

the Mediterranean, (I've been--have you?

I've seen the rock and the hard place where my 

epic crimson forbear found himself adrift.)

And here's where you find me.

Crafty one, send an owl. Whisper in my ear.

Get my stupid ass out of here. 

Here I am: not in the dark of the Underworld,

but in the bright light of day, 

chained to a mountain of bullshit,

vultures gnawing at my ever-renewing 

last living fuck.  

The mountain is my own bullshit,

the vultures exist in my mind,

and the chains are those I forged in life,

whatever the Dickens that means. 

And I am not sure how to stop torturing me.

She Maintains

 She hangs by her ankles,

iron hook run in.

She hangs by the bones of her ankles,

feet above head.

The dry heat of the land

where the sun doesn't shine

and the rain doesn't fall

bakes her skull

and her soul is thirsting.

And here she is, bereft:

no cloak of invulnerability,

no shining armor,

no girdle of confidence,

gone are her jewels,

her sword of discerning,

her words of power--

even her skin is gone.

The shadow of her tongue longs

for wine.

The shadow of her tongue yearns

for water.

But she can taste:

blood of a soldier

tears of a lover

sweat of a laborer.

And new skin forms over

 the dry chalk of her form.

She Descends

 Where love was gone

the dry world sighed for what was lost

and the maiden left her couch to see:

Nothing bloomed in the garden

and no tree bore fruit. 

The air had no birdsong and

rain would not fall.

She would find love and return.

What she can't take with her 

will drop onto the path:

the cloak of invulnerability,

her shining armor,

her girdle of confidence,

her many jewels,

her sword of discerning,

the words of power--

gone.

The skin unwound from her flesh,

the fat rendered in the heat,

the nerves exposed and made

into a garland for a holy tree.

Her bones walked into

the land of the dead

to find her love.

The Limit Does Not Exist

 To those who would say 

this love is not 

(in your mind) 

a love divine,

what measurement did you use 

to fathom the heart--

either of God's,

or mine?

For I would go

on bended knee to the one I love,

but for you

I would not crawl.

And I would give my life

to the one I love

and care nothing for your words

at all.

If I would fight with angels,

what might I fear from the words

of men?

If I would lose the world for my love--

what of love could you say then? 

My love more visible in deeds

than in the salty tears of spite

of those who claim that love is not right

denying the basic needs

of those to love and be loved.

We are enough for that,

and survive the risks--

those that limit love must learn-

the limit does not exist.