You're Goddamn Haunted

I hate to say it that way. But you're goddamn haunted. You smell like the most beautiful tears of blood and you smile like a broken chandelier all goldish and glittering but too jangled up. You move like a rhinocerous sometimes like a heady heaving robot but with a swiftness to your shoulders that makes me wonder about your sadness. You broke inside of me before, in my heart, you closed the door, but you really sting now like a wistful diary or a graveyard full of spilled roses and banshees. You chalked up the last eight years to madness and then you just blew up into your own hurricane propelling and projectile sadness. You're goddamn haunted the way your hands scrape the teeth of the air and the back neckline of your hair bends and then falls down timber to the barren stripe of your back. And you feel like an old rope that is worn over the edge of the ship about to break but biting hard right now, never willing to give in to a thought LIKE THAT. Like you might break, like you already broke, like your beauty is all that's left in your paydirt world and then tables upturned bereft in your ghost house you split! And you rock. You rock like a teenager on too many drugs and needles and sex and feeble attempts to get crazy and be crazy and then you win. You better start thinking about this sinking that is happening. Because you're so goddamn haunted that some kind of portal poltergeist is going to come volcano-like out of THAT. And you got so much more to give so much more to live and you don't want to scare off the little kids, do you? Do you? Aren't you just that anyway? You lovely, you never, you please live and breathe you. You are goddamn haunted and once upon a time I wanted in that shack of fluttering spirits. But I think i can taste how haunted you are now from perfectly where I stand, and that is just plenty for me, I have done already seen haunted before, and even more than you know, and so I am NOT GONNA GO. I am going to stick to this living room. I am going to love my candy and my broom. I am going to kiss heaven and hold skin and love my velvet bed and my cat. I am going to go now, love. You will forever be in the heart of me.

The New York Lonely Times

It is Fall summer day. Like coats and tank tops, shorts and wool socks. By nighttime I am freezing my patootie off. By day, dress me up in sundresses and scores of sunglasses, jewels, cold medicines. Ranges of weather like this cause everyone to get sick. So I take 5,ooo miligrams of Vitamin C, and I wander the streets alone with my doses of Echinacea Goldenseal Yin Ciao formulas brewing lonely spells of weakness in my belly. I am trying to be strong, I tell them. I am trying my god damn strongest to be strong, but instead, I fall into bed at night bewildered and anxious about God, Jesus, Buddha, Beezelbub and all other archetypal figures that will haunt me. I pray now alot, with sweet words to pathetically beg for help in lonesomeness, "please god, where are the friends who would understand me and want to live NEAR to me, to come to my house EVERY SINGLE night and get drunk with either beer or love and run through the wilderness and jump into foamy ocean tides at midnight? I know my little brother, twelve years younger, is one of them, but where are the rest? I am still that same age as him really, 18, and wild and not changed by any bouts of jadedness and I just want to stare at the moon and sing songs out loud and climb to places where the policemen wouldn't like. Dearest God, I know you'd understand the good intent behind my wildness. Gratitude of everthing!" I also thank God- him/her- for the family I came here into, the wild romantic talented CRAZY family of actors and writers and dreamers that we are. My grandfather was diagnosed Schizophrenic you know, and so I think we get tinges of the voices in our heads, but still I am a true love.
And yet, here I remain, wandering alone. Realizing maybe quite importantly that any friends I ever leave behind are just as available to me as the next circle of friends. That not any particular group is going to love me any more than the last realm, and that they are all busy now, and have their own issues and forget about those adventures I MUST HAVE in my life. So I dream about them, all the characters, and when I get one note or one phone call, JUST ONE EVEN, that chimes in on the passion I crave, I am 1,000 times lighter! Today, in the midst of my double espresso americano I received ONE. How can one tiny note change your day? I was a zombie in the minutes and hours before. But one message, this ONE message, just a trinket really, just a drop-a- line, inspired me about more shows and www.gypsytownmusic.com, and all my talented friends, and future travels, and beautiful people who are kind to each other. Thank You. I guess a portion of my prayers answered. And so I realize, I cannot escape myself. I may move to new homes over and over, but myself there I remain. And lonely, and so Hopeful and optimistic that someday I will never ever be lonely the way I have had to be lonely this year. That I will know everyone in the whole world practically, or at least, they will know me. And we will all have wine or tea and fun and singing together whenever possible!

DREAMS OF FLYING

Last night I spent at Claire's and Dee's in San Francisco.
Central Avenue.
On a magic couch.
Two nights my dreams were so strange and psychedelico.
My dreams of flying last night.

