Dent Progress

If I press my hand against your cheek, a remembrance of my body imprints, momentarily, upon your skin, and then you become yourself again.
I am just a momentary dent, in the beingness of your body, springing back into itself.
How different, my soul, when I softly open myself to your murmuring exploring,
And all that is new and wonderful about joining, and searching, and striving for more than dent - to closed eyes, to opened eyes, to staring, breathing
Straight stare, total tremble, at once, while so, at gaze staring back -
Is in the sigh, that always waits
For mine.

My New EBIKE!

Top speed, 32 miles an hour, Dawn sits astride her brand new e-bike (a prize won at work), excitedly strapping on her new helmet in the dark, so that none of the neighbours see her introductory ride...

Good thing, too: as she hits the pedals to initiate the brakes (which aren't located there, of course, as she remembered them being, on the bicycle on which she first began to ride) before actually going anywhere, panicking, she squeezes the ride hand control...which also happens to be the accelerator - how surprising! - slamming into the driveway railroad tie, and ingloriously managing to fall over, as the bike shoots towards the neighbour's porch, without her on it, rather like a sailing hand held car - without the remote.

Somewhat predictably, it moves amazingly faster, without an actual body on it. (Cough.) The body sits blinking rather awkwardly on the asphalt, looking decidedly relieved that the very first attempt at learning the controls - without an actual manual, with all visible directions in Korean symbols, on the actual bike - occur in the dark, without anyone actually seeing......

Three tours around the neighbourhood, after learning where the headlights and the horn are, and not mixing them up, finally, along with a worn down battery later, she also discovers that there is no reverse, and that speeding up while going around a corner can result in a Flintstone like-movement which causes foot dragging and a small amount of swearing, in order to avoid flying into a car or a sign. Also, sticking both feet straight out, like the flying nun, does not, contrary to the balance of physics philosophy, make things steadier, but it does cause both a windshift and a shimmy while heading towards the side of a barn. Again, experimentation in the dark is a blessed thing, and no actual collisions occur, as the finite aspects of learning where the controls are, and discovering the joy of small circles instead of reverse, becomes a learned, and precious dance movement on wheels.

Hurrah to ebikes! I think I'll like this.....wink. Ah, the speeding wind through the hair, mashed underneath my beanie!! Is this what the Model T felt like, as the scarf flew through the wind...? Be still my heart! (I think I came close to losing it, when I stopped jamming the pedals backwards to stop....grin.)

Oh, in Autumn

Oh, in autumn, when the leaves are painted with impending sleep
To brighten the sky, before the world draws in upon itself,
And Winter blankets all with a cool pause,
There is still time for crisp apple's juice, blinking stars,
and rose-cheeked smiles, amidst summer's plenty,
As we stroll down these quiet country ways,
Clasping hands among the trees,
Murmuring to each other of yesterday's youth,
And not minding its
Rebirth.

The Day after Your Birthday.

"What exactly gives you impetus?" He said the words softly to her, but the quizzical look was genuine, and urgent.

She breathed quietly, drew her lip up over her teeth, sucked in the offending lip briefly, narrowed her eyes, and stared up at him. He was standing over her, shifting slightly awkwardly from one foot to another. She thought he looked slightly like he was waiting to receive detention. She smiled, and he stopped shifting from one foot to another, smiling back at her.

"Your ass", she said, blinking at him. He coughed, suddenly. "It's a perfect personality." He blew air out of his nose suddenly, expecting pith and profundity, and receiving an example of it, wondered at its simplicity.

HAPPY 45th BIRTHDAY, CHARLIE

September 2, 2009

Well, I was going to write a poem today, in celebration, but I kept seeing these little blurbs on all of the rag mag pages..."What do you think of Keanu Reeves?", to the point that I was moved to paragraph: an infrequent, if enjoyed, stylistic stretch.

So..."What do I think of Keanu Reeves", on this, his 45th birthday?

Hmm...


Here is effort and success, in the face of fits and starts: indeed, in spite of them.

Here is respect for craft, sincere submission to the progression of it, in one's self, and a genuine love of challenge within its confines. It is a lack of fear, and a striving, within its midst, and amongst its practitioners.

Here is compassion, and encouragement, and appreciation, having achieved a level of success, and this same combination of states of mind, within one's own sphere of being, for others'- without patronizing them, or minimizing them, or characterizing their own striving, their own evaluations, and valuations of their own work, as unimportant. Here is true comaraderie, and trust, when exploring, creatively, from another, as a result of that implicit, and noted, respect. Here is real regard, and sharing, as its reward.

Here is passion, restrained, and ardour, controlled, to just such an extent that it is a part of vitality, and effort, and need, extended - and becomes a sense of, (in connecting with that sense of being, in the face of Death, and Loss, and Pain,) its defiant excitement.

