The Unbuttoning

Folly exists in a night’s pleasure.

 I count the days till moments in truth.

 The ways I find surface to feel alive.

 “Let me unbutton your cuff; may I help”?

Still I played an intoxicated game.

 This is the power I know so well.

Childhood touches grab my spirit.

This was the cement carving my future.

Running as I looked for each bit of attention.

“Let me unbutton your cuff.”

My breath ached as I had been captured.

Our hands became what they are not.

 I unbutton his shirt with my eyes.

 He pulled down the front of my blouse.

Listening for what?

Who are you as we long become us?

Who am I, in my serious truth?

Let me unbutton you!

Let me see who you really are.

Regret

Longing for what was, what will never be

Talk to me of your tender truths

In unexpressed holdings of self

I see you and do you see me

Years of the wine drank in restrain

Because of caring in the name of health

You must remain confined with words

What I want for you cannot be explained

Every whisper, every shout remembered

Air breathes across my face as tears flow

Today's stories move forward

Come when you no longer can run

Love will say taste me here, it is alright

It is all right to cry, eyes opening only glimpse

Gazing into a field of a veiled heart

Walking one last time to say goodbye

Now we sing silently listening for voices

Joy talks and shares what has never been said

The world of who we are opens once again

Go against yourself, risk regret.

Half Truths

I woke in the night with your words of care

Twisted awareness flying sideways

My spirit remembers lodging itself in fear

Awakening to truth where beginnings began

How is it I did not know of my edges flying forward

Finding the night aching to the touch of surrender

Does longing take place wrapped in darkness

Shrouded in the evenings splendor

I used to whisper unacquainted with poetry

What am I waiting for in phrases not formed

Scratched hiding behind my half truths.

Hands

My hands palm flat

Skims the surface as if

Every pore is imbibing  

Smooth pages

Lost sentences

Remembrances of pain

Once again

Picture Perfect I sit

My chair of constant comfort

I want to be all that I am

Take me forward

Let me listen

Talk to me of your days wanting

Let me know that I am more

than chairs and pages

Smoothness interrupted by lines

My hand proceeds and I have been touched by you.

Poetry Slips Away

Poems slip away as fast as a thought

Distractions come taking my dreams

I hold light within as the rain sings to me

I call to you and do you hear me

Waiting to share my lines known

I’m seen for what I am as the sun shines

What are these moments lingering 

In the moon as the sun embraces

I hold this opalescence found in this night 

Breathing in you as my air touches your face

Words taunt and tease me, I treasure each taste

You have bound me with compliance

I am angered yet set free, do you hear me?

No, it is you just won’t feel my poetry!

Alive

There is a quiet holding amongst a receptive note

 

Our connection of art, and love, wraps us in healing

You are a gift where expression is our time together

We paint knowledge and play beyond language

 A quiet holding finding balance

Was it the time of day or our life force

Exchanges alive in time and hope we are found

 I rejoice in the excitement that I am alive in you.

Fruitvale Station

Every Tear I haven’t shed

All the moments I stood quiet

Each song or prayer I didn’t have

I called to you and I knew

That when I cry God is there

I cried for my heart

I cried representing those felt and seen  

Tears left on hospital floors

My tears explode in a stall of the bathroom

Found within a hospice to heal my wounds

Prayers left in a theater

Meant to entertain

Instead religion is found.

The Doctor

How is it that anyone can stay knowledgeable

When there are so many lives entrusted needing care

Must there be a distance

Can life ever be engaging

I’ve been hit with my fortunes longing

Stopped as if slapped

Struggling with care and trust

I don’t want to be closed off

 Questions that don’t belong while together

 Realizing I have no assurances

The wonder’s in waiting for truth

I am living too many adult days

Speed

Don’t Tell me I am all over the place for I know 

Capturing moments, accumulating times rippling’s

Opening those people who close their hearts

Opinions fly when my movement is shaken by theirs

It can’t be possible there is no brilliant juncture

Time holds me in ages acceleration of tears

I want to rip open my lack of stability

My heart shakes in a free spirit of timing gone wild

Burnt, I will grow again letting them be free of confines

Talking heads illustrating words of conjecture

We think we create power, however powerless

Weak dependent yet free to choose. 

All because we can’t play within life elevations.

Dancing in a Winters Night

Dancing in a Winter's Night

There is quietness coming over me

Earth frozen, storms and winds shelter

The warmth of home stills the chill

The air needs fire and spark

Proceeding wisdom found in a dance

I’m alive in retreating

My mind wanders

Marveling found in tranquility

Repose exchanged for passion

Still stopping so I can sleep

Incredulous and alive

How can this all be true

Circles

 Words as fast as bullets

Waiting to share thoughts

Extinguished upon release

Language propels

I’m pursued

Circles and I’m lost in my patois

Unwritten silence

Released in the recesses of my mind

Standards remote till now

My process repeats itself

I begin and end in a circle.