We were driving. My mother, my sister, and I.
A snow covered mountain poised directly ahead in our view on the highway.
I had a strong feeling that anything could happen so I checked my skin to know this was real life. A premonition was brewing in me. The view ahead shone clearly as the earth began shaking and I watched the top of that mountain fall off with trees crashing and thundering to the earth. Dirt was spilling all over the highway ahead, avalanches of the skyline falling.
The earthquake of all earthquakes was devouring the earth. And I had a feeling I would die.
Recently I had had a dream that I died in a plane and felt the free fall of death going into my stomach as we went down. I remembered that dream in this dream and thought, "I am going to die again? But that other one was a dream. Maybe it's true that its all just dream", but I feared for time and lostness as I realized that my present consciouness was really the real one. I thought, wow, this time I really AM going to die. No dreaming, this is real. I really thought this was it, in fact, I knew it. And for all I know now, this computer as I type is my new afterlife. It was THAT real. Everything went together in my mind, you see, memories of the days leading up to that fateful moment on the road, it wasn't like other dreams I had had where it is all choppy and misleading and the dream gives itself away. And then sure enough, we fell over the edge of a new cliff that the earth had broken into, while sitting in the car. And I knew this was my last few breaths, with Mom and Heather, in that car.
I was falling and dieing, and I just kept thinking, "wow, this really is death". And I just kept falling. And then I wasn't in a car, or with anyone, just alone falling and dieing into a void of sorts. I was falling and dieing and then sort of flying, too, through weird universe tunnel bubbles of white swirls that seemed like cloudy candy and I just kept thinking... which made me realize I wasn't quite dead yet. And then in the midst of my still impending "death", I went from dieing and falling to just thinking and flying. I began to fly everywhere, and anywhere, and I could fly through things, but I was still real. I somehow ended up back at planet earth and without meaning to, began descending from the sky with my hands raised from a light as though I was Jesus. I think it was New York City at this point. Or I was landing in some city like New York City, and actually the light was sort of coming from behind me from an unknown source in the sky. A resurrection of sorts. No one on the streets that were falling apart from the worldwide quake hardly even noticed me as I made my weird descent. I think there were some people pointing towards me with mouths agape and all, but then a falling building or a splintering gash happening in the concrete would distract them as I sort of landed back to the ground trying to proclaim that death was a joke. People seemed real caught up with the horrific dramas breaking out, and were so scared of their impending death as the earth shook in chaos and hurricanes, mountains breaking and fires, that my measly cries to them about there being nothing to fear were not working AT ALL. First off, no one believed me. I tried to tell them there was no reason to hurry or run or scream or cry because there was all eternity forever to do anything you want, and death had been a big joke. They could even SEE me flying and they still didn't care or really believe me. I even found my sister and mom, clear across the country, and they were still in the car, alive, but so scared and sad, and they didn't really believe me or know what was going on. So I just started flying from place to place trying to help out here and there, you know, wipe a bloodied forehead, calm a crying baby, little tricks of compassion and such. But the noise, after a while, started getting on my nerves, all that chaos and sadness and screaming and even fighting. Nobody would listen to reason. I was getting antsy about the whole thing, and a little annoyed maybe. I had to just sit back at a certain point, in the chaotic dark night, and watch for entertainment's sake or something. I mean, what else could I do? I was dead, already. My voice seemed so tiny in the midst of all that Armaggeddon shit. Finally I was like, "you guys suck and I'm bored. This is stupid." For all I cared, Earth could eat it.

And so I took off with my new flying habit to see what other places in all of eternity and the universe had some things new and funner going on.

The End
The END

Love is a way of life!

I can't stop writing about colder Fall air, and the warmth
people share when the light changes.
I am a revolutionary.
If you asked me why I have a thousand answers.
Just try.
I feel strong, invincible, true. I feel in love with everyone of you.
SO what's left but to drive my life in service to the world that aches.
I have healed my own lives, they run amuck now and I cannot stop
this frenzy.
A junkie for inspiration, passion, enthusiasm and strong strong beauty am I. And so a favorite prose.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
© Mary Oliver

The Smell of Politics in Fall

Leaves quiver hold to olden light.
Morning fades from July's drastic dry to smooth cold shimmer.
Sunshine falls shy and cool.
Papers scattered through the office wood.
Voices on a weathered radio, claim your donation to manifest
public real news.
The world overrides its claws on suits and ties and $7,000 dollar shoes
For hurricane nervous breakdowns into the patient heart of awareness.
The same global page awaiting its new viewers.
Turn in your fat crusty balcony of remote controls and voiceover microwaves.
Throw them to the sea of junk they belong in.