Here is Quiet Admission, and Wildness, in sync, meeting its Other in Places, and Faces, and Moments, and its gentle protection of them, in a personal, and loving way.

Here is the Coolest of Breath, in the Heat of Life, and Love.

Here is Keanu.


----------
Happy Birthday, Charlie. Many more, filled with all of this, and more, is what I wish for you, on this day.

xo

Cloud Busting

A streak across the ink...it is breath, there in the blackness of night canopy;
Breath - when you spoke a moment so near my neck that
The hair stood on end, straining nearer to your lips:
Fast cilia, waving, and sighing....so fine that
Shadow suggestion made my
Skin
Quiver, in its
Wake.
And then, the earth turned....was turned.
Suddenness, and I had
Taken Your Breath for
Mine,
with just a glimmer and Twinkle in my Eyes
For Comfort, amidst the
Pure Jewry.

Chevalier

In this strange moment of victory,
Vetted pit of animalia discovered,
Amidst the viciousness of vile and venom,
When I cannot celebrate, only vomit, and I turn to you, my darling,
For a kind of sanity,
Remind me, with quiet depth and rumble,
That I am feeling, still; am loved, am something other than
Some wild animal, bared teeth, wild eyes flashing,
Seeking prey,
For the squirming innocence of birthed filth that will be
Our reminder of
Nature's error.

Ambrosia Latina

See that star, love?
In this ink black night, when jewels adorn the sky that is this blanket, keeping,
It blinks, and, sending twinkle on twinkle on twinkle
Waves for me, washing, separates space into moment.
Perhaps this quiet touch, soft as liquid ambrosia reaching for your lips,
With trailing fingers painting,
Languid, lingering, limbering, (in measure, for oak's aged finest)
Will speak what I might, in my absence, caressing,
And, eyes closed, swirl and dance in the glass,
Like warm honey on a liquid night of
Bees knees, whispers and
Christmas sighs,
Suddenly there.

Inverted First and Last, Steamed and Sauteed.

This could be the first time I have tasted.
Before, the food, like the movements I made, filled space.
The space was me, before you: a void, with lined curves and spaces covered with something alive that made a white spot, when you pressed it hard, seeking pain.
It was an absent reaction, that; a kind of spasm protesting a state of prefrozen fish packets, with freezer burn.
Funny: I never thought of myself as a frozen dinner foil packet, stored too long somewhere...
All shrunken peas, like small heads, glaring out, balefully, and horrid dried flaked bits of chemical potato slices, jammed in, for something akin to a lack of boredom, ice crystals glazing the whole mess, with congealed gelled sauce of mystery meat eyeballs dumped over the whole thing, like some angry food processing plant workers' finger painting.
No wonder I worked nights, ate chicken sandwiches, dreaming of nicoise, and rammed cabbage salads down my throat with green tea for two years, until I shed the other self I grew around me, because I was so startled at it all.
It was very strange, stepping out of myself, and all that baggage of loss and agony.

There you were....with a beard, and everyone shocked at facial hair, which made me feel safe. How can you possibly explain something that silly to anyone, while I was becoming a less supersized version of myself? I cannot explain being shocked at my own timidity...you'll have to, for me, oh Thespian Mine. I'm still afraid I'll dislodge something, if I do it.

Now? Well....now I search in vain to add to my collection of Butter Cookie and Caramel spray cologne, thinking myself some kind of freak dessert, like a wild raspberry tart for Sunday tea.
I may even design a whipped cream beret, and flaunt it, while driving the new EggMobile down Main Street, daring myself to try out the electric windows again: Ms. Creme Caramel, grooving to George Clinton and varying versions of "Peg" blasting out of the windows at three a.m, as I careen down the road....sadly, the dog died two years ago, otherwise the picture might have almost been pastoral, except for the still-perpetually shocked farmers, the electrified funk and acid jazz wafting out of the raising and lowering glass, and the secret way I have of keeping time with internal technological devices with which I have recently become adept. I pretend they're very small flip tambourines.

I've only just graduated beyond Amish roll up window status, after all, and I am the only person I know who is still fascinated for minutes at a time with the fact that I have windshield wipers on both ends of my car...it's an odd thing to explain at parties... this wild positional cleanliness. (I feel I must qualify this, and roar loudly, lest my shattered reputation be further mutated into truly decent, newsworthy, rag mag tart status.)
It makes me feel wild, like ...oh...I don't know:finding a hotter Szechwan sauce, just to see whose eyes will tear up first - knowing I'll win, of course. It's the same with horseradish, so you really should just give up now, and accept it calmly, with suitable male grace. You won't though; you'll make me eat suicide wings until I can't breathe, and try and kiss me at the same time, you beast. And me attempting controlled weight! Ah, life; ah, struggle...ah...lip locking in mid-tingle burn.