New York City Speaks

There is an essence of a distraction. 

A balance that courses through us

When we feel trapped.

Suddenly growth comes

All because Country meets City

The walk is uneven

Allowances must be made

Together but Separate

Am I living a quiet realization

We think we talk but can’t

Comparisons of love 

Finding words unable to say

Say Goodbye to a dream

 Because of our age.

Dental Dreams Visit

My feet climb the stairs to my childhood Dentist office. Cement stairs with a railing takes me through the door of a corner house to an office where I wait. I don’t remember my mother being there with me. My memories are of chairs while I wait, feeling them marking an internal clock, still finding a hard wire attached to my years of such memories. The walk down a street  is long forgotten amongst my tears. My teeth are a catalogue of crowns, fillings, root canals, and extractions. Encrusted with sweets, my favorite food to eat, supported by my mother and a generational worship of sugar! A German bakery was across the street from my home, becoming my comfort. I would get a nickel for my friend and me to get doughnuts. I had sugar  carried in my bottle. Well into becoming 5 years old. My mother was grieving and longing to quiet a needy child when she was 43. The pain of rotten and decayed teeth was a remnant of gifts I’d rather not have had. I was pushed out the door to walk on my own to Dr. Ashton’s office. The frequent journey was five blocks from home. I walked alone at the age of 6 until I left home at 19. I still see myself waiting there,for it to go on and on into my adult life.Waiting for the Dentist. Waiting for life. Archaic dentistry had left my mouth in a crooked form with one front tooth placed in the center. Oral hygiene was only executed in some random fashion among neighborhood families. I got a funded form of braces that were only moderately successful. 

Later, I worked in a dental office as a receptionist, how ironic and learned about flossing and was given a crown for cosmetic beauty as the Dentist I worked for found I had an abscessed tooth that died a long time before. Asking me did I have pain, no I didn’t feel any. I think it happened as I was taking a ship across the Atlantic. I know this because I kept a travel journal. I never paid for the crown when it turned gray.  It was not my intention to bail out on payment but I was on to other adventures. My lack of moral standards did not get in the way.

As I think of my mother hustling me out the door to the dentist office, her Southern farm girl gave up not paying. If I was ever taught morals, I don’t know. How did I survive? Yet I have. This facing pain at such an early age gave me a warped sense of courage with fearless training  and may have ignited the passion I now have. Running from life event to life event.

How did I ever get to England by an ocean liner, my pushing my mother over and over were remnants of a training to see opportunities and just keep going, like the pat on my but out the door to the Dentist. If I truly understood my thoughts about my past I don’t think it was my intention, but my mothers needs linger as she wanted a life of travel like she gave and promoted in me. Often her imprint I feel her motivating me.

Blurred

Listening while living in light

Seeing your walking knowledge

So huge in there visions

Blurred

What does this mean

As we walk with dreams

Blurring pictures occur

Found in living pages

Eyes squinting, distorted by illumination

I’m fed up with emotional phrases

While listening and seeing your breath

Light becomes the shadow of exact truth

Found within the walk with each of our words

We must not become blinded

Eyes open when we see.

Blanc

  

 The colors of clouds on a sunny day surround me.

They float before me to wrap me in words.

I’m floating across the sky with white and tender forms.

While colorless tile and tub support my glide.

My bruises and pains are washed away.

Talking softly I am held up by memory

Does remembrance offer purity and security?

 While fires burn around me?

Is it Blanc that tattoos itself with each touch at waters rim?

Is it Blanc that carries me with these “love letters to God?”

That helps me live and love and make me pure.

 I never knew what lurked inside

What nervous quake exists?

I never knew what lay where tears break.

I had no father to celebrate

Swept away within hospital walls

All things come and go

Memoirs of tears exist

Dormant till given voice

Now they come and go!

Fearlessness Training

My feet climb the stairs to my Dentist office. Cement stairs with a railing takes me through the door of a corner house to an office where I wait. I don’t remember my mother being there with me. My only memory is of chairs while I wait. I may have years of such memories. The work done now is long forgotten and my teeth are a catalogue of crowns, fillings, root canals, and extractions. encrusted with sweets, my favorite food to eat, supported by my mother and a generational worship of sugar! A German bakery was across the street from my home. I would get a nickel for my friend and me to get doughnuts. I had sugar water carried in my bottle. Well into becoming 5 years old. My mother was grieving and longing to quiet a needy child when she was 43.