I want more family and feet and hands to feel.
I want to grasp starlight with my eyes and to never
forget
twenty and the beginning of every new life.
I want cold to shoot into my lungs and create dance of joy.
I am muksha now I am red and gold and eskimo!
I am fire water ether air earth.
I am biomolecular receptors of nuero firings!

I want to sing from my throat cells and my heart's
own beauty strings.
A song that befalls every curtain of night every window of death
and the moment without fear.
One moment.
The only moment.
The only bridge across to an absolute.
Absolute that defeats itself as being its own arch nemesis.

And all of its thrift stores eternal.
violins, sands, clocks, fingernails, housepaint, billboards, gasoline
incense, coffee table books, records, turbans, frames, rainbows, harpsichords
forests, freeways, ferns, magazines, praying mantis, lollypops, silver, lipsticks
bricks, naan, spider, moss, garbage sack, snake, tv tray, gazebo, coconut, cigarette
hammocks, wrought iron, dolls, signpost, welcome mat
antique, video tape, earrings, airplane, laptop
peas, carrots, coins, plastic wrap, ac adaptors, bric-a-brac, bric-a-brac, bric-a-brac,
littered. used. over. ended. life junk. life junk. time.
I need need need
I am.
I am.
TIMELESS.
Without time.

We have smiles to pass around and kiss.
We have tongues that want grain and water.
We have new countries to sustain.
Their granted needs save my heart such pain of my own.
Childrens gleaming teeth.
Sun skimming hair.
Dancing ocean sands.
Flying feathers birds.
Call, fly, ocean shell.
SSsssssssss desert wind whip.
Dry, wet, yes, no, no, no
Yes.

Beautiful Cities of North America

When I think of New Orleans, I think beignets, Cafe du Monde, the horses and carriages, the wrought-iron French lace balconies, voodoo dolls and beads, the darkest loveliest cup of coffee ever, One-Eyed Jacks and the prettiest bartender ever, Meghann, and all the sweet spooky intellectuals I met there.

New Orleans wouldn't go down. It had to withstand the force. The sheer amount of haunt kept the heart of that storm away. Sure, the city's been hurt, but not swept away. And it could have happened. Too many good spells and magic keep a place alive. Especially those Rues and Calles in the French Quarter.

San Francisco is beautiful and haunted in a little less of a dark way. She is more full of wind and seagull's cries. She is more cold and alive. New Orleans is more death and dies. But funerals are alive too as we well know. Time is just an illusion. New Orleans makes peace with death and laughs with her poor man's cemetaries and her sweaty pavement heat.

What's It All About?

First and Foremost. Family. It is what we brought to the world we are in. It is the world we were given. It is our souls link, our karma, our own love, our own tree. Look in their eyes. There is a reason they look so much like our own. Isn't that nice? To know you are that close to someone that the actual spark in your eyes looks like theirs?

What will you do with your life? (and what I am doing with mine )

Tick tock tick tock
The clock is going and not waiting!

One life, one chance, what matters to you now? What is success?

ONE * Be a Part of saving our world and not destroying it.
simple. Recycle. Be kind. Be humble. Think of the other humans our actions
directly (or indirectly) affect.
How do I affect my friends and family?
Think of the animals and nature we affect.
How do I affect animals and nature?

ONE* Respect the child you used to be, and still are in many many ways!
(treat others as you would have others treat you)
(treat yourself as if you were the most wonderful innate being ever)
(have regular wondrous and innocent new adventures!)
( Go for the gold! Your dreams can and do come true!)
(We are always as new, just in a different moment, as we were back then.
there are still a thousand million possibilities.
Even if you are 99!
See a new natural phenomenon. Go to a castle. See a movie. Taste a new food.
Kiss a stranger on the cheek. Write a book.)

ONE* Love this gift of life we are so priveleged to receive!
Truly. Every moment, good friend, family member, blue sky, etc. IS ON LOAN! Any moment
it could very well vanish! Be cheerful now and always and show your love, and you will know
that you did your best with your precious life and with the life of your loved ones when the
time comes to say goodbye!

YES, wild Wind.

Yes, Wild Wind
I do summon you now!
You once took my hand,
And the friend in you shall last a lifetime.
We will blow to the tops of golden trees!
We will shine through stars and into mouths of monkeys!
We will sail so far in rags and swim with whales!
We will whip and stroke the sky and all her billows...