I, contrarily, am the only person I know who promises a complete body cleanse with every meal consumed. It's become a very odd source of pride, like in Homemakers, or something...I fear you're laughing, now, in the doubly funny way you have of doing nothing, and exploding inside, retaining gas, until your ears feel like they're going to blow out, so no one knows you're roaring inside.
I worry for your arteries, frankly.

Oh....cook me stir fry, and eat butterscotch sauce off of my navel, till you make me yell, and we'll call it a day, you darling, darling wonder in my life. How I adore you.
I'll even be the Cherry on top, if you promise not to throw financial reports at me.

Seasoning

I am of spring, of flowers, and growing things, and possibility, budding green of shoots and yawning, bursting out of the sleepy earth;
I am of fall, in crisp golds and greens; olives and burgundies, and all good celebrations of good work and plenty like honey and rose noses on a crisp afternoon of favourite sweaters and kisses, feeding each other with crunches of bread, sweet onion soup, apple juicy slices on warm tongues, and sharp wine nectar;
I am of winter, when ice fire and mellow fire mix and gleam in candle's glow,
and all good things and good loves, and goodness, find their Noel magic;
I am of summer, when hot sweet moments dive in water's comfort, refreshed,
and gleam with bronzed summer sun on hot sweat skin, when lips meet, and youth is reminded of itself, in the torpid twirls of passion and rhythm, on a fevered night.

I am all these things, and more, to you; and I have seen them, reflected, and known, somewhere,
the circle's match, and measure, and May, in the Deep Quiet and Flicker there.

Dawn Nevills, August 15, 2009

Character Development: Photo Bucket 1

There the Olympic flame of globed light flickers,
In the gloom and mist of smoke and mirrors.
The smells - tantalizing mix of wine and women, scents and
sweat and consumption, amidst the idea of possibility, lounges silently
Waiting.
The ember is just another part, and the eyes are far away, even as the smile
Extends, like a slightly languid version of itself...but not to the visage:
No, not yet.
The lamp's gleam reflects another part, another place, another past - another
Other, and Of, and Beyond.

Darkest Charlie, waiting.
A sigh escapes on the other side of the glass, in time with the breath, escaping into the dark, clouded,
Dark and Light of Dragons, cavorting.
Breath, like watching Love, intermingling, even then, in struggle.

Stone Soup, and all that:An Argument in Favour of God

Having just watched, with a certain amount of intrigued interest, as an artist, an internet interview with shock rocker Marilyn Manson (who also happens to be an extremely talented painter and visual artist), I could not help but muse rather quietly, while driving home from work the other day, about a vehement debate about the "viability" of God in today's world.

What was supposed to be a learned and somewhat scholarly sounding older gentleman kept quite vehemently pointing out the "implausability" and "presumable inviability" of what he termed, for want of a better term, the "Christ Myth." The term, in and of itself, is an oxymoron, for we know that Christ Himself, is not, in fact, a myth at all, but a documented person who lived, breathed, and completed His Work in this world, much like Ghandi, John Paul II, and any number of respected and venerated persons in history. In using the term "myth", one simply must ascertain that the word "myth" is used, in conjunction with Christ, to make a sweeping assessment about the body and life of His work, and the various disagreements about the depth, scope, and clarity of his Relationships in doing so, "miracles" and all. What is real is that this work is "documented", much as the supposed scholar kept trying to skirt around....Thus, the word "myth" itself, is inaccurate, regardless of the scope and measure of the work itself, and what it involved, miracles, et al.....

And this, as they say, is the conundrum....

What I found most quietly entertaining about the vehement denial of the "Christ Legend", as I like to call it, for those insisting upon myth as a descriptive word, without realizing that Myth, rather than story, is misleading, literarily speaking, is the ease with which the supposed scholarly gentlemen, bound and determined to refute Christianity in general, managed to contradict himself - not once, but twice, in attempting to construct his argument.

Ultimately, what it came down to, was the fact that, like transubstantiation misunderstood and misexplained as simply a physical repetition of a process fulfilling a simply physical need in the act of Communion, rather than a sacred ritual celebrating the simplicity of Spirit, and its Presence, in the simple act of sharing and breaking bread with one's brothers and sisters, and all of the legend, tradition, and responsibility inherent in allowing that Presence to work in one's Life, and its continuance in renewing that Life by the act of sharing Bread and Wine, was that the man thought on only one level: physical.

And what I say in response is, simply, this: when you are moved by Christ, in even the simplest way, you have allowed that Spirit to work in you, and around you, and within the Greater World in which you live, and have an impact. Certainly, from a scientific standpoint, no little green man lands on you, like Gazoo, bonks you on the noggin, and says, "Get to it, bucko, or you're up shit's creek"; one is simply moved, after contemplation, like Wordsworth's explanation of The spirit running through all things, and connecting us with the Greater Creation of which we are a part, and a product of, with respect to the Greatest Artist of all time: God. To be moved, then, by a Life that spoke of the deepest connection with, and the deepest reverence for, each other, as a part of that tapestry, makes "Myth" the greatest misnomer of all - even if you are simply speaking "etymologically."It is a denial that one is a part of a part of that work; that we are alone, and apart, and completely disconnected from everything else that moves, and breathes, and functions around us, be it flora or fauna. Certainly, disconnectedness emotionally and intellectually is a product of our inability to, or painful withdrawal from, hurtful examples of this disconnectedness, but it is a huge disservice to one's self to deny that one can still be moved, and, thus, to have an effect upon, either one's self, or upon another situation.

This is Being Moved, just as the Breath created the first movement of matter in the Heavens by a force inexplicable, but omnipresent, even in the idea, simply, of collision, scientifically. We are not simply void, and when we reconnect with That Which Is, like Yoda, what we accomplish in His Name is greater than we can hope for, or imagine...a kind of "Pay it Forward" that still speaks of possibility in the face of chaos, patience in the face of rage, and tranformation, personal evolving, and new beginnings, after pain, loss, disappointment, death, and brutality at its ugliest, emptiest worst.

It is hope, unextinguished, in ourselves. Surely, there is nothing about "myth" in that, but, rather, a gentle miracle, every day, in the embrace of it, in ourselves.

Makes the story of stone soup a smiler, in retrospect, notwithstanding......

Throat Hum Beginning We

What is this ice fire
That spins and whirls my breath
Into the night sky, spilling like tears
on a void
With eyes?
There is matter: and mattering,
Awakes, blinking suddenly into
Fusion of silence
Linking us to each, and we to our
Magnificently, softly, sadly, savagely, tenderly;
Breath on breath, repeating,
Under each other's, over ourselves' and themselves'
and long forgotten pain
Struggling against
Expurgation:
Oh....speak with just a hint of sound
So I may close my eyes, feeling the movement of your throat
laying on mine, in a moment of
Shared bird song, and
Kiss my surprised rounded lip beak, trilling and thrilling,
The remembrance of snow and fur and
Fire, stroked and stoked into
Usness. I shall forget I am supposed to be
Old, and you will
Smile again.

Soup

Ambling bulwark contemplating,
Desire Eloquence First.
Graciously, Honestly, incapable, just
Knowing Love means New
Omnipotence persists
Quietly.
Relegating silence, thusly,
Undulations vie
With Xavier's
Zephyrs,
Alphabetized.

Good Work, Quoth Comfort

Oh, workaday, how blessed I am,
Embroiled, like this, in Thee:
Sweet Bean juice filled cup, waking eyes,
I blink, stretch, look....still Me!
The rhythm, pacing, stretch of Time,
I leap across, face first,
And think, with quick wit, thought, and pause,
Of when I did my worst.
Not often; ethic drawn upon, Two Stalwart Stocks
With dour looks, and tempered smiles
Made short the momentary guile,
Responded to with sheepish grin, and clean white smocks,
...with maybe a sigh or two; too real! A human bean,
Reaching skyward, still.

Oh, my dearest,
It is the Fourth of July.
Today, you would be 49.
With laughter, I light all the candles, twinkling a spirit light
Path to join me in silent celebration, and think of
Your story of confused youth, wondering why so many
were celebrating
Your birth.

There were fireflies this evening;
I sat in the twilight's gleaming, as the sky poured watercolours upon the garden,
And I imagined you breathing with a certain hesitance.

In a quiet moment, when I could not help myself, there, in the dark,
With the slight mist of eve, and tumbling seconds of years and thoughts
Bringing the dark and the lanterns into a kind of gentle swaying,
there, in the silence,
I sipped sweet wine's nectar, dreaming of your lips brushing mine,
Softly in the kind shroud of twinkling lights.

The dry cling of pressed grapes, and my closed eyes
Brought them closer, and the fireflies approved,
Glinting suddenly near my misted eyes.
I was sentinel, and queen, at once,
as you ordained.
The palm trees only made it again so,
And the eyes were dark, and near mine,
And wanting me, again,
Beautifully,
At Last.

How soft, the question. How sweet, the answer.
How gentle, the night, amidst the velvet of blanketed stars
Twinkling their sighs, and clasping prayers,
Amidst the passing years.

The sleep seems a kind encasement, dreaming.
I shall not mind waking, tomorrow, remembering.