The pain of rotten and decayed teeth was a remnant of gifts I’d rather not have had. I was pushed out the door to walk on my own to Dr. Ashton’s office. The frequent journey was five

blocks from home. I walked alone at the age of 6 until I left home at 19. I still see myself waiting

and it has gone on and on into my adult life.Waiting for the Dentist. Archaic dentistry has left my mouth in a crooked form with one front tooth placed in the center. Oral hygiene was only executed in some random fashion among the neighborhood families. When I reached

my senior year in high school, I was given braces based on a modest grant from a government program, because of my mothers income.

The braces were only moderately successful. Later, I worked in a dental office as a receptionist and learned about flossing and was given a crown for cosmetic beauty as the Dentist I worked for found I had an abscess tooth that died a long time before. Asking me did I have pain, no I didn’t feel any. I think it happened as I was taking a ship across the Atlantic. I know this because I kept a travel journal. I never paid for the crown when it turned gray.  It was not my intention to bail out on payment but I was on to other adventures. My moral standards did not get in the way.

As I think of my mother hustling me out the door to the dentist office, her Southern farm girl gave up not paying. If I was ever taught morals, I don’t know. How did I survive. Yet I have. This facing pain at such an early age gave me a warped sense of courage with fearless training  and may have ignited the passion I now have.

Broken

I speak of an evening without words

Birds without wings

Trees without leaves

And grass burnt within its growth

Washed on a shore of half broken shells

Listening for sounds only I can hear

Watching my feet and toes

Covered by sand and washed away

With wave after wave

Each flows across with a gentle massage

The wind and sea caresses

I give rest to the wicked

I am at peace because I played

 With words prolonged and unbreakable.

The Doctor is in

Standing where their feet dare not to feel.

Designs etched in languages written, as a task, for mechanics who’s gears are organs, blood, tissues, muscles, and bones. A body revealed in the Doctor's hand. Do they really see or craft a very dangerous Artwork which could be finished in loss! Generations of life watched, renewed over wisdom in time!

 Standing

Standing with feet grounded

Grounded in emotionless steps

Detached and released

Idioms written as a task

The dialects are carved in blood

A craft with dangerous mechanics

Application artistically finished

Renewal over time in patients

While waiting and watching 

These realizations are universal

The Doctor is in.

Backstage Rock and Roll

On average I missed a week of school a month. School couldn’t capture my creative spirit or interest. When I got out of the house in the morning and trot myself to school, a new girl began walking with me. She was from England and I was captured by her accent. I parroted her because I wanted all things British. She was happy to have my company to explore where her Father and Mother had taken the family. He was a chemistry professor at the University of Rochester on sabbatical in the US. 

I became more social in school in my senior year as well as at the local radio station WBBF. After working I would take myself with a box of doughnuts to the office of the station and somehow get to be talking to the announcers. One guy adopted me, Nick Nickson. He was somewhere between an Uncle and a father figure. Being the fatherless girl I was expressing myself to reflect the past times when I ran around my fathers rifle range. Everyone became my family. We had no extended family in Rochester.  I only now am really reflecting on how I moved through my life and interactions with men, looking for a Father figure . I was genuinely friendly and sweet, looking back.  The Radio station took me in as some ilbregotten mascot and I latched onto the attention that my mother wasn’t able to give because she had to work in a time when women didn’t work outside the home.  

At that time, in my senior year, I was 18 years old and I was able to drink.  My personality seemed to be preparing itself for self expressions.  The radio provided me with knowledge first hand of when there would be a show of Rock and Roll stars. I only know that once again everything music and dancing was what I wanted to surround myself with. I lived it and talked about it and somehow I was going to be famous and live in the world of Stardom and Rock and Roll, the Beatles were to be my focus. 

My best friend and I got tickets to the Gene Pitney Shower of stars. I don’t know if they were comps but we went.  We dressed up in white gloves and shirts and navy skirts, looking like ushers. In the auditorium we went up to the side entrance and slid our way backstage. I was leading my friend and being quiet and as professional as teenage girls can be. We walked with confidence into the Backstage dressing rooms. By the time anyone noticed us and questioned us, Nick Nickson was there and gave his approval that we were alright. 

The excitement began as we just stood and watched. I never asked for autographs. I wanted to consider myself a star and an equal with them, even though I wasn’t even close. Off the center of the dressing rooms where various supplies are were set up, like coffee and snacks. Individual dressing rooms on the side housed Gary and the Pacemakers, Dione Warwich, Gene Pitney of course as well as a few others I can’t remember. Dione would come out in her white terry bathrobe and then go right back in. My friend Margoret and I would stand quietly and take in all the activity. I don’t even remember watching the show, only hearing the music in the background. Did hear about a group joining the show in Pittsburg, the Hullabaloo’s.