I will tiptoe to the balconies of ghost towers.
New York City, Bowery Ballroom, and dance the hours!
I will not give up the vein of blood that haunts!
I will fly like pidgeons spires to rooftops!

Wild wind, there is a spirit stuck in my heart
We are lovers, wind, and never shall we part.
Through to mountains, fog and streetlamps, fire and paper
Oragami cranes that fly behind those vapors.
And in all my mind's wildside imagination
There are spells of heart that come across in tides
They have whispered in my ears the name of you, wind
The wind of timeless kisses love,
The name of passion.

Back to Reality

Of course, you!
Back to reality, here I go.
My dreams had already come true but then I'd forgotten.
Don't tell me who I am.
Don't tell me you're disappointed.
Tis I my friend, whom is disappointed.

My love is as boundless as the sea!
And it goes for an eternity!
So it shall send itself off like Amazing Pilots in tiny jets
Into the eyes of everyone now.

There is no hero here
Only a zero flicker of clear.
And my love flies to every canyon and creek.
To the skyscrapers, pidgeons, palm trees and frozen lakes.

I am my own heroine, dear.
Have heart when I tell you it's the pain that must go.
Not I, I am here.
In my heart I reside.
But knowing your choice
Its as though a green branch has died.
And it still sucks the life,
From my beautiful small tree
Til I cut it off, darlin
Til I hear it hit the ground.

Now, my beautiful darling love
I am free.
You have to let go of me.
You chose that other road
And you can't have both,
You can't not not have me.

I will always love you- FOREVER!
I won't forget the way your eyes search
The way you stop and need to hold my hand
The way I loved you and
The way you could have loved.

It was clear to me.
You are where you want to be.
And my love is here, love.
My love is here.

Setting fire!

Setting fire to the Wind!
I run to the operas, the cameras, the synopsis of my fate!
I am in love with the autumn and she carries me to the gate...
Of all the poetry and song tucked in warm corners
where we huddle,
When the heat no longer drenches our bones and drips
from our heads,
And instead
Hides behind warm glowing windows with faces and notebooks.
We must seek it out,
To conspire for our survival of the Winter.
And we play in the midst of its tiny challenge.
After an overload of the miracle of fire,
We accept the loss with a smile.

And in this modern age I am again my own romantic.
Not scared not scared, just half inspired and frantic
With the love of passion and a love of human nature
And in caves and in creeks to study the wild moving there.

Oh I am the best girl to ever come alive!
I won't give up, and more alive to more alive!
It's taken darkness and it has taken nearly death
But I am so alive right now I am the bridge of every breath!

Real

I forget nothing.
This is not working.
When can I see you?
I miss your smile and your eyes.
Your sweet sweet eyes.
But I will go on now.
And I will go about my life.
There is so much beauty still.
There is so much love around.
It isn't more when you are around.
It is just shared when you are here.
It is just seen when you are here.
It is just that much more real
When you are here.

I am going to sing and act again. In theaters,
On Fall nights I will see people of all the ages.
I am going to work so hard now, and nothing that
mattered to me about being so
wipsy on the wind like a gyspy for pretend
matters
When you are here.
I want to stay where you are.
I do not doubt this will go on.
I love you and it is part magic,
Part creative, and part practical.
One part logic defying mystery,
One part the motivation of sharing creativity
And one part a foundation of stability but challenge.
The only way I,
will ever stay put.

heart of the city to the heart of the forest

I have not spent hours in vain waiting for the ghost of this train to pass me by. I have studied the subtle scents that it would bring and I have traced the shadows on paper time and time again.

And in the heart it is Green! And in the heart it is vast and velvet across the lights of our very modern sky. And in the twinkles of the tiny computers and in the rustle of golden red leaves and in violins and pianos echoing out of warm doorways I have felt it coming. And in the smiling eyes of friends who have given me their love I have felt its promise. And in the heart it is a hope that has no bending or breaking, an unrelenting hope that knows no end and goes on no matter the flying arrows or spears or jeers or countdowns or obstacles.

My heart is the hope that is love, now. I have turned my grey and vicious demons into panting puppies! And instead romance is in a mad swirl of skirts and streets and music and laughter all around me! Dancing out of taxis, running up stairs, crowded in business suits, swimming in the full moon tonight, catching the light on bats under streetlamps, pushing bicycles, blowing through the forest pines. I am back! I am free! I forgot my own favorite part of